I must admit all the horror talk about benzos has really freaked me out, though I'm dealing with it now, so any kind words would be welcome.
The horror stories are, like most of the genre, often greatly overstated. Yes, you will be dependent on benzodiazepines (BZDs) after 8 months of daily use. You probably are already. Are you therefore destined to suffer greatly when you begin weaning off Ativan? Maybe....if you go too fast, or talk yourself into it. A number of studies have shown the mind can generate withdrawal symptoms when patients have been told their dose has been reduced even though it hadn't been.
It is a 'curious' fact that those with anxiety disorders tend to have much more difficult withdrawal experiences than those that have taken these meds for epilepsy. BZD withdrawal is not much of an issue in epilepsy forums. Yet, they take them in much higher doses than those normally prescribed for anxiety and often have done so for much longer. The average Klonopin (clonazepam) dose for epilepsy is about 10mg/day and 20mg/day is not unheard of. This is the equivalent of 20-40mg/day of Ativan (lorazepam).
Why do epileptics have fewer problems? Well it isn't because their brains are different. They have much the same BZD-GABA binding site deficits as we do. A more likely explanation is that neurologists are just better at weaning their patients off BZDs and do it more slowly and methodically. Another explanation is that epileptics don't necessarily have anxiety disorders so don't also have emotional/psychological 'baggage' to cope with when quitting. Many of the BZD withdrawal symptoms are typical of anxiety too.
When the time comes to quit the easiest way of doing it is to switch to diazepam (Valium) and wean of it. This has two major advantages over trying to quit on Ativan. Firstly, its half-life is much higher, up to 200 hours compared to about 15 for Ativan, which smooths out the peaks and troughs, especially at very low doses. Secondly, the equivalent dose is much higher while coming in relatively large sized, low dose tablets making weaning small dose reductions much easier. 1mg Ativan is about the equivalent of 10mg diazepam and the smallest dose 2mg tablets can easily be accurately quartered using a pill cutter so you can cut back the dose by 1/20th the starting dose with relative ease. You wouldn't be able to accurately divide a 0.5mg Ativan tablet into 10 pieces, though you could get the same result using Ativan liquid, albeit without the half-life advantage.
Using diazepam you should be able to comfortably reduce the dose by 2mg/day every month until you're down to 4mg/day, then 1mg/day each month down to 2mg and then in 0.5mg steps every month to zero. You could probably handle bigger dose reductions, but there are no prizes for doing it quickly. Also, because of the long diazepam half-life there is no advantage in dropping the dose at less than monthly intervals, but doing so may increase withdrawal symptoms.