Lowest effective dose of klonopin

Ive been taking more of my PRN klonopin and it worries me. I try to take 0.25 mg and it just doesn’t help. So I was wondering what is the lowest effective dose for you?

I'm not on it anymore, but when I was, I needed 0.5 mg to get any benefit. I weigh 180 lbs, FYI.

Yeah I weigh more than that so that makes sense. Thanks

It depends, sometimes 0.5mg, sometimes one---on rare occasion a tad more. And I am small...

the thing is medications are not this thing where the same dose works for everyone as the lowest effective dose...

treatment providers look at many different things like what a persons own symptoms are, what their own history is of taking meds, what their history is for dosage of meds in the same medication category, then they start a person on a particular medication. the next appointment they check in with the person to find out what their problems and improvements are with taking that meds. then adjustments happen (increase dosage/ lower the dosage/ change to a different medication...what ever the treatment provider thinks will improve things) then a few more weeks goes by of the person taking the meds as prescribed. at the next appointment the prescriber asks more questions, finds out whats going on with taking the meds and again makes adjustments.....

sometimes this process of finding the right medication and right dosage takes only a few changes and time and other times it can take many years to finally find the right medication or medication combination and dosages.

example my lowest effective dose of medication is higher than my wifes with the same medication for our depressions, why because I have more symptoms / problems and health issues / and a different history of side effects for this medication group than my wife does. we in fact weight the same and are the same height give or take a mini inch as my children say.

my point is Im not going to list numbers for things like weights, heights or dosages simply because that tends to lead people to compare their selves to others and make each other feel something is wrong if they weight more or less, are not as tall or taller or their dosages are more or less than another on forums. in other words it could activate someones mental disorder symptoms not help them if I were to post numbers and what have you.

but what I can say is keep working with your treatment providers and with your help they will be able to figure out with you what …………..your own...…….. lowest effective dose is, and help you to be more stable.

I agree that it varies by person and other factors.

I have been taking 0.5 mg Klonopin for about 9 years now. I don't know if it does anything. I take it at night, so that makes it even more difficult to figure out. I wish I was off of it completely, but my psychiatrist refuses to wean me off, for various reasons. One is likely not relevant to most people. For me, I always found Ativan to be a much more effective PRN. As for Ativan, it's also best for me when I don't take it that often or get to taking too much of it. Ativan works a little differently than Klonopin, though they are both benzos. There are fans of both. What I hated about Klonopin, initially, was that it made me tired during the day and that dragged on. Ativan has rarely made me that tired, so I prefer that during the daytime. It kicks in, for me, in about 20 to 30 mins. If I'm extremely anxious, I take 1 mg, but my mild anxiety is helped with as little as 0.5 mg. Sorry I'm answering for Ativan and not Klonopin. Again, Klonopin made me so tired that I was miserable.

As I've mastered coping skills, for some things my minimum needed doses decreased. When it comes to anxiety, trying to rely 100% on medications alone can be a losing battle.

I am just going to sort of echo some of what @BirdDancer wrote. For me, The curves for Klonopin effectiveness and Klonopin side effects (being in a coma and depressed) seem to totally overlap. I never got to a place where taking Klonopin benefited me in the absence of those side effects. So, for me, it just isn't a good choice. I understand that it works great for lots of folks, though.

It never helped me but my issues were "situational" & no drug could fix the situation. How I was feeling was a NORMAL response to what was going on even though the situation was a long term one

It takes so much to get through anxiety and panic attacks. I have so many tools in my anxiety tool box but those only get me so far sometimes. Sometimes I absolutely need the medications. So I agree. We can’t 100% rely and medications but sometimes we can’t 100% rely on nonpharmacological tools either.