How To Taper Off Temazepam Completely (Page 3)

Please help; doctor doesn't want me as a patient anymore, reasons are ridiculous and too long to get into, but now she has put me in a jam. I was taking Clonazepam 2mg. 2 tablets 2x per week(for anxiety & sleep), & Temazepam 30mg. 2 tablets 2x per week(for sleep). I have been on both these drugs for 2 1/2 years & want to get the heck off them. I noticed the last couple months; neither appeared to be helping the anxiety/sleep issues I have had; so basically I just want off both. I have been Clonazepam free for 11 days now. I CANNOT believe how I feel--like I could crawl right out of my skin; anxiety ridden, non stop talking,completely wired,nerves jumping in arms & legs, more and more and on and on. Bad idea to go cold turkey, but did & now out of them. So I have to deal with the withdrawal with that one I guess.... But like I mentioned, I also want to get off the Temazepam. Am not going to go more crazy & quit cold turkey on that one too. My tablets are 30mg. & I normally took 2-30mg. tablets on Mondays & Fridays. Since I don't have a doctor anymore--can anyone suggest how to taper till completed weaned off? I want to get off this crud asap. (as you probably notice, I have a high tolerance). Thanks everyone!!!

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Samantha, what dosage of temazapam were you originally taking and for how long? I went from 30 mcg to 15 last night. Didn't sleep much but am not groggy like usual. I wish there was a natural for, of sleeping med like herbs that really would help me instead of putting this drug in my system!

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Ricky, look into CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia). From what I've read, it works better than any drug, and unlike drugs, it doesn't give you the wrong kind of sleep, and doesn't create tolerance (which is what causes drugs to stop working and created dependence). CBT-I requires work on your part, but there are a lot of people out there who have tried it, like it, and can tell you more.

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Thank you, Kent....
I will look into BCT. I am trying to wean off of the temazapam. Dr. said to take it about 7:30-8:00 p.m. I don't understand that...won't I have trouble sleeping through the night? I didn't sleep through the night last night on my first try with just one pill instead of two. I will try it earlier tonight.
Do you understand his thinking? I was not groggy today but I am tired from not sleeping much.

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Ricky:
You have nothing to lose by asking him why, and you have a right to understand what he's asking you to do.

You didn't say when you go to bed. I think he's assuming you're taking your dose according to the instructions (½ hour before you go to bed), and that it does help you sleep, or if you're dependent that withdrawal effects will keep you awake.

Psychoactive drugs tend to have short half-lives (the time it takes for their concentration in your blood to drop to halve - 8 to 10 hours ± for temazepam). That's important for sleeping pills, or you'd sleep way too long; but it also means that if it helps you sleep and you don't go to sleep soon after you take it, its effect will begin to wear off making it harder to fall asleep and you causing you to wake up earlier, getting less sleep. Since the sleep you get from sleeping pills isn't the kind of sleep you need, I'm not sure that matters.

To make the withdrawal as smooth as possible, try to take your dose at the same time every day and go to bed at the same time every day. Also, while you're withdrawing, your brain is healing. Eat a healthy diet. In particular, get omega-3 (e.g., salmon), also lean meat, vegetables and fruits, avoid processed foods with sugar and fructose (normally as high fructose corn syrup - not easy to avoid in our country), and drink only water and maybe milk (no fruit juice, soda, energy drinks, sports drinks, coffee, black tea or alcohol). Also, don't do anything in bed but what beds are for (no eating, sleeping, TV, gaming, etc.)..

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Their editor stripped off a character it should say "(half hour before you go to bed)".

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Kent, i just drink one cup of coffee in the morning. I don't drink anything but water otherwise. I will watch what I eat. When I used to take 30 mg of temazepam I would take it right before going to sleep but and I would fall asleep immediately and sleep through the night. Usually the whole day I would be groggy and my bones would hurt. I will take the 15 mcg
temazapam tonight an hour before going to sleep and see if it helps me. I have a feeling that I will just have to be patient through this process but will look into the Valium idea and let my doctor know about it.

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Ricky,
Read the entire thread. Valium is a "benzo". It does the same things to your brain as temazepam (Restoril), but is a different chemical and may do different things to the rest of your body. If you're withdrawing from one drug, and there's a problem, at least you know which drug caused the problem. If you're withdrawing from more than one, toss a coin.

Search the web for Valium withdrawal. Valium is used to treat anxiety (panic attacks), so your brain will react to it in a way that will tend to make withdraw symptoms include anxiety.

Do you want to stop taking a drug you've become dependent on, or do you want to become dependent on a different drug? Valium creates dependence, too.

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I took 30mg for about five years before I started tapering off about 8 months ago.

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No, I don't want to become dependent on something else. I just remember when I tapered off of Xanex a few years ago, I took nothing and was unhappy because of not sleeping at all. So, that's when I decided to go on another sleep medication and after trying ambien, clonazepam, Ativan, rozerem and seilenor, I had the best luck with Temazepam... Except I think things turned badly when I started taking two pills of 15 mcg each night. My joints started aching and the grogginess all day long.

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Ricky,
Like most people, you have come to believe that a psychoactive drug can fix something. Sorry, but all psychoactive drugs do is change perception by interfering with your brain and nervous system. They don't kill a pathogen as an antibiotic does (while some of them do permanent damage to your body), they don't immunize you against anything, they don't replace something that your body can no longer produce as supplements like insulin do, and they don't help an injury to heal as a salve might. As soon as you start taking a psychoactive drug, you brain begins to adjust to what it apparently perceives as an imbalance caused by the drug, and that leads to tolerance and dependence, which is also incorrectly called addiction. Something that is addictive will make you want to keep taking MORE as dependence develops; whereas something that creates dependence isn't necessarily addictive. Furthermore, some drugs will make everyone dependent, but may be addictive for only some.

When you understand how psychoactive drugs work, immediately and over time, you will realize that based on the science behind them, they can only be expected to make a condition they're used to "treat" worse in the long run. If you analyze how they're approved, you'll know that the trials do not show what they claim to show, and that safety testing is inadequate for short term use and non-existent for long-term use. If you research benzodiazepines, you will learn that they should not be used for more than a few DAYS, and if you search the web for withdrawal horror stories, you will find them.

All another drug will do is drag out the withdrawal process and increase the risk of damage to your body (particularly liver and kidneys) or worse. If you want to slow down withdrawal, increase the time between decreasing your dose, and/or decrease the size of the steps at which you decrease your dose.

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The problem with staying on temazepam alone is that you cannot reduce the dose beyond 10 mg. Valium doses go down to 2 mg tablets, that you can halve, so you can slowly reduce your dose. This makes a big difference in helping your body adjust to the withdrawal.

It worked for me. I was able to eventually wean myself from 30 mg nightly temazepam habit by following the Ashton taper (look it up online, there is a detailed schedule of doses.) The key is to be patient, go slow, let your body adjust. As Ken points out, it is not ideal to be on two different drugs. But it is not ideal to be hooked on benzo's either. Using Valium in a taper can WORK to get you off the pills, so I'd suggest you consider it.

After finally getting off the pills, I started a 2 month treatment with a CBT therapist, and that was very, very helpful. Got at the root of my anxieties about sleep, and helped me set up better sleep habits. For the first time since I was a teenager, I am now sleeping fairly normally! So there is hope. But it was a long, difficult struggle. Good luck to Ricky, and all who are struggling with it. You'll get there.

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LJ,
Thank you for providing information from someone who has "been through it" with the drug this thread is about. I will say more about what you did, but first need to look up half-life, absorption and bio-availability information on diazepine (Valium) and do some calculations in Excel, so I can show you what you subjected your body to.

Note also that (as with everything about psychoactive drugs) just because it works for you doesn't mean it will for someone else. That's why it's important to know what any method is subjecting your body to. A quick Google search shows that some people have serious problems with the Ashton taper. Perhaps my Excel calculations will allow me to suggest why (although I already have an idea, because the diazepine half-life is much longer than the temazepam half-life, and that can have huge implications).
Ricky, too:
Note that Valium is also a benzo; and if you take it for long, you're dependent on it. It just has different side effects (from what I've read, temazepam is particularly nasty in that department). If it is OK to break a tablet of temazepam, there is nothing that says you can't halve a half tablet, etc.

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Ricky,
In your post #41, you say you reduced your dose from 30 mcg to 15. I am assuming you mean 30 mg to 15 mg, because 15 mcg (microgram) is 1/1000 of half of a 2 mg tablet (the smallest tablet sold).

The Ashton taper changes your dependence from a short half-life benzo to an "equivalent" of the long half-life benzo diazepam, and then tapers you off of that. The theory is that the long half life causes the dose variation to decrease at large doses and is easier to taper at small doses. The tacit assumption here is that the drugs are safe, so once you're dependent, it doesn't matter how long you're on a drug. You have to decide if you consider a drug safe that progressively damages your kidneys and liver, that you can die from an adverse reaction to, or that can cause you to have an accident that kils you because it interferes with your thinking, judgment, memory and reactions.

If you begin taking 30 mg of temazepam at the same time every evening, at the end of 1 week, your theoretical blood levels of temazepam will have stabilized to varying every day in a range between a low of 5-33 mg and a high of 24-51 mg, depending on the half-life in your body. The Ashton taper assumes that a 15 mg dose of diazepam is equivalent to a 30 mg dose of temazepam. If you begin taking if mg of diazepam at the same time every evening, at the end of 5 weeks, your theoretical blood levels of diazepam will have stabilized to varying every day in a range between a low of 13-38 mg and a high of 84-98 mg, depending on the half-life in your body. Actually, because one of diazepam's metabolites has and even longer half-life, these numbers could be low, but my point is that when you take 30 mg of temazepam, once daily, you're body exposure to it varies between at least 5 and 33 mg but no more than 24 to 51 mg for the time you take it, whereas when you take only 15 mg of diazepam, once daily, you are exposing yourself to more of the drug for potentially a longer period of time.

Read about the Effects and Side Effects Profile of diazepam here: nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/job185drugs/diazepam.htm
This guy's experiences should give you an idea of how you MIGHT expect to feel for 6 months of diazepam withdrawal using the Ashton taper: ashtonbenzomanual.com

As long as you are taking a psychoactive drug, you are experiencing both side effects and withdrawal effects to varying degrees between doses, and depending on how much your brain is still changing to compensate for the drug (and any adverse reactions with other things in your environment). Once you're "clean" of the drug (3-7 days for temazepam, 7-40 days for diazepam), you will only experience withdrawal effects, the strength of which will vary depending on how much your brain still needs to heal itself (and any adverse reactions with other things in your environment), but should mostly decrease (there will be bumps, possibly because the healing brain is becoming more sensitive).

Bottom line: It's your body, but there are more things to consider than how comfortble you'd like to be. Psychoactive drugs don't do anything good to your body, only bad things* (side effects, permanent or not). Withdrawal only harms your body if it causes you injure or kill yourself, accidently or on purpose, which is why I say don't go it alone.

The biggest problem I see with the Ashton taper is that, because psychoactive drugs affect everyone differently, there is no way of knowing if it will work for you or not until you try it; but once you've tried it long enough to find out it isn't working, you're stuck with another withdrawal problem, you've lost that much more time, and you've exposed your body and brain to more damage. If the possible comfort is worth the risk to you, it will help you while it hurts you.

* doctors note: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere

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sarah-could you give more info on ryourw/d sympons since ive been tapering for 6 weeks. im 63 years old and very scared. thanks so much.

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Ken, a Google search will also tell you that many folks have benefitted from the Ashton taper. There are various taper methods - some that use titration rather than Valium - mixing water in with the dose of the original drug to dilute it. The best approach is to do research on your own, and then talk to your doctor to decide on a strategy. My doc was supportive of my proposal to do the Valium taper, and it worked well for me. I am no expert, but am sharing my experience in the hope it will be of some use to others.

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LJ,

And I appreciate your doing so, for the benefit of those who must now do what you have already done; and I wholeheartedly agree that people need to do research on their own. The main reason people end up in withdrawal in the first place is that not doing research before taking/prescribing drugs is apparently the norm.

I finished the additional research and calcualtions I wanted to do, but my response was long, so the web site has not posted it yet. The decision to use a benzo to get off of another benzo should be be based on whether you think what you hope to gain is worth the risks. As you will see, based on the facts that the risks are not small and any benefit is only psychological, I continue to maintain that drugs should be the choice of last resort.

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Well, after tapering from 30-15 mcg of Temazepam. I reported I doctor that I did not sleep but was not groggy like I was feeling with 30mcg. Did that or two nights. Then he told me to just stop the Temazepam complexly and take Lunesta. The first day after I lunesta, I was tired all day... I had only slept 6 hours but wasn't a good sleep. Last night was my second try on Lunesta and slept 3 hours and decided to take I mg Ativan. I just basically layer there but couldn't sleep. So, now I don't know what to do about tonight. What about melatonin or herbal formulations that have GABA. Valeria, etc.
I think when I tried Ambien I was depressed. Suggestion, anyone? I'm starting to believe that not sleeping is more problematic than taking a medication.

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Ricky,
Sounds like your doctor is hoping he'll hit on something that "works". Now you have no way of knowing if the unpleasant side effects you are having are Lunesta side effects or Restoril withdrawal effects, or both. If you had done your research, you would know that insomnia cannot be corrected for any length of time by drugs, but with CBT-I, it can.

Lunesta (eszopiclone, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunesta ) is a nonbenzodiazepine that does the same thing to the brain as temazepam and diazepam; they are all "GABA receptor agonists", which increase your brain's GABA receptors' sensitivity. You brain sees that as too much GABA, so it reacts to all GABA receptor agonists by decreasing its number of GABA receptors to compensate. GABA calms you, so lack of GABA excites you. That reaction starts immediately, but takes time; the time it takes to become "dependent" on and tolerant to the drug. After than occurs if you stop or decrease a GABA receptor agonist, your brain is not going to have enough receptors for the GABA in your brain, and you are going to have trouble sleeping until your brain heals by replacing the receptors it got rid of, which also takes time.

Instead of dropping from 30 mg to 15 mg, I would have cut tablets as needed to drop 7.5 mg and then waited a week to see if I could manage. However, I'm not you or your doctor. You have to live with the withdrawal. Changing drugs is asking for trouble; I helped someone get off of multiple drugs and it wasn't pretty (but I had done research and recognized the problem with multiple drugs before I began, so I encouraged stopping one at a time).

No-one is going to be able to make withdrawal pleasant. You need to get some CBT-I training ASAP, and you really need to stop worrying about not sleeping (worrying helps keep you awake). I know, easier said than done, but remember that the companies that make sleeping pills want you to keep taking them; they don't care what the foreign chemicals do to your body in the long run, because you won't be able to prove they were the cause (the same reason they can't test them properly).

Yours is a sad case, like others I've seen. If you can't handle feeling miserable while your brain heals, the worst thing you can do is take psychoactive drugs, because none of them are appropriate for long-term use, and all of them can have very unpleasant side and withdrawal effects.

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Now you have no way of knowing if the unpleasant side effects you are having are Lunesta side effects or Restoril withdrawal effects, or both. Insomnia cannot be corrected for any length of time by drugs, but with CBT-I, it can.

Read about eszopiclone (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunesta) and psychoactive drugs (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoactive_drugs).

Instead of dropping from 30 mg to 15 mg, I would have cut tablets as needed to drop 7.5 mg and then waited a week to see if I could manage. However, I'm not you or your doctor. You have to live with the withdrawal. I helped someone get off of multiple drugs and it wasn't pretty, but I encouraged stopping one at a time.

No-one is going to be able to make withdrawal pleasant. You need to get some CBT-I training ASAP, and you really need to stop worrying about not sleeping (worrying helps keep you awake).

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am tapering off 30mg tamazpan. down to 26 mg in two months time.i think the worry of w/d is making it worse.ive taken it 7-8 years and it still works. any ideas or thoughts. thanks kelli

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