xburtonchic
Bluelighter
- Joined
- May 17, 2011
- Messages
- 1,009
DISCLAIMER: I am sorry this is so long. I'm currently going through some pretty severe buprenorphine (Suboxone) withdrawals, and my brain is just sort of all over the place. Writing about it and talking about it/venting is helping get my mind off of it a bit, so I guess that's why it's so long... the more I type, the longer I'm keeping my mind a little bit occupied and distracted from the war raging inside my brain and body. Plus, I really just kind of want to get my story out there because none of my friends and family really understand and I think I might get a little bit more of that understanding on here. Also, I want other people to know that this stuff is not child's play and I'm hoping that after reading this, someone will maybe think twice before they go out and play with fire. If my story can help even one person... if it can stop just one person from going through what I've been through/am going through now, that's a beautiful thing. You don't have to read the whole thing; I know it's long... but I would appreciate if you did... moral support would be nice right about now. If not, then maybe you could at least read the last part where I'm asking for advice? Maybe someone on here can help me, because I'm sure as hell not getting it in real life. Thanks. 
Before I ask my question and leave it open for discussion, I feel it's necessary to give a little background about my experiences with opiates and Suboxone. I have had trouble with drug usage since I was 15, and have done pretty much everything under the sun, the only exceptions being crack, heroin, and PCP. But anyway... continuing on to what got me into this mess.
Vicodin: Had surgery for my wisdom teeth, was put on Norco and Percocet. I had no experience with opiates before this, although I had plenty of experience with other illicit substances. Oxycodone doesn't work for me as well as hydro does, so I didn't even use it. It's still probably laying around my house somewhere actually, but anyway. I developed a dry socket, Norco dosage was upped. I was having to double my dosage in order to get proper pain relief, because I have a very low pain tolerance and very high tolerance towards opiates. I also develop tolerance rapidly. Not a good combination. So over the course of a month, I was upping my dosage by at least 15 mg per week. By the time I was done with my surgery treatments, I had gone from about 10mg per day to 60mg. Keep in mind, I was still very naive about opiates and had no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn't even know I could get addicted in such a short time. So anyway, my treatments ended, my Norco supply was cut off, and I went into mild withdrawals. Of course, now I wish I had just sucked it up and been done with it then. But we all know these types stories don't have happy endings like that
So anyway, the w/d's were mild, but uncomfortable enough that when an acquaintance started getting large amounts of Norco (the huge bottles that come with around 150 pills or so) and offered to give me a few, I accepted. Well, a few turned into more than a few. He got them for back pain and didn't take them often, and since he was already really rich, he didn't have any qualms about giving them out like candy to people. For about three months, I had a never-ending supply of Norco... as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. Until one day I mentioned I had been wanting to try Oxy, and he handed me a pill. I had established a pretty trusting relationship with this guy, so I didn't even think to question what he had given me; I just took it. Stupid thing to do on my part. I ended up in the ER; turns out he hadn't given me Oxy at all, but Dilaudid. I guess because I had already taken my "daily dose" of Norco earlier, I overdosed; they gave me Narcan and I was released about 8 hours later. Once I got home, I went apeshit on the guy and tore him a new one, telling him he shouldn't be giving pills to people and claiming they're something else because it could kill someone. I know I should have looked up what I was taking before I took it, so no need to tell me. It was careless on my part, but I still put a lot the blame on him. For all I know, someone did die because he was giving out "fake" Oxy's. I was lucky to have already had such a high tolerance to opiates; I'm sure someone with no tolerance at all WOULD have died. But needless to say, that was the end of that relationship, and also the end of my supply to hydro. I was up to about 150-200 mg per day by this point, but that experience scared the crap out of me and I decided to finish up my supply, quit cold turkey, and be done with it for good. I was expecting the withdrawals to be the way they were the first time- just slightly uncomfortable. Hah... no. Wrong again. It was complete torture, and it made my withdrawals from before feel like a bed of feathers. I don't think I need to go into detail, I'm sure most of you already know what it's like. By the third day, I had literally lost my mind. I was throwing furniture, threatening to go find some heroin just to stop the withdrawals, yelling, screaming, crying for no reason... EVERYTHING was depressing me... just petting my dog was depressing. I just remember petting my dog and thinking, "He's going to die someday" and bursting into tears. My brain was so messed up at that point. My mom finally called the cops because I was so out of control, which brings me to my experience with...
Suboxone: When the cops arrived, they gave me two options- go to the hospital, or be taken into custody. Well. That was a no-brainer. My dad took me to my primary care doctor; luckily he is licensed to dispense Suboxone, and I started my treatment that day. One minute my withdrawals were full-blown torturing me physically and mentally from the inside out... 40 minutes later, I felt like I could fly to the freaking moon and back if I wanted to. OMG. It was miracle drug! (or so I thought). He told me I would have NO withdrawals when I got off of it and that there were absolutely no side effects. I was stoked. So he started me on 16 mg a day, and my Suboxone treatment was going perfectly for about 6 months... that is, until he suddenly decided to take MY recovery into HIS hands and began drastically reducing my dosages. This caused me to be in pretty much a constant state of mild withdrawal for the next 6 months, and it turned me into a completely different person that I was before. I became depressed, withdrawn, lost all of my energy and motivation, irritable, and I woke up in the morning just generally feeling like complete crap, and it didn't get much better throughout the day. I isolated myself from my friends and family because my anxiety levels shot through the roof, which was causing me to be irritable... I stopped talking to anyone because everyone would annoy me; someone could just say "hi" to me and it would annoy the crap out of me and I would snap at them... and also because I got so depressed that I just felt like there was no point to having human interaction anymore. It just completely screwed me up. It took me a long time to figure out it was the dramatic change in my doses that was doing it, so on my most recent refill (last month April the 25th) I went against what my doctor told me to do and started self-dosing. Nothing dramatic... I wasn't abusing it or anything... I was just giving myself the dosage I felt comfortable with.
Just on a side note... before anyone reams me out for not doing what my doctor told me to do, I would just like to point out that addiction is a unique disease. Being treated for opiate addiction through Suboxone is not like having an infection or the flu, where you take your medicine at certain intervals and there are no problems. Suboxone is meant to help you STAY OFF of opiates. It's supposed to prevent withdrawals and give you a clear head long enough for you to get your life back in order. I strongly believe that a person's recovery should be in their own hands... no one else's. You can't force a person to change their personality any more than you can force an addict to get clean before they are ready. That is just a recipe for disaster and relapse. The only reason I was self-dosing the way I felt comfortable with, is because my cravings were coming back BAD, I was constantly feeling crappy and depressed, and I knew I was on the verge of a relapse. I do NOT want to go through that again. I've heard that with opiates, relapses get worse and worse each time... and God forbid I don't go back to Norcos, but something like Oxy or heroin. No thanks. So I did what I needed to do to stay clean, okay? I didn't want to get off of Suboxone or even decrease my dosages before I was ready, because I knew I wasn't ready. I'm still not. There are still too many issues I need to deal with, things I need to work through- the things that caused me to fall into this addiction in the first place. I need to throw out the skeletons in my closet before I can go back into the world on my own. I'm not going to go into detail, but I haven't been able to cope without some sort of substance since I was 15 for a reason, and there are a few things that happened in the military that made it worse. For me, the pills were a way to forget and numb the pain more than anything else. So before I get off of Suboxone, I want to be at least 99% sure that I'll be okay, that I can deal with my demons on my own- without having to turn to pills to help me out when it gets to be "too much". And at this point, I am not 99% ready... more like 50% or 60% ready.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. My doctor didn't like that too much, and he completely cut off my Suboxone script. Now I am SOL and going through some pretty nasty withdrawals. That's the one thing that completely pisses me off about Suboxone doctors- a lot of them are ignorant to the side effects and the withdrawals they cause. It's not just my experience, either. In almost every story I've read about another person's experience with Suboxone, their doctors told them the drug had zero withdrawals or addictive properties. Such a freaking lie. Like I said, you can't just force an addict off of Suboxone before they're ready. That's just setting them up for failure. Because I wasn't ready to get off, and these withdrawals are horrible. They're a bit milder than the hydro withdrawals, but at the same time they're a lot worse because I know they also last MUCH longer than hydro withdrawals... and it seems to be tricking my brain into thinking they're a lot worse than they really are for some reason. Or maybe they just really are that bad; who knows. The one thing I DO know is this: I have a few Percocet and a whole lot of Vicodin in my house somewhere... I just have no idea where they are. I have searched high and low, and I absolutely cannot find them. I think I put them in a box somewhere, and I really just don't have the energy to move all of these boxes around and keep looking. But believe you me, if I knew where they were I would be ALL over it in a second. I lost contact with all of the people I knew who had them because I cut them all off when I quit... so that's not an option either.
So since hydro isn't an option to stop these withdrawals unless they magically turn up somewhere, I guess what I would like to ask is this: has anyone ever been through this before? Is there anything I can do... anything AT ALL... to make it better? My symptoms are as follows: chills, gooseflesh, cramps, muscle/joint aches and pain, crazy anxiety, restlessness, depression, irritability, and extreme lethargy. I am so tired and I just want to go to sleep, but I can't because of the restlessness and anxiety. I just can't seem to get comfortable. I have xanax, and it's not helping much, even when I double the dosage. I have some Tramadol left over from a surgery I had back in December, and I'm wondering if that will help? I've seen people on other forums say that it works wonders, but I think they were talking about the instant release ones... and the ones I have are the 100mg ER. Will that make a difference, or will it still help me? And if not, what will? If you know of anything that will relieve even ONE of the withdrawal symptoms, especially the chills (blankets, sitting in the sun, etc. isn't helping either) and the restlessness (I just want to sleep)... please let me know. Hell, at this point I am open to anything... anything at all that might help... even moral support would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to relapse and I don't want to feel like this anymore. I just want this nightmare to end.
Again, sorry this is so long... and thanks in advance for your help..
Before I ask my question and leave it open for discussion, I feel it's necessary to give a little background about my experiences with opiates and Suboxone. I have had trouble with drug usage since I was 15, and have done pretty much everything under the sun, the only exceptions being crack, heroin, and PCP. But anyway... continuing on to what got me into this mess.
Vicodin: Had surgery for my wisdom teeth, was put on Norco and Percocet. I had no experience with opiates before this, although I had plenty of experience with other illicit substances. Oxycodone doesn't work for me as well as hydro does, so I didn't even use it. It's still probably laying around my house somewhere actually, but anyway. I developed a dry socket, Norco dosage was upped. I was having to double my dosage in order to get proper pain relief, because I have a very low pain tolerance and very high tolerance towards opiates. I also develop tolerance rapidly. Not a good combination. So over the course of a month, I was upping my dosage by at least 15 mg per week. By the time I was done with my surgery treatments, I had gone from about 10mg per day to 60mg. Keep in mind, I was still very naive about opiates and had no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn't even know I could get addicted in such a short time. So anyway, my treatments ended, my Norco supply was cut off, and I went into mild withdrawals. Of course, now I wish I had just sucked it up and been done with it then. But we all know these types stories don't have happy endings like that
So anyway, the w/d's were mild, but uncomfortable enough that when an acquaintance started getting large amounts of Norco (the huge bottles that come with around 150 pills or so) and offered to give me a few, I accepted. Well, a few turned into more than a few. He got them for back pain and didn't take them often, and since he was already really rich, he didn't have any qualms about giving them out like candy to people. For about three months, I had a never-ending supply of Norco... as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. Until one day I mentioned I had been wanting to try Oxy, and he handed me a pill. I had established a pretty trusting relationship with this guy, so I didn't even think to question what he had given me; I just took it. Stupid thing to do on my part. I ended up in the ER; turns out he hadn't given me Oxy at all, but Dilaudid. I guess because I had already taken my "daily dose" of Norco earlier, I overdosed; they gave me Narcan and I was released about 8 hours later. Once I got home, I went apeshit on the guy and tore him a new one, telling him he shouldn't be giving pills to people and claiming they're something else because it could kill someone. I know I should have looked up what I was taking before I took it, so no need to tell me. It was careless on my part, but I still put a lot the blame on him. For all I know, someone did die because he was giving out "fake" Oxy's. I was lucky to have already had such a high tolerance to opiates; I'm sure someone with no tolerance at all WOULD have died. But needless to say, that was the end of that relationship, and also the end of my supply to hydro. I was up to about 150-200 mg per day by this point, but that experience scared the crap out of me and I decided to finish up my supply, quit cold turkey, and be done with it for good. I was expecting the withdrawals to be the way they were the first time- just slightly uncomfortable. Hah... no. Wrong again. It was complete torture, and it made my withdrawals from before feel like a bed of feathers. I don't think I need to go into detail, I'm sure most of you already know what it's like. By the third day, I had literally lost my mind. I was throwing furniture, threatening to go find some heroin just to stop the withdrawals, yelling, screaming, crying for no reason... EVERYTHING was depressing me... just petting my dog was depressing. I just remember petting my dog and thinking, "He's going to die someday" and bursting into tears. My brain was so messed up at that point. My mom finally called the cops because I was so out of control, which brings me to my experience with...Suboxone: When the cops arrived, they gave me two options- go to the hospital, or be taken into custody. Well. That was a no-brainer. My dad took me to my primary care doctor; luckily he is licensed to dispense Suboxone, and I started my treatment that day. One minute my withdrawals were full-blown torturing me physically and mentally from the inside out... 40 minutes later, I felt like I could fly to the freaking moon and back if I wanted to. OMG. It was miracle drug! (or so I thought). He told me I would have NO withdrawals when I got off of it and that there were absolutely no side effects. I was stoked. So he started me on 16 mg a day, and my Suboxone treatment was going perfectly for about 6 months... that is, until he suddenly decided to take MY recovery into HIS hands and began drastically reducing my dosages. This caused me to be in pretty much a constant state of mild withdrawal for the next 6 months, and it turned me into a completely different person that I was before. I became depressed, withdrawn, lost all of my energy and motivation, irritable, and I woke up in the morning just generally feeling like complete crap, and it didn't get much better throughout the day. I isolated myself from my friends and family because my anxiety levels shot through the roof, which was causing me to be irritable... I stopped talking to anyone because everyone would annoy me; someone could just say "hi" to me and it would annoy the crap out of me and I would snap at them... and also because I got so depressed that I just felt like there was no point to having human interaction anymore. It just completely screwed me up. It took me a long time to figure out it was the dramatic change in my doses that was doing it, so on my most recent refill (last month April the 25th) I went against what my doctor told me to do and started self-dosing. Nothing dramatic... I wasn't abusing it or anything... I was just giving myself the dosage I felt comfortable with.
Just on a side note... before anyone reams me out for not doing what my doctor told me to do, I would just like to point out that addiction is a unique disease. Being treated for opiate addiction through Suboxone is not like having an infection or the flu, where you take your medicine at certain intervals and there are no problems. Suboxone is meant to help you STAY OFF of opiates. It's supposed to prevent withdrawals and give you a clear head long enough for you to get your life back in order. I strongly believe that a person's recovery should be in their own hands... no one else's. You can't force a person to change their personality any more than you can force an addict to get clean before they are ready. That is just a recipe for disaster and relapse. The only reason I was self-dosing the way I felt comfortable with, is because my cravings were coming back BAD, I was constantly feeling crappy and depressed, and I knew I was on the verge of a relapse. I do NOT want to go through that again. I've heard that with opiates, relapses get worse and worse each time... and God forbid I don't go back to Norcos, but something like Oxy or heroin. No thanks. So I did what I needed to do to stay clean, okay? I didn't want to get off of Suboxone or even decrease my dosages before I was ready, because I knew I wasn't ready. I'm still not. There are still too many issues I need to deal with, things I need to work through- the things that caused me to fall into this addiction in the first place. I need to throw out the skeletons in my closet before I can go back into the world on my own. I'm not going to go into detail, but I haven't been able to cope without some sort of substance since I was 15 for a reason, and there are a few things that happened in the military that made it worse. For me, the pills were a way to forget and numb the pain more than anything else. So before I get off of Suboxone, I want to be at least 99% sure that I'll be okay, that I can deal with my demons on my own- without having to turn to pills to help me out when it gets to be "too much". And at this point, I am not 99% ready... more like 50% or 60% ready.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. My doctor didn't like that too much, and he completely cut off my Suboxone script. Now I am SOL and going through some pretty nasty withdrawals. That's the one thing that completely pisses me off about Suboxone doctors- a lot of them are ignorant to the side effects and the withdrawals they cause. It's not just my experience, either. In almost every story I've read about another person's experience with Suboxone, their doctors told them the drug had zero withdrawals or addictive properties. Such a freaking lie. Like I said, you can't just force an addict off of Suboxone before they're ready. That's just setting them up for failure. Because I wasn't ready to get off, and these withdrawals are horrible. They're a bit milder than the hydro withdrawals, but at the same time they're a lot worse because I know they also last MUCH longer than hydro withdrawals... and it seems to be tricking my brain into thinking they're a lot worse than they really are for some reason. Or maybe they just really are that bad; who knows. The one thing I DO know is this: I have a few Percocet and a whole lot of Vicodin in my house somewhere... I just have no idea where they are. I have searched high and low, and I absolutely cannot find them. I think I put them in a box somewhere, and I really just don't have the energy to move all of these boxes around and keep looking. But believe you me, if I knew where they were I would be ALL over it in a second. I lost contact with all of the people I knew who had them because I cut them all off when I quit... so that's not an option either.
So since hydro isn't an option to stop these withdrawals unless they magically turn up somewhere, I guess what I would like to ask is this: has anyone ever been through this before? Is there anything I can do... anything AT ALL... to make it better? My symptoms are as follows: chills, gooseflesh, cramps, muscle/joint aches and pain, crazy anxiety, restlessness, depression, irritability, and extreme lethargy. I am so tired and I just want to go to sleep, but I can't because of the restlessness and anxiety. I just can't seem to get comfortable. I have xanax, and it's not helping much, even when I double the dosage. I have some Tramadol left over from a surgery I had back in December, and I'm wondering if that will help? I've seen people on other forums say that it works wonders, but I think they were talking about the instant release ones... and the ones I have are the 100mg ER. Will that make a difference, or will it still help me? And if not, what will? If you know of anything that will relieve even ONE of the withdrawal symptoms, especially the chills (blankets, sitting in the sun, etc. isn't helping either) and the restlessness (I just want to sleep)... please let me know. Hell, at this point I am open to anything... anything at all that might help... even moral support would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to relapse and I don't want to feel like this anymore. I just want this nightmare to end.
Again, sorry this is so long... and thanks in advance for your help..
And you have no idea... he is really stingy about prescribing me my meds when I need them, and other times he will cut me off without warning. It pisses me off beyond belief. It's definitely an issue I plan to address when I see him tomorrow, because this is not okay. Doctors should be there to help you, not make you even more sick. At least, I assume that's WHY they went to medical school in the first place. If they just wanted to piss people off for a living, they should have gone to law school. I am printing off a bunch of stuff from the internet- scientific findings about Suboxone withdrawals as well as personal user experiences- and proof that clonodine does, in fact, help withdrawals tenfold. Even certain detox clinics use clonodine for that purpose; he can't argue with that. 
