Buprenorphine is the most effective of those meds for treating the acute withdrawal. Especially with fent, as kicking that is rather intense. You only will need to use buprenorphine for 4-12 days to treat the acute withdrawal though.
If you just use it for a week you won’t become dependent on it, and you won’t have to then kick the buprenorphine. All taking it will do is to treat the acute withdrawal from your primary opioid if choice. If you only take it for about a week, it won’t prolong withdrawal. It just treats the symptoms when used properly for a detox.
If you’re on 0.1g fent/day, you’ll like need 5-8mg buprenorphine twice a day. Possible more. Possibly less by the same token, but that’s a pretty serious habit. Especially if you inject your fent, you very well might need higher doses of the meds I mentioned.
Tramadol also works well to treat opioid withdrawal, although not so much if you have a formulation that included APAP.
Actually DXM might be more effective than buprenorphine in a certain more subjective or psychological sense, but most people don’t tolerate it well and when someone does it has some uncomfortable side effects. Buprenorphine is more practical.
If forgot it I mentioned it already, but I’d suggest you visit SL and check out our directory there. Lots of info about getting off opioids.
Post detox, do you have any plans for how you’ll move ahead? Going for abstinence from harmful opioid use or are you just trying to dry out for another reason?
Generally speaking you’ll need to do quite a bit to maintain momentum in early recovery (for me it took: methadone clinic for 2.5 years, individual therapist, peer support recovery groups and getting involved with the mindulness movement; it also requires my serious involvement with SL here).
What are your intentions with getting off opioids?
Thank you for your letter and for your input.
I want to stop using fentanyl (or any other opioid), so I can get my mind back. I have always been a loner, and lived mostly inside my own mind. Maybe because of my Asperger's, or maybe because I stuttered very severely when I was a child and in puberty, and so couldn't really join in the social activity like I wanted to. I always wanted to, but I couldn't. So I developed my own world, and my own interests, and that was okay.
But taking all this fentanyl, my mind isn't working. It's gotten a little better over the years - maybe my brain has adapted a little to the constant state of intoxication.
For the first years, my memory was so poor, that I couldn't remember what I had thought about a minute earlier. And my memory is still very poor, but I have learned to live with it, and I compensate a bit by writing things down.
Another ability I lost, was my imagination. I simply couldn't form an image in my head! And since forming images is probably a big part of thinking, that probably also contributed to my inability to think.
So mostly, I want to get out of fentanyl, to make my mind work again, and to be able to think.
But another part, is that I would like to be able to go places with my mother. She is getting old, and I would like to give her hopefully at least a few good years.
And I would also like to lose weight. I have already lost 50 kilogram from when I was alcoholic before I started on fentanyl. But for some reason, fentanyl has always increased my appetite. I eat a lot of biscuits and such. I don't know why. Based on movies, I expected to become thin like a skeleton.
I almost don't dare think about what I would do after getting out of my addiction, because I don't want to be disappointed yet again. But if I were so lucky to ever get out this addiction, and through the withdrawal symptoms, my plan is to take it easy in the beginning, and see what happens. I don't know how I will feel.
But I imagine I just will want to stabilize myself psychologically in some liveable daily existence.
I hope that with a clearer mind, I will get hopefully some of my imagination back, and maybe some sense of humour, and begin to enjoy thinking again. I used to be very curious about many things, which I lost after my bad trip when I was 20, but I have felt it return about 5-6 years ago, but the effects of the fentanyl mean I can't really delve seriously into anything, only see the surface.
If I am able to stay psychologically stable for some months, I hope my energy will improve, and then I "plan" (or hope) to begin to "work" on myself. That's my greatest hope.
I have so many psychological problems, and things I need to work on. But for all the years after my bad trip, I could only focus on staying alive.
It's only maybe 5-6 years ago I began to suddenly feel I was ready to work on myself - to look into certain areas of my psyche, and to analyze and get insights about it, and try to change.
That's my main goal. To be able to work on myself. If that makes any sense?
That's how I imagine it, anyway.
I live with my mother, and I don't work. I can't work, not as I have been and am now. But maybe in the future, I will be in a different position. But I know I have to go through an immense amount of work on myself, before I would ever be able to really function around other people and be able to contribute anything to their lives.
I have a disability-pension from the state because of my Asperger's, so we can make ends meet, so at least I don't have financial worries as yet an obstacle. Money sucks.
That's great! Best wishes to you! And thank you for the information.
