I had no idea Temgesic was used in the UK, we usually have meds the UK do, here in Canada.
You realize that this is the ingredient in Subutex/Suboxone so people stop shooting up if they really want to, it works. But man the smallest pill is not 0.2mg, it's 2mg. And 2mg is a tapering away dose, I'm on 12mg a day since august 2013. I have all my takehomes so I have a week's worth of bupe with me but unfortunately, since my dose is never really 12mg except the one I have to take and open my mouth in a humiliating way to the pharmacist or pharm tech to prove the pill is dissolved, I can't leave otherwise, the boss lets me leave, but the young women, obviously, with a stick up their ass about rules and such..if I have a dry mouth it can be a 20 minute thing of just walking around in the service area while I do everything to make them smaller, chew them away etc.
Anyway....hope you realize that if you can't stop by yourself, you have one less option (I think the UK removed their compassionate and ahead of its time heroin maintenance program with pure pharma heroin, and anyway, for some on bupe....I gotta say that it's easier to reduce Methadone dose, of course since it's a larger number, I would go down 2-3mg a month and then got on buprenorphine cos methadone unfortunately made me obese and get gynecomastia, it's fucking shit, unlucky as can be....but when I was dropping a bit faster from 49 to 44 then to 39 each month, I was doing fine, and actually enjoyed getting back some intellectual capacities when at only 39mg, but then one day I had to be off the 'done for 48 hours and they gave me 4mg of sublingual "temgesic" with naloxone added to it, for some reason, I think the Naloxone is to blame for all the pressure headaches I get, it may be a tiny dose, but having some constantly is sure to do something. And I laugh at Targins. You know, the OP/OxyNeo like pill that has added Naloxone "to help with constipation". I wish that was true, I have to eat tons of fibre, drink constantly (not alcohol), and use 2 or 3 meds (one is a rescue stimulant that makes one whole intestines go into spasms, bisacodyl, you need to have taken your emollients first or your dump is going to be incredibly painful and could be dangerous, had blood on the TP more than few times, just a little, but, now that i take more emmolients I'm fine (Relaxa(polythylene glycol, thankfully it tastes nothing so I can just drop the 37g dosed spoonful right in a glass of anything, unlike PegLyte with all the electrolytes, made anything taste horrendous. I'm speaking of this because as a bupe addict, even if it's "just" Temgesic, you most likely noticed the extreme constipation just taking 2-4mg a day can give someone.
It's sad as fuck that I'm there, still in pain, cannot go back to methadone, docs wont allow it because of the side effects I had, even though I'm on treatment since a year and a half for low testosterone and finally my T is in the okay range, when the doc added the anti-estrogens things got better, gynecomastia almost all gone, no more painful bumps, there is a mass though that isn't cancerous or anything under my left nipple (I don't know how they can determine it's not cancerous without a biopsy but there you go...I'm seeing my GP on friday so I'll discuss this. I also got rid of an endocrinologist who almost killed me with her Cortef script, because the blood tests that showed I had low T were also a general check up of my blood for many things. She told me I had low cortisol levels which is bad because it can make you it easier to catch colds and worse, but she asked for a list of medication. Of course somebody taking clonidine everyday (varies between 0.1mg to 0.3mg), I'm allowed to to take up to 3 a day, it helps with anxiety a bit and with sweating, a lot, and when on 'done I didn't sweat at all, while on bupe, I'm a sweat factory, I put antiperspirant cream (Rx) on 80% of my body during the summer since where I live, the city is an island, it creates it's own awful bubble of humidity that you can see driving towards it, literally ends where the bridges reach the northern and southern burbs.
All this because a specialist retired on me who had me on an opiate regimen (albeit not very strong) for a jaw condition that he wouldn't do surgery on (4% chance that he'd mess up and injure the nerve that allows one to close an eye....4% isn't much but he was really not wanting to do it. So he put me on Codeine Contins 150mg (200mg later the strongest) twice a day every 12 hours, with meloxicam (nsaid), a Percodan 5mg if I had pain that went through it, and that's all I wanted, I didn't use recreationally, (that came later, and I already explained how and why and anyway at those doses I was feeling really awesome all day and not sleepy at all, could go to college, could do homework no problem) and some cortisone injections sometimes, although I find them to be totally useless. And I don't enjoy taking cortisone, as I was saying, a Cortef script almost killed me, and I wasn't at the dose where she wanted me to be yet. Ever had a feeling like your whole chest and back is being sliced by tiny internal shrapnels, piercing you from within and then the pain concentrates on each side of your upper trunk (lungs/liver area) and then move to the upper back and then the pain would go away very slowly. When it hit it was enough to make you pause anything you did. Checked my pulse and breathing and all was fine...I think Cortef didn't mix with clonidine in particular, and that would be the external cause of why I have lower than normal but not dramatically lower levels of cortisol. I don't know what it was, but it never happened again when I tapered away from the Cortef. And hell, I took much stronger steroidal anti-inflammatories before, Cortef at that dose wasn't even anti-inflammatory. I was put on Prednisolone (stronger than prednisone, no pro-drug like prednisone is) by my lung doctor (with some antibiotics, good ones, not the crap they gave me at the ER (first Biaxin XL, I reacted so badly with the diarrhea, that hospital says I'm allergic to it, then fucking Avelox, which I took only 3 days and then had my emergency appointment with the lung doc, I had pneumonia big time, so instead of those pieces of shit, I was given Cefzil (a really good antibiotic if there is one, ER docs are trained to toss the strongest shit and not necesssarily the most efficient shit for bronchitis and pneumonia.., Hydrocodone syrup 5mg/5ml, 12oz, now that works and doesn't make me feel weird at all, prednisolone for a month and a half, first going higher and higher in dose, reaching a plateau then tapering away, that stuff gave me back some energy those 3 weeks of hell while I was withdrawing from the rather large dose of codeine and a small dose of oxycodone through the Percodan (5mg), seems laughable now, but it was really efficient when I had a sudden jolt of pain going over the codeine where i felt like someone took an icepick and pushed it in my ear as hard as it could. 400mg of codeine a day on contin release and 5mg every 3 days of oxycodone, I was scripted a 30 Percodans a month but didn't take them everyday, the doc was good enough to understand that there could be days I might need 2, so the script was take 1 or 2 prn, then I fell into a really awful withdrawal, different than when I was taking IR codeine pills for a month straight, that was bearable, and I would be scripted a 30mg/300mg Empracet codeine/apap every 4 hours before for a skateboard accident and I did abuse it slightly, taking 200-300mg doses, not higher, and it was a bit shitty when the script and the 2 renewals ended, but just smoking weed made me forget it. C-Contins at 400 mg a day acted different, they seem to think that getting off XR medication is easier but I find that it's not, it's a lot more insidious and your body is expoded all the time.
But anyway, I would have never stopped the treatment if I could have had my medical dossier from him, but his office closed, phone's dead, no proof of anything...I was so fucked. Only pharmacists could back me up and only one really helped me. And that's why although I hang in there and have a job that doesnt require moving my ass at all, becoming obese because of methadone, 10 pounds per month for 11 months, it's madness.
But I'd give a shot at taking methadone if the bupe makes your life hell, you wont have to run after dealers and such and will be given probably a low dose, highest I went was 60mg, you already take something that completely sits on your mu receptors and doesn't budge at all from injected heroin and such, only crazy stuff like fentanyl and maybe ketobemidone can dislodge it fast in case of an injury or needing surgery.
To others, think twice before using bupe for fun, hurt yourself or need surgery and you'll have to admit you illegally take bupe in whatever form you get it, and first they won't believe you or will do a blood test to detect it before even giving you anything for your pain, even if you were in a car crash and lost your legs while they burned while your car was burning over you legs and your body is stuck on the ground cos you went through the window....hypothetical situation, but i know somebody who was run over by an ambulance while on bupe, hit the shotgun seat area, at about 160 km/h, car had an explosion, fell on its side, 2 of his friends burned alive while his legs burned to ashes before they got to him, that was in 2007 before I knew much at all about opiates and only cared for weed and psyx. I asked my friend's dad what happened to him and he said "Suboxone happened to me" before telling me the whole story drinking beer and smoking hash with my friend and his dad.
As for the RLS My-Life-Back, I find Mirapax really works well, half a 0.25mg pill and script for hydroxyzine or cyclizine (its legal in the UK so better go with it) for the nausea, ondansetron if its really awful.
To me bupe withdrawal is different. It's extreme diarrhea and sweating buckets and insomnia that necessitates double doses of valium when I have been out of bupe for 5-6 days...I can endure days without it longer than you since the dose is so much larger in Suboxone/Subutex.
Could be worse, Americans can be scripted 0.3mg ampoules of Buprenex for IM, where they do the injections themselves at home. It's often scripted by veterinarians for cats and dogs who have something broken or painful arthritis heh. But we don't have it here.
You could find your way out by getting a BuTrans patch, it's for low to moderate pain, it releases what's in temgesic, either at 5 microgram an hour, 10 or 20. My grandma wore a 20 patch for a while, but not anymore, but I laughed when I saw this. Apparently it works well for pain that is constant and taking handfulls of tylenol and destroy your liver with time or handfuls of advils and fuck up your stomach. Although, being over 40 is almost a requirement for that BuTrans patch, it's probably available in the UK though, I guess wearing 2-3 20ug patches could help one go through a temgesic withdrawal, i dont know how much you take everyday, if it's in the Subutex/xone doses, ouch. But you should see a doc regardless for the mirapax and hydroxyzine and maybe BuTrans if you have anywhere that hurts moderately and prevents you from doing your job 100% then maybe you could get some. All of these things are dirt cheap btw, generic for mirapax and hydroxyzine or promethazine are, BuTrans patches aren't very expensive either. A month's worth is cheaper than a generic oxycontin 60mg 120 count bottle in my country I'd say.