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Bupe Buprenorphine Withdrawals

I dunno, if you keep your doses low when you have a small habit and do a rapid detox (3-5 days) you can come off subs real easy. When I was doing between 90-120mg of oxycodone a day and needed a break I'd take subs for 3-4 days then jump off with little to no WDs. Only real effect was a little fatigue and some psychological wd symptoms (which wasn't bad at first, now that I've been on opioids for well over a year, the psychological wd symptoms are almost the worst part of the sub WD). Basically with a small habit I found subs were extremely helpful if you didn't try and take high doses of subs and limited time on it.
 
Update 2

I'm down to taking 48mcg in the morning and night for a total of 96mcg/day. I am supplementing with ~20mg loperamide every day but I haven't needed the clonodine to sleep for about 5 days. I'm still feeling well for 90% of the day. I start to feel w/d around 9:00pm even though I am dosing then anyways. For this reason I'm going to try and cut to one dose per day in probaby 2 days, I might try cutting my night dose in half and then cut it out.

It has been pretty painless but I have almost zero responsibilities right now and I think that helps with the process. After I cut down to one dose per day I will try and do a dose every other day. I expect this to be difficult but I'm a believer that any w/d felt before coming off will result in a reduction of total w/d at the end. I have nothing to base this on but it makes sense. Ultimately I would like to stop completely when I am around 10-20mcg per day but we'll see how things go.

After being on bupe for 5 years I have almost completely forgotten what it feels like to be high and I have absolutely no cravings. I also have completely forgotten what it's like to go through the day needing nothing but food and water, and that prospect is really driving me right now. I'll check back in once I'm down to one dose per day.
 
i have to go to detox to get off benzos, and these fucking unethical detox doctors think 3-5 days of phenobarb will cure my 5 YEAR klonopin 4mg daily habit, which i was RXed, how inconsiderate. im also RXed suboxone, i TAKE 24MG a DAY, they want to TAPER ME OFF that in 3-5 DAYS, when i have a SCRIPT, them fuckers are so evil...i dont understand how cruel they can be~?
 
opiatekrzy said:
i have to go to detox to get off benzos, and these fucking unethical detox doctors think 3-5 days of phenobarb will cure my 5 YEAR klonopin 4mg daily habit, which i was RXed, how inconsiderate. im also RXed suboxone, i TAKE 24MG a DAY, they want to TAPER ME OFF that in 3-5 DAYS, when i have a SCRIPT, them fuckers are so evil...i dont understand how cruel they can be~?
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Go somewhere else, you have like a 0.1% success rate at those dosages and taper rates.
 
Update 3

I'm down to 64mcg/day in two doses. The drop rate has slowed a little as I get lower but I've been feeling pretty constant as far as w/d goes. The w/d is strange actually, I feel fine all day until after i take my night dose at 9:00pm and it is then that I feel considerable withdrawal which goes away when I take some loperamide.

I'm sleeping 8 hours a night and still have no urge to use. I would like to get some tramadol to use when I jump off completely but I don't want to go to a doctor and I don't have a reliable way to get it otherwise. I will continue dropping every 3 days or so until I get sufficiently low/run out of bupe. I'll post again in a few days. There isn't a lot of response to these posts but I will continue to do them for selfish reasons.
 
dopiate said:
Update 3

I'm down to 64mcg/day in two doses. The drop rate has slowed a little as I get lower but I've been feeling pretty constant as far as w/d goes. The w/d is strange actually, I feel fine all day until after i take my night dose at 9:00pm and it is then that I feel considerable withdrawal which goes away when I take some loperamide.
.
I'm sleeping 8 hours a night and still have no urge to use. I would like to get some tramadol to use when I jump off completely but I don't want to go to a doctor and I don't have a reliable way to get it otherwise. I will continue dropping every 3 days or so until I get sufficiently low/run out of bupe. I'll post again in a few days. There isn't a lot of response to these posts but I will continue to do them for selfish reasons.
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I applaud your patience. I would want to get it over with already. I prefer to do a very fast opiate taper and just take some clonidine for a few days to help with sleep, instead of having to deal with minor WD with every dosage drop.
 
opiatekrzy said:
you're right, i never get success there. too bad its the only place in the city of buffalo that will take people to detox off benzos
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What about Rochester? I'm sure that Syracuse would have more options, but that's a bit of a trip.
 
yeah it is, and my suboxone doctor told me 2 times he would allow me on it while at detox and long term rehab, i was just going to get off benzos, the TWO times i went into detox the doctor there said my doctor wont RX me suboxone anymore, if i do long term, then after i can get back on it (why the fuck wuld i go back on subs after 6 months off of it)? WTF i pay this guy $200 a month, he gave me his word i can be on it at rehab, so wen i went to detox 2 times wasting time, he changed his mind on me again, thats the reason i wont go to that detox, im not going off benzos + suboxone when i been on them 5 yrs, and tapered in 3 days. the benzos yes im willing to do, but dont take my maintence drug away that keps me off heroin 5 yrs!
 
I was at a place in closer to Albany that allowed me to stay on Xanax at the time, and had tons of people there on methadone still, so you could pick and choose what you wanted to detox from there, and they let you use whatever else as long as it was scripted. It was a pretty shitty rehab though, and all but maybe 5 people were not court ordered to be there.
 
sounds like the Ritz of all detoxes compared to the one in buffalo, ny. they dont are if ur addicted to 20mg xanax daily for yeas, all they will give u is just phenobarb for three days and out u go. tapering is a necessity with benzos, there has to be some law of cruelty man over here
 
Update 4

Down to 48mcg/day. Still feeling well throughout the day and even had a 3 hour job interview I felt normal through. The withdrawal hits at the weirdest times, I will feel totally fine and calm and then all of a sudden I will feel fairly strong restless legs, yawning, muscle tightness, etc. Yesterday I got on a plane to come home and felt fine sitting there and by the time we got in the air I wanted to jump out of my seat. It went away by the time we landed.

I'm going to try and drop down to 24mcg/day and stay there for like 4 days. I have a really small amount of bupe left and I wish I had a little more. Its crazy how far even a half 8mg pill would get me. But I do need to jump eventually. I'll post again after my next drop. Surprisingly though, each drop doesn't bring on many more symptoms, its pretty steady.

Just as a reference, I made a 0.8mg/ml solution and I'm now taking 3 units at a time, I think I'm going to half to dilute a little because pretty soon I'll be taking 1 unit at a time and I'm not sure how accurate a syringe is in drawing 1 unit.
 
Update 5

Down to 32mcg/day. I don't know if I'm just having a good day but it seems that these drops are having no measurable effect on me. The best part of this taper is going the whole day without thinking about buprenorphine. I have been waking up earlier than usual (6:30am), dose, and go all the way to 8-9pm without dosing. This is only my second day at 32 but I'm going to drop to 16mcg/day tomorrow. My loperamide doseage has been constant at 15-20mg a day. Clonodine was only used in the beginning and I haven't needed it at all.

Also this dose is ideal. Through micron filtering, some amount of the chemical is lost, it's anyone's guess how much but I would bet it isn't negligible. I don't know how active a dose in the single digit mcg range is as I'm not a chemist nor a neurobiologist but I'm feeling pretty constant despite drops. I am hoping this will continue when jumping off but that could be wishful. I'll post again in several more days.
 
Update 6

Down to 12mcg/day at least for today. I didn't take my nighttime dose this evening because I didn't feel like it made any difference, which I think is a good sign, and I feel fine. The biggest w/d symptom right now is just periodic lack of energy/lethargia and yawning. I'm hoping this will be the extent of my withdrawals if I continue to taper. This would be a considerable success considering 5 years of bupernorphine use. I'm trying to stay somewhat busy and I find I forget about the w/d if I do.

I'm not really putting a timeline on my taper and just letting my body tell me when to drop. I'll probably taper for the next 4 days or so and jump off.
 
Preface: If any mods want to tell me to stfu or go somewhere else, please do. I just have never read of an experience like mine and I think people could benefit from it, here or elsewhere.

Update 7
Well, one skipped dose turned into two. My last dose of buprenorphine was 12mcg IV 36 hours ago. I guess I decided to jump off and I'm going to roll with it. I feel no different than yesterday and I venture to say I feel better. I have had some short lethargic episodes but I haven't even yawned today. Keep in mind that during my normal use I couldn't go 6 hours without feeling considerable withdrawal.

It's possible I reached a dose that was so diluted or inactive that it made no difference, that is certainly how it felt physically. I have continued to take 20-25mg of loperamide and will reduce that every day until I'm taking none. I have to say everything about this taper has been mild and manageable. I hope it continues this way as this is a territory I haven't experienced in 8+ years (taking no opiates, except loperamide).
 
Update 8:

I last used suboxone 5 days ago. I have been living normally, even went golfing twice this weekend with no symptoms. The w/d seems to hit later in the day and I have no idea why. I'm still taking the loperamide but I'm reducing my dosage every day. The w/d symptoms are just yawning and fatigue towards the end of the day. I usually wake up once during the night yawning but it passes and I fall back asleep after some time. It is almost what I would envision paws to be like, just a kind of nagging feeling towards the end of the days, neither getting worse nor better. Fully manageable and I love not having to take suboxone or inject anymore.
 
I'm only few months on this shit and I'm taking only 2 per day
once I try and come down to 0.5 but it's very easy and cheap to find bupe and I'm doing it for all the wrong reasons
I'd like to try do switch after go on 0.5 to codein for couple weeks and than try to go cold turkey
so I'd like to hear what you think
 
Update 9:

12 days since i stopped buprenorphine. Cognitively I feel unchanged since i was on suboxone and still feel no cravings to use although occasionally a subconscious thought of going to take my dose soon arises. The physical withdrawal is still present and it is possible that it has gotten worse. I don't feel any withdrawal until the evening, around 7pm or so. The symptoms are restless legs, yawning, fatigue, and inability to sleep. I was using loperamide at fairly regular intervals of 8mg every 6 hours but I'm discontinuing that use for fear that it wasn't helping my cause any, or even hindering it.

I get the feeling(through research and intuition) that the physical withdrawal will be extended a couple more weeks or more but I am surprisingly vigilant in not succumbing to thoughts of giving up (which are fleeting anyways). The curiousness of it all is the postponement of the physical withdrawal until evening time, my dosing wouldn't suggest this as a cause, and I can't seem to find a reason for it. But it is very real nonetheless.
 
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Update 10:

It has been 22 days since i last took suboxone. And roughly 10 days since I last took loperamide. The first 12 days were relatively easy and I think this was due to using loperamide (25mg/day). Once I stopped taking the loperamide I started experiencing more significant withdrawals for about 5 days. I felt w/d all day as opposed to just at night (restless legs, yawning, fatigue).

It has gotten much better since and although I still have w/d symptoms (mild indigestion, yawning, and way too much sneezing), they are mostly relegated to the evening. I am sleeping 8 hours with increasing quality as the days go on. I have no doubt that I will feel 100% at some point but I think it is probably a month or so away.

The freedom of having not taken drugs for 3 weeks is wonderful and not injecting/worrying about my arms is almost as rewarding. While on buprenorphine I struggled to picture myself without taking opiates and I have to say it has come fairly naturally despite not being in this state in 8 years. I am not even really feeling cravings at all. I'll try and update at the 1 month mark.
 
Tomorrow it'll be 21 days since I took bupe. Still not sleeping well (5-9hrs/day), might sound like I do but the quality of the sleep is crap halfly because of the hot weathers too.

RLS and aching in my legs still noticeable, been eating benzo's/Lyrica/Seroquel occasionally for sleep. Still eating loperamide some day's and someday's not :( I hate the feeling in my stomach, especially in the mornings when I havent been eating anything yet.

But mostly I feel like a winner! Quitting a 3-4 month almost daily bupre binge was a good thing to do.
 
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