Hi @JulieS
I'm so sorry to hear about your experience. It sounds absolutely terrifying.
I have been tapering down from 30mg of amitriptyline for the last eight months after being on it for fifteen years. I'm now at 5mg.
Naively, I thought it would be a breeze.
If the doctors told me I could come off it within four weeks, then surely by doing it so slowly, I wouldn't notice a thing!
In all honesty it's been incredibly hard and all this time I've felt pathetic because of how hard I've found it.
Discovering this community has really helped me.
There's so much valuable information and wonderful support from really caring people who are going through the same extremely difficult process.
There are lots of helpful guides which Catina has kindly provided links for, and for what it's worth, if you do decide to begin tapering, please be as gentle and kind with yourself as you can. There is emotional grief and trauma involved with realising how damaging these medications can be and sometimes I think we have a tendency to blame ourselves for taking them in the first place.
You deserve compassion and empathy.
Also, take it as slowly as you want and need to.
I just blithely entered into decreasing by 5mg at a time after about four weeks at a time, which was too much of a drop in too fast a time period.
I was just so desperate to get off the stuff that I wanted it over as quickly as possible.
But having used the amitriptyline for chronic pain and to help me sleep, and presumably receiving some of it's "antidepressant" effects (though I know it's used in much higher doses as an antidepressant), I soon found myself in more pain, feeling more depressed and unable to sleep as well.
Not attributing this to the tapering off process, I began to use diazepam to mitigate the symptoms.
Now I realise I was simply going too fast.
It's okay to go as slow as you want. It’s your body and your choice.
It's not easy, but it is possible to get through it.
One more thing.
Rather than reducing by the same number of milligrams each time, reduce by roughly the same percentage of your current dose. That means the reductions get smaller as your dose gets lower. So, for example, instead of taking 5 mg off every time, you might reduce by 10% of whatever dose you're currently on, then 10% of the new dose, and so on. This can make the lower doses easier to come off because you're not making increasingly large reductions in percentage terms.
The basic idea is: don't keep taking the same number of milligrams off as you get lower. Take off a similar percentage each time, so the reductions gradually get smaller.
This is something ChatGPT has helped me calculate in terms of converting the amount of liquid to use in mgs to mls, so that I can use a syringe correctly to measure out a dose.
I've kept a record on my phone using the notes app to count how many days I stay on a dose before tapering again.
There are really helpful journal logs here on the Taper Community app which help you log your symptoms too, which I've only just discovered and started using.
Okay, I've probably waffled on for long enough. I hope I haven't overwhelmed you with info!
I just know how hard it can be and wanted you to know that you're not alone.
Please reach out with any questions or concerns.
Take care.
Claire 💚
TaperCommunity