Opioids How to ween off heroin using methadone

[Intrinsic man]

Hello all,

I am currently trying to get clean from heroin and was wondering if it is possible to implement a short term methadone taper, similar to how one might use buprenorphine, in order to get thru the withdrawals as painlessly as possible. Subutex does not work for me the way it used to and methadone has recently become available to me.

How much would be a good starting dose for day one for someone using about a half gram of heroin per day? How often should I dose? How much should my dose decrease?

Any info you guys may have would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Quere]

It certainly can be used for a rapid taper, although most would suggest buprenorphine if the intent is to taper off quickly.

Unfortunately it is quite impossible to estimate a dosage for you based on 1/2 g street heroin as it could be any level of purity (or even might not be heroin at all for that matter). Do you know how many mgs of morphine pills or oxy you would need to keep you well?

If you're detoxing with methadone you should only have to dose 1/day and in terms of reduction I would suggest dropping an amount that you either don't notice withdrawals from or if you can notice them, they are still at a tolerable level.

A rapid detox does sound good but if your reducing your dose too rapidly there is a significant risk that you will go off-schedule and take extra, use other opioid etc.

So my advice would be to take slow, no point doing a rapid detox only to cave due to how shitty you feel. It always sounds easier to get it over and done with ASAP when your not in withdrawal, but once the withdrawals really get going, the plan tends to go out the window.

 

[ChemicallyEnhanced]

The trouble with this is that you'd not know how much heroin you're using as you don't know it's purity. This makes it impossible to know how much methadone you need, and just a bit too much can kill you.

 

[Quere]

The trouble with this is that you'd know know how much heroin you're using as you don't know it's purity. This makes it impossible to know how much methadone you need, and just a bit too much can kill you.

Exactly. 1/2 a gram of street heroin tells us very little about your actual tolerance. Do you know many mgs of morphine tablets you need to stay well? Or oxy?

 

[Lucy20]

It took me a couple months with a doctor to get me on methadone and not he sick. I only went to 60 and i was at least a 1/2 gram a day.
If you use it start at a dose that keeps you unsick and reduce 10% every couple days , then 5% when at 1/3rd of your starts dose of methadone

 

[Fiction Tales]

Just did this about a month ago. Took methadone for four days. day 1: 40mgs, day 2: 30 mgs, day 3: 20 mgs, day 4: 10mgs. The 40 on the first day was almost enough to hold me, but still felt a little sick. was smoking about a g a day, sometimes a bit more, for about four months on this last run. methadone builds up quickly in your system so after the 30mg dose on the 2nd day I felt basically 100%.

the half life of methadone is crazy long. 7 full days after my last methadone dose is when i started feeling a bit sick. got pretty achey and had bad restless legs for about 24 hours on the 7th day after last methadone dose. but that was my only symptom and it wasn't anywhere near as bad as cold turkey. i took some gabapentin to help (which it did tremendously), and after sleeping a few hours, when i woke up i basically felt like i was in PAWS....a bit sick and sweaty, but overall not too bad. this lasted about a week.

this method is pretty good at bypassing the acute phase of withdrawal, but its pretty weird starting to feel sick 11 full days after i last did any H. feel like this method is good at avoiding physical pain but all the mental aspects of withdrawal are still there. it's a bit of a slow burn. potential for relapse unless you're serious about stopping.