Opioids Methadone Mega Thread and FAQ v 2.0

['medicine cabinet']

Im not familiar with lispiril, but clonidine is an alpha blocker. she prolly said no bc a lot of ppl on methadone take it to intensify the methadone. If taken too much and stopping abruptly you will get rebound hypertension and anxiety, it sucks bad. i was on it when i was on sub maint and had to be tapered down. Its strong stuff, take a little too much and stand up too quick you can fall over, like that instant bp drop feeling. It does have an enjoyable effect when taken w opiates and other downers, thats my guess as to why she said no.

 

[-Guido-]

I have a question.. I keep seeing ppl here post that they are on mmt and doses of like 29 mg's or 67 mg's and I don't understand. I am on mmt and my clinic gets the methadone from a pharmacy but it is already in the little bottles..the nurses just go and fetch the dose you are on and open the bottle and hand it to me..And you can only be on doses of 5,10,15,20 and so on.. I take 100mg's a day. I have to start tapering because I can't offord the 400 bucks a month. I am scared to death when I get down to 5 mg because that is the lowest my clinic offers. And BTW My 100 mgs methadone only comes 1/4th the way up the bottle..5 mg's would not even be but like a drop or 2...how the hell do you take that and it hold you for 24 hours?? I would guess they mix it with water? I just wish they would give you the 5 mg pill when you get down that low because then you could split it in half and go down to 2.5 mg/day before jumping off...I hear it is stupid to jump off at 5 because the withdrawels are still bad..but all the nurses tell me I will be fine!

Talk to the clinic director. Here in NY patients pay based on their pay, it's a sliding scale based on income. Also try getting on Medicaid, I was on that while out of work and they paid for my treatment and even a ride back and forth to the clinic.

Also your dose at 5mg won't be a few drops. It will be a full bottle of liquid with 5mg mixed in. Bottles are mixed by first adding the amount of Methadone you need. For me two 40mg wafers are put in the bottle along with half a 40mg wafer (20mg) totaling 100mg. Then they pour in water to the top so the Methadone dissolves.

 

[-Guido-]

OMG...I totally agree with this..The first 3 weeks I was on MMT I seriously thought I was going to have to stop just because of the ungodly constipation...Luckily I found Miralax helps so much.. but be careful if you take too much you will shit yourself silly.. I end up taking it about everyotherday and I am fine..I have a bad habit of on Friday when I get my 3 takehomes to swallow all 3 on Friday which total 300mg's then on Monday night at the 72 hour mark the diareahea comes on full effect and I end up counting down the hours until 6am when I can dose again. It's not worth it,but I don't know why I continue to do it. I am about to go up to getting 4 takehomes a week and there is no way I am going to be able to wait 4 days to dose so I am going to give them to my roommate to give me every morning..addiction sucks!!

Lose that fucking habit or else you will pay for it.

 

[ganeal]

Talk to the clinic director. Here in NY patients pay based on their pay, it's a sliding scale based on income. Also try getting on Medicaid, I was on that while out of work and they paid for my treatment and even a ride back and forth to the clinic.

Thanks for the info...I was in a near fatal car crash and I broke my neck and back..so I am trying to get Disability. When I get approved I will be entitled to Medicare...I have applied for Medicaid but since I have no children or depedants I am disqualified..even though I was at that time homeless. I guess the state of Georgia just sucks. Today I talked to my clinic director and he said once I get approved for disablilty I can pay 250 a month instead of 400.. That will help a lot.

 

[crzydiamond]

When I was on MMT I went from a stabilized dose of 75 mgs (was on for about 3yrs), started detoxing very slowly, at 3 mgs per week. I never noticed any wd until i got under 20 mgs. Then I went to 2 mgs, and under 10 mgs I went to 1 mg. I had to stop at 4 mg for several weeks n restabilize. That was where I hit the wall, felt sickness. But I did stabilize at the 4...then 1 mg decrease every 2 weeks. Worked for me.

A separate time I did cold turkey MMT detox of 40 mgs ( not by choice). That was hell. 30 days of wd--mild wd compared
To h, but it went on forever. It took like a week to sleep a little at night...and I was very very weak. Never that again!!

 

[ganeal]

Yeah I hear methadone wd's go on forever! My ex roommate took 140mg's a day for 10 years then got arrested and had to cold turkey wd in a cell for 20 days..he had seizures and all the nurses would tell him was to keep his head close to the ground,(sarcasm). When I picked him up he was shacking so bad,right then and there I decided I would never break the law again...I am scared shitless of having to withdrawel from this.

 

[thelastclubkid]

When I was on MMT I went from a stabilized dose of 75 mgs (was on for about 3yrs), started detoxing very slowly, at 3 mgs per week. I never noticed any wd until i got under 20 mgs. Then I went to 2 mgs, and under 10 mgs I went to 1 mg. I had to stop at 4 mg for several weeks n restabilize. That was where I hit the wall, felt sickness. But I did stabilize at the 4...then 1 mg decrease every 2 weeks. Worked for me.

A separate time I did cold turkey MMT detox of 40 mgs ( not by choice). That was hell. 30 days of wd--mild wd compared
To h, but it went on forever. It took like a week to sleep a little at night...and I was very very weak. Never that again!!

yep i just went through this... i decreased all the way down to 2mg doing it at a rate of 1mg every 7-14 days... when i got down below 3mg i wasnt stabilizing anymore at all (e.g i would be ok during the day after my dose but at the 12 hours mark i could feel the onset of WD's every night.. so after a week of that i decided it was stupid to prolong it and quit altogether... that was friday night...

anyway 3 days in (monday) was the worst.. there was a period of about 6 hours where i was like "f*ck i might not make it through this.." then things started getting slowly better.. yesterday i started to actually feel relatively normal as the day went on and now today (this morning) im still feeling normal... so it was generally pretty uncomfortable and for those 6 hours it was like H WD's but otherwise much easier than the acute WD's you get from H or vicodin or oxys... the point is dropping your dose down by 1mg increments as you get below 10 is pretty much the way it has to be done... then you will eventually get to a point somewhere below 5mg where you wont stablize easily or quickly and thats where you jump off (because basically you are just going through mild WD's on a daily basis anyway)

point is it can be done because i just did it... but you gotta get below 5mg or you are just asking for alot of suffering...

 

[thelastclubkid]

Talk to the clinic director. Here in NY patients pay based on their pay, it's a sliding scale based on income. Also try getting on Medicaid, I was on that while out of work and they paid for my treatment and even a ride back and forth to the clinic.

Also your dose at 5mg won't be a few drops. It will be a full bottle of liquid with 5mg mixed in. Bottles are mixed by first adding the amount of Methadone you need. For me two 40mg wafers are put in the bottle along with half a 40mg wafer (20mg) totaling 100mg. Then they pour in water to the top so the Methadone dissolves.

at my clinic they do *not* mix it with water... so they have an automated pump system and at 3mg it would literally just spit out a few little drops into each take home bottle... it was funny because the nurse that did the dispensing obviously did not have many patients that tapered because she would do a double take at each bottle as if the machine did not dispense properly... then she would look at me and i would look back and say something like "yeah its just rediculous at this point"... you would think that tiny amount of liquid couldnt be having that much of an effect but man it really does....

 

[YellowNikes]

I have a question that i would greatly appreciate an answer to. I understand that there may be no definite answer and no possible way for me to get a definite answer but anyone with personal experience and /or advice would be very helpful.

So I became a MMT patient last thursday (1/3/13) they started me out at 20mgs, the next day i was moved to 25mgs (1/4/13), then 30mgs (1/5/13) and 30mgs again on sun (1/6/13), then on monday and tuesday I recieved 35mgs (1/7/13 and 1/8/13) today i moved to 40mgs (1/9/13).
I went to a suboxone doctor yesterday becuase I do not want to stay on methadone for various reasons. I will be able to pick up my first perscription of suboxone on friday from the local pharmacy the sub doctor advised me to stop taking methadone today and depending how i feel either take the suboxone friday evening or preferably saturday.

My question is since I have only been on methadone maitenance for 7 days at relatively low dosages ( Highest dose (ever) being 40mgs today, when would it be safe to take the suboxone?
I really want to avoid precipitated withdrawal, the doctor said it varries alot and since i have only been on the methadone for a short period of time (7 days) and at low dosages i could possibly take it it friday morning
(48 hours from my last and hopefully final methadone dose) or would it be better to wait til saturday morning giving me 3 days (72 hours.)
My main concern is i have to work on both friday and saturday...

I would greatly appreciate some advice thank you all very much.

 

[Pornlando]

Yeah I hear methadone wd's go on forever! My ex roommate took 140mg's a day for 10 years then got arrested and had to cold turkey wd in a cell for 20 days..he had seizures and all the nurses would tell him was to keep his head close to the ground,(sarcasm). When I picked him up he was shacking so bad,right then and there I decided I would never break the law again...I am scared shitless of having to withdrawel from this.

Good lord that sounds like a horrid experience. Those nurses sound like a bunch of unprofessional cows. Fuck them... they could have at least brought him to the medical ward and gave him fluids and a bed (I know alot of jails wont give comfort meds under any circumstance) Thank god I live in Canada, if you get locked up here they give you your juice, even in jail awaiting trial, and of course in prison after sentencing too, even if your too broke to afford it...It wasent always that way thou, apparently that didnt start untill the 80s, Ive heard some horror stories from older guys about withdrawing off m-done in jail....I cant imagine how shitty that would be. Our prison system is rather liberal here thank god. Ive never even been to prison but I fully support basic human rights for prisoners and access to medical programs.

 

[Mr.Scagnattie]

Yeah, kicking 140mg's of methadone cold turkey.... brutal. I've never had to kick done in jail.. H yes, and that was hellish enough. Forget about coming off a methadone habit like that. I shudder at the thought.

 

[majicBLUE]

Methadone withdrawals do go on for fucking ever. I went cold turkey on 85 mg's, I had about 4 perc 10's and some like 4 xanax 1mg to help me thru the "3 days". At the beginning of October, say October 5th probably before that though, I got on a Greyhound bus to move across country, on the bus I was fine, I had the percs and I still had methadone in my body (I took my dose the morning I left. Got to where I was going and the withdrawal started, Oh My God. The muscle aches/joint aches are so fucking horrible I wanted to chop my knees and elbows off. So, I was like okay, it'll be over soon. WRONG. October 31st, Halloween we goto the casino, my legs are hurting the whole way, I stretch them, that makes them hurt also. I can't even really enjoy the casino because my knees are so weak to walk.

Forget sleeping, maybe a hour or two at a time, and if anyone even breathes near you when you're asleep, you'll wake up you definitely won't get a deep sleep. It's now January and I finally feel somewhat normal, I have energy, I'm in a good mood, I don't think about getting high alot. I'll never, ever, again in my life take fucking methadone more than one dose, I've kicked heroin and dealt with those withdrawals, i've dealt with Oxy withdrawal and dealt with Opana withdrawal, and nothing compares to the hell I experienced with this shit. Anyone considering it, it's a good route to get you back into the routine of a good life, but DON'T kick it cold turkey.

And please, don't mix with benzo's. It's not a fucking myth, it's truth. I had 3 friends who did that combination and died. It depresses your CNS (Central Nervous System) and can end up stop breathing. The guy posting that shit needs to be banned, he's giving dangerous advice/false facts and could cause some serious harm. At the very least that post needs to be edited/deleted. Someone may believe his fucking bullshit. Just because you have a tolerance doesn't mean other people don't. I'm lucky I survived my overdose of Valium and Methadone, most people aren't so lucky, the only reason I did is my mom had a stash of Narcan put up in case this ever happened. Idiot.

 

[bfisher]

I have a question that i would greatly appreciate an answer to. I understand that there may be no definite answer and no possible way for me to get a definite answer but anyone with personal experience and /or advice would be very helpful.

So I became a MMT patient last thursday (1/3/13) they started me out at 20mgs, the next day i was moved to 25mgs (1/4/13), then 30mgs (1/5/13) and 30mgs again on sun (1/6/13), then on monday and tuesday I recieved 35mgs (1/7/13 and 1/8/13) today i moved to 40mgs (1/9/13).
I went to a suboxone doctor yesterday becuase I do not want to stay on methadone for various reasons. I will be able to pick up my first perscription of suboxone on friday from the local pharmacy the sub doctor advised me to stop taking methadone today and depending how i feel either take the suboxone friday evening or preferably saturday.

My question is since I have only been on methadone maitenance for 7 days at relatively low dosages ( Highest dose (ever) being 40mgs today, when would it be safe to take the suboxone?
I really want to avoid precipitated withdrawal, the doctor said it varries alot and since i have only been on the methadone for a short period of time (7 days) and at low dosages i could possibly take it it friday morning
(48 hours from my last and hopefully final methadone dose) or would it be better to wait til saturday morning giving me 3 days (72 hours.)
My main concern is i have to work on both friday and saturday...

I would greatly appreciate some advice thank you all very much.

youve been dosing methadone long enough for it to build up sufficient levels in your system. When switching from methadone to suboxone, typically the doctor will taper you down to 30mg's (Or lower if u can wait) and from there you need to go without your drink until youre in withdrawl.. for me this took 4 full days. to be safe wait until you think youre sick enough, and then give it another day.. when you put that tablet under your tongue and it kicks in you'll feel better than ever... greeeat feeling.

 

[YellowNikes]

Thanks for the response bfischer. So it's been about 30 hours since my last methadone dose and Im starting to feel some withdrawals which is a good thing lol. God i hope all this is worth it for suboxone.

 

[THE_REAL_OBLIVION]

I'm really fucking happy they let me have benzos + methadone in the first place. I noticed i do not even get held by that amount of methadone for 24 hours, well I used to do, but with benzos. Protip to aspiring methadone doctors : fucking let benzo patients take their benzos, they will not need ridiculous amounts of methadone to be stabilized, much less. At least those on high doses, i hear valium is considered high dose at 20mg and more so eh.

All I know is that the few days i am out of benzos during the month, i start feeling opiate withdrawal at around 16 hours later in the day. I swear that i would need much more methadone if it wasn't for valium.

I have a question.. I keep seeing ppl here post that they are on mmt and doses of like 29 mg's or 67 mg's and I don't understand. I am on mmt and my clinic gets the methadone from a pharmacy but it is already in the little bottles..the nurses just go and fetch the dose you are on and open the bottle and hand it to me..And you can only be on doses of 5,10,15,20 and so on.. I take 100mg's a day. I have to start tapering because I can't offord the 400 bucks a month. I am scared to death when I get down to 5 mg because that is the lowest my clinic offers. And BTW My 100 mgs methadone only comes 1/4th the way up the bottle..5 mg's would not even be but like a drop or 2...how the hell do you take that and it hold you for 24 hours?? I would guess they mix it with water? I just wish they would give you the 5 mg pill when you get down that low because then you could split it in half and go down to 2.5 mg/day before jumping off...I hear it is stupid to jump off at 5 because the withdrawels are still bad..but all the nurses tell me I will be fine!

Hmm...

Those are the bottles of 'Metadol' brand by a company known by all canadians who has used a number of medications Pharmascience, the PMS before the name of your script when made by Pharmascience, like PMS-Clonazepam etc. They have 10mg/ml and 1mg/ml solutions which they pre-drop in your bottle which is that kind of brown bottle usually used for codeine, hydrocodone, hydromorphone syrup for cough and then add orange juice to it when I arrive at the pharmacy. I haven't been on other than 5 mg increments but i know when i asked about when i was to go down my 55mg dose, by how much would I go down and they told me 2-3mg increments.

I have a question i'm not sure if its good thread to ask in but i'm gonna ask my 'done bros first for sure about it. I don't intend on being on methadone very long, I don't see myself doing this for more than 6 months. I read about how I could switch to suboxone after enduring being put into withdrawal. I'm at 55mg, what kind of suboxone dose should I expect ?

Also, I heard last year that unlike methadone, bupe isnt covered by the health insurance in my province, surely i'm not the only bilingual Quebecois around here ? I really wanna know about this and i won't be meeting my methadone doc until the 30th when I finally get to have some takehomes, but yeah, I wanna know how much suboxone costs here. I heard once that I was looking for something like 25 dollars a day ? This can't be right, fuck.

Also,

There is this nasty ass chick at the clinic who is always preggers, sold her baby for 3500 with no agency or paperwork and then tries to get the kid back...ive heard of some crazy schemes but that takes the cake for sure. Birdhouses are something you make and sell, not babies.

 

[majicBLUE]

Lol, what the fuck? Child trafficking and birdhouses in the same sentence. I just came back into post that when I first started MMT I said I wouldn't be doing it either for more than 6 months. 3 and a half year later, I FINALLY quit in October, not by choice but by being forced to move 3,000 miles away. I wouldn't take it ever again though, as a treatment, i'd take it to get fucked up once or twice, though.

 

[THE_REAL_OBLIVION]

Methadone withdrawals do go on for fucking ever. I went cold turkey on 85 mg's, I had about 4 perc 10's and some like 4 xanax 1mg to help me thru the "3 days". At the beginning of October, say October 5th probably before that though, I got on a Greyhound bus to move across country, on the bus I was fine, I had the percs and I still had methadone in my body (I took my dose the morning I left. Got to where I was going and the withdrawal started, Oh My God. The muscle aches/joint aches are so fucking horrible I wanted to chop my knees and elbows off. So, I was like okay, it'll be over soon. WRONG. October 31st, Halloween we goto the casino, my legs are hurting the whole way, I stretch them, that makes them hurt also. I can't even really enjoy the casino because my knees are so weak to walk.

Forget sleeping, maybe a hour or two at a time, and if anyone even breathes near you when you're asleep, you'll wake up you definitely won't get a deep sleep. It's now January and I finally feel somewhat normal, I have energy, I'm in a good mood, I don't think about getting high alot. I'll never, ever, again in my life take fucking methadone more than one dose, I've kicked heroin and dealt with those withdrawals, i've dealt with Oxy withdrawal and dealt with Opana withdrawal, and nothing compares to the hell I experienced with this shit. Anyone considering it, it's a good route to get you back into the routine of a good life, but DON'T kick it cold turkey.

And please, don't mix with benzo's. It's not a fucking myth, it's truth. I had 3 friends who did that combination and died. It depresses your CNS (Central Nervous System) and can end up stop breathing. The guy posting that shit needs to be banned, he's giving dangerous advice/false facts and could cause some serious harm. At the very least that post needs to be edited/deleted. Someone may believe his fucking bullshit. Just because you have a tolerance doesn't mean other people don't. I'm lucky I survived my overdose of Valium and Methadone, most people aren't so lucky, the only reason I did is my mom had a stash of Narcan put up in case this ever happened. Idiot.

Calm down, I am only talking about cases like me, people with already high tolerance to benzos. If you aren't taking benzos daily since 5 years like me i'm sure it is very important not to take other cns depressants with them. As for me I was and am benzo addict and benzo withdrawals are complete hell and makes opiate withdrawal a joke (cos you know it will not last, at least, the physical feelings of being tortured from the inside, thats about 5 days, I went through a 56mg dilaudid IV / day problem before cold turkey and i made it before when its been a week i was always fine. That time I couldn't endure it cos I was on an already too low dose of valium, 20mg just barely holds me and prevents me to go into seizures.

Ever heard of kindling ? I really really do not want to have my brain messed up by doctors and end up with kindling from being put on and off benzos repeatedly.

I was not making blanket statements here. People who chip on benzos and abuse them and do not need them already sicken me. It's their fault having my benzo therapy is so much of a fucking hassle. I'm followed by the head psychiatrist at the hospital I go to and you can be sure he is one of the best pdoc in Canada. If i had been going herp derp people who were abusing benzos should be continue and be alllowed to do so even on methadone!" You could be justified to post like this. It's not the case, buddy. I will not budge from my position that it is extremely irresponsible and of unquantifiable dangerous practice to shock short taper people on high doses of benzos who were already using them since before they were opi addicts. Especially people like me who are easily prone to seizure. If 56mg of IV dilaudid a day and valium didnt kill me, its not a weaker dose of another opioid that will kill me and it didn't. Even us medical benzo users benefit from benzos as we can use much less high doses of methaone in the first place if we can keep the benzos

 

[majicBLUE]

My bad man, I don't know if your post mentioned it like that. I know about the high tolerance thing, I took 140mg's of Methadone a day I liked to mix in 1 or 2 mg of Xanax it just made the methadone fun for a change. If you've been on MMT you know what I mean when I say the tiredness and laziness of extensive daily methadone use is crazy. I usually have lots of energy and fun guy to be around. On MMT, I would go take my dose around 7 am and come home, get online for about 3 hours, by noon I was in my room watching tv all day with no motivation to do anything at all.

I didn't read it correctly or just assumed that you meant in general.

 

[ganeal]

at my clinic they do *not* mix it with water... so they have an automated pump system and at 3mg it would literally just spit out a few little drops into each take home bottle... it was funny because the nurse that did the dispensing obviously did not have many patients that tapered because she would do a double take at each bottle as if the machine did not dispense properly... then she would look at me and i would look back and say something like "yeah its just rediculous at this point"... you would think that tiny amount of liquid couldnt be having that much of an effect but man it really does....

Exactly! I was curious about this so I just asked my nurse at the clinic yesterday when I went and dosed. I asked to see a bottle of 5mg methadone that is already prepacked at vista pharms and heat sealed and delivered to my clinic.. A 5 mg sealed bottle has about 1or maybe 2 drops of methadone and it does not even cover the bottom of the bottle. The nurse said we don't have very many ppl on 5 mg's or 10 even. But when we do she just opens the bottle and mixes it with some water and gives it to the patient. I think once you get below 20 mg's they have to start adding water to the doses. I know right now im at 100 and when I drink my liguid the nurse takes my bottle and puts some water in the and I drink again to get any remaining liquid out.. I am really worrying about this taper but not the first part..it's the dreaded last 5 mg's that has me worried..I think I am just going to stock up on some benzo's and get some clonidine those last 2 weeks after I jump off!!

This has also sparked another question I have I need to look online to see... If its just a Georgia state law here but our nurses at my clinic do not pump the methadone it's already pre packaged...but I asked a buddy of mine who went to the same clinic as me back in 2005 he said the nurses did use a pump that calibrated your dose,but then switched to the prepackaged vistapharms methadone..so now the nurses don't have to do anything other than hand you the bottle and take the seal off. I wonder if it's like that in all of our state where the nurses don't actually dispense the methadone..

 

[ganeal]

Good lord that sounds like a horrid experience. Those nurses sound like a bunch of unprofessional cows. Fuck them... they could have at least brought him to the medical ward and gave him fluids and a bed (I know alot of jails wont give comfort meds under any circumstance) Thank god I live in Canada, if you get locked up here they give you your juice, even in jail awaiting trial, and of course in prison after sentencing too, even if your too broke to afford it...It wasent always that way thou, apparently that didnt start untill the 80s, Ive heard some horror stories from older guys about withdrawing off m-done in jail....I cant imagine how shitty that would be. Our prison system is rather liberal here thank god. Ive never even been to prison but I fully support basic human rights for prisoners and access to medical programs.

I have learned a lot about the criminal justice system in America the last 5 years. I have to say before I got on opiates I rarely thought about it..but I have come into contact with people in the system and it sucks... In the USA the drug laws are way too tough and non violent crimes jail terms are way out of control IMO..if you get DUI you are likely to be in jail as long as someone there on assalt charges. I think Canada and the UK have more compassion in the system than here where they look down on drug addicts like they do rapists or murderers...I just got called for Jury Duty the end of this month.. and when I plan on telling the Judge during jury selection that I hold little regard for our system I think I will probably be released from duty,but I do feel that way. I know too many good decent people who for one reason or another got in trouble and when they got in the system they got little to no help..it's also all about money too...I won't get started with that..but that is another issue here.lol just be thankful you live in Canada...yall also get free healthcare I hear!!!