In my quest to rid myself of my Benzo addiction, I did a changeover to Valium from Clonazepam. I followed Dr. Ashton's advice on equivilancy (1mg Clonazepam = 20 mg Valium). I also noted several other sources with similar equivalancy charts showing the same thing. I ended up getting suicidal after two days on Valium. I did it in a two part changeover over 4 weeks. In the second step, I went from 0.125mg x2/day Clonazepam and 2.5mg x 2/day Valium to 5mg x 2/day of Valium when I went nuts. I upped the dose to 7.5mg x 2/day Valium, and now feel sort of stable. I feel much more tired on Valium (maybe lack of sleep?). I do notice the longer half life of Valium (one of the key reasons to changeover). I used to get antsy before the 12 hours were up, but tonight, I felt good (fingers crossed) after 14 hours. I find, for some reason, that I can handle say 14 between doses during the day, but only 10 hours or so at night??? I feel bummed I couldn't handle just 10mg of Valium without the shakes, tremors and general malaise. Funny how 5 extra mg make all the difference in the world. Mind you, I am probably still suffering from the Risperidone WD (3 weeks - yeah!).
Just thought I would pass the info on to those going down the same road.
Cheers.

Hi Melli from mel! I guess we are going through the same thing. The klonopin w/d from hell. I went back to my original dose and started over tapering from 1.5- three times a day, to morn. dose-1.5, midday dose-.125, eve. dose-.5. I will see how that works out, keep me posted on how you are doing.

The best tapering advice I have ever seen is to dissolve the pills of whatever you're taking in alcohol(benzos are not water soluble) and then go down by maybe 1/50 a day over 50 days or longer/shorter as you see fit. That way it's a completely steady decline.

Lost my post! Anyway, I couldn't hack Valium, even at increased dosage (suicidal and severe IBS), so I went back to Clonazepam (makes me less tired) 2x 0.375mg/day. I was down to 2 x 0.25mg/day, but my IBS got so bad I went to ER twice. They gave me buscapan, probiotics and pain meds and kicked me out the door. Saw a couple of pdocs, one of which, mentioned that I should taper off Clonazepam by no more than 0.25mg per day every 4-6 weeks. joy.

Update - been on 5mg/day Valium and 0.25mg/day of Clonazepam for the last week without going bonkers. Seems my move to the sticks (middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere) has calmed me down (lived downtown in a big city before). I did take a drive to the big city, and wow, was I anxious to get out of there! Something about waking up and hearing only my own thoughts in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Cheers. Mellissa