Hey SL!
Long time, no post. I have been reading and keeping up with everyone. Some SUPER fucking inspiring people posting right now. Talking to you, SoCal, ladyH, EP, Green, etc. I love this community, just been too down to participate much.
I am posting now because I am desperately in need of advice - and there is no better place for advice than SL. Here is what is going on. My most recent quit attempt lasted about 4 months and then my chronic pain got in the way, along with other things (after a flareup). Since then, I have been up and down in dose. Up to 90 mgs and then tapered down to 60.
I have been fairly consistently at 60 mgs a day since the end of April. I have also changed my habits of dosing really high once per day, so I am only ever taking up to 30 mgs at a time, once per day. The rest of the day I take 10 mg about every 4 hours and my last dose is at 7:30 pm. My goal is to get to 10 mgs every 6 hours and then finish reducing in dose from there incrementally. I will not spend any time patting myself on the back about this dosing schedule - but it is so much better than it was before. Here is what a normal day looks like:
7 am - 10 mgs
11 am - 10 mgs
3 pm - 30 mgs
7 or 7:30 pm - 10 mgs
My problem is that I constantly feel like I am in a state of mild withdrawal. Do you think it is the 3 pm dose? Do I need to spread that out more and do 20 mgs for a couple days and just stick to 10 every 4 hours after that?
It is starting to get to me. I have the head fog, the chills and goosebumps, tummy issues, etc. it is not terrible. On an acute wds scale it is about a 2-3. It reminds me of where I am at around days 7-10 after quitting - the worst of acute has subsided but you still feel pretty fucking rough. I don not sleep well, six hours at best. I am exhausted all day. Honestly, if wds was not such a familiar feeling for me, I might think I had a serious illness.
The only thing that even remotely helps is (taking more oxy, obviously, but not an option for my dosing schedule that I am REALLY motivated to stick to) clonidine. I have an old RX that I got from a previous quit attempt. If I take a half of the .01 pill then the chills and everything are almost entirely gone. It does not help me sleep longer though. What in all bloody hell is going on and how do I make it stop? unfortunately, I can not make another stab at quitting opiates until sometime this fall due to my work/life schedule - so I am just trying to get as low as possible before then. Sometimes I cave and take the .5 clonidine but never cave and take more Oxy. At least not since April.
I would be going lower than the 60 mgs by now but I never really recovered from this dose cut when I did it 6/7 weeks ago. I am afraid to do another one. It is wearing me out to always feel like this. Thoughts on what I am doing wrong? What happened to 3-5 days to stabilize?
I am not having hardly any issues with cravings or wanting to go up in dose. I had a life altering event happen earlier this year and something changed in me - well, a lot of somethings, but one specific to this issue. I realized that I could take all the oxy in the world (and kinda went for it for awhile there, only about three months maybe?) and it wouldn?t make this feeling go away. It did not/does not matter how bad/good/ok I felt or feel, physically, the oxy still won?t make this fucking feeling go away. I don?t mean to sound flippant about the very real physical/mental addiction I have, just wanted to make clear that this is purely a physical issue for me. I am certainly not in a good state mentally and emotionally, but with what is bothering me, I barely notice the monkey on my back, and when I do, she is non-consequential. I am hoping that remains the same. Silver lining to an otherwise dark time in my life.
Thank you so much to anyone who can give me advice on this.
- VE
Long time, no post. I have been reading and keeping up with everyone. Some SUPER fucking inspiring people posting right now. Talking to you, SoCal, ladyH, EP, Green, etc. I love this community, just been too down to participate much.
I am posting now because I am desperately in need of advice - and there is no better place for advice than SL. Here is what is going on. My most recent quit attempt lasted about 4 months and then my chronic pain got in the way, along with other things (after a flareup). Since then, I have been up and down in dose. Up to 90 mgs and then tapered down to 60.
I have been fairly consistently at 60 mgs a day since the end of April. I have also changed my habits of dosing really high once per day, so I am only ever taking up to 30 mgs at a time, once per day. The rest of the day I take 10 mg about every 4 hours and my last dose is at 7:30 pm. My goal is to get to 10 mgs every 6 hours and then finish reducing in dose from there incrementally. I will not spend any time patting myself on the back about this dosing schedule - but it is so much better than it was before. Here is what a normal day looks like:
7 am - 10 mgs
11 am - 10 mgs
3 pm - 30 mgs
7 or 7:30 pm - 10 mgs
My problem is that I constantly feel like I am in a state of mild withdrawal. Do you think it is the 3 pm dose? Do I need to spread that out more and do 20 mgs for a couple days and just stick to 10 every 4 hours after that?
It is starting to get to me. I have the head fog, the chills and goosebumps, tummy issues, etc. it is not terrible. On an acute wds scale it is about a 2-3. It reminds me of where I am at around days 7-10 after quitting - the worst of acute has subsided but you still feel pretty fucking rough. I don not sleep well, six hours at best. I am exhausted all day. Honestly, if wds was not such a familiar feeling for me, I might think I had a serious illness.
The only thing that even remotely helps is (taking more oxy, obviously, but not an option for my dosing schedule that I am REALLY motivated to stick to) clonidine. I have an old RX that I got from a previous quit attempt. If I take a half of the .01 pill then the chills and everything are almost entirely gone. It does not help me sleep longer though. What in all bloody hell is going on and how do I make it stop? unfortunately, I can not make another stab at quitting opiates until sometime this fall due to my work/life schedule - so I am just trying to get as low as possible before then. Sometimes I cave and take the .5 clonidine but never cave and take more Oxy. At least not since April.
I would be going lower than the 60 mgs by now but I never really recovered from this dose cut when I did it 6/7 weeks ago. I am afraid to do another one. It is wearing me out to always feel like this. Thoughts on what I am doing wrong? What happened to 3-5 days to stabilize?
I am not having hardly any issues with cravings or wanting to go up in dose. I had a life altering event happen earlier this year and something changed in me - well, a lot of somethings, but one specific to this issue. I realized that I could take all the oxy in the world (and kinda went for it for awhile there, only about three months maybe?) and it wouldn?t make this feeling go away. It did not/does not matter how bad/good/ok I felt or feel, physically, the oxy still won?t make this fucking feeling go away. I don?t mean to sound flippant about the very real physical/mental addiction I have, just wanted to make clear that this is purely a physical issue for me. I am certainly not in a good state mentally and emotionally, but with what is bothering me, I barely notice the monkey on my back, and when I do, she is non-consequential. I am hoping that remains the same. Silver lining to an otherwise dark time in my life.
Thank you so much to anyone who can give me advice on this.
- VE
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