Yeah that wasn't a good recommendation on my part. The point I was trying to make is being dependent to a less potent opiate is still not good. Lets say someone was taking morphine then they switched to codeine to withdrawal, then stayed on codeine. It would still suck being dependent on codeine even though it's weak. Kratom is good as a withdrawal aid when taken in small enough amounts, not large enough amounts to hinder your recovery, just enough to ease the withdrawal symptoms and make it easier to go through when it gets to intense. That's the proper way. The way I look at it is the weaker ones still produce withdrawal and that's what you want away from.
I think you're right on there man. And I know what you mean about wanting away from the WDs. I'll be honest, after about a month and half of moderate agony on the poppy pod taper, I've let myself get into the kratom more than I intended. Now I'll have to go through some more WD, but hopefully it will be easier than my pod adventure. I certainly know how to get through a taper though. I did with alcohol, twice. I did with pods once after an unsuccessful CT attempt. Now I'm trying to taper off the kratom.
I don't have a good schedule yet though. I was on the pods so long that I knew what to expect from being off them for certain amounts of time or what it was gonna go through when I had o stretch what I had until a shipment arrived.
Yesterday I went on a 7 mile canoe trip (awesome!) And I used less than the day before. Today, I've used as much as yesterday, but in 2 larger doses instead of 4 smaller ones. This seems to work better. I took my larger a.m. dose at 8 and didn't start to feel the first part of WDs until 4. That's 8 hours, so my reasoning is that my second, similar-sized dose will last me until tomorrow. That way there's 16 hours between the 4 p.m. and 8 a.m. doses. This will allow some of what I cal WD progress to happen overnight.
I used this strategy to good effect some of the time during my pod taper. If the WDs were not coming on strong enough to keep from getting to sleep, then I could stay asleep, and wake up feeling the harder WDs, and then take my next dose on the taper schedule.
It's a theory, but the way I imagine it working is that on a taper you spread out what would be a monumental WD process over a longer time, and the more moderate WDs you go through, the more your brain starts adjusting to being without the substance. So going through moderate WDs during the taper = progress towards normalizing without the drug.
I think I'm going to go on with 2 doses a day for now rather than 4. I'll do what I did yesterday and today, or maybe a gram less each dose, for one or 2 more days, then drop about a third and wait 3-5 days for some stabilizing, and continue that way. I do thirds when doses are larger and then I'll do smaller fractions when I get lower and closer to the jump.
Right now I'm doing 11-12g twice a day instead of about 3g 4 times a day. Another complicating factor here though is my current stash of several various strains: maeng da, bali, malaysian, and one just labeled "kratom" from a different vendor, which is similar to the maeng da. Anyway, I'll do the math today, and if I need to order more will order only one strain, and only enough to finish the taper, with some wiggle room for unexpected bumps along the way. Like on my taper from pods I dropped from 7g to 5g (both tiny compared to my worst times of up to 90g/day) but had too much of a reaction, so went to 6 and stayed there a few extra days before dropping by single grams every 3 or 4 days.
I'm all over the place with what I'm saying, but what I did was I used kratom for the first time on my second to last day of 1g/day pod powder. Such a fucking relief! I was having my Bday party at my house and wanted to not be moderately miserable for once, as I had been for 6 weeks. I also snuck some vodka that night, as I had been for a week or two towards the end of the pod taper. Damn those days were rough.
Right now it's easy to get too comfortable because kratom is working for me now, but I know it'll quit working and tolerance will continue to rise. I know it's best to taper now, and it helps to say here that I'm doing so. SO I expect you guys to hold me to it!
thanks and peace to all,
pnm