^^^^ Good advice however I myself cannot speak on the cimetidine as I've never had it but grapefruit juice to me is a hit or miss, drinking too much will cause high levels of vitamin c making you urinate more often as it increases your metabolism. I've tried both fresh bought & juice carton, both red & white lol and still wasn't able to make my mind up on weather it increased any of the effects of my doses. Trust me this was attempted many times, although I hear with Cimetidine its a very different case which is why it is being phased out for others with less to no interactions like Ranitidine (zantac) and others like that. I also cannot speak on cats claw which I've heard that it increases the methadone half life. I was very tempted on trying this but didn't have the motivation to go looking for it!
- Milk Thistle has been shown to help potentiate oxycodone in strength, and make methadone's duration longer! In my case I take it 3x a day for health reasons and it certainly doesn't hurt the methadone though it may help a bit in the enzyme department.
- Drink green tea (l-theanine has been shown to help regenerate endorphins). Whenever I drink green tea now, I *always* get so sedated I go to sleep even after drinking 6g-8g of tea (3-5 bags). White tea is even better for this purpose.
- If motivated enough taking 'walks' or if up for the challenge 'runs'....try finding a place say a block, maybe circle it 1x the first week, 2x the second week, until you get your strength up - though remember that you'll be dry sweating and this will destroy your already destroyed & hibernated immune system, making you get colds much more often, especially if your a smoker. Make sure you don't get like me where outside for 2min will have you sweating buckets and this will be on clonidine.
- If clonidine doesn't work for sweats, something that *always* works is Tylenol (regular) 650mg! It is taken in colds for this very purpose as it reduces body temperature. Similar to how opioids work actually!
- Find something to watch that you could stand to watch over again as you may only need it for sound as you should imagine what you would do if you had a VERY SEVERE flu! You will feel the need to cry at inappropriate moments or be overtly sensitive, something not wrong in itself but extremely difficult when you find yourself balling out crying at the Biggie Smalls movie. My method is I put Seinfeld or South Park, on over and over!
What to avoid/cut down on:
- Caffeine & cigarettes and any other stimulants (increase metabolism)
- Alcohol (more than 1-2 drinks, inhibits the CYP2D6 enzyme which is responsible for removing methadone from your plasma more rapidly)
- St. John's Wort & any Barbiturate esp. phenobarbital - both will inhibit the CYP2D6 enzyme, the barbiturates much more so, eliminating your methadone much quicker from your body.
- Don't be naïve! If you can do this without any opioids that's amazing but its rather better if you used something to either switch to if you find it too much to bear (methadone affects NDMA which other opioids do not) rather than go through the taper and find yourself relapsing right at the end - after a 2-3 week break say almost a month then deciding to take a dose; this is the most dangerous time to take an opioid, especially if you are a heroin user & considering that most dope users are needle users, in some cases you won't even have time to pull out the plunger! This is not exclusive to heroin however since hydromorphone & oxymorphone are just as dangerous when shot, maybe slightly less as you know the dosage but still careful not to mix your normal 10mg valium and 1mg Xanax in that mix like you used to.
I too am on MMT and I too at one point was on a high dose (200mg/day) and I dropped off to 10mg-15mg before jumping to zero, until then I decreased going off by the medical standard at the clinic. Several months later I was able to get fucked from 2-3 percocets with nods and all! This many not be what you want to hear coming off but some people may need to take some time off the program just in case, God forbid they get sick or require an operation in which case the only thing they can do to someone on methadone is to put them in a drug induced coma! This time I will be working on lowering my dose just so that I can take lower doses and have them work! While I take a certain amount a week sometimes I will be taking an extra 100mg-300mg on top of my doses that week, so its quite a jump when I get to take my normal dose which doesn't hold me as good as before! My goal is to get on suboxone, apparently the highest dose is 24mg (remember how strong & long lasting they are without tolerance & that temagesics come in 0.2mg where prescribed). Anyways they say 24mg is equal to 50mg methadone or that you must be on a dose of around 50mg/day when switching for the conversion to work!
