• 🇬🇧󠁿 🇸🇪 🇿🇦 🇮🇪 🇬🇭 🇩🇪 🇪🇺
    European & African
    Drug Discussion

    Welcome Guest!
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
  • EADD Moderators: axe battler | Pissed_and_messed

Opiate and opioid withdrawal: Coping strategies and medication

After a 40 day taper, I jumped off 12 days ago at about 30mg vicodin ( down from 80 mg of methadone ). The first few days were the easiest detox I've ever done. I had plenty of benzos - mostly valium and klonipin. I also used Immodium ( very moderately ) and kratom. Sudafed and Benedryl controlled the histamine response.

Then problems arose:
I had gotten only about 3 hours of sleep/night throughout taper and jump. 50 mg of trazadone used to knock me on my ass, especially cause I'd throw in some wine and zanax.

But nothing could make me sleep , once I started tapering. My mind and body became super active.
(I guess this was only natural after 20 years of use. While employed, I'd use about 140 mg to make it through my long shifts (12-24 hours/day). So I've been in a stupor for most of my adult life.)

All of a sudden , to have so much energy, led to shin splints that were particularly painful when I tried to rest. I used ice, heat, Aleve and Ibuprofen. Only the heat pads gave some relief.

At first, a sudafed in the morning and benadryl at night controlled the shattering sneezing. But then they stopped working so I started taking 2-3 suds during day and 3 benadryls at night.
And still, the sudden histamine reaction would terrify my bedmate (kitty) and was very messy. I couldn't leave the house without a box of kleenex. It was very embarrassing.

I went to an urgent care yesterday for help with my 3 symptoms:

They gave me a nasal spray -Fluticasone Propionate. I only sneezed once - that was after 10 hours of first dose.
They gave me 800 mg Ibuprofen - and the awful, bone deep pain in my knees and calves mostly subsided.
They gave me Hydroxyzine HCI for sleep. With wine and valium added (as per usual), I got 6 hours of sleep - with REM! I dreamt for the first time since this began.

My advice is to stay away from the sudafeds - way too speedy and sleep impairing.
The Hydroxyzine not only calms the mind, but is an antihistamine.
The 800 mg Ibus are controlling my pain.

I will continue moving, walking daily, ( I haven't walked in 5 years), but I'll stop running up and down the stairs - just too much for my atrophied muscles and nutritionally deprived bones.

Doc also suggested hot showers before bed time, but I'm a shower-phobe.

This has been the gentlest, least painful detox I've ever done - and hopefully the last!
I hope that what helped me will help you.

Thankfully, I have no more access to opiates. The doctors in my new town are tough nuts and I'm too old to go street seeking.
Good luck.
 
How long to wait between subs and use

You only have to wait 2 days.
 
Last edited:
BecomingJulie said:
Were you on the needle before you started on the meth? If so, perhaps it's the mental part of your needle addiction. The mind-habit is at least as strong as the body-habit.Or it could be the fact of not using on top of your script. Especially if you were doing so intravenously. Now you've taken care of the needle addiction, you don't feel so much need to inject anything else?

Anyway, just glad you found something that works for you.
Click to expand...

When I came off IV H years ago, a counselor suggested that I could get relief by sticking sterilized push pins in my arms. It was great! It felt so good.
 
I started searching Youtube last night for any clips which may be helpful in terms of this thread. There are thousands of results on drugs, addiction, and quitting. There are tons of first hand user experience reports, tv documentaries, some more or less scientific and evidence based clips, some sheer sensationalist inaccurate nonsense. (A documentary i watched about Meth kept repeating how all the ingredients required to make it are easily and freely available; and that anyone who could bake cookies could also make meth in less than 1 hour! 8() having also watched Breaking Bad I do not believe this is actually the case, and that certain essential precursors are extremely securely and tightly controlled, and all but impossible to obtain without either having special access or contacts in the criminal world or otherwise).

I'm going to need to find some way of making sure the clips i watch are at least accurate as the quality of the materials is so variable from the absolute bunk scaremongering end of the spectrum right through to the most knowledgeable, impartial, and evidence based, rigorously scientific clips. I think this could be very helpful and motivational overall though. Obviously the quality of the videos will be very variable in terms of their scientific and practical truthfullness, but they will at the very least help focus my mind on the task, and as my sleep pattern is absolutely completely fucked i may as well watch these clips through the night rather than laying in bed for hour after hour completely unable to sleep.

Last night i watched about half a dozen random videos. One of them featured a young woman who looked stunningly together and healthy supposedly going through day 1 of opiate withdrawals. Apparently she had taken 10 Loperamides and some Tagamet (for its antacid properties) and some Ibuprofen, and was feeling as right as rain. I cant help but feel sceptical about some of the stuff uploaded and I wonder what her habit was, but if a handful of Lopes, some Ibuprofen, and and an antacid makes it such a breeze I dont think her habit can have been very severe or long lasting.)

I also watched a couple of really scary benzo w/d experience reports, one user saying it took 18 months to recover, another saying things are no easier for her 8 months after quitting, they did not even say whether they tapered or not. For the sake of my own optimism I have no choice but to assume that they did not taper, or they didn't taper properly or gradually enough. A 3rd account was much more encouraging and pretty much confirmed that what i am currently doing is more or less the right thing in terms of listening to your body during a benzo taper, and taking your time, which should allow your brain time to adjust to the decreasing dose and eventual quit.

If I do manage to find any particularly good clips I will post the links in the relevant threads.
 
All lope does is postpone inevitable withdrawls as it is an opiate at the end of the day.....plus lope wds are awful.....plus tagamet is POM in the uk.....not worth it.
 
If anyone would find it remotely interesting I could elucidate on Loperamide pretty extensively from both personal experience and objective knowledge?
 
Ive hads tonns of experience with it using OTC (UK) potenters with it and as i say the wds just come back when u stop. (mind you ive got 200 in the post just in case). Regardless of chemical composition /textbooks whatever. .....yes they remove wds but when you stop then they come back.....just like kratom......seems pointless.
 
You have to remember that you had 2 decades of obscene doses (what was your 'Done dose again? :) ) of the most brutal opioid to cover.
For those who couldn't wipe out a zoo with their plasma concentration it is a little more effective. ;)
 
Sprout said:
If anyone would find it remotely interesting I could elucidate on Loperamide pretty extensively from both personal experience and objective knowledge?
Click to expand...

I, for one, would be very interested to read about your experiences with Lope, doses etc. As Englandz suggests does it merely postpone the crash until you stop the Lope, or does it ease the w/ds and reduce the severity of the crash when you quit the Lope too?
 
I've been on subutex for 5 months, I started at 8mg and am down to 4mg now, would i likely get unbearable withdrawals from 4mg if I just stopped taking them? or would be going down for 2mg for a couple of weeks be a better idea? I'm just fed up of taking them now
 
Taper, the drop from 2mg is where it starts to get painful IME.

After being on 2mg for a few days, go down to 1mg for a couple days, then 0.8mg another couple days, 0.6mg, 0.4mg, 0.2mg etc then it should be relatively painless to drop off completely.

You can do a sub taper from start to finish in a month ime.
 
Fug said:
Taper, the drop from 2mg is where it starts to get painful IME.

After being on 2mg for a few days, go down to 1mg for a couple days, then 0.8mg another couple days, 0.6mg, 0.4mg, 0.2mg etc then it should be relatively painless to drop off completely.

You can do a sub taper from start to finish in a month ime.
Click to expand...

going by lifelines time scale it will be six months for me to get down to 0mg, since I pick up my medication I was thinking of just doing it myself over the next month and sitting on the left over tablets
 
It would appear that the best way of using Lope would be more or less as intended or prescribed, perhaps slightly more, taking it to 2-5mg, or, as required for a few days. That might well be plenty to dose for few days to ease myself off Kratom. I really do not want to be replacing a Kratom habit with a fucking diarrhea pills habit so will not be taking any mega doses, so no doses high enough to become 'opiate replacament' in any meaningful sense. Just enough to ease off a heavy and fairly long term kratom habit and and stop my insides liquifying. :\

If that doest work I will muddle through for a few days by steadily reducing DHC and Kratom, then perhaps ween myself off Kratom and DHC using very low daily doses of bupe. It may be a bit optimistic to hope that 0.4mg per day of Bupe will be enough. But i can make it be enough for a few days, and then finally jump off the daily grind that consuming 20-40g of Kratom has become. 8)
 
PredatorVision said:
going by lifelines time scale it will be six months for me to get down to 0mg, since I pick up my medication I was thinking of just doing it myself over the next month and sitting on the left over tablets
Click to expand...

Just do what works for you, I got myself down to 2mg, then would take that dose for 2 days and reduce by 0.2mg.

Repeat.

Sure I could've dragged it out for twice as long and maybe not suffered from as many cramps or whatever, but if you really want off the shit, getting off from 2mg needn't be such a commitment time wise.
 
I am hoping someone can give me some advice on how to taper off of oxy 80's. I am finally down to 1.5 a day..... How long with it take me to be at 0 and not have WD.... Any appreciation will help. I do have Xanax that I'm prescribed that I can use as well..
 
If u have xanax, then just wean down over the next 2 months. You can do it easily!
 
I'm sorry baby, I've never been addicted to that. My experience with addiction is slowly slowly and take each day as it comes. Don't push yourself too hard. Sometimes these things can take more time than you expect.

By the way, welcome to EADD <3

We've got a lot of experienced members here that can put their two cents in. I'm just going from experience from another substance m'dear.
 
There's only so much you can learn in 6 years.

Lysa, depending on how long you've been on oxy you might want to switch over to a longer acting opiate such as methadone or subutex.

If you're currently at 120mg, keep dropping by 10mg every week or few days, whatever feels easiest on your body and mind. You'll be off it in no time.

Staying off is another matter. The xanax will come in handy towards the end when you're likely to feel anxious / have trouble sleeping.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top