• BASIC DRUG
    DISCUSSION
    Welcome to Bluelight!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Benzo Chart Opioids Chart
    Drug Terms Need Help??
    Drugs 101 Brain & Addiction
    Tired of your habit? Struggling to cope?
    Want to regain control or get sober?
    Visit our Recovery Support Forums
  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

Methadone cold turkey?

B

Bloodreina13

Greenlighter
Joined
Nov 19, 2022
Messages
9
I've been on opiates for years and always had trouble staying clean. I never used herion but I was heavy into the oxy30s. I got on methadone about four years ago and since then my health has went completely downhill. I've put on weight, I cant function with any amount of energy no matter how high or low my dose is. Because of all the negative effects I desperately need to get off this stuff. I started a taper 2 months ago. I was at 149mg I dropped 5mg a week putting me on 109mg. My question is how low does your dose need to be to safely come off? I don't want to spend 8 months on a taper and be in the beginning stages of withdrawal for months. I also don't want to die coming off of it. Any insight? Please be honest.
 
Not sure what the ideal dose is to CT but many people say that a LONG taper is necessary. Some people jump when they get down to 5 mgs. Others jump at 10, and others go down as low as even 1 mg. Tapering methadone is the only way to get off even if it takes a year or more.

You have been on it for 4 years and you are still on 109 mgs. Just keep tapering.

Methadone CT at your dose will be hell. Even when you get down to 10 it won't be easy but it sure beats trying to jump at anywhere between 20-80 mgs.

The only way you could jump at the dose you are on now is take 2 weeks off of work, get 100 bottles of Gatorade, lots of benzos and be prepared to suffer.

A couple of people on here have written stories about jumping from high doses and they have PTSD from it. I mean they aren't the same. They said it was horrible and the worst experience of their life. I'm not trying to scare you but take your time and taper, taper, and taper some more.

Welcome to Bluelight.
 
First, is it possible for you to switch to XR morphine as a maintenance opioid? Morphine is more forgiving about tapering/quitting/turkey in my experiences than methadone, and I was on just 60mg of methadone.

Then, there's always the possibility of using other drugs to aid the turkey, like dissociatives (NMDA receptor antagonists) which modulate mu opioid receptors at a very deep level and can reduce/reset physical tolerance as well as help to alleviate post-acute withdrawal. Ultra-low dose naltrexone is another option which I haven't tried myself but read good stuff about. I was on 600mg/d morphine and first tapered as much as I could bear with the aid of pregabalin, down to 120mg. Then I did some megadoses of the NMDA antagonist memantine, at least 60mg in one dose, this is what they used in a study, so I took it as a starting dose. Through that I got off the morphine without much discomfort, let alone a full-blown turkey. Unfortunately is memantine prescription only in many places and doctors are still mostly ignorant about the help this med offers so you need to order off generic Indian online pharmacies or try DXM (contained in some OTC cough suppressants) but I heard mixed stuff about DXM, if possible then memantine is the best option, it doesn't come with such a body load or trip and has a long duration which is what one wants in this context.

Good luck, and welcome to BlueLight!
 
Nurse Ratched said:
couple of people on here have written stories about jumping from high doses and they have PTSD from it.
Click to expand...
You can bet it

Nurse Ratched said:
The only way you could jump at the dose you are on now is take 2 weeks off of work,
Click to expand...
On 109 mgs/ day methadone, 2 weeks is nothing. One could thing otherwise, but at that mark fun is only about to start.
Don't cold turkey methadone, OP. Don't do it to yourself, misery is beyond words.
 
I’m about to taper methadone in hospital via an opportunity of already being in here for a longer term. I’m aiming to have a quicker taper. I’ve kicked methadone several times, suboxone as well, morphine maintenance I’ve stopped now in one shot. Lots of people want it slow and as painless as possible but I prefer a one a done myself. When it’s over it’s over and it’s so worth it. I’ll never be crying about going from 6 to 5 mg or whatever I’ve never been that type. Usually I’ll kick from 20 to zero or even from higher, above that I’ll be going down 10mg at a time and quickly.
 
I want it to be as quick and painless as possible. I don't want to spend a year trying to taper to still withdrawal like a mf. I guess the real question is.. I know 100 mg is a lot compared to like 10mg but in terms of withdrawal what are we talking.. Is it that much worse? Is it worth it to not have to slowly suffer for 9 months? Right now my starting dose was 149mg. I'm dropping 5mg a week. So far it's not to bad. I feel kinda shitty by midnight. So far my plan is to keep dropping 5mg a week until it starts to be to hard then either jump off or slow the taper. I really don't want to just lay there and die for a damn month tho either.
 
Bloodreina13 said:
I want it to be as quick and painless as possible. I don't want to spend a year trying to taper to still withdrawal like a mf. I guess the real question is..
Click to expand...
Use dissociatives. I can only repeat what I've already written over and over, they do work for skipping opioid withdrawal. I don't know if people don't believe that there was a way out given the many urban myths we have around when it comes to drugs, or that doctors don't believe it, or for whatever reason this route isn't more widely known.
 
Someone I knew from Opiophile got a truly massive fentanyl habit. I mean 1 shot every 20 minutes (and 10mg+ per shot). A year and many doctors later and he was still a mess. But he did say that MXE gave him a break from the horrors.
 
Fertile said:
Someone I knew from Opiophile got a truly massive fentanyl habit. I mean 1 shot every 20 minutes (and 10mg+ per shot). A year and many doctors later and he was still a mess. But he did say that MXE gave him a break from the horrors.
Click to expand...
I was wondering whether dissociatives might also help with more massive habits than mine (I was only using morphine XR orally the last time before quitting), good to know that they also bring relief for severe cases. I think the reason why I had success with memantine was due to high dose and especially, long duration and possibly (paradoxically) pre-existing dissociative tolerance which made me almost immune to the trip induced in people with less tolerance. Many dose only one solid dose of a dissociative and are afraid of staying in that mindset for longer time, so they get only a temporary relief. Memantine has a half life of 72+hours and is cognitively the least intense dissociative I've done so far, next to no psychotomimetic or psychedelic effects, just relaxation, stimulation and receptor modulation. I think I was over the morphine within just a few days but I don't remember it exactly because honestly I too didn't believe it would work that well.
 
Hey, I would seriously consider checking your vitamin d levels and your testosterone levels (if male). Both are regularly effected by prolonged methadone therapy. If they are effected easy cheap replacement therapy can both greatly increase your standard of living while on methadone and also can significantly reduce symptoms of PAWS. Thus greatly increasing your chances of success ditching the medication.
 
Well I'm just telling you what I am told. Just 1 person's experience. After all, dissociatives interrupt the pain pathway. I doubt it would help with physical effects such as yawning, sneezing, runny nose and loose bowel. I cannot find ANYTHING that stops those symptoms (well, loperamide for bowel).

Given that the fluorine and trifluoromethyl homologues last significantly longer, they would provide a decently long window out of the suffering. I think some private detox places use K.


Above is a link to the use of K in precipitated withdrawal. It makes sense. If you can get qualified help, you could take MXE (or whatever) and have them give you narcan. Naloxone has a very short duration of action.

Personally, I discovered that one could take bup in the morning an an agonist in the evening. The agonist worked but tolerance/dependence went away. Did it for 7 days and just stopped. But I NEED opioids to function. I just needed to know their was a way out.
 
My experience was that memantine even helped with the physical symptoms, I did take loperamide but just regular anti-diarrhea dosages and just once or twice, and didn't suffer from the diarrhea usual turkey would give me. Neither sweating nor excessive yawning were present and lope doesn't usually help with these unless dosed above therapeutical window. Yawning was usually the first symptom of opioid withdrawal to appear besides a diffuse mental aura of what might come.

Memantine might be special about this though because once I accidentally biosampled some naloxone (must have been at max 2mg, rather less) while still mostly opioid-naive and not having any opioid other than together with the naloxone ingested tilidin in my system, just 40mg/d memantine, and I suffered from heavy mental symptoms for a hour or so. So maybe memantine releases endorphins or has some other not yet discovered mechanism in high dosages at least.

MXE metabolizes partially to 3-HO-PCE if I'm not misled and that compound is an opioid but likely the amounts would be insignificant specially with a fent habit.

Thanks for the link, will have a read.
 
I jumped off of methadone at 5mg and I was shocked how bad the withdrawal was. I tapered down to that 5mg from a whopping 380mg/day. It took me a bit over a year.

The severity of the withdrawal from cold turkeying a small of methadone is proportional to the size of the habit you tapered down from. So in essence I was still kicking a 380mg/day habit in a way, so my endogenous opioid system was clearly shot.

Problem was, I had take homes, and so the whole time I was tapering I just saved the extra methadone pills and never told the clinic. This meant that I ended up having a huge amount of pills, thousands of them, which I ended up polishing off about 6 years later (which sucked when i ran out, i got sick again).

I would recommend taking your time and going slow, there aren't alot of shortcuts in something like this. If you go too fast you'll probably just wind up on other opioids again.
 
negrogesic said:
I jumped off of methadone at 5mg and I was shocked how bad the withdrawal was. I tapered down to that 5mg from a whopping 380mg/day. It took me a bit over a year.

The severity of the withdrawal from cold turkeying a small of methadone is proportional to the size of the habit you tapered down from.
Click to expand...
QFT.. this is the reason I think tapering may be/is a miserable waste of time. thoughts?
 
You cannot jump off 100mg methadone, wd will Last a month and the intensity will be high. You will not sleep, even with other meds.
But you can taper 10-15% each week and you will, say 15mg of 100mg.
I dont know the power of dissos but you can try. Ask plumbusone how to do it.
You can taper to 30-40mg then turn to suboxone and probably you will feel better.
Send you hugs
💜♂️♀️❤️
 
why would anyone at this point end up at 380.. there is no positive ends,, sides the money
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top