4 hours ago, Wombat said:

Could I just clarify how to use the maple syrup.

Eg. 30mg water plus 10ml maple syrup, then add the crushed tablet

Do you usually use 40 ml of water? Then that would be perfect. Always stir or shake before drawing the liquid.

♥️🙏 Sorry for my late response…..I missed the notification.

Edited April 25Apr 25 by LostinCanada

Yes. I have been dissolving 20mg tablet in 40ml water.

Thank you for your help. Hoping your symptoms subside very soon. This has been a long month for you.

Wombat

6 minutes ago, LostinCanada said:

Sorry for my late response

Not late at all. I am ever so grateful for your advice. 😊

@Wombat Hi really struggling tonight 04.00 here and not had a wink of sleep seems like im alternating one day good one day bad !!! Hope you are fairing better .

Dear Beehive, I have not been great since trying to transition to liquid.

Inner tremors is my lovely symptom. And fear. So much fear. Overwhelmed by noise, too much conversation, etc. It's hard work.

Wombat

@Wombat Sorry to hear that this journey is so hard and even worse with no sleep .I'm with you on the internal tremors I just can switch off ..has your sleep been ok

I do OK with my sleep. I average 6 hours, but can sometimes do 8 hours. Usually a wake up or 2 through the night. But I can usually go back to sleep. Every few weeks I will get a sleepless night, but overall I can't complain.

I am sorry you can't sleep. That is so awful. I find that sleep is like an escape. (Unless I am having nightmares).

Edited April 25Apr 25 by Wombat
Took out sentence

@Wombat my sleep was absolutely fine but just playing up since this one good one bad business. One night I sleep the next I don't!..I'm.glad you are able to sleep

Oh that's awful. I am so sorry. Hopefully soon this will all get back to normal again.

I hope so for us all

On 4/7/2026 at 4:16 PM, LostinCanada said:

Lol...they are on Vancouver Island...nasty looking things and huge lol.

 

Glad you did. 🙏❤️

And they taste terrible too! 🤪

1 hour ago, Wombat said:

Oh that's awful. I am so sorry. Hopefully soon this will all get back to normal again.

I have heard some people have weird reactions to switching to paroxetine liquid formulations. Since you’ve had a pretty steady and functional WD up to this point, how does this compare? It might be good to go the jewellers scale and file method if it proves to be too destabilizing doing the switch over. For some reason paroxetine appears to be a bit of a weird one. I tried to taper benzo by switching to a suspension and for some reason it felt like a jump to zero for me

Hi Talltreescoldseas,

I haven't found this transition any more difficult than a drop in dose. In fact, it feels as if I have just done one of my drops. Not a big drop, just my regular less than 2% drops.

I have also seen a couple of people on paroxetine have trouble switching to liquid, so I do have that in the back of my mind.

I will give this a try, and change the way I am making the liquid (going to add maple syrup and crush the tablet) and see how I go from there. If all fails, I will be going back to the scale and file. Although I expect I am going to have to buy a way better scale than the one I have now.

Best wishes to you

Wombat

Hey @Wombat how as your day today ?

Make sure you give it time before making up your mind with the liquid . If you do it now you will save doing it at the smaller doses.

9 hours ago, Wombat said:

Dear Beehive, I have not been great since trying to transition to liquid.

Inner tremors is my lovely symptom. And fear. So much fear. Overwhelmed by noise, too much conversation, etc. It's hard work.

Wombat

Hi @Wombat can I kindly ask why you are switching to liquid at this stage when it's not yet extremely low?

I hope you are feeling better now!

Thank you.

Edited April 25Apr 25 by Fullhealing

9 hours ago, cheeky said:

If you do it now you will save doing it at the smaller doses.

Hi Cheeky, yes, this was my thought. I keep second guessing myself. The tremors this morning are not nice.

My mind just keeps going in circles: you've been on these meds for so long, you will never get off; it's too hard; etc etc.

When I am in a window I am a lot more confident of getting off.

I think if I knew for sure that I could adjust to the liquid I would feel OK about persevering, but thinking I might not adjust means I am just wasting my time and going through all this for nothing.

Oh, I do so hate how difficult these meds are.

9 hours ago, Fullhealing said:

why you are switching to liquid at this stage when it's not yet extremely low?

Hi Fullhealing,

I haven't "met" you yet. But I have been reading your posts, and know that you are having a particularly difficult time. I am so sorry for this. You have been incredibly strong through this.

The reason for switching now is mostly because it is easier to measure the smaller doses now. As in: when I do the last step of the transition which will be about 2mgai I will be able to measure it. I don't know. It was just what I was thinking.

My scales are also getting difficult to accurately measure the doses, so now seemed like a good time to switch to liquid.

I have been at this step 2 of transition now for 2 weeks and the symptoms have not let up yet. So I am starting to wonder what to do.

I am doing a lot of second guessing.

Best wishes

Wombat

1 hour ago, Wombat said:

Hi Cheeky, yes, this was my thought. I keep second guessing myself. The tremors this morning are not nice.

My mind just keeps going in circles: you've been on these meds for so long, you will never get off; it's too hard; etc etc.

When I am in a window I am a lot more confident of getting off.

I think if I knew for sure that I could adjust to the liquid I would feel OK about persevering, but thinking I might not adjust means I am just wasting my time and going through all this for nothing.

Oh, I do so hate how difficult these meds are.

I understand completely, but a lot of people have done the liquid and Ihave succeeded and how you're feeling now isn't permanent. It's because of an adjustment. You have to look at it that way it's like going down in dose. You might feel it for a month but you level out eventually it will be much much easier for you in the long-term of using the liquid specially when you're doing a daily micro taper. I have spoken to a lot of coaches and they all have advised me of doing this personally I would just give it more time.

2 hours ago, Wombat said:

Hi Cheeky, yes, this was my thought. I keep second guessing myself. The tremors this morning are not nice.

My mind just keeps going in circles: you've been on these meds for so long, you will never get off; it's too hard; etc etc.

When I am in a window I am a lot more confident of getting off.

I think if I knew for sure that I could adjust to the liquid I would feel OK about persevering, but thinking I might not adjust means I am just wasting my time and going through all this for nothing.

Oh, I do so hate how difficult these meds are.

Hi @Wombat I use a compounding pharmacy in Sydney. They use the liquid version of the Lexapro brand. The solution is stable for 90 days. I am using the the 20mg/ml Lexapro brand and dilute it for the 1mg portion of my dose, for the smaller portion of my dose I use a compounded 0.2mg/ml solution. So the base is always the same. Hope this helps and doesn’t muddy the water. 🤗

Cheeky, Thanks so much for your advice. I was wondering how long I should give it. I can wait a month.

Thanks

1 hour ago, Wombat said:

Cheeky, Thanks so much for your advice. I was wondering how long I should give it. I can wait a month.

Thanks

Honestly it can take awhile for your brain to register that you've done something different.

6 hours ago, Wombat said:

Hi Fullhealing,

I haven't "met" you yet. But I have been reading your posts, and know that you are having a particularly difficult time. I am so sorry for this. You have been incredibly strong through this.

The reason for switching now is mostly because it is easier to measure the smaller doses now. As in: when I do the last step of the transition which will be about 2mgai I will be able to measure it. I don't know. It was just what I was thinking.

My scales are also getting difficult to accurately measure the doses, so now seemed like a good time to switch to liquid.

I have been at this step 2 of transition now for 2 weeks and the symptoms have not let up yet. So I am starting to wonder what to do.

I am doing a lot of second guessing.

Best wishes

Wombat

thank you for answering @Wombat

I didn't know there were stages to this, so part dry and part liquid for now? I've heard it can be challenging at first, but I really hope your system can adapt and work with it well, I had my thought about that too but as long as the measurement is accurate I'll stay dry, don't want to rock the boat any further.

Good luck moving forward!

Best wishes.

Edited April 26Apr 26 by Fullhealing

Hi Fullhealing,

22 minutes ago, Fullhealing said:

there were stages to this

Ha ha, tricky. So basically what I have learnt is that changing form of medication can be read by your body as a change and therefore you may get withdrawal symptoms from it.

The best way to counter it is by gradually transitioning to a liquid.

The way this forum and SA recommended was by doing

Step 1 - 3/4 tablet, 1/4 liquid for 4 to 7 days

Step 2 - 1/2 tablet, 1/2 liquid for 4 to 7 days

Step 3 - 1/4 tablet, 3/4 liquid for 4 to 7 days

Step 4 - Fully liquid

I am just doing it a little more slowly.

LostinCanada has written up a how to in the Taper Forum - Preparing doses for Tapering. Sorry, I can't work out how to share a link.

Many, many people have successfully dry cut and got off this medication that way. BrassMonkey from SA was one of them.

I am just finding my scale not to be accurate enough, so thought I would try this way. Using liquid you are able to make even more miniscule drops than by dry cutting.

Hope this helps.

Hope today has been OK for you. You are doing really, really well.

Best wishes

Wombat

Edited April 26Apr 26 by Wombat
Take out extra word

30 minutes ago, Wombat said:

Hi Fullhealing,

Ha ha, tricky. So basically what I have learnt is that changing form of medication can be read by your body as a change and therefore you may get withdrawal symptoms from it.

The best way to counter it is by gradually transitioning to a liquid.

The way this forum and SA recommended was by doing

Step 1 - 3/4 tablet, 1/4 liquid for 4 to 7 days

Step 2 - 1/2 tablet, 1/2 liquid for 4 to 7 days

Step 3 - 1/4 tablet, 3/4 liquid for 4 to 7 days

Step 4 - Fully liquid

I am just doing it a little more slowly.

LostinCanada has written up a how to in the Taper Forum - Preparing doses for Tapering. Sorry, I can't work out how to share a link.

Many, many people have successfully dry cut and got off this medication that way. BrassMonkey from SA was one of them.

I am just finding my scale not to be accurate enough, so thought I would try this way. Using liquid you are able to make even more miniscule drops than by dry cutting.

Hope this helps.

Hope today has been OK for you. You are doing really, really well.

Best wishes

Wombat

I bought in advance a laboratory scale with maximum accuracy, so far so good in terms of weight at least.. 😬

It's great that you're attentive and going slow, we have very adaptive system so there's no reason it can't work, maybe a little bumpy at first but you'll make it.

Keep up the good fight, you're doing a great.

Have a lovely easy day 🙏

Excellent. That would be my next thing, getting a lab scale. If I can get the liquid to work that would be my choice. To drop tinier drops and way less expensive.

Definitely a little bumpy. But I have to admit I am still mostly functioning. Even if it is with gritted teeth.

Hope your day treats you well today.

Wombat

Edited April 26Apr 26 by Wombat
Spelling error

@Wombat ,

How was your day today ?