It's time for me to get honest . . .

[anonman17]

So, I'm trying to taper off heroin, but it's not working. I've got to be honest about my addiction to everything about using. Using heroin as a taper isn't working for me because I'm still associating with other active drug addicts, I'm shooting up, and I'm doing all the same things (like the hunt and the score) that stir my addiction. I've got to change all these behaviors if I'm going to have success cleaning up. I suppose I knew this in the common sense part of my brain, but I needed to relearn it. I've heard it called changing one's "playgrounds and playmates."

The more I associate with addicts, the more I welcome resentment into my life. I'm functional (who knows for how long), so I live my life quite differently than most active heroin addicts. I find myself associating with addicts to score and what not and they see me as someone who can drive them places or give them a place to stay or supply them with money. When I do those things, I hope that these people will come through for me when I need something from them, but it doesn't work like that. We are drug addicts. They only care about surviving through the next twenty minutes. Everyone is out to take as much as he can from the next person. I don't want to live my life like this anymore. It's sad. This road goes nowhere. If I go on like this, I live my life in anger until I run out of resources--and then I'll live my life trying to hustle the next guy who has the resources. Instead of being kind, I find myself being angry. I don't want to live my life as an angry person and I don't want a future as a manipulator and a cheat. I do want to say that I don't necessarily look down on people who survive through hustle (I used to do it the first time drugs took everything from me), I just don't want to live my life that way. It doesn't feel good to me.

I'm just as addicted to the actual process of cooking and then shooting (or even snorting) the drugs as I am to the (possible) feeling the drugs give me. Including this process in an attempt to get off drugs is counter-intuitive because it reenforces the addiction.

Using heroin as the substance to taper down with when I have access (albeit not ideally enough) to other things is also counter-intuitive. I have to play out a whole host of behaviors, and engage with other addicts, in order to obtain the heroin. These actions and interactions also feed my addiction.

I remember when I quit years ago. I had been using for quite a while and the drugs just didn't make me feel "good" anymore. I would use and use and either feel nothing or nothing enjoyable. I've only been using recreationally for three months and I hit that point in the first week! I've been using and using and it doesn't feel good. The drugs don't work. At this point, I'm using for three reasons: 1) To stay well (avoid opiate withdrawals) 2) Because I'm chasing a high that I'm rarely successful in achieving (mostly the drugs make me feel like shit physically and do nothing for me mentally) 3) Because I have a compulsion that I'm powerless against.

Today, once again, I've pumped loads of drugs into my veins and have felt very little. I have a tiny bit of heroin left that I'm going to do before the night is over. I might cook up some morphine for the hell of it too. After I'm done using my works, I'm going to walk them out of the house and dispose of them.

Tomorrow is the day. I have 20 or so 15mg morphine that I'm going to EAT (eat being a very important word because if I'm serious about quitting I have no excuse doing anything other than eating them) for the next few days. I'm going to eat (I'm trying to stamp it into my mind) as many as I need each day to feel well. They likely won't last very long; I found out the other day that my tolerance is kind of atrocious. It took me 80mg of IV morphine just to get well the other day. So, I'm going to stretch them out as long as I can and then spend at least 24 hours with nothing so that I can jump onto suboxone. I have 5 8mg subs. I hope to God I can taper off with those.

I think I'm ready now. I want to be a good person. I want to be a loving boyfriend, a trustworthy friend, a good pet companion, an avid student, a good son and brother, and in touch with God.

 

[xburtonchic]

Using is never the same once we've realized and admitted to ourselves and other people that we have a problem and once we get a good amount of clean time and a real taste of what life COULD be like. That's why it stopped being enjoyable so quickly this time.

It gets to a point where it's just not worth it and it's time to let go. The addict lifestyle is a daily struggle for survival, hustling, being sick if you don't have your fix, being broke all the time, risking infection and disease from IV use, trouble with the law, losing trust by the ones you love, surrounding yourself with toxic people and situations, and worst of all losing touch with yourself and your spiritual connection with the world. The clean and sober lifestyle is all about each day being a new adventure, having money to spend, never waking up sick and dependent on a drug, being free, having control over your actions and the people/situations you choose to let into your life, knowing who you can trust, taking care of yourself and the people you love, having real loving honest connections with other people, and improving yourself and your spiritual connection each day. There is absolutely nothing that is worth that trade-off... certainly not a 5-minute rush followed by hours of nodding and being completely out of it.

It's good that you realized that your addicted mind was still controlling your behavior. Now that you know, you have the power to change it, and I fully believe that you can Good luck and keep posting, seriously, these forums have been my lifeline at times!! It's an awesome community to belong to when you're detoxing and then trying to stay clean after.

 

[obecalp]

Keep a positive outlook. That's my best advice. I struggled with heroin , pills, xanax, cocaine, alcohol or just about any other drug I could get off on. I continue to struggle but it's easier than it was. Spending 400 or or week to barely get off. Waiting in parking lots for my dealer. Worrying about my next fix. Hiding my addiction. I don't miss any of it. Tapering off heroin was impossible for me. If I bought a gram I would use all of it in one day. Best of luck... You can do it if you put the effort in! Remember the addiction is not curable, but it's treatable.

 

[rhun]

Here's my response that I posted in your other thread:

"Tapering absolutely DOES work. But not with your opiate of choice or with a short acting opiate. I've never seen a heroin taper work.

I've posted some responses to recent threads that include information about buprenorphine, you're welcome to check them out or message me.

Cold turkey detox from heroin has been proven to be almost completely ineffective with most addicts eventually relapsing. Rapid or slow tapers with buprenorphine have a much higher success rate. I personally don't support methadone, but I've seen a rapid detox with methadone work in a few cases.

There are many options out there to safely get you off heroin with minimal discomfort. You don't need to suffer needlessly. But managing your own detox is setting yourself up for failure. If treatment isn't an option, a doctor certified to prescribe buprenorphine or a clinic that dispenses it can be a great option.

Once you're off though, nothing short of active recovery will keep you from eventually relapsing. You need a plan and support."

Switching to a long acting opioid that cannot be injected and has no euphoria will help you break out of the daily cycle of addiction. It will also set you up for a successful taper and allow you to begin the process of recovery while doing so.

 

[deltakappamu]

Rhun-- great post.. could not agree more.

Unfortunately, I have never had a pain-free or at least discomfort-free detox from heroin which is my DOC.

When I read about people doing a "heroin taper" it sounds like as if a crackhead would propose doing a crack-cocaine taper. Pretty impossible IMO.

In my experience, getting the drugs out of my system is of course the initial step.. but after that is where the work begins. I need DAILY treatment for my addiction. Even at two years clean, I attended meetings almost daily, or at least had some sort of contact with my sponsor or people in recovery. I know for an addict like me, it is easy to get complacent and I am living proof that when I stopped going to meetings, I made the choice to put myself in a situation I should not have been in, and I got fucking high. Went back out for another few years of misery.

Addiction is a disease of many components, not just physical. It is a disease of the mind, body and spirit.

I will keep any and all addicts using, or not in my thoughts. It is possible! We can do it

 

[xburtonchic]

Indeed, there is no such thing as a comfortable detox. Even with a QUICK Suboxone taper like I'm doing, you still gotta tough out the first 24 hours, and then deal with the discomfort of stopping the Suboxone a few days later. And in my experience, Suboxone never takes away ALL the withdrawals anyway. You're going to be uncomfortable from your last dose up until 2 weeks or so later, though ymmv. The only exception to this that I can think of is if you get on methadone right away with the intention of staying on it forever. But then, you wouldn't be detoxing in that case, just switching opiates.

Sooo yep, I think it's safe to say that there is NO SUCH THING as a 100% discomfort-free detox haha.

The idea of a heroin taper to me is ridiculous, it would require an insane amount of willpower that I doubt many people have. Maybe there's a very, very small percentage of people out there who could handle it idk. I know I personally would fail, which is why I never considered it for myself.

 

[rhun]

So, I've switched from heroin to buprenorphine multiple times. When I did it following my very first Sub doctor's instructions (wait 24+ hours, dose 2mg and wait) I couldn't even do it. I don't think I even made it 6 hours, I was in such a state of anxiety I was seriously contemplating crashing my car into the freeway divider except my dealer called me at that exact second. In rehab, I was in the middle of nowhere and couldn't back out so I followed through with it but it was LIVING HELL. I actually had my blood pressure drop to dangerously low levels and I lost consciousness, woke up in the ER, and remember the screen with my vitals had this alarm that kept going off because my heart rate kept going below 40.

It's been my experience that medical professionals don't know shit about buprenorphine. They make you endure hell because they're overly cautious of causing precipitated WD and when you finally get to the 24 hour mark they dose you in 2mg increments, which isn't going to knock out WD symptoms and if you were going to go into precipitated WD it would happen whether you took 2mg, 8mg, or the full 32 anyway.

When making the switch, I would use until I went to sleep then wake up and dose the buprenorphine. I would take whatever mg I thought would hold me all and I took it all at once. In my experience, once I'm in full blown WD bupe isn't enough. I dose when I wake up with minor WD, when I'd be doing my next shot of heroin. I've never experienced precipitated WD.

When I first got on bupe, I'd recently come off methadone and had a massive heroin/cocaine/benzo habit. It definitely took not only the max 32mg dose of bupe, but I had to wait the 7 days for it to reach peak levels in my blood. For someone just doing heroin, one dose of bupe should definitely hold you providing you make the switch correctly and dose the correct amount of bupe for your habit.

Bupe will make you well physically, but I've never had it work for the severe anxiety, restlessness, and insomnia. I think it's important to use it with non-habit forming sleeping and anxiety medication. Seroquel and Remeron together have worked for me, though in the beginning the doses were really high.

Rapid buprenorphine detoxes are definitely not pain free. It's really important to stabilize and then slowly taper at small increments because bupe is actually incredibly potent. Because it's a partial agonist vs a full agonist like heroin and methadone, you won't get high on it and you will begin the process of feeling normal while you're on it. When tapering, I take the reduced dose in the morning and use Remeron during the day for anxiety. As long as I don't just sit around I usually feel fine all day and I take the Seroquel at night and then wake up and take the next dose and feel fine.

I tapered down from 32mg and was almost off before finding out I was pregnant, so now I'm at 4mg. Nothing is going to be 100% painless but this is the most effective method I've found and has a much higher success rate than cold turkey detox, which has really been a failure in treating heroin addiction. Most of the heroin addicts in treatment and sober living with me were on bupe and I definitely saw firsthand a much lower relapse rate.

Buprenorphine also allowed me to get involved in AA immediately after getting off heroin. I definitely think being in active recovery is also an extremely important part of this process and in sustained sobriety.

 

[deltakappamu]

Regarding the bupe-dope transition:

I have a horrible history of using heroin and then telling myself on the weekend that I was gonna kick. I would get subs and then take them for a day or two then get back on heroin. I did this pattern many many times and at first I would be able to do my bedtime shot of dope then wake up in the morning and take a sub. Over time, I found that I needed to wait longer and longer in order to take sub without going into precipitated w/d. I am not sure why this was, and I thought that it was maybe because I was doing dope with longer legs or something, but I have noticed that the more times I switched back and forth, the longer I needed to wait.

I have went into precipitated withdrawals twice in my life and there are no words to describe that feeling of hell.

Also, I agree that bupe does not take away all symptoms.. not for me anyway. I still feel shitty, it just takes the edge off. My most recent detox was at my last treatment center (historically I have never been able to detox at home successfully, only have been able to in an institution,) they did a 14 day suboxone taper. It worked pretty well, but still only made me feel like 70% better. It was just enough to take the yanks off.. no more, no less.

 

[rhun]

Regarding the bupe-dope transition:

I have a horrible history of using heroin and then telling myself on the weekend that I was gonna kick. I would get subs and then take them for a day or two then get back on heroin. I did this pattern many many times and at first I would be able to do my bedtime shot of dope then wake up in the morning and take a sub. Over time, I found that I needed to wait longer and longer in order to take sub without going into precipitated w/d. I am not sure why this was, and I thought that it was maybe because I was doing dope with longer legs or something, but I have noticed that the more times I switched back and forth, the longer I needed to wait.

I have went into precipitated withdrawals twice in my life and there are no words to describe that feeling of hell.

Also, I agree that bupe does not take away all symptoms.. not for me anyway. I still feel shitty, it just takes the edge off. My most recent detox was at my last treatment center (historically I have never been able to detox at home successfully, only have been able to in an institution,) they did a 14 day suboxone taper. It worked pretty well, but still only made me feel like 70% better. It was just enough to take the yanks off.. no more, no less.

It takes a full 7 days of taking the same dose daily for buprenorphine to reach peak levels in your body. So it takes time to stabilize. The reason for this is due to the long half life of this medication. So if you take buprenorphine one day then take the same amount the next day you'll still have a large percentage of the first dose in your system plus full second dose. It takes those 7 days of taking the same dose of the amount of bupe in your system to stop rising and level out.

So only being on it for a weekend will relieve major withdrawal symptoms but you're not going to feel complete relief. It will take you out of the worst of it but know in a week you'll be feeling more normal, not just well. And like I said previously, if I took it while in minor withdrawal I felt totally fine. It took more time to feel better when I dosed in major WD.

Due to half life, you're going to feel better doing a slow taper because dose changes also take multiple days to take effect. So while a rapid taper is better than cold turkey, you won't be able to adjust easily to frequent dosage decreases even if you space them out by a couple days.

Hope this helps clear up some confusion.