I am sensitive to medication so I need some advice.


After taking 7.5mg for 7 weeks due to sleep problems I tapered of in 4 weeks. The reason that in slept poorly was due to stress and physical complaints due to illness. I am not yet cured and it remains unclear when this will happen.


So after 6-7 weeks, I felt good. This dose helpt me a lot with sleeping but it also improved my mood.


I tapered off in 4 weeks like mentioned above and then stopped. My tapering schedule looked like this: 7.5, 5.0, 3.75, 2.0, 1.0, 0,0.


On the first reduction, I suffered muscle twitching and slight dizziness during the day. And when I finally stopped completely, I started having heat attacks at night, muscle twitching and flu-like symptoms for about 8 days straight. Lack of sleep made me very emotional and low in energy during the day so I decided to reinstate at 1.0.


Unfortunately, this dose did not help me to sleep so I eventually went back to the original dose of 7.5mg 1 week ago.
Since then, I sleep well again and all side effects like the muscle twitching have disappeared.


Despite realising that this medication has brought me a lot, I would prefer to be on as low a dose as possible so that I can eventually taper more easily.


My idea is to stick with 7.5 at least for 1 month and then taper very slowly to avoid as many side effects as possible.
I was thinking about 20% reduction per month so 7.5, 6.0, 5.0, 4.0, 3.2, 2.5 and so on.


Personally, I think the 1-month period each reduction is a bit long. Can this also be done every 3 weeks, for example?


And what do you think of my tapering schedule given my situation and past history? Any other tips or advise?
Thanks a lot!