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Suboxone Withdrawal, Keeping Mental Clarity.

W

WakiMan

Greenlighter
Joined
Feb 8, 2015
Messages
6
Hello all, I hope this Sunday afternoon is treating everyone well :)

As a primer I am a 37 year old Father of 3 (1 on the way so soon to be 4) boys, I am married to a wonderful understanding wife and I am also horribly addicted to about anything that binds to the opiate receptors in your head. I started using about 4 years ago, mainly as a way to deal with stress. In short I am a minor owner of a telecommunications company that was in financial trouble, because of the financial trouble we were in we had to default on a loan to a municipality (a 37 million dollar loan). Because of the way the company was incorporated the follow through TAX consequences put me in a spot where I owed a $150K to the IRS. I hired a tax attorney to help negotiate with the IRS which ultimately failed and led to my chapter 13 bankruptcy.

Before all of this started I was a 6 foot 3 inch 205 pound weight lifter and a fairly optimistic guy. I am now a 261 pound fat man feeling like his personal choices and life in general has chewed him up and spit him out.

I have taken an assortment of narcotics over the past few years and at one point had a $3K a month morphine habit, about a year ago I decided I wanted to try and get my life and health back under control and transitioned to suboxone. I have tapered down to 1 mg and then jumped about 3 days ago and I am starting to feel the withdrawals coming on.

One of the things that is making this withdrawal so difficult is that I am literally super dad and very quintessential at work. My wife and I have been lucky enough that even through the bankruptcy she has been able to be a stay at home mom and I have always made enough money to be a single income family.

The problem I am facing now is that literally everyone in my social circle does not know about my addiction and I am terrified that I am going to relapse when something bad happens at work and the stress hits me. I manage multiple technical departments at work so there is always some kind of problem I am having to work through (I easily work 60 hour weeks).

What is really sad is that one of the things I always knew about myself is that if I put my mind to something I had the will power to do it. My opiate addiction has shown me I am not as strong as I used to think.

What do you all do to keep a positive mental outlook? I start off all positive but as I get sicker and sicker all of the promises I have made to myself get weaker. Then someone from work calls and says we have an outage or a fiber cut etc.. and I have to start coordinating large number of resources to resolve (which really sucks when your in moderate withdrawals).

Also, I have never attempted a Suboxone detox, how bad do you think it will get? I have done a few detox's, the worst was a cold turkey detox from 300mg of morphine a day habit.

Thank you in advance for you time reading this and any suggestions you have.
 
Well, just passed day 4: Went to work, came home and forced myself to take all vitamins and supplements and then walked on the dreadmill for 30 min (I had read light exercise helps, juries still out on that). After excercise I made dinner (my night) then went upstairs and sat in the shower feeling pretty bad (I moped under the hot water for like 45 minutes). Came down talked to my 3 sons and I am now laying on the couch writing a reply to myself (yes I know talking to myself is not a good sign). Anywhoo compared to cold turkey off Morphine this is "easy" which is kind of bs because when I have done cold turkey in the past I was so sick I couldn't even focus on the mental crap (to busy soaking everything I owned with sweat while overheating and freezing to death at the same time while I feel like I was sun burned all over, of all the sypmtomd this followed by RLS are what really got to me) currently I have brief periods of mild sweating, just enough to keep me thinking the other shoe is going to drop and throw me into full withdrawal.

Its wierd, I am afraid to go to sleep because I am afraid I will wake up in full withdrawal however I am also afraid that I will lose the ability to sleep .

Well that's all for tonight I know that on sub the real withdrawal should be on day 4, 5 and 6. So I will let you all know how tomorrow ends up.
 
I'm so sorry to hear about what you're going through

I'm a little over 3 months off suboxone

Don't fear the withdrawals, embrace the suffering

realize that getting through it, you'll feel much better

like you shouldn't fear ripping off a band-aid; it'll hurt temporarily, but underneath is a healed wound that needs air
 
Thanks Capt. I appreciate the kind words. Day 5 and 6 have been strange, its like my body cant decide whether it is going to do acute withdrawals. A lot of the physical symptoms are lessened this evening:). Only thing that really sucks is my work needs me to come in tonight but I really, do not want to:)

But on the very bright side I am still sleeping!

When I stopped cold turkey on Morphine I lost the ability to sleep for over a week, its what caused me to relapse.

So I am optimistic I will make it this time:)
 
Sorry to hear as well, 29 yr old in infosec here with 2 daughters and a 70+ hour work week, been on subs for 6 years now after a severe iv dilaudid addiction i caught after a car accident. Desperately hoping to gain enough vacation time at work to schedule getting off them soon. I can certainly understand what your feeling but if you have made it this far don't stop now. I can't go over 48 hours without feeling acute w/d symptoms so your lucky in that respect. Anyway, just wanted to wish you luck and let you know im around if you ever want to talk. You can do it, kick its ass.
 
We are many years apart but very good advice that ive been given as i too am an addict 48 hrs into sub wihdrawal is that addicts really fuckthemselves with their way of thinking especially when it comes to worrying about the future. As you stated you are already worried about something bad at work happening and you relapsing. How about you get to that stage then worry about it lol. Its comical to me as i think the same way. OMG i need 5000 dollars to put down on a car thats do much !!! Well how about i focus on getting the first thousand saved instead if worring about something down the line. I know its not easy but just worry about today before anything. Take it a day at a time. Thinking so far down the line and overwelming yourself so much will only lead you to rationalize using today. The "well ill prob relapse when something goes wrong at some point in the future so fuck it if ill relapse then i might as well use today"

The wheel of fortune called life is a fickle whore my friend

Good luck
 
Are you doing this without any medications? If you have a alot of responsibilities I would suggest taking clonidine and lyrica/neurontin, they do help. Jump from 1mg isnt really a very low dose so it is going to suck for ~2 weeks and then the rest is mental. At that stage you can take advantage that you have a job and stuff to do because it is about occupying the mind but for now, just try to aim for 2 weeks day by day. You just got to want it a lot, there is no other way to stay motivated. Good luck.
 
nygiants1313, My wife told me the same thing last night:) In fact it's the same advice I give people when they are freaking out about a project. I always ask them what is the best way to eat the elephant:) (one bite or step at a time). This morning I woke up filling particularly crappy (not acute withdrawal, just well crappy because I had to work from 8:00 AM to 3:00 AM the following morning). So instead of mopping I made my tire fat ass go out for a walk, it's amazing how your perspective brightens when you get outside.

I have a picture, taken a few years ago with my family and I on vacation "pre-addiction", every time I feel like giving up I look at it and remind myself why I am doing what I am doing.

I appreciate everyones comments, it's amazing to know that in this world there are literally hundreds if not more facing the same challenge that I am facing. My prays go out to all of you :)
 
cook, I do have some clonidine and it is acting as my sleeping pill, and I agree it makes a huge difference. I am hoping that in a week things will start to look up, what I think is really funny is caffeine has always been good to me. Currently I have to avoid it because all it does is make me feel more jittery than anything else. What do you guys take to give yourself and extra boost during this part of recovery?

Thanks~
 
Ive found taking l-theanine with caffeine completely eliminates the jitters, you might want to try it if youre looking for some kind of boost with mental clarity. Usually stimulants are not recommended in withdrawal because they just make everything worse, but for me the l-theanine is very good supplement.
 
Captain.Heroin said:
I'm so sorry to hear about what you're going through

I'm a little over 3 months off suboxone

Don't fear the withdrawals, embrace the suffering

realize that getting through it, you'll feel much better

like you shouldn't fear ripping off a band-aid; it'll hurt temporarily, but underneath is a healed wound that needs air
Click to expand...

I have been trying to quit methadone after using it for 7 years. It feels horrible
Not only the withdraws, but the fear. The fuc...ing sadness. Lack of happiness and constantly being afraid of something that I have no idea what it is.
This has been one of the most challenging tasks in my life and I find it extremely difficult to embrace the suffering although I don´t give up trying.
 
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Sub withdrawal is such a drawn out hell. All you can really do is suffer and try to hold on. For me I got a brief respite at day 22-23 before paws slapped me in the face on day 29-30.
 
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