Does anyone relapse

[cornyguy]

My question to members are how many people relapse while tapering medications.I was tapering Xanax when I relapsed from 1 mg to 1.5 mg for five days under stress.My Pdoc again made me taper from 1.5 mg as I started having stress at lower dosage.I am now at 1.25 mg but feeling awful at relapsing.How does one cope with all this.No I wont do it again but am feeling awful.

[cornyguy]

My Psychiatrist has recommended me to reduce the Xanax by 1/2 of a 0.25 mg tablet(0.125 mg) every week till the tapering finishes and unfurtunately I relapsed once on that but right now I am on 1.25 mg and wont relapse again.I know it is going to be tough.

[paranoid_cataclysm]

Yeah benzo withdrawal has to be done especially carefully because it can possibly kill a person.  A psychiatrist on youtube taught me this in one of his educational and/or amusing videos and my own therapy team at PACT is always impressed by how much I know when I bring up stuff like this and can have a competent conversation with them on their own job material but of course I don't know EVERYTHING and far from it, no one does.  I went through relapse and withdrawal when I was forced to quit Geodon cold turkey.  Have sort of relapsed on only 5mg of abilify which is half the starting dose because I'm sensitive to psych meds but my psychiatrist decided to keep me there because although my depression and such tries to come back and I have psychosis to an extent (which I still did somewhat even on the highest dose of Geodon you can take at a time) I can control parts of it through willing it with my thoughts since I realized you could use self control on mental illness as well but you usually need help through treatment and can only do so much.  Plus I always had the benefit of intelligence although I'm not the most intelligent person in the world by no means but I'm smart enough to know I shouldn't start screaming at my grandma for example and should eat it anyway for trying to poison my food just because the thought entered my head when there's no evidence of it really.  My quality of life could stand to be a hell of a lot better but I guess that's life.  Unfortunately there's not much you can do to cope with withdrawal syndrome and relapse except keep yourself busy so you don't think about it and only reduce the med once the withdrawal symptoms go away and replace it with another to handle the rebound psychological problems if they come back as soon as possible.

[ILADVOCATE]

Its extremely hard to taper off Xanax as it has a high potential for a person to build up a tolerance to it. I was allowed to taper off Klonopin about a decade ago (after that I decided to ask to go back on it and still am) and didn't follow my psychiatrist's titration schedule and had full blown withdrawal syndromes which were terrifying. If a person is titrating off a benzo, their psychiatrist always gives them a titration schedule and it should be followed and if symptoms emerge even at that rate best to call the psychiatrist and they might ask the person to stop or wait at that point.