The thing I think is funny about the whole Suboxone thing:
At one of the Suboxone places I was going to, a lot of the people there were there for pills, and they weren't even really on the pills for that long or doing that much. A lot of them had never even kicked a habit before or even experienced full-blown WDs. It's like they got caught by their doctor's taking too many, or got referred by a counselor to Suboxone treatment. A lot of these people were normal working moms who weren't ever even really involved with the whole "druggie lifestyle" at all...
So here they are on Suboxone now, taking it as prescribed....Then they decide they want to taper off. Everything's going fine with the taper. Now, most of the doctors out there's taper schedule is pretty much just drop down to 2mgs and then just stop one day! The doctor tells you, "You'll just be kind of tired and irritable for a few weeks, but that's about it"....
Now you have these people with full-time jobs who have never even really been dopesick before stopping at 2mgs and thinking they'll be able to just continue on with going to work and taking the kids to their after-school activities like it's no big deal! You're gonna tell me that going through the hell of jumping of suboxone at 2mgs is a better option than just kicking the 60mgs of hydrocodone straight up?
And here we've been on BL, knowing for years that the sub 2mg doses are where it really gets tough....How the hell is it that all these people that went through 10+ years of medical school haven't been able to figure this out? It's mind-boggling to me!
I've only kicked Suboxone once ever, in 8 years of having a legit prescription...I jumped off at 2, and I didn't sleep for 11 days....but despite how shitty I felt, I could feel my senses coming back stronger than they had been in years! I was looking at women and actually getting turned on! I could smell the grass and feel the wind and the rays of sunlight. I started to remember things from my childhood that I hadn't thought about in years. The world seemed like such a big place again with unlimited possibilities!
Maintenance can be a great tool, but nobody should sell themselves short and think, "I need to be on opiates forever and that's it!"...
You guys are really making me want to get off it again...Just 6 weeks of heroin last winter and hear I am again, scared to death to go through the withdrawals, afraid I won't be able to make it....but sooner or later that horrible feeling does subside and that sick anxiety in your chest goes away...It seems like a long time while it's happening, but in the general scheme of things, a few weeks isn't that long. It's not worth staying on the shit forever just to avoid it.