Thanks for the reply herbavore. I'm going to write a long drawn out "novel" of a post about my situation and how I got here tomorrow, mostly for therapeutic purposes, but right now as far as my plan goes it is to do a 9 day rapid suboxone taper.
From my research online a rapid suboxone taper will be the best way to minimize the acute physical withdrawals. After the rapid suboxone taper I plan to use kratom for a week, then switch to light tramadol and then finally clonodine and Valium for the final stages. As you can probably tell I'm a bit of a bitch when it comes to acute withdrawal. I may not even need to go to this great of lengths as my previous withdrawal from black tar heroin and oxycodone were not as drawn out, though I used some opiates intermittently for sleep aid, but was, in the end, very proud of myself for eventually turning down the opiates my mother was offering me in a drawn out tapering processes much earlier than anticipated. Unfortunately I relapsed after grossly overestimating my own personal ability to control my use of my prescriptions as I still deal with backpain from when my girlfriend and I were rear ended by a semi truck.
I understand that a lot of doctors and others recommend longer term suboxone tapers rather than the short term kimd that I am considering. Their main argument seems to be that changing the drug seeking lifestyle is the purpose behind switching to the long term suboxone taper even though the longer acting partial agonists like suboxone and methadone cause much more drawn out withdrawals. I haven't used opiates to get high in over 6 months now, my drug use has been purely maintenance so I don't believe that, at this point, using a long term suboxone maintenance program is the best choice for me if in the end it will only prolong my withdrawals which I feel will have a greater chance of causing me to relapse than the urge to get high.
So far I have greatly decreased the amount of oxymorphone I am taking and have moved to a new state with no drug contacts. Along with this my insurance is getting canceled in 1 month so I won't be able to afford pharmaceutical opiates. However, I realize that this alone is not sufficient cause to guarantee a true recovery from addiction. Fortunately these occurrences have coincided with my deeper want to change my life and I am looking at them more as happy conincidences to aid me in changing my life style rather than the driving causes behind the change.
Ive just taken my night time dose after several hours of discomfort from preliminary withdrawal and am going to try and get some sleep but tommorrow I am looking forward to discussing yours and others opinions regarding my plans for dealing with the acute withdrawals and PAWS as well as telling you about my life, suspected underlying reasons for turning to drugs and generally just discussing various topics with people who have more experience with the problems I'm dealing with than I myself have.
I just wanted to add one more time that the support I've seen you all giving each other on this forum has been very inspiring and has helped to strengthen my resolve to get clean and live an opiate free life so thank you all for that.
