Opioids Want to quit methadone after just a week...

Hello, I've been on methadone 30mg for a few days, then up to 40mg for a few more days. I had a light hydrocodone addiction/habit. I occasionally did oxy and heroin as well. I decided to try MMT because I no longer wanted to risk my freedom by going to my supplier who is having too much police contact and legal problems lately. I've only been on MMT for seven days and I do NOT want to be addicted to MMT. I have to go out of town in February so I really need to be off MMT. This slipped my mind when I started the program. Will I go through withdrawals after such a short time? If so, for how long, and to what degree? Would I b able to take my legit rx of hydrocodone to get through the w/d?
Thanks for your help.
-Issokay

Edited because of accidental double post

Hey there! It's great that you are trying to do something about your addiction. That's a wonderful first step.
I was on MMT for 5 years. My dose was 120 mgs split (so 60 mg in am and 60 mg in pm). I weaned off of it 2 years ago so I'm well aquatinted with MMT and quitting methadone. Methadone is highly addicting, no joke! BUT, it saves many people's lives. Sometimes it's the best option. It sounds like your habit wasn't very large however. Only you can decide if you need methadone treatment, no one else. The biggest benefit I found from it was that it allowed me to straighten my life out, change my thinking , friends and lifestyle for when I was ready to be totally opiate free. Then I tapered off of it. To answer your question about the WDs, yes I think you will have them, not just because of the methadone but because you never stopped regular opiate use. You just switched opiates, KWIM?
I guess the big question is, do you think you'll stay clean if you get off of it now? If you truly do (but please give this a lot if thought first!), then I would taper down on the methadone as low as you can go before quitting. Methadone WDs really suck! If you can taper your methadone dose down at least somewhat lower then switch to a short acting opiate (like hydro) and taper with that your WDs won't be as bad as tapering from methadone to nothing. I knew of doctors who did this for MMT clients who were at low doses.
Keep in mind though, that tapering with your drug of choice can be very difficult. If hydro is your DOC, it may be hard to taper. It will take a lot of willpower!
So my questions are: Are you positive you're ready to quit? Do you have any chronic pain issues that need consideration? Have you been away from the lifestyle (friends who use, hookups, etc) long enough? Do you have a good support system? A plan for dealing with triggers? Are any mental health issues (ie: depression) that may have caused you to get addicted in the first place being addressed currently?
If at all possible, consult an experienced medical professional about getting off of MMT. I wish you the best of luck hon! I'm dealing with detoxing from hydro myself right now (had to take it for medical issues recently)and I know it isn't easy. If you need to vent PM me.

issokay said:

Hello, I've been on methadone 30mg for a few days, then up to 40mg for a few more days. I had a light hydrocodone addiction/habit. I occasionally did oxy and heroin as well. I decided to try MMT because I no longer wanted to risk my freedom by going to my supplier who is having too much police contact and legal problems lately. I've only been on MMT for seven days and I do NOT want to be addicted to MMT. I have to go out of town in February so I really need to be off MMT. This slipped my mind when I started the program. Will I go through withdrawals after such a short time? If so, for how long, and to what degree? Would I b able to take my legit rx of hydrocodone to get through the w/d?
Thanks for your help.
-Issokay

Click to expand...

Ask your clinic if you can take a vacation. 8 months into the program they gave me 2 weeks worth of take home doses so I could go the beach with my girlfriend. If they don't let you then I would stay on the program.

You have to realize, you are addicted to opiates/opiods so when you go off the Methadone you are going to deal with harsh physical withdrawal and a tremendous psychological withdrawal. You have been abusing opiates and opiods for a while, you just happened to switch drugs.

What the fuck are doing on Methadone with a light hyrocodone habit? That's overkill. Methadone is for people shooting 120mg of Oxycontin multiple times a day or shooting a couple grams of heroin.

8mg of Suboxone is what you should be on.

-Guido- said:

What the fuck are doing on Methadone with a light hyrocodone habit? That's overkill. Methadone is for people shooting 120mg of Oxycontin multiple times a day or shooting a couple grams of heroin.

8mg of Suboxone is what you should be on.

Click to expand...

I was gonna ask the same thing.........from hydro to methadone is a huge jump. He did say he used heroin some times & oxy as well.........but if he can still feel hydrocodone easily, how in the world can he do 30 to 40mg of methadone & not overdose? His tolerance must be high..............

I Agee with Guido, you shouldn't be on MMT. I made the mistake of listening to a doctor when I was 19. I had stopped breathing from taking methadone, Xanax, and fentanyl all in one day. So the doctor at the hospital suggested to my mom that I go on MMT. Not knowing much about methadone, only that I was able to get really high off of it, I said sure, it sounds like a great idea. Within two months I had my dose pushed up to 90mg a day. I was falling asleep all over the place, long story short it was a total mess, and I never got take homes (except the one for Sunday) cause I kept pissing dirty. Luckily I only stayed on it a year. The withdrawals were pretty bad, but honestly IMO, not as psychologically tormenting as suboxone strangely enough (I didn't randomly break down crying is what I mean).im sure if I stayed in maintenance longer, I would have had a hell of a harder time kicking it though.

Anyway, whatever withdrawals you feel after a week of MMT, are going to be nothing compared to staying on it for much much longer. Get off while you can, or you're going to find yourself addicted to something that's gonna take a lot longer to kick.

Yes I am ready to be off of the drugs altogether. I do have pain issues but I think that they have been aggravated by the opiate use itself. Staying up without sleeping, etc... if the withdrawals do happen, how long do you think they would last and how bad would they be? That's my main question now. I am skipping MMT today just to see how I feel. I can skip a second day and still stay in the program, but I cannot skip a third day. So I can stay in the program by trying this out. I just really need to be off of this stuff as I'm going to be living with family for a couple months before going on vacation for a year, so I know that I can stay clean. I have never abused in front of them and they don't even know I'm going to MMT. My partner knows and is very supportive. I am away from that lifestyle because honestly I don't hang out with drug users. I only had the one guy who supplied me, and we didn't hang out. His house was too hot to chill at for any period of time at all. I was nervous just waiting for the dealer to arrive (he was the middle man-meh)

methadone is so strong i think wafers were 40 mg and i ate a quarter once and i was puking for hours and it made me fel like absolute shit
to be honest heroin seems to have less bad side effects that oxycontin and methadone

Zneg: Yeah I agree. I mean it would be ok if I didn't have travel plans or if I was highly addicted. I was occasionaly doing oxy and heroin, which is why I got on MMT, anyway yeah I was hoping to be able to skate by with minor WDs

What I would do honestly, is try and buy some methadone illicitly off the street, about a 100 mg if you can, and just use that to taper yourself off, that way you won't be facing grueling withdrawal. Methadone is great in that it lasts a long time, and when you're at the point where you're down to five mg, you can still feel it as its so potent.

Since you've only been in it for a week to begin with, you can probably get off with relative ease if you taper. Dropping it at fourty mg is going to be hard.

Also don't base going a day without methadone and no withdrawals to mean you're in the clear. It will probably take about fourty eight hours for the shit to really hit the fan. If youre on it longer, it can sometimes take five days for withdrawal to hit.

I can go two days without it and still be allowed to continue the program, I feel I have to at least try. Also, I've got quite a few norco left. Couldn't I taper off using those?

RockNRoll: you may have gotten sick because you had never taken it before.

Yeah, you could, but I'd suggest you CWE them because you're going to have to take a hell of a lot of them now that you have a tolerance to 40mg of methadone.

The methadone would be better though, as it is often used to detox people off of opioids. It has a super long half life, which makes the gradual decrease in dosage go more smoothly. I imagine if you got back on hydrocodone or OxyContin, you'd just find yourself back in the same position as you were when you got on methadone. If you don't want to buy it off the street, you can wait for you're weekend take home and use that to taper off of, even though it will be less pleasant than if you had a slightly higher dosage.

IMO, you should consider suboxone

I can't get suboxine or methadone on the street. I've tried before. It doesn't exist. And I know my dr would certainly not do it. He would be furious with me. How do you do a cwe? I tried once and I really think it didn't work

http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/396416-New!-Cold-Water-Extraction-Mega-Thread-amp-FAQ

In all seriousness, tapering off isn't going to be easy with hydrocodone. I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but the whole reason you got on methadone to begin with was because you couldn't stop using short acting opiates/opioids.

You should also find an opiate conversion chart to estimate how much hydro you're going to have to start off taking to just keep yourself not sick. I imagine it's going to be a fuckload. Just go without any methadone or hydrocodone for as long as you can and only start using it when the withdrawals become unbearable. That's the only way I can see possibly doing this in a way that will yield effective results.

Yeah I kinda planned on doing that. I think I'll skip two days, then go and get Friday's and Saturday's dose, then I'll have a take home for Sunday, then I'll skip monday and tuesday, and keep skipping two days as long as I don't get sick. If I do, then I'll talk with them more about it.
I really just want to know what I'm facing having been on methadone for just a week at a low dose. I have benzos to help with W/Ds.

40mg of methadone is still a huge dose (compared to youre habit) as methadone is a very potent opioid. When I was shooting a bundle of dope a day, 30mg was all I needed to keep withdrawals at bay for a good 24 hours. Maybey you should just talk to one of the counselors at you're clinic and just say "look, is there anyway we can just devise a two week detox plan?" it may not work as I'm pretty sure most clinics demand a six month commitment or so, but you have nothing to lose by trying it. If it works out it'll be a lot easier than skipping days and using hydrocodone for the withdrawals towards the end.

But if they won't allow that then yeah, it's a good idea to start skipping days at the clinic to lower youre tolerance before you just ditch methadone all together.

It's just hard to believe that seven days would cause withdrawals.

Dependency occurs much more quickly in those that have already been opiate dependent.
Or in your case it sounds like you were opiate dependent to begin with & just switched opiates?
As far as I can tell you were taking hydro's, with some oxy & dope on occasion & went on methadone.
As such you would have already been physically dependent on opiates & the week wouldn't really matter.

I hope that helps clarify things a bit for you.

Well, an opiate is a opiate. Switching to methadone doesn't mean that you kicked your hydro/oxy/heroin addiction, it just means you're now using methadone instead, which is way more potent mg for mg. in essence, you really just raised you're tolerance a lot so quitting cold turkey now would be harder than before you got on methadone. Even seven days of 40mg of methadone is enough time to raise your tolerance considerably. Luckly though, it hasn't been so long that the methadone has really begun to stack up on itself, so you probably don't have much more than fourty mg in your system at any given time. If you continue to go to you're clinic every day, the dose will stack up and you'll probably accumulate a much higher total amount of methadone in you're system, probably twice as much as you're daily dose. So that will mean that detoxing from fourty mg will really be like detoxing from a total of 80mg (maybey a little less, I havnt looked at a methadone half life graph showing accumulation), so after 24 hours or so, you'll still have fourty mg, 48hours, 20 mg etc..
It wouldn't be the end of the world, a lot of people take 100mg+ a day, but if you want to quit before methadone really has its grip on you, now is the time.
Otherwise I would just use the methadone for maintenance for as long as you need to get your life back in order, and when the time is right taper off. Either way you got to make up you're mind relatively quickly as to what you want to do, because methadone is something that requires commitment, and it sounds like you're having doubts about the whole thing in general (which is perfectly appropriate as methadone maintenance is a pretty serious form of ORT)