Posted by qbsbrown on July 24, 2009, at 14:12:25
In reply to Re: Scott, taper rate? » qbsbrown, posted by SLS on July 24, 2009, at 13:16:50
> > > Personally, I feel that the 10% reduction every 4-5 weeks is absurd. It is an unnecessarily protracted process.
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> I guess I have to rethink this issue.
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> Of course, I wish such a long taper period weren't necessary, but perhaps it is.
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> It seems that those people who take the longest to discontinue a drug have the worst withdrawal. This can be looked at two ways without having more information to work with. Is the extended length of discontinuation a result of the degree of tolerance and withdrawal severity or is the withdrawal severity and persistence the result of a protracted discontinuation schedule? Perhaps the optimum rate of taper is greater than what might seem intuitive.
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> Kindling?
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> I don't know.
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> Now that you are already kindled (in my way of thinking), you will be extremely sensitive to dose reductions. It may not matter whether you drop by 2mg or 4mg. You might experience the same degree of withdrawal symptoms regardless.
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> If it were me, I would try to use an anticonvulsant drug like Depakote to reduce the severity of withdrawal symptoms along with the time it takes to discontinue. I would consider it an experiment. If it fails, either choose another anticonvulsant, or move on to another strategy. Maybe there are food supplements like magnesium that would help. Magnesium competes for the glutamate NMDA binding site and reduces neuronal excitability. There are people who post on the Alternative board who can be of help with this.
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> All I know is that I would not be willing to tolerate the experience of withdrawal symptoms that you have. I would sooner discontinue a drug by "feel" than use some sort of rigid taper schedule.
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> - ScottWell, in my case, I really hope the Depakote works. It's probably a crap shoot. Like I had said, I went from 30mgs to 10mgs in 10 days while on trileptal, but stupidly quit the trileptal (cause it was inducing rapid cycling type symptoms), and i was hit like a ton of bricks, and to re-instate 30mgs. Now when i tried to re-introduce the trileptal, the brain was rejecting it (hates chemicals) and was making withdrawal worse, plus the rapid cycling was coming back.
Depakote i was able to come off in a week last summer, just that i quit it at the same time, should have held.
It always seemed much smoother, grounding, and had less anxiety than trileptal, and was more tolerable.
Yeah, it does make me stupid, introverted, some of the fun side effects, but perhaps not on a small dose of 500.
For sure worth a shot. And yes, a year of this hell is unimaginable as I've already dealt with it for 4 months. It seems pretty barbaric to me.
It seems for detox, that either tegretol/trileptal, depakote, or phenobarbitol are the choices.
Thanks Scott.
Brian
poster:qbsbrown
thread:906673
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/wdrawl/20081229/msgs/908355.html