Opioids Advice on quitting opiates by tapering

[Solipsis]

Hi

I've been having a very rough time that led to me starting to use opiates daily, and grow a tolerance. I used to take oxy and went up to 60-70 mg a day by using 10 mg IR capsules. The actual daily use has been maybe 3 months.

Recently my oxy contact dropped off the radar (may just be on vacation), so I switched to my stash of raw opium - what should be the equivalency if we consider the O to have 10% morphine: about 500 mg per day orally.

I got psychiatric help for high functioning autism but they are not really that versed in addiction. And the tapering schedule I found online for hospital patients on pain meds mentioned something like 10% lower dose every 5-7 days. That seems *much* slower / longer than the 1-2 weeks tapering total that I see mentioned here on the forum.
(Is it smart for my situation to see if they can prescibe a mixed agonist antagonist like buprenorphine, or will that get me further away from home?)
I am a bit afraid that an extremely slow taper may be both drawing it out too long to stay disciplined but obviously quitting too fast will have a great chance of failure / relapse. Also a very drawn out taper will cost a lot of opium and time, I don't want to calculate in my failure too much, but I want to be able to afford it of course.

Another thing that I am considering is extracting my morphine from the opium and converting it to dipropanoylmorphine and insufflate that (to avoid having a lot metabolized back to morphine too quickly). May be stupid cause a rush is definitely not what I need to quit, but long halflife and higher potency seems both more economical and more suited for tapering.
I think I will use maybe 10g of opium for this conversion, and keep the rest to be sure that I won't be forced to go cold turkey.

I can arrange for basically constant supervision / help with administration of drugs to taper and have a safe to secure any drugs. I also have benzo's and can of course get OTC meds or prescriptions to help my withdrawals. So I am not looking for what is most commonly done, but what would be ideal for my recovery.

Can people who have experience with successful taperings give some advice on how quickly or slowly to taper? How much risk at protracted withdrawals do I have with my few-month habit?

I have personal experience with coming off of benzo's after a year of daily use and I rarely take them anymore since they are not recreational for me and I have other meds prescribed to make sure that I have no real need for frequent benzo use. So yeah I know about having to fight a protracted withdrawal syndrome for over a year.

(Posting standard links to FAQs and lists is fine - I have used the search engine and am resourceful, and have a decent understanding of many drug related things, but advice I have found so far similar to: "try to take as little as possible to feel remotely okay, and take a little less each day" is way too vague for me.)

P.S. I am also on daily prescibed pregabalin (~150 mg a day now)

 

[Usa51]

I've tried tapering with Roxis before and it's just too hard. Unless you have someone holding your DOC and you can do it like that but I always wound up having no self control.

If I use a sub taper. I always use my last dose round 8-9am. Few Xanax round 5/6 pm so I go into a coma and sleep til morning then I'm close to 24 and dose subs no problem.

If you can successfully taper I would try to drop 25% every 3-4 days. Good luck. I hope I somewhat helped.

 

[CruelBri]

Hey, Using the Bupe to taper is good in your situation ONLY IF: 1: U wait until you are out of all your actual opiates and start with drawing. 2. You only use 2 mg. and taper down every 2 days from that. that way the withdraw from the BUP wont be that bad also. And of course, get maybe a xanax or some other sleeping aids to help u when you run out of the BUP

 

[Solipsis]

Thanks guys.

Dropping 25% every 3-4 days sounds more reasonable, and yes I think I can get my 'supervising' person to hold my drugs - otherwise there is not much of a point to the supervision imo. I have to sell my shrink on the idea of bupe (though I fear they may be unwilling to take the responsibility especially since I am also on pregabalin), so what would be the real advantage of the bupe here? Can it be tapered more cleanly or got off of with less withdrawal?

Benzo's with opioids feel fucked up to me so I will wait as long as possible with using them for anxiety or insomnia, perhaps trazodone or seroquel are better when I am still on the opioids.

Also I forgot to mention I am also considering NMDA antagonists / dissociatives like DXM to lower tolerance first, but I am still not clear if it just seems like that due to potentiation. Someone posted a lot of research article links in a thread that I should read now, there seems to be something to it - but I am skeptical as to how magical they can help with getting off opioids.
I dislike DXM and have no connecting for K at this time, and using 3-MeO-PCP or diphenidine seems really crazy for this purpose though I may try (sub)threshold doses at - it seems - rather minimal risk.

Of course I will be careful not to mix every drug together that has been mentioned so far.

Any more advice please? Even if your info is similar to what has been already said!

@ the bupe taper: reduce the dose by how many % every 2 days would you say??

 

[CruelBri]

if you use sub for only about 5 days, there is little to no withdraw. lol this is a tricky situation and to be honest, I think you might be over thinking on what you have to do. I think that if you give your supervisor ur shit. and u just taper at 25% you should be good, then when your done, using a little bit of sub for only 3-4 days that should allow the opiate withdraw to get passed the worst part, and then its all uphill from there if you take the anxiety / sleeping aid for the next 2-3 days u should be good. ALthough you will feel very fatgue for a while after that I dont see you feeling any harsh withdraw symptoms.


please post when you are in fact starting this taper so you can let us know how it is going. Thanks.

 

[Solipsis]

I've started this taper since monday - with 400 mg opium as initial dose for 5 days, then go down 25% each 5 days.

Am on 60 mg DXM polystyrex since today as well, seems to help with general feeling okay (although, I haven't stepped down my opiates much at this point - was probably 500/600 mg or unmonitored before) but may even add to nausea and possible hypertension. And I am pretty damn tired.
I drink alcohol frequently but plan to stop now since it combines so terribly with the DXM. Also with the combination of pregabalin (prescription), DXM and opium I really don't want to add anything els to the mix.

 

[Gob Bluth]

I know this thread is about successful tapering, but for me, with 3+ months of daily IV hydromorphone use, I just couldn't seem to find the self-control to taper. So I induced a precipitated withdrawal with Naltrexone. I do NOT recommend doing what I did, but what transpired was this: I took my naltrexone about 12 hours after last hydromorphone dose. I sat around, watching netflix, and knowing from bluelight forums that I might be in for a painful experience. When the naltrexone kicked in, it felt like cold agony, all my mu-receptors were being stripped like a fish getting scaled. I had the worst stomach cramps of my life, probably a 9/10 on the pain scale. It was painful enough that I could not suppress moans and whimpers of pain. I then projectile vomited - I mean PROJECTILE, esophagus FULLY dilated for 2-3 seconds at a time - for about 15 minutes, and then settled down into a painful withdrawal. I believe I had clonazepam handy at the time, which helped moderately. After 4-5 hours the cramps lessened in frequency, and I drifted off into the sleep of a person who has been brutally tortured for hours.

So that's the negative. The positive is that, in my experience, if you are struggling with tapering, precipitated withdrawal can shorten a protracted withdrawal into basically a 24-48 hour experience (not considering PAWS later on). So, for me, it was totally worth it. I went through withdrawal in one night of hell, felt okay by the next morning, and haven't touched hydromorphone since. It has been 2 months since this experience. Hope this helps.

 

[Kid Amine]

gl solipsis. as far as quick tapers, most people do them knowing they only have x amount of time or drug to do it. they always suck and are prone to failure. ive done em many times, relapsed as many too. I was successful getting off of 20mg methadone/day by tapering over the course of 4 months to 0, with no w/d symptoms at all. the 10% a week taper plan is okay, tho the last 10% is the bitch. I think a 25%/12%/6%/3%/2%/1%.... to basically 1/8 of a mg taper is better... little faster at the start and slower at the end, but some like the poster above just want to be done with it asap. Having accidentally dosed myself once with bupe too soon after hard opiates, I cant recommend any kind of instant/ultra rapid detox.

 

[rave_itsrealfun!!!]

Good luck man. I'm struggling with a similar habit, but I don't want to quit. It's the only thing that has ever helped my chronic back pain, which is sheer agony. I mainly desire to keep my tolerance in check, if that's even possible with daily use (and stay away from heroin and IV forever).

It's smart that you are thinking ahead and realizing that a taper will result in much less suffering than cold turkey, however the suffering will be prolonged. I'm not sure about exact numbers but so long as you are reducing every few days, and should calculate to run out when you are at a real low dose. The main thing with tapering is self control... some people are just not capable of it. Then again, some people will run out and do whatever it takes for more. But I think you are prepared and knowledgable regarding the importance of self control.

Also, I find that opium and oxycodone have drastically different effects. Oxycodone energizes me, opium is more of a classic depressant - and has different side effects, like constipation. So I wouldn't view them as equivalent - when I ran out of morphine, no matter how much oxy I used, I would still get restless legs, pain and insomnia. They're a bit different for sure, at least in my case. Also, do you think your O has a consistent amount of morphine content? When you get down to lower doses, it might be difficult to know how much you're dosing.

Peace, if you don't have chronic pain issues I'd say you're making a great call too.

 

[isthisreallife]

I've found that promethazine, tablets or suppository, helps immensely with the come down nausea but you may get drowsy from it.

 

[Purfectlycrazy92]

I was at 35 a day dude cold turkey is possible defiantly need some OTC drugs though!

 

[Purfectlycrazy92]

Imodium, melatonin, icy hot look up the thomas recipe