Good news virgil- the post is noormal width and i notice you altered the sig. so that must have been it.

Hi Folks,

Just thought I'd give an update regarding my benzo tapering. Tomorrow, my clonazepam dosage will be reduced to the equivalent of 1.3mg diazepam daily. I'll be on that dose for one week at which point I'll reduce by a further 10% (give or take a gnat's whisker). And so on until mid-September when I'll take my last dose of a benzo. I hope everything goes to plan; I'm pretty confident that it will. So that will be one less variable to be concerned about.

How are the other members of the benzo bunch getting on with their tapering, assuming that you have chosen to go down that route? It really would be good to know and find out about others' experiences.

V.

I tapered down to 2.5mg diazepam for about 2 months and I stayed at that level while TSM finally broke my addiction. Now that my desire for alcohol is way down, I have started to increase my diazepam to 5mg per day. My wife and I feel that I am under-sedated and need some additional help which obviously alcohol can no longer do. I hope I will soon stabilize on this relatively low dosage.

Bob

Re benzos: I have been on them since the mid 1980's. They, and AL, are about the only things that seem to help my essential tremor--head and neck. But the problem is that the day after an AL bout, a rebound effect kicks in. AL withdrawal then makes my tremors worse, which promotes me to increase my benzo intake. It's a vicious circle.

I have cut down on the benzos drastically. For years I used to take lorazepam, 2 mg t.i.d; plus 5 mg diazepam t.i.d. Occassionally, when the tremor got really bad, I'd throw in a mg or two of clonazepam. Wow! Then, on top of that, I'd drink. That's probably enough to kill a horse, but never bothered me. I must have one hell of a tolerance for them GABA monsters. (My doc is very sympathetic in trying to help me because he had an uncle who had the same tremor problem, became a full-blown all-day-drinking alcoholic--which I am not, evenings only--and died in his early seventies. My doc doesn't recall the cause of death.)

Anyway, my liver function tests are in the normal range even after adding the naltrexone 50mg. I have drastically cut down on my benzos, now averaging one 2mg lorazapam tab, plus one 5mg diazepam a day, and am working to slowly reduce even more. Surprisingly, about ten years ago I was able to cold turkey the benzos for about six months, but compensated by upping the AL. So now I'm trying to reduce both benzos and AL.

Then I discovered that gabapentin, 300mg t.i.d, helps tremendously with the tremor lessening the need for benzos. Incidentally, benzos never made me feel high, so I may not be classically addicted to them. I can take them or leave them as far as any euphoria goes, because they don't produce any for me the way AL does. They're only good for the tremor.

Since I'm apparently a GABA drinker, where benzos are contraindicated for tsm to work efficiently, I now wonder if gabapentin (which is non-addictive and not metabolized in the liver, but the kidneys instead) might also interfere with tsm since it, too, is GABAergic. Anybody have any thoughts on that, even though I imagine the answer is self explanatory?

Just thinking out loud. Sorry.

Mike

Mike -- Don't be sorry. A couple of things: Eskapa has posted that benzos don't help TSM, and could hamper it. That little tidbit got apocryphal in the telling: It morphed to "Oh no, I'm a benzo user so I must be a GABA drinker; therefore TSM won't work for me." WRONG!!!!It took us weeks to tamp down that little bit of misinformation. Eskapa readily admits he's just guessing at this, and it could be true in some very rare cases. But we have seen anecdotally on this board that the benzo bunch is moving along at about the same pace as the board as a whole. So don't let that worry you.

Neurontin is NOT a GABA mediator. It mimics the function of GABA but does not interfere with GABA production like alcohol and benzos do (those two make GABA more efficient and our body responds by making less). Wikipedia has a good explanation of neurontin (generic gabapentin).

I started with my doctor giving me something to help with sleep mid 90's that I thought wasn't much because it was "only" 1 or 2 mg -- klonipin (clonazepam). When I tried to stop and couldn't, I learned it was equivalent to 20-40 mg valium!!!

I started with the Ashton taper a couple of years ago, which was way too fast for me, and I used wine to self medicate. That's when my drinking got out of hand. It had always been pretty heavy, but for the first time I found I couldn't take it or leave it. And it just kept getting higher.

Eskapa has recommended Ashton on this board. It's certainly better than most of what's out there. The important thing is to back off if you feel symptoms.

I use a different taper method that cuts a micro dose every day. I had been down to nearly .28 when I had to be in the hospital this winter but I didn't know how to explain it to them so I just said .5. I resumed my taper a few days ago and am doing just great. For those wondering, my alcohol units suddenly dropped before I started the taper so the two are not causally related.

On the benzo board I was told to lose the booze or it would be too tough to titrate off benzo. Then here Eskapa said benzos might make it tougher to lose the alcohol AUGHHH!! Happily I am dropping both and the future looks bright.

Hi Lena,

Thanks for the feedback and clarifications. I've been aware of Ashton for years, and even have a written record on a legal pad from 2001 where I followed her instructions to the letter and noted the results. They were good but not spectacular. I also know that benzo equivalents vary for each type, the cross-over techniques which I didn't really follow, and that the shorter half-life ones are more dangerous than the long acting stuff such as diazepam and it's metabolites which Ashton recommends because it allows for a slower taper.

I found that although I have taken hefty amounts of benzos at various times, they apparently are not very addictive to me. Simply palliative, I believe. I can cut down pretty quickly with no apparent consequences--as long as I avoid caffeine in any form. That's one of the bad guys in activating the excitatory NMDA glutamate (watch that Chinese food!) receptors. However, there is no one solution. Everyone is different.

Gabapentin (Neurontin) seems to a very helpful replacement for benzos in my case. Anecdotally noted, however.

As far as tsm goes, this evening I had a breakthrough--maybe a delayed "honeymoon?" After four units of wine, I suddenly lost interest in any more. I suspect it may be partially psychological since I am strongly motivated to cut way back but I can't deny that naltrexone may well have played an important role. I'm only at about the 2-1/2 month mark, so time will tell. However, I sense that something is changing--I hope. I think perhaps pharmacological extinction may be half the process with one's mindset accounting for the rest. Only a guess. Humans are much more complex than experimental rodents and harder to measure.

With best wishes,

Mike

Maybe not half the process but a good bit of it. The mice, as Camelia noted recently, do not consult the financial times before they pick their stocks. Nor do they lose their jobs or get divorced as far as we can tell. Moreover, as Eskapa recently reminded us, they were specially bred to be readily addicted to alcohol. So we are at a disadvantage and must rely on our wits for part of it. But not too much; as SpringerRider used to say, it works whether we want it to or not.

You are fortunate indeed to not be prone to physical dependence on benzos. But some on the benzo board say getting off them gets tougher each time. I hope never to know.

I have had gabapentin in the past for sleep and will go back to it if I have trouble as I get off the clonazepam. I'm glad it works for you too. Three hundred mg is a very small dose, isn't it?

If you feel you've had some sort of corner turned, the history of this board says you're right! That's great news. Thanks for continuing to share here -- the ups AND the downs.

Hi Lena,

Re: gabapentin dosage, I misspoke. Each capsule contains 300mg. My script calls for 300mg q.i.d which equals 1200mg daily. (It's eliminated from the body quickly, which is why it's spaced out.) I usually take less -- maybe two or three 300mg caps a day. Sometimes none. My body must be a high-tech pharmacological sewage treatment plant given all the varying amount of junk it's asked to metabolize which it seems to do so efficiently and seamlessly with no ill effects, so far.

Mike

Hey Mike --

Just a quick observation. If you read when Bob turned the corner, it started with, "something's happening here..." The same has been true for several others: nothing perceptible was happening for months and then suddenly a "light switch" went off. Lena and Firebird recently reported this as well as others. So, this could be something big for you. I'll take a wild guess and say that I don't think the psychological need to feel a change for the better is playing a huge role here. If it were, everyone on this board would be reporting it because we are all counting the minutes to the cure. I hope so anyway, because that would mean you are well on your way to a sober sailing adventure.

My best,

Nick

Hi Folks,

As most of you know, I have not had any success with TSM to date. However, I do have cause to celebrate today. Yes, the day has finally arrived when I took my very last dose of a benzo (clonazepam). It has taken many months of tapering my dosage to get to this stage. There was no fanfare of trumpets and no fireworks but, at long last, I will not be taking benzos on a regular basis. I will, however, take the odd diazepam as, and when, required (which I hope will not be often). I sincerely hope that I do not suffer any withdrawal symptoms at this late stage, otherwise I'll be eating my own words.

All the best, everyone!

V.