If I take Ativan during the day for a week, it starts to lose it's effect. At that point I usually stop taking it instead of taking more. I'm needing more lately because of withdrawal from coming off Lexapro (doc is experimenting with that). Does it take about a week to remove that tolerance? Does the size of dose matter? If I took it longer than a week would it take longer than a week to detolerate?

lemon,

with benzo use as prescibed by my doc, and this is for clonazepam, which has a different half life so keep that in mind - dosages are different, and length of effectiveness is different.

we would start at a dose, say .5mg, and then do that for a few days, then taper down, to .25mg before going to 0. this can somewhat lesssen the withdrawl, but also might affect how much time you have to wait before you can take that dose again and feel the effects.

sort of like:

(time -------------------------------------->)

.................. ______.5......................................... ________.5
................................ _____.25 ........................................... ________.25
............................................ ___________0 then ............................ _________0

sorry if the diagram above made no sense. i am crazy.

ask your doctor for a more precise tolerance management dose for you.

This is also for clonazepam. I stopped it cold turkey when my script ran out. I was taking more than prescribed (was taking 2mg three times a day). I had no ill side effects. So some people don't get withdrawal symptoms from these drugs. I guess it could also be that clonazepam has a substantialy longer half life than ativan.

Tom