Opioids Methadone Mega Thread and FAQ v 2.0

[-Guido-]

I have been on 100mg of Methadone for four years. Only have to go to the clinic once a week. Best thing that ever happened. Since day one I never shot a bag of dope ever again. Yeah, I have my rare moments where I think "A shot of dope would feel great right now." but I have come to terms with the fact that I can't control my usage and using again would be detrimental to my well being.

If you on Methadone, stay on Methadone, and don't go using other opiates to get high, gauge your tolerance, or whatever bullshit reason you have because in all seriousness it's Methadone patients like you that make the program all the more difficult and give Methadone patients a bad reputation. Tapering off out of fear of never being able to get high again or because you want to start getting high again is only going fuck you over. You only taper on Methadone because you can live a sober life and you are tired of the taking it everyday.

 

[WBROCKSTAR]

Youll probably notice....I suggest taking tagemet to make your dose last longer....Take 4-5 tablets 1 hour before you dose....I take 100 mg mdone daily with 5 tagemets b4 dosing,and it stretches my dose out for 24 hours....Before I began takin tag,my dose would stop workin after 10 hours....Helps alot of mdone patients I know

 

[WBROCKSTAR]

Hum I could have went all day without hearin that comment Ban and Ora.....When I reply to someones post,its normally so I can try to help answer their question....I dont log in to my account,go look for some questions or posts to join in on,just so I can find someone to go verbally attack....Its better if you help with an answer,be nice,or dont waste my time giving me a reply that sounds like youre treating me like a child,talkin down to me,or tryin to pi** me off....Dont bother me cause Im not botherin you

 

[ganeal]

Thanks,I have some tagament and I will try to remember to take a few at 5 am! I go down to 90mg tomorrow. the drop from 105 to 95 was not too bad,it held me for most of the day,but to be honest those last few hours before I dosed again I started to get the sniffles and insomnia. I plan to stay at 90mg for 2 weeks because it has just been a week since I have dropped from 105 to 95 so 15 mg's within a week is enough I think.
I have an apt with my pain Dr in a few weeks.I hope he gives me 40 mg's of methadone then I will just go ahead and quit the clinic and take the 40mg's. I find that the pills hold me better than the liquid,but I still think I could be a little sick for a while. I have stock piled some lyrica so that will help too until I get use to the 40 mg''s!

 

[jessicas]

I am at a methadone clinic and I am wanting to start tapering. I am on 125mgs and I told the doctor that I wanted to go down 5mgs a week. The doctor told me it wasn't safe. I find that hard to believe. Is that really true?

 

[ganeal]

Huh? not safe to go down 5mg's a week? At my clinic you can only go down 5mg's at a time...that or even 10mg's. I just find it hard to believe that is not safe...I mean I would only go down 5 mg's a week,not 5 mg's a day now that would be too fast I think. some Dr's are nuts I think,it's scary sometimes what they think!

 

[Znegative]

Different people respond differently to reduction of their methadone dosage. Some find that they can even go 10mg down at a time (every two weeks) with little difficulty. However, it seems that most find that the real difficulty in tapering off of methadone after periods of long chronic use, is when the person gets to about 50mg and below then. At that point most people need to taper down at smaller increments or tale longer periods of time to stabalize at their decreased dose. However, some people will find that below a certain dose, they simply cannot comfortably be held by the methadone for a full 24 hours (I've heard these reports from people I know that have tapered below 30 mg. it might then be usefull to use medications like Gabapentin or Pregabalin to help reduce discomfort.

 

[Mr.Scagnattie]

Different people respond differently to reduction of their methadone dosage. Some find that they can even go 10mg down at a time (every two weeks) with little difficulty. However, it seems that most find that the real difficulty in tapering off of methadone after periods of long chronic use, is when the person gets to about 50mg and below then. At that point most people need to taper down at smaller increments or tale longer periods of time to stabalize at their decreased dose. However, some people will find that below a certain dose, they simply cannot comfortably be held by the methadone for a full 24 hours (I've heard these reports from people I know that have tapered below 30 mg. it might then be usefull to use medications like Gabapentin or Pregabalin to help reduce discomfort.

Yeah the reductions from 50mg's and below then even worse, 20mg's and below, were always the most difficult for me personally. Coming down at 5mg's a week I'd be sick by the 15 hour mark.

 

[ganeal]

Today was my first day down from 95 to 90mg's so far so good. On my drop to 95 I just noticed it did not hold me the whole 24,but still I metabolize it slow.I can go 72 hours without much discomfort. After that I start getting into the heavy duty stuff. I plan on staying at 90 for 2 weeks. Then go down to 85. I plan to quit the klinik around the 20th of April when my next Lyrica shipment comes in. Even then I will get my dr to give me 30mg's of methadone..(actually I will ask for 40mg's) but I know he said he would give me 30mg's for pain. so If I load up on Lyrica(pregabalin) and still take 30 to 40 mg's by that time I should be at 75 to 70 mg's at the clinic when I leave I know I can expect some discomfort but I am hoping it will not be too bad!

 

[fluxy]

run limitbreaker! fucking run run run run run run or pick any random postin TDS and it will be you in a few months, a few years tops

 

[THE_REAL_OBLIVION]

Okay before the Morality Squad comes here to flame me for the following please read carefully and you will understand there is no talk of double dosing here.

I now have 2 takehomes, I'm pretty proud of it all, that means i'm a good 5 months into the methadone therapy and I have already come to reduce dosage slowly (dropped from 60 to 55mg in a month and a half and will continue reducing by 2 or 3 mg every 3 weeks). I found out that I prefer taking my methadone in 2 doses a day at 12h or so intervals. Like I'm gonna drink sometimes just 1/3 in the morning but most often 1/2 and drnk the rest at around 5 pm. This way I found myself to sleep way better than in the past which makes me eat less hydroxyzine and valium which is always good. Is there any way to convince a methadone doc to split your dose in two at the prescription level ? Thanks in advance for the comments if you have been through a similar way of doing things re methadone.

 

[cire113]

i just started MMT and just not sure if its for me; Ive only been on about a week stable on about 40-50mgs; Ive tried to stay on BUPE before but ketp relapsing and it just didnt work for me;

Will MMT be any different? I dont know what to do; This going everyday is fucking kill me guys

 

[Mr.Scagnattie]

i just started MMT and just not sure if its for me; Ive only been on about a week stable on about 40-50mgs; Ive tried to stay on BUPE before but ketp relapsing and it just didnt work for me;

Will MMT be any different? I dont know what to do; This going everyday is fucking kill me guys

Nobody is going to be able to tell you for sure.. everyone is different and reacts differently to certain drugs/treatment. MMT works great for a lot of people, so does bupe.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Okay before the Morality Squad comes here to flame me for the following please read carefully and you will understand there is no talk of double dosing here.

I now have 2 takehomes, I'm pretty proud of it all, that means i'm a good 5 months into the methadone therapy and I have already come to reduce dosage slowly (dropped from 60 to 55mg in a month and a half and will continue reducing by 2 or 3 mg every 3 weeks). I found out that I prefer taking my methadone in 2 doses a day at 12h or so intervals. Like I'm gonna drink sometimes just 1/3 in the morning but most often 1/2 and drnk the rest at around 5 pm. This way I found myself to sleep way better than in the past which makes me eat less hydroxyzine and valium which is always good. Is there any way to convince a methadone doc to split your dose in two at the prescription level ? Thanks in advance for the comments if you have been through a similar way of doing things re methadone.

It's up to your doctor. I just told my doctor the truth, that taking it once a day didn't last for 24 hrs and I would have trouble sleeping because I would start getting some WDs at night, and he said it was fine for me to take it twice a day. He just wrote on the prescription that it was to be taken twice a day (so if you currently are prescribed, say, 50mg/day you would get 25mg BID [2x a day]). If you have to go for witnessed ingestion at the pharmacy (note to anyone reading, we're from Canada) on some days, then the Dr can just write it so that you only have to go once on those days and you get a take-home for your evening dose, or if your doctor is not cool with that idea you'd have to go to the pharmacy twice a day on those days. It depends on your relationship with your Dr and whether or not your Dr believes that it is more effective for you to do "split dosing" (as it's called), and also on whether you have the type of Dr that just prefers instead to give people a higher dose if their current isn't holding them for 24 hrs. Just tell your doctor the truth and see what they say

ETA: Personally I did find that I had to take a little more in total (like in the 50mg/day example I would have taken, say, 35mg 2x a day or something, I forget the actual doses I was on at the time) at first when I first switched to 2x a day dosing instead of 1x a day but it doesn't sound like that is the case for you, so you could just get your current dose evenly split. An even split would be easiest for the pharmacy because IME pharmacists are easily confused by split dosing, but your doctor could potentially write you a script for an uneven split as well, like in the 50mg/day example, 20mg to be taken in the morning and 30mg at night or whatever. What your particular Dr is willing to do is another story, just explaining what is possible.

 

['medicine cabinet']

Everyone at the clinic i go to say that since they switched from vista pharm methadone to methadose liquid from malinckrdkt they arent being held the same by the same mg. I try and tell them its the same fucking drug with just different inactive ingdredients. Is this all in their head or is there any truth to this? So many ppl have raised their, i feel fine. I dont get it. I think its just junkie miscommunication which is everywhere at the clinic i go to.

 

[thelastclubkid]

methadone is one of *the* most heavily regulated and audited drugs on the planet... it is extremely unlikely that one brand is synthesized to a lower potency than the other... im thinking placebo effect...

 

[mmmCHRISx]

How are you guys on 100mg+ a day?! I've been shooting dope again this time for about 3 months .5g-2g a day and 20mg of done and i feel completely normal and can sleep fine...

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Everyone at the clinic i go to say that since they switched from vista pharm methadone to methadose liquid from malinckrdkt they arent being held the same by the same mg. I try and tell them its the same fucking drug with just different inactive ingdredients. Is this all in their head or is there any truth to this? So many ppl have raised their, i feel fine. I dont get it. I think its just junkie miscommunication which is everywhere at the clinic i go to.

Mental conditioning is a very powerful thing and not something you can deliberately control. If the medication tastes different, the brain could interpret it differently, causing a "nocebo" effect, like the opposite of a placebo effect. This is a real phenomenon. However, differences in so-called "inactive" ingredients can actually make a difference in things like absorption rates, which some people could be more susceptible to or more affected by than others. OD doesn't allow "which brand is best" type discussion as it generally only leads to speculation and is subjective, so that's all I can really say.

How are you guys on 100mg+ a day?! I've been shooting dope again this time for about 3 months .5g-2g a day and 20mg of done and i feel completely normal and can sleep fine...

I don't think anyone usually starts out on those kinds of doses, they gradually raise them over time. For some clinics it is their policy to just keep raising the dose until the person stops doing heroin and stops complaining about having cravings for heroin. I have heard of people starting on 25mg and over a period of years getting it raised up to 200mg. BUT there are also HUGE differences in the way different people metabolize methadone, and in the potency of street heroin. 20mg of methadone would absolutely have NOT alleviated my withdrawals if I was shooting .5-2g of heroin a day. I metabolize methadone rapidly and it didn't last for 24 hrs for me unless I took high doses (I ended up taking it 2-3x a day in small doses instead but that's not an option for many people). So bottom line, everyone is different and many people also end on on doses much higher than would be necessary to merely alleviate withdrawals from their original opiate habit. People can think they are supposed to feel high from the methadone and feel distressed simply because their mental addiction is not being alleviated, or people are told that methadone should eliminate their desire to use opiates. But really, after being on a stabile dose for a few months all it normally does for most people is alleviate withdrawal. You get a tolerance to methadone too. I think a lot of people expect methadone to make them feel how heroin did and think they are not taking enough when it doesn't.

 

[Mr.Scagnattie]

I think a lot of people expect methadone to make them feel how heroin did and think they are not taking enough when it doesn't.

Yeah I agree with this. It has been the reason a lot of people I know (including me at one point) failed at methadone maintenance. Before starting, they thought that simply being "well" would be enough, meaning not having any withdrawals, but what they actually still wanted was to be well and high... and as we know, that's not an option if you really want to get clean.

 

[BananasAndOranges]

How are you guys on 100mg+ a day?! I've been shooting dope again this time for about 3 months .5g-2g a day and 20mg of done and i feel completely normal and can sleep fine...

Everyone deals with their own withdrawals differently. You must Shoot straight garbage though if only 20mgs held you. No offense but 2g a day IV isn't small...but its also Not a lot especially if 20mg of methadone held you. Methadone tolerance is fast. You get used to that Sedated feeling and Boredom. I can't call it anything else. I do think a lot of peoples doses are excessive. I know mine was when I was over 100mgs I still think its high which is why I am tapering. A lot of people on the clinic live a sedated life. Its fucked up. Its shitty, but I won't get into that.

Do you get tar? Or Pow?