- clonazepam wean

[Guest guest]

,

Glad to see you back. I'm still catching up on posts because Esther just

had a terrible week of withdrawal from clonazepam. I think it's a nasty

drug. When I was still living in Taiwan, a neuro. from the US said they

hardly ever use it in the US because it has the worst withdrawal

seizures. Esther was down to 1/8 of a .5 mg pill. I was dropping 1/8 at

a time once a month. The night before the very last dose of clon., I was

forced to use diastat. Last week was awful. All I wrote in her seizure

log each day under " # of sz " -- MANY. She was sooo twitchy and sensitive

to any touch or noise. And there was the terrible back arching

episodes. One night she couldn't sleep unless I held her head in

midline...so guess how much sleep *I* got! :-( Well, she's turned the tide

this weekend and is down to 2 or 3 definite seizures a day. She still

arches more than before, but if I hold her, that seems to calm her down.

I kept thinking all last week, maybe I should give her more clon. But I

kept saying, " Hang on. She's just addicted like any other drug

addict. " (Sometimes you tell yourself the craziest things to keep keeping on.)

All that said, I would bet that overdose and the stress, et al. has thrown

her out of whack

At 01:58 PM 8/21/01 +1000, you wrote:

>Surely it cant be due to her clonazepam wean, because I only dropped 0.1mg

>from her morning dose in January, and a further 0.1mg drop in June, so

>that she is now on 0.5mg AM and PM. Usually, if there is going to be a

>problem with a clonaz wean it happens within days of the dose drop. Can

>anyone comment on their experience of clonaz weans and the timing of

>withdrawal seizures associated with it?

My neuro. predicted the third week after a dosage drop to see the

withdrawal seizures and he was right on the money exceptp for this last

drop...it was the fourth week of the drop and the first week of the next

drop. Does that make sense? I'm still not sure if we're out of the woods

yet. I've got 2 more weeks until we start dropping the vigabatrin. After

all those seizures, though, she's much improved in holding up her head in a

sitting position...not that she sits alone yet.

How long has Hannah been on the clonazepam? Esther's been on it since she

was 4 months old and she's now 33 months. But I stayed at .25mg because

more than that made her so congested.

Hope this helps some.

mom of Esther (Aicardi syndrome)

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