u/Consistent-Doubt964

Hi everyone,

I feel like I’ve been overly posting in this community and if that’s the case I’m sorry. I’m just having a hard time, trying to taper from 4mg of Klonopin (originally 10mg daily for 10 years)

I’ve done a lot of research and I’m terrified of the withdrawals. My mother died a little over a week ago. It’s just me and my father now in this house. It’s a blessing and a curse. A blessing because he isn’t charging me rent but I still have bills, the biggest being my credit card balances (I have $25k in debt) and basic living expenses. A curse because he doesn’t understand what I’m going through, he can be abusive and we both kinda hate each other. I was close with my mother. She protected me but now she’s gone.

I haven’t even jumped. I’m just trying to taper. Point is I need money but I find myself dysfunctional.

I used to film and edit weddings for the bulk of my income, but they are super stressful. I only have a few left for the year but I’ve gone back and forth on whether to cancel them and just focus on my health.

My question is would it be ok to taper to 3 or even 2mg daily, and then take 4mg or 6mg to get through a wedding shoot? Or will that only hurt my taper progress.

Tl,dr: I’m tapering from klonopin but considering breaking my baseline to do stressful work for money I really need. Would this hurt my taper progress. I currently feel dysfunctional and that’s no good for work, especially high stress work like weddings.

I might be facing a pretty bad Klonopin withdrawal. I used to be on 10mg a day. I more or less reduced that to 4mg for a month or so. Now I’m trying to taper to 2mg and hopefully more before ct.

My provider got flagged for overprescribing and he might loose his license. He can’t give me a refill. I’m looking for options to lengthen my taper but it’s hard to get and I fear what I have left is all I’ll have before the jump. I’m already making plans to cut my professional obligations because I don’t think I could do them now let alone the hell that likely lays ahead.

For people who have been through it, I’ve heard the physical symptoms can be torture, but what really scares me most is the psychosis / de realization.

How long does that last? I feel like other symptoms might be more tolerable but a month of psychosis? I can see why someone rather just end it.

I’ll save my sob story exposition.

Point is I was at one point, an awhile actually, prescribed 10mg of klonopin daily. I film weddings, I might as well put that in that past tense because they’re extremely stressful. I needed the klonopin to get through them. I am currently completely dysfunctional.

My psychiatrist abruptly lowered my dosage from 10mg to 4mg daily. My mother also died recently which has turned my life upside down, not that I was doing well before.

My question, I want to get off this shit but I understand it can be lethal and the withdrawals can be severe enough that you might take your own life for relief.

I’ve been trying to taper to 4mg a day. I have been successful at this, along with alcohol self medication. But I can’t seem to sustain it. I can do 4mg a day for 4 or 5 days but then I start to feel psychotic and I go back to 6mg to calm down.

Is this 4mg most days and then 6mg every now and then a method of progression, or do I need to consistently sustain the same dosage?

I feel like things are not looking good for me and I’m scared.

I have been a chronic alcoholic for 20 years, I’ve been addicted to klonopin for about 10 years, and I have a slew of other health issues like diabetes and most recently neuropathy in my toes and feet. To make matters worse my mother just died and I’m devastated. I was for a long time a “functioning” alcoholic but that time has passed and I’m completely dysfunctional at present.

I’ve had two psychiatrists. One who started me on .5mg of klonopin. As my tolerance grew my dose increased to 3mg.

I then moved and found a new psychiatrist who over time has increased my daily dose to 10mg. Was this malpractice? He’s abrupt decreasing me from 10mg to 4mg.

I was never warned about the withdrawals of this medication. I’m trying to taper but I’m so scared of the withdrawals. I had a withdrawal once years ago when I had been taking 3mg and I went into an unbearable psychosis, so I can’t imagine what could happen to me now. I’ve heard the withdrawal can be lethal and if it doesn’t kill you, you may just kill yourself to end the pain.

I’m scared. Any advice?

More often than not I have very dark exits. I push my ISO has high as acceptable, shoot with a fast lens but I do struggle with focus at like a 1.2 aperture, I put a cube light on my camera but this adds very little light and I feel increasing it would distract the couple and it’s also flat, and when I’ve tried adding external lights it either cast my shadow on the couple or cast guests shadows.

What’s your go to method for filming exits, especially non sparkler ones or ones with little to no light?

I use to use my GH5s on a Ronin S gimbal with just a small focus wheel mounted in on the side. The gimbal fell at my latest wedding shoot and now I can’t pull focus. The wheel no longer works. I even have an RS4 but kept using my Ronin S since I could rack focus manually without touching the gimbal. Now unless I want to mount a heavy focus motor on a rode and attach it to a ring on my camera I can pull focus without touching the camera, for a walking/moving subject etc. This defeats the point of a gimbal to me.

So am I stuck with gimbal shots with set focal lengths?

And is my only other option auto focus with low transition sensitivity?

Is there no other work around for pull focus on moving subjects with a gimbal?