u/gialloscore

I started Lex in February 2026. 5mg for a week, then 10mg onward. By June I was still suffering from the one side effect that never went away… REM disruption.

I had no problems falling asleep, and if I woke up in the middle of the night, I could fall back to sleep easily. The problem came around 5:30 in the morning when I would go through a two-hour cycle of experiencing vivid dreams that would jolt me awake for a few minutes. Some days I would just get up early, but mostly I tried to sleep longer. And the longer I tried to sleep, the worse it got.

Eventually I would force myself to get up between 7 and 7:30 and try to caffeinate myself enough to stay awake. Taking walks and going to the gym also helped, but the grogginess was still strong. And of course the side effects of this situation are fatigue induced depression and anxiety. The very conditions I was trying to fix with the Lex.

My doc recommended a few things to help: Trazodone, magnesium, melatonin. But nothing fixed the morning sleep issue.

So on June 1st I dropped to 7.5mg and on June 22nd I dropped to 5mg. Today is day 14 on 5mg and the sleep issue hasn’t gone away. But I really believe that Lex isn’t for me and so I’m going to go for another week on 5 and then discuss micro tapering after that.

…but here’s the thing:

No matter how bad my mornings and early afternoons are. I always return to my baseline of zero anxiety/depression by the evening. Sometimes as early as 4pm. Sometimes later. And it’s extremely difficult to experience all that relief knowing that I have to climb the fatigue mountain again in the morning.

I would love to hear from anyone else who has experienced something similar and how they overcame it.

Also important to mention, that I take 0.25mg of Clonazepam 2x/day as well. And yes, I want to taper off that as well, but that’s a project for another time.

TIA for any advice/support.

This update is not on their socials yet, but I received an email from CD today confirming another delay in the release of their Black Belly of the Tarantula 4K. Personally, this doesn't bother me... when it's ready, it's ready.

But as I've mentioned on multiple podcasts, the multitude of extra features and "versions" sometimes seems overkill. I like this film a lot, and I'm excited to watch the 4K, but this release will now have FIVE versions of the film (widescreen 4k, full frame 4k, widescreen blu, full frame blu, and a 35mm "grindhouse" transfer, which I assume is a blu). There's also mention of a 10-minute difference between the international version (88 minutes) and the domestic version (98 minutes).

Frankly, I can't envision a future where I've consumed everything that this release has to offer, and sometimes I wish they would release a stripped-down version of the film for people who don't want to (or can't) pay $60 for a boutique special edition release.

Anyway, rant over. Here's a copy of the email if you're interested in the details:

>THE BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA LIMITED EDITION JUST GOT ANOTHER UPGRADE!

>As you know, we decided to add the widescreen version of the film to our Limited Edition of Paolo Cavara's 1971 landmark giallo, "The Black Belly of the Tarantula," some time ago. Over the past weeks, we've been authoring the individual discs of the release, encoding the video, and performing quality control, juggling and experimenting to fit all the different versions of the movie on the respective discs.

>However, it ultimately became obvious that there is just no way to put both aspect ratio versions of the movie on a single Blu-ray Disc without visibly sacrificing the quality of either or both presentations. The only way to make it work would have been to apply ample noise reduction so that the video would allow for more aggressive compression. Since we pride ourselves on pushing the presentations of our releases to their limits and maintaining the most film-like look possible, a degradation of the presentation in such a way was simply unacceptable to us!

>Therefore, to address the problem and to ensure maximum quality of each version, we have decided to add another Blu-ray disc to the Limited Edition, so that now, the original aspect ratio full frame version and the modified widescreen version will each have their own disc and can perform at the maximum bitrate the format safely allows.

>This is a big decision for us because our original pricing of the release did not account for all the additional costs associated with the addition of a second aspect ratio, and now even an extra disc. However, in the spirit of making sure to release the best version of the film that we can, we decided to make all these improvements without raising the price of the release, so once again, this upgrade comes at no cost to you!

>However, all these struggles and tribulations we went through, including the unbelievably complex arrangement of the seamless branching to accommodate the film's 98-minute domestic cut along with the 88-minute international cut on the same disc, did take their toll… in time.

>While we finally have the first check discs in hand and can truly see the end of the tunnel, unfortunately, we have to once again delay the street date for "The Black Belly of the Tarantula." No one likes delays… least of all us, since we have so much invested in this particular release, but we hope you will agree that we'd rather have a good product than a rushed one. Considering the countless unexpected technical challenges we ran into, surrounding the authoring of such complex discs, we are not ready to make any real predictions at this time, exactly when the final discs will ship. Our best guess would be sometime in July.

>However, we will keep you informed, of course, and we will definitely let everyone know through our social media channels when the masters are golden and have gone into replication. As we have done with all our previous releases, all orders placed through our website will also come with an exclusive set of beautifully restored 12″x8.25″ color reproductions of the original Italian fotobuste (lobby cards)!

>Here's what you can expect from this highly anticipated 4K UltraHD and Blu-ray Limited Edition!

>Brand new 4K transfer and full restoration

>HDR-10

>Original full-frame and widescreen presentation

>Domestic and International Cut

>Italian and English audio tracks

>(NEW) Grindhouse Version from 35mm theatrical print

>(NEW) Commentary Track by film critic Guido Henkel

>(NEW) English Trailer in 4K resolution

>German Trailer

>(NEW) English Double-Feature TV Spot

>(NEW) "The World of Paolo Cavara" Interview with director Paolo Cavara's son, Pietro Cavara (22 mins)

>(NEW) "Made-up Words" Interview with soprano Edda Dell'Orso (25 mins)

>Archival Interview with producer Marcello Danon's son, Lorenzo Danon (16 mins)

>Archival Interview with director Paolo Cavara's son, Pietro Cavara (5 mins)

>(NEW) "What a Tangled Web We Weave" Video Essay by Andy Marshall-Roberts (25 mins)

>(NEW) "The Uncanny Peephole" Video Essay by Howard S. Berger (25 mins)

>(NEW) Image Gallery

>(NEW) An 80-page booklet with an essay by James Branscome (Cinematic Void), an essay by JA Kerswell, and a collection of Then/Now location photographs by Andrea Girolami

>(NEW) A set of 16 reprints of publicity photographs from the original press materials

>Specifications

>New 2026 4K ultra-high definition Master sourced from a 4K scan of the original negative!

>4-disc combo containing a 4K UHD and Blu-ray Disc version of the movie

>Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1 and 1.85:1

>Run Time: 98 minutes/88 minutes

>Subtitles: Newly translated English, English

>Audio Specs: Italian - DTS HD Master, English - DTS HD Master