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Help! Opiate and suboxone questions.

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lit504

Greenlighter
Joined
Jan 16, 2018
Messages
1
hello.

So I am a long time opiate abuser. I did 8 years on the methadone clinic and successful tapered off. After being clean for several years, i let the stress of my job break me and started dabbling with heroin again

For 4 months i would binge and then take tiny amounts of suboxone on the off days. A few times i tried to stop and had put ten solid days together. The subs worked great, never felt that bad. I am able to work and all that.

However, now the bupe doesnt seem to hold me. I have decided enough is enough but my past two attempts, i have not been able to get passed day two! I am freaking out and so scared now.

I wait 24 to 36 hours to take the subs. I take 2 to 4 mgs. They seem to help my stomach but OMG the cold sweats are unbearable! My body simply cannot regulate its temperature. Everyone at work kept asking me whats wrong! I'm pale and just cannot even function. Both these recent times i have cracked and got heroin. The subs blocked me from feeling anything but the cold sweats went away and i could relax a little bit.

I don't understand what is happening. It used to work great! Did i screw up by going back and forth between subs and dope so many times? I dont know what to do and am so scared. I don't want to go back to the methadone clinic and get trapped there again.

Please help! any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!!!!
 
I?m going thru the same thing I was shooting a brick a day and when shit gets crazy I would jump on the subs I have done this so many times that now I?m taking 12 mg a day and I still feel like shit cold sweat cramps etc I?m on the fence myself
 
Okay I have been on Subuxone a very long time. When you say the sub isn't working, do you mean you aren't feeling anything or you are actually getting sick? And I mean real sick, where you can't forget about the WDs (as addicts you know we can work ourselves up to the point where we feel WDs simply because we aren't high).

I ask this because Sub has a very long half-life. After using it for some time, you will stop feeling it because you aren't having a swing-up in blood drug levels anymore. Essentially, you are saturated. I found this happened more often on doses over 4mg (so this may be more for your situation, Loubrooklyn). It seems counter-intuitive, but to get it working again, cut your dose in half for a few days. Once your levels settle back down, you will start feeling it again.

Lit504, your issue may actually be that you aren't taking enough. That is a low dose to start off with if you are coming from a pretty hard heroin habit. 8mg may be a better starting dose for you. Just start experimenting once you get settled with taking less. I promise it is so much easier than reducing methadone. It takes me 3 or 4 days to even notice I have cut my dose in half. But you will want to get down a bit even if you want to stay on it longer-term so you won't saturate-out so often. It also reduces the weird Sub side-effects ("The Headaches").

If you have any more questions, let me know. I am not a doctor but I have used it for years at many different doses and situations.
 
in my experience the more you jump from suboxone to other opiates the harder it gets. it was painless for me the first 3ish times. then i started having to endure a day of mild withdrawal. then severe. then two days. then almost a week before it was working properly again.
 
I have a similar issue regarding medication and medication. I am taking Suboxone and now I am going to be going into surgery and the recovery requires stopping the Suboxone to take a heavier medication post-op for pain.
Fearing the worst as we do, I have not taken Suboxone of 18mgs daily for one day and I took 4-7.5mg Norco. I have not felt a thing yet. It has been an hour and a half. How long does it take for Suboxone to leave my system. My surgery is not scheduled until three days from now. Will I be ready?
 
tenderviddles said:
I have a similar issue regarding medication and medication. I am taking Suboxone and now I am going to be going into surgery and the recovery requires stopping the Suboxone to take a heavier medication post-op for pain.
Fearing the worst as we do, I have not taken Suboxone of 18mgs daily for one day and I took 4-7.5mg Norco. I have not felt a thing yet. It has been an hour and a half. How long does it take for Suboxone to leave my system. My surgery is not scheduled until three days from now. Will I be ready?
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They expect 30mg hydrocodone to take the place of 18mg of suboxone? It will not. You're going to go into Wds. I just used an opiate dose converter against 18mg of suboxone. Says equivalent dose is 240mg hydrocodone. Did real doctors really advise this?

EDIT: Also, not only would you have to take 200mg, or close to it to stay well, you would likely have to do it 3 times a day.
 
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tenderviddles said:
I have a similar issue regarding medication and medication. I am taking Suboxone and now I am going to be going into surgery and the recovery requires stopping the Suboxone to take a heavier medication post-op for pain.
Fearing the worst as we do, I have not taken Suboxone of 18mgs daily for one day and I took 4-7.5mg Norco. I have not felt a thing yet. It has been an hour and a half. How long does it take for Suboxone to leave my system. My surgery is not scheduled until three days from now. Will I be ready?
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Opiates aren't even close to being effective for days after stopping Suboxone, especially with higher doses. My second day off subs I would have had to take twice my usual dose to feel anything.
 
Unfortunately it does take weeks before the Suboxone has released you and opiates start working again. Some people report it being over a month.

The real issue is not post-op meds. As Pickle said above, they are not going to give you anything that will touch you. Their idea of "powerful post-op meds" are like....14mg of morphine. Just get someone to bring you your Subs and start again on it as soon as you are done with the surgery.

The main issue is that they have to know that your system is blocking opioids because quite often fentanyl is used as part of your anesthesia. Not an important part, mind you, and the chances of anesthesia failing are very low even if they didn't know because the fentanyl is a very small part when compared to the raw power of the main ingredient: Propofol. But it is part. And the anesthesiologist may need to make adjustments based on that.

I would be up-front with them. Tell them that opioids are still actively blocked in your system and that you have talked to your doctor and the doctor suggested you simply keep taking your Suboxone to control the pain. I have spoken with two old Suboxone doctors before about surgery, and they both said don't take the opioids the docs give. Just get back on your Sub and it will prevent pain about as well as you can expect it to be prevented. But definitely tell the surgeons.
 
I know no one wants to hear this but putting the shit else's hand's that you truly trust is good. Tell them what you are trying to do and have them monitor your dosages/Subs whatever. Methadone is the fucking devil, I would check into rehab before going back to that shit. If you have someone then that's good but know they are trustworthy and are in it for your safety only. Dr's are shit with this stuff they are so regulated. It feels like death but its not, once you've kicked it you will always remember the pain and will help a lot to keep you sober. Took a big rehab stint for me but good luck. Just make someone you trust aware (non-user) and you will get help. My mom is my savior and even though we went to bat several times she stood her ground and helped me. People want to help, we just have to communicate to them. Its probably the hardest part is to let it go, but there will come a point it wont be anymore and that's all you will want to do. Is be free from it no matter the consequences. Don't discount yourself for quitting before!! you did it once and are capable. My advice ( as a 3-4 Roxy 30's a day for 10 years and I've been 3 years clean (no subs either, far from have life figured out so please don't take this as I'm bragging just info), is to change your life. Get away from it all. And stay strong, the detox wont kill you. It will hurt like hell but I find the life hurts worse. The copping etc. Sick or broke or in trouble. Waking up with a black eye and all your shit gone. Ratched! And I'm a chick. By no way do I have it figured out just was sharing my opinion. My heart is with you my friend.
 
I was 7 and a half days off of a 6 week/1g a day Heroin habit, I shot 0.05 yesterday around 4 then a 0.05/0.05 goofball an hour later, Then one last 0.1 this morning. Did I start my withdrawals over?
 
Welcome to Blue Light! You will probably want to start a new thread rather than posting a new question in an existing thread. It will get a lot more visibility. I will go ahead and respond though. If it gets cut out and moved to a new thread hopefully my response will go with it.

It is hard to say. You are definitely playing with restarting your WDs, but I always had mixed results with stuff like this. Were your WDs completely over? Usually 7 days does finish off heroin WDs. Once I was on ~120mg a day of morphine (a fairly heavy habit) and detoxed. I shot a 60 5 days into the WDs and I mostly restarted them, although it only took 3 more days rather than the normal 5 - 6 morphine would take for me. But then once I was going about 120mg a day of oxy for around a year. I detoxed and did an 80mg pill on the 7th day and I did not get sick again at all.

It seems to me like if you are totally over the WDs, the re-occurrence is not that bad, if at all. If you were still feeling WDs, you may have mildly restarted them, but it seems like they clear up faster as long as you only use one day and then stop again. If you think about it, while in active use you are always restarting your WDs every day. You are just usually restarting the clock before it starts. At least this is my experience.

One thing I do know for sure is that if you recently got over the WDs, you will get hooked again lightning fast. Maybe even in just a couple days of use.
 
I went through that nightmare!! Was on sub 24mg tapered down during 10months jumped of at 2mg sub was completely off sub for about 10 months (total clean time) had an eptopic very painful I argued after 4days of them giving me only codine trying to explain my receptors were totally messed up after being treated awful (like an addict which shouldn't matter!) They finally gave me only 7mg hydromorph contin ms! Because I was honest about being a previous sub patient I was mistreated so bad I finally relapsed IN HOSPITAL with morphine!!! I'm so pissed I lost my sobriety because of the fn stigma about addicts made me so disgusted with the health care system assholes!!
 
Therealslumpgod said:
Unfortunately, they did start over. Equally as severe. Would not recommend using on day 7.
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Sorry to hear that. Hopefully they will clear out a little faster. But it sounds like you need to build up a support system that you can dive in to once you kick to keep you from picking back up. The WDs are the easy part. Staying off long-term is hard.
 
Sounds to me like you are taking too much. Thats what happens to my husband when he takes them. They do have a very long half-life so its gonna build up. People don?t realize how strong buph is. Noone needs the doses they give out. 2-3, 8 mg pills a day? Ive been on subutex since 2012 and only take 4mg or less a day and not at once. Even in active addition Doing 200mg of oxy i was well on a quarter. Take a smaller amount, like the dust off one. Seriously
 
Suboxone does the job, but is just as hard to get off as the gear itself. I wouldn't play with the 2. seriously mate you deserve better. I can't advise much as I made a mess by abusing oxys and benzos, now on 8mg subs. I used kratom for a while after oxy and wish I hard toughed it out with that and not gone near the subs. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Due to opiate abuse and subs I had testosterone levels of a 90 year old man. My only advice is think hard about where this is heading and like an old friend told me " LESS IS MORE" I didn't listen. good luck!
 
TheOldme said:
Suboxone does the job, but is just as hard to get off as the gear itself. I wouldn't play with the 2.
seriously mate you deserve better. I can't advise much as I made a mess by abusing oxys and benzos, now on 8mg subs. I used kratom for a while after oxy and wish I hard toughed it out with that and not gone near the subs. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Due to opiate abuse and subs I had testosterone levels of a 90 year old man. My only advice is think hard about where this is heading and like an old friend told me " LESS IS MORE" I didn't listen. good luck!
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Less is more is the truth. Buph is extremely strong. Dont try to catch a buzz just feel better. Didnt know about the testosterone issue but it has rotted the shit outta my back teeth over the years. 23 cavities, 8 crowns and 6k later I realized this :/
 
Hey there. I'm on day 7 off a 2g/day (snorted) H habit and on 16mg subs. They started me last Tuesday at 4mg and, despite being in wd for almost 24 hours, the subs did nothing for me. I had to use H the first 2 days just to get rid of the residual wd symptoms (didn't get high, though, the subs blocked that). They've brought me up to 16mg over the past week and I'm finally starting to feel normal again. DON"T USE ANYMORE DOPE. You will adjust to the subs, it just takes a couple of days. Just try to get through a couple of shitty days and know you will be feeling better.
 
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