22 days on 50mg

Well, it seems I’m gradually stabilizing. I can walk again now, although it’s still quite difficult. I imagine a lot of it is the trauma that’s been left behind in my unconscious body. I can move around the house now. To be honest, I don’t have much motivation to get out of bed, but when I do, I usually don’t have any major problems—maybe my breathing becomes a little irregular. Starting on day 25, I’ll begin reducing my Rivotril (clonazepam) by 0.125 mg every two weeks. I think it’s actually the Rivotril that’s keeping me in this constant state. As I gradually taper it off, I expect to regain my drive. It does seem that staying at 50 mg of sertraline is helping. I no longer wake up with tachycardia. now i wake up extremely exhausted, and as the day goes on I gradually feel better. By nighttime I usually feel very good, and I sleep quite comfortably. Even so, the morning rumination is still intense. I put far too much pressure on myself to be “okay” already, and that only makes things worse. It will take me about three months to come off the Rivotril. Hopefully by then my psychiatrist will be available again. Fortunately, he seems to actually understand withdrawal syndrome, unlike many mediocre psychiatrists. This time we’ll taper the Rivotril properly, with long plateaus, and I won’t make another reduction until the withdrawal symptoms from the previous one have completely settled. Right now I don’t see any reason to rush it. I also know this is part of the process. I’ve been through this twice before, and I eventually recovered both times. One of my biggest mistakes has always been trying to rush the withdrawal process. I want to repeat something in case anyone reading this finds it useful. The reductions I made over the past two years were continuous and diario. It seems possible that the nervous system adapts to a constant downward trend, and when you suddenly stop reducing, it enters unfamiliar territory and that’s when withdrawal symptoms begin to appear. My hypothesis—if there’s a psychiatrist reading this—is that something similar may happen during a cold turkey withdrawal. As soon as you stop the medication, the blood level drops rapidly, but the various biological systems continue adapting at different speeds. Since some systems readjust faster than others, that temporary loss of synchronization could be what produces such severe withdrawal symptoms. I don’t actually know if that’s correct. It’s just a hypothesis.