Hey
@billyj I hear you buddy. I became pretty good friends with an older gentleman that I only know through the forums. He is in his late 60´s now and when I first met him, he was mid 50´s. He was a successful real estate guy who flipped houses and that kind of shit in a wealthy part of the country (Hamptons). He had been a major Alcoholic/Cocaine addict in his youth, but had gotten clean and had been sober for a couple of decades.
He was diagnosed with cancer and the whole process led to chronic pain that made it difficult to function. This led him to Hydrocodone (Vicodin) and Gabapentin (Neurontin). This guy was able to moderate his usage. He never went overboard. His doctor would give him like 90 Hydrocodone per month and his idea of a ¨really bad month¨ meant consuming the entire 90. His mission was always to take a lower amount and attempt to tolerate the pain.
For this guy, it seemed that his own shame/guilt/concern was the ultimate problem, as the drugs in question were not really messing up any part of his life. In fact, they were allowing him to work and function. Still, he would always message me to talk about tapers, reductions... he wasn´t ever going to feel ¨complete¨ if he were dependent on anything. He was retiring by this point.
I said to him, you´ve done everything right in your life. You´re there for your family, you give them love and you have happiness. You have done the hard work, now is the time to rest and enjoy life. If you are on Hydrocodone until you die, I see no problem with that. As long as you´re happy, healthy and able to be honest, why not? I´m not saying all old folks should just go ape shit once social security kicks in. I just feel that deciding to remain on the drugs permanently can lead to a greater quality of life as opposed to spending your golden years yo-yoing through withdrawal. I see nothing wrong with it.
At this stage of your life man, you´re theoretically done being the one people depend on. You just have to focus on being happy and giving that same happiness to the ones you love. If you feel you can maintain your dosage without losing control, then I say go ahead and stay on them; only if you can remain disciplined though.
If you´re trying to think of the best way to taper, might I suggest Volumetric Dosing? There is a sticky on the BDD landing page that explains it more in-depth authored by yours truly. In short, it allows us to easily make incredibly minute changes to a given dose. If you´re taking 10mg Diazepam, we can easily make it so your drops are 10-9.9-9.8-9.7 and so on. The idea is that we can make drops so small they are practically imperceptible.
If you are looking for help/advice regarding the best ways to taper, volumetric dosing is a good place to start. Also, we can recommend other drugs that are not cross-tolerant with Benzodiazepines that can mitigate the negative symptoms coinciding with your taper. Just let me know if any of this sounds good or you want more information.
I´m not sure where you´re at. I worked as a Secondary-level History/English instructor in my 20´s. I lived in a few different places. I was in Phnom Penh for ~2 years. This would´ve been almost 10 years ago now. I also worked in Vientiane for a summer. Heroin was cheap and pure. There were Methamphetamine pills known as Yaa-Baa that were wicked cheap, though there was also crystal available for a higher price. The right pharmacy and the right pharmacist would hook you up with anything from Benzodiazepines right up to Oxycontin.
After being there for a while and taking my Heroin dependence to stupid levels (I was injecting at least 2 grams of relatively pure Heroin a day and sometimes more) and not being able to get high, I started injecting Pentobarbital (Nembutal), which is a powerful Barbiturate. I went to a Veterinarian on a lark to see if they´d give me some and they did. I then was injecting Heroin and Pentobarbital every day. I would sometimes swallow a 10 pack of Yaa-Baa just to remain upright in the classroom. I will add, every single student met their metrics in my classroom, so I was doing something right. Even the non-junkie instructors had a hard time with 100% passing. I guess I´m pretty full of myself 
