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Positive The Tapering Support Thread v 2.0

Chichimami said:
With the Valium….I’m at such a low dose. About 1.5-2mg/day. It’s also been a medication that’s been apart of my life a long time so I don’t think I have to worry too much about the step away with that one. I can feel the intensity of electricity in my body and the brain misfiring. It’s so horrific. So I’m grateful I have it. In daily life I enjoy not being tired though, and Valium has never been euphoric or fun to take. I’m so afraid of a seizure and Valium keeps those at bay.

I HAVE noticed my taper seems to get easier as the dose is smaller. The initial big step down was like death. And now each step down is hard but manageable. Do you think even the conservative and low dose step down will destroy me? Those first days were unreal. I just want to be prepared for the end of the taper.
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Hard to say. Physical wd’s seem like the worst until all you have left is psychological. And there’s light at the end of the tunnel when the physical wd’s start to get easier, but there’s despair when you feel like your brain ought to feel better after weeks of wd’s. It sounds like you have most of it figured out.

Next will be figuring out how to NOT do it again. That’s where I always fail.
 
Squeaky said:
Hard to say. Physical wd’s seem like the worst until all you have left is psychological. And there’s light at the end of the tunnel when the physical wd’s start to get easier, but there’s despair when you feel like your brain ought to feel better after weeks of wd’s. It sounds like you have most of it figured out.

Next will be figuring out how to NOT do it again. That’s where I always fail.
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Yes absolutely. I have never gotten sober for more than a few days maybe up to 10 days? In the last…well nearly 3 years. After a divorce just took every bit of my mental health and stability. It’s weird to look back on now. I know I wouldn’t have made it to work or been even able to greet clients/keep my apartment if I wasn’t using. It was the only way to fake it through the pain. Now I’ve been in therapy and with such an amazing new partner. I have everything to look forward to if I can get past this.

I’ve never wanted to stop until now. And still I feel those nagging urges of like…one of you said it “reward”. I want the reward of getting high. Now I can see though, that the last six months of my addiction I was never even experiencing euphoria, just keeping me steady. I want so badly a life I can feel proud of. I want my partner to have the best woman beside him, his career is doing so good, he loves me so deeply. He deserves me to be sober, and I deserve to live without the pain and shame.
 
This thread is #2, the moderators had to split it into a new thread because the old one was like 1000 pages. The original was started by Pokemama when she was tapering, eventually to zero opiates. If you want some momentum.... go back to her first post and you can see how much happier she got after being free. It took several months to get clean, and several more to feel ‘good’ but it’s a true testament to how long it takes and how awesome that freedom can be.

And if you want to see how miserable it can be to never get away..... I posted my journey there as well. Obviously I’m still struggling 6 years later. Tons of great information on what NOT to do.
 
Chichimami said:
one of you said it “reward”. I want the reward of getting high.
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Its a miserable trick opiates play. You never really get high anymore. You become so desperate to feel normal, and you have been miserable for so long, than ‘high’ becomes what normal people feel when they feel ‘normal’
 
I feel happy and miserable and I don't understand myself. Comfort meds only do so much, twelve weeks ago tomorrow I quit pod tea and all other opiates unless from the dr and I've been pleased with how I'm doing.
Twelve weeks down, only three weeks until we travel and I've given up.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
On some level do I not want to go so I keep sabotaging myself?
That's stupid, I want to go and be ok with being clean when I do.
And only I can do it.
But not today I can't.
I bet it's the benzos again, I only had a couple yesterday, temazepam, not diazepam this time, just because I'm not sleeping, benzos remove my willpower, I knew that, I forgot.
 
Ugh this is a nightmare.
I *was* 2 years clean. Then I get offered some dihydrocodienes from some lass, she just wanted to get some weed, she didn't care if I got hooked. And I did, and it escalated straight away again.

I've managed to not keep injecting this time. I'm smoking it and its less bad the withdrawls than when I IVd.

I plan to use a taper,
I'm not sure what I think of methadone for this. Its long length seems to prolong the withdrawls a long time.

However, the short redose times with heroin seem to make it very difficult to lower dose with, it takes so much will power to put something away when you are still feeling ill just to taper down.

I was planning on using a combined approach, using a taper, and some clonadine (i hear this helps with some of the physiological side effects )

Kratom isn't available in the UK legally and I hear some people get worse withdrawls from that somehow than the h.

I was gonna buy like 5g of ketamine, gonna take some time to have the spare money for it but I thought using 100mg x 10 times a day for 5 days could really help getting through the first week. I have had moderate success using k to help mitigate some of the torture.

What do you guys think about the use of K during the acute withdrawl phase?

I might get some benzos and some weed to help with the withdrawls,
I plan to stop my daily weed habit and have managed the last few days to smoke non (unheard of for me for over a decade I've smoked daily).
I might use it for the first week of stopping the gear tho.

I'm absolutely terrified tbh. Its so bad that I feel suicidal during withdrawl, too much bad shit comes back to bite me in the ass, psychologically speaking.
Also being in bad health makes the wd much worse this time around,

Man, this stuff is the fkn devil.
I wish anyone reading this well , I hope you haven't went through any of what I have. But if you have, any experienced input would be helpful

I know there is no easy way out of this.
I just want to find a way to make it possible, I am prepared to walk through hell. But I want to do so as equipped as possible. Thank you.

And peace out
 
ihavelotsofbongs2 said:
Ugh this is a nightmare.
I *was* 2 years clean. Then I get offered some dihydrocodienes from some lass, she just wanted to get some weed, she didn't care if I got hooked. And I did, and it escalated straight away again.

I've managed to not keep injecting this time. I'm smoking it and its less bad the withdrawls than when I IVd.

I plan to use a taper,
I'm not sure what I think of methadone for this. Its long length seems to prolong the withdrawls a long time.

However, the short redose times with heroin seem to make it very difficult to lower dose with, it takes so much will power to put something away when you are still feeling ill just to taper down.

I was planning on using a combined approach, using a taper, and some clonadine (i hear this helps with some of the physiological side effects )

Kratom isn't available in the UK legally and I hear some people get worse withdrawls from that somehow than the h.

I was gonna buy like 5g of ketamine, gonna take some time to have the spare money for it but I thought using 100mg x 10 times a day for 5 days could really help getting through the first week. I have had moderate success using k to help mitigate some of the torture.

What do you guys think about the use of K during the acute withdrawl phase?

I might get some benzos and some weed to help with the withdrawls,
I plan to stop my daily weed habit and have managed the last few days to smoke non (unheard of for me for over a decade I've smoked daily).
I might use it for the first week of stopping the gear tho.

I'm absolutely terrified tbh. Its so bad that I feel suicidal during withdrawl, too much bad shit comes back to bite me in the ass, psychologically speaking.
Also being in bad health makes the wd much worse this time around,

Man, this stuff is the fkn devil.
I wish anyone reading this well , I hope you haven't went through any of what I have. But if you have, any experienced input would be helpful

I know there is no easy way out of this.
I just want to find a way to make it possible, I am prepared to walk through hell. But I want to do so as equipped as possible. Thank you.

And peace out
Click to expand...
Hey @ihavelotsofbongs2 welcome to Bluelight and to The Dark Side!

I'm moving your thread to the Tapering Support thread. Hopefully you can get some support and advice here. Please don't forget that this thread is a continuation of a previous thread, link is on first post up on page 1.
 
ihavelotsofbongs2 said:
Ugh this is a nightmare.
I *was* 2 years clean. Then I get offered some dihydrocodienes from some lass, she just wanted to get some weed, she didn't care if I got hooked. And I did, and it escalated straight away again.

I've managed to not keep injecting this time. I'm smoking it and its less bad the withdrawls than when I IVd.

I plan to use a taper,
I'm not sure what I think of methadone for this. Its long length seems to prolong the withdrawls a long time.

However, the short redose times with heroin seem to make it very difficult to lower dose with, it takes so much will power to put something away when you are still feeling ill just to taper down.

I was planning on using a combined approach, using a taper, and some clonadine (i hear this helps with some of the physiological side effects )

Kratom isn't available in the UK legally and I hear some people get worse withdrawls from that somehow than the h.

I was gonna buy like 5g of ketamine, gonna take some time to have the spare money for it but I thought using 100mg x 10 times a day for 5 days could really help getting through the first week. I have had moderate success using k to help mitigate some of the torture.

What do you guys think about the use of K during the acute withdrawl phase?

I might get some benzos and some weed to help with the withdrawls,
I plan to stop my daily weed habit and have managed the last few days to smoke non (unheard of for me for over a decade I've smoked daily).
I might use it for the first week of stopping the gear tho.

I'm absolutely terrified tbh. Its so bad that I feel suicidal during withdrawl, too much bad shit comes back to bite me in the ass, psychologically speaking.
Also being in bad health makes the wd much worse this time around,

Man, this stuff is the fkn devil.
I wish anyone reading this well , I hope you haven't went through any of what I have. But if you have, any experienced input would be helpful

I know there is no easy way out of this.
I just want to find a way to make it possible, I am prepared to walk through hell. But I want to do so as equipped as possible. Thank you.

And peace out
Click to expand...
Gabapentin and Kratom help, so does black cohosh, it's a similar effect to clonidine. I'm waiting impatiently for the doctor to phone me (can't really vape any flower until after that) and it's clonidine I'm trying to get from her today, don't know if she'll give me it. My fingernails are bitten to nothing.
Edit, I got clonidine, hope it works, anyone have experience of it?
 
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C
papercuts said:
Gabapentin and Kratom help, so does black cohosh, it's a similar effect to clonidine. I'm waiting impatiently for the doctor to phone me (can't really vape any flower until after that) and it's clonidine I'm trying to get from her today, don't know if she'll give me it. My fingernails are bitten to nothing.
Edit, I got clonidine, hope it works, anyone have experience of it?
Click to expand...
Clonadine is an anti-anxiety med. Those nagging thoughts you have about feeling stupid and hopeless should get better. It helps with the sweating also.

The first step is recognizing your role/responsibility in the shit-storm you exist in right now. You’ve already done that part (most addicts struggle with that one). It’s a much bigger step than most people can comprehend, so it’s great that you’re already there.

Next is handling the physical wd’s without getting hooked on something else. Loperamide works awesome (Immodium). Probably over the counter at your local pharmacy. Not cheap but not as pricey as H. It’s an actual opiate. If you want help getting the dosage right, just ask.... we can help.

The psychological crap really sucks. Your best bet is to find something, anything, to pass the time. Best if it involves exercise and sunshine. Binge on Netflix, or start a new steaming service so that you have a ton of new stuff to watch. Force yourself to go for a walk in a place where you won’t likely see anyone who wants to talk to you (conversation makes the time go a lot slower). Scalding hot showers, as many times a day as you want (your skin absorbs water, so it also helps you to stay hydrated when you’re nauseous). Just remember that the happiness you feel standing on the beach or playing with your dog is all driven by dopamine, and wd’s come from having NONE in your body.

Prepare your lies now. Ate some bad leftovers, threw out your back, didn’t sleep because the bathroom faucet was dripping all night. Again, conversation sucks in wd and you will benefit from some quick excuses that don’t invite a lot of questions.

Load your house with simple meals, and do it soon. The last thing you will want to do is go to the store when you feel like shit. I gave ip on a taper many times because I needed to go somewhere and I couldn’t stand the idea of people seeing me like that.

Set strict but attainable goals with whatever you do. If it hurts too much, you’ll cheat. If it’s too easy to cheat, you’ll cheat. And try to identify what triggered your recent slip so you can avoid it next time. For example: the person who gave you the H this last time..... stop seeing them. They can’t tempt you if you never run into them.

Also.... regardless of what you choose... taper, cold turkey, transition to other drugs....it takes 4-7 days before it will feel like you’re making any progress. And probably a full month before you can look back and see that it really worked. It helped me to just decide that this is my new life for a long while. Otherwise I’d start thinking it was too hard and get suicidal. Once you have a couple of days clean (or closer to clean) you will hopefully see that you’re not going to die, even though you feel like death.
 
papercuts said:
Gabapentin and Kratom help, so does black cohosh, it's a similar effect to clonidine. I'm waiting impatiently for the doctor to phone me (can't really vape any flower until after that) and it's clonidine I'm trying to get from her today, don't know if she'll give me it. My fingernails are bitten to nothing.
Edit, I got clonidine, hope it works, anyone have experience of it?
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Great for anxiety. Sometimes that anxiety feels like it’s overpowering me in wd.
 
Squeaky said:
Great for anxiety. Sometimes that anxiety feels like it’s overpowering me in wd.
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It seems a very low dose, 50 micrograms twice a day. I looked it up and they have a sodding cut off at 130lbs. Recommended dose for women under 130lbs is HALF the dose for women over 130lbs and all men. That is just unfair, I mean a little less, yes, my granny weighed 77lbs and had lower doses, but ffs, I'm average height, can't I have an adult dose?
On the other hand I felt nice and slept great, but I was really stoned too, I'm really going to get onto that one soon, I hate being stoned every day now, have done for a while, it's been three years since my last break of more than three days, but it's like nicotine to me (and I'm not mixing in tobacco), I really crave it and the first vape of the day just gets me better, so I allow that one to be capable of eating a late lunch at 3 or 4 pm, then I keep refilling...
 
papercuts said:
It seems a very low dose, 50 micrograms twice a day. I looked it up and they have a sodding cut off at 130lbs. Recommended dose for women under 130lbs is HALF the dose for women over 130lbs and all men. That is just unfair, I mean a little less, yes, my granny weighed 77lbs and had lower doses, but ffs, I'm average height, can't I have an adult dose?
On the other hand I felt nice and slept great, but I was really stoned too, I'm really going to get onto that one soon, I hate being stoned every day now, have done for a while, it's been three years since my last break of more than three days, but it's like nicotine to me (and I'm not mixing in tobacco), I really crave it and the first vape of the day just gets me better, so I allow that one to be capable of eating a late lunch at 3 or 4 pm, then I keep refilling...
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I could probably switch back to nicotine and stop weed, but that took years to quit too so I don't want to go there just to be effing legal.
 
Squeaky said:
Nobody ever got cancer from weed.....
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I guess it's better than not eating. Last time I quit weed after daily toking for only two years, it took another two years of trying to eat and not kill myself before I felt normal again. Not all the time but my worst thoughts all surfaced and ate me up. I'm too old to do that again. If I hadn't been having a kid I wouldn't have done it then either.
Or it might have been the other drugs I gave up at that time, but only weed & cigs were every single day. Weed is so much stronger now than then.
I'm not functioning so well now, it was so easy doing nothing much during the pandemic.
Now I hate hearing a knock on the door and fake being just tired as I try to string sentences together if I need to answer it.
I don't drive now.
I don't phone people any more.
I struggle to work three hours a day.
I can't plan anything for after work each day because I'll forget absolutely everything until I get a vape of flower.
I've tried, but I can't do something else first, only one thing occupies all my mind and pushes all else out.
I don't know if this is my compulsive nature, perfectionism stopping me come down and see the mess or just an addiction to weed, which we all know happens to some others, but never to ourselves.
Lucky I'm not trying to give up opiates any more, I accept my buprenorphine future.
My doctor is so great, somehow I have her respect and she doesn't talk down to me, I'm not dubbing myself in to her. To compliment the bupe she gives me gabapentin, clonidine, prozac, baclofen, codeine, and a few more that help me live doped up enough to stop my brain working.
I've stopped sourcing unofficial meds completely, so that is something. I still feel doped up to the eyeballs for too long when I only want a quick hit like nicotine really, but that would be stupid, I've not smoked in seven years and not at home even those times. Occassionally I started again when my husband still smoked, but not since he stopped too.
Mostly, I'm embarrassed. I want to be the best, I showed my kids a sober life while I raised them, now I'm ignoring everyone, even them, to sit in clouds of fuzziness and it's bloody annoying me stupid. It's like I wasted all that time and trashed my life for nothing. Where did my ability to set a good example go?
Call it a mid-life crisis I guess. In the 90s I cut off contacts to stay clean and then was depressed for a long time, those two combined left me lonely. I still miss peope I cut out of my life back then and I can't say they'd lead me astray now, they'd help bring me back to the ground.
People I've met since then don't know and probably wouldn't approve because those were my new straight friends, y'know.
So I got my husband, he knows all and is content to have me doped up and happy. Happy wife, happy life. Suits him fine. He does no drugs or alcohol at all any more.
How do I accept that this is my life now?
How do I explain why I have secrets now after being totally open with my kids and hiding nothing until this?
I literally only care about this because I have (adult) kids and don't want to hurt them by turning their mom into a self-serving junkie or by lying to them either.
 
And then I switched tabs and read this,
"When you slow down and actually focus on the things that give you inner satisfaction, you realize you already have everything inside you to be happy."
It reads better if you switch "inside" to "beside", lol.
 
papercuts said:
Mostly, I'm embarrassed. I want to be the best, I showed my kids a sober life while I raised them, now I'm ignoring everyone, even them, to sit in clouds of fuzziness and it's bloody annoying me stupid. It's like I wasted all that time and trashed my life for nothing. Where did my ability to set a good example go?
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Gotta let that one go. I would be trying to be smart with my pills but feeling like crap, and then I would go to work or need to be around my family. I would take a little extra so that I could have strength and patience... then a little more to be happy..... then a little more because I wanted to really enjoy that moment. Then my taper was blown. Next I’m running out of pills. Now I’m in total withdrawal. Now I feel guilty and stupid, and I’m remembering all of the time I wasted in the previous months and years doing ‘stupid’.

By the time I got my refill, I felt so exhausted from the guilt that I really wanted to start again but be ‘smarter’ this time. Maybe get back on track, only using them as prescribed. But the cycle just started all over and I wanted to feel ‘good’ for just one day, then two, then.....

What has happened cannot be changed. The only control we have is the future, not the past. The smart move is to learn from our mistakes and try to be better in the future. The guilt only makes us screw it up again.
 
papercuts said:
Are you sure about that, though?
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There have been several studies done around the world regarding the negative health effects of smoking pot vs smoking tobacco. Obviously pot makes you lazy, but there has never been a direct connection between marijuana smoking and lung cancer.

It causes brain damage.... just not cancer.
 
Squeaky said:
It causes brain damage
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Is that certain? I mean, I've been smoking this stuff since I was twelve and never considered myself stupid. I can't remember shit these days, that's tough, it hurts people when you don't remember you were talking to them last week, so I'm just avoiding people now.
I thought if I could just detox then my memory would all come back intact. It has before.
 
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