Hi All,
I seem to have hit a very rough patch in my recovery.
Have been on Mirtazapine now for about 3.5 months, saw small improvements up to a point but still was having sleeping issues. These settled a bit with starting melatonin at night and I decided it was time to come off the diazepam which I'd ended up on a maintenence dose of 4mg/day. Had become tolerant so it wasn't doing anything but had been advised to keep it there while things stabilised and only to change one thing at a time. This means I've been on diazepam for several months unfortunately.
So I chose to drop .5 mg a week in keeping somewhat with Ashton recommendations of dropping 1 mg every 1-2 weeks.
I managed not too many ill effects for the first 4 reductions. I did it on a Thursday and found I was a bit more on edge over the weekends but this eased over the week and I started to feel almost good!
Last drop last week was from 2-1.5. This time things didn't settle and on Wednesday night I woke in the early hours and had the first full panic attack I've had since being on the Mirt. Full on, need to go to hospital stuff! I didn't, as I know there's no point in doing that! I only managed a couple more hours sleep and yesterday was very rough.
I had to get friend's support to take my dogs out and go to the GP.
Usually after a rough start I improve as the day goes on but yesterday I got worse in the evening. Constant waves of anxiety. I gave in and took zopiclone at 1 am and managed a few hours sleep.
Up early I don't feel quite as bad as yesterday, mainly bad nausea and shivers.
I was tempted to increase the diazepam again to see if that helped but stopped myself from doing so, though I decided this week not to do a dose reduction.
If I'm doing it so gently, the tapering off, should I have such a bad increase in anxiety? And if so why not with the other reductions?
Please tell me this gets better!