Bupe All you suboxone pros, please help me decide on the best way to taper

[revned04]

So I guess to start off, I have been taking between 3-4mg per day of suboxone IV 4 times. I have about 200 tramamdols, which I heard help with suboxone withdrawls, 150 valium (diazepam), 75 soma (75mg carisoprodal), and 14 colonidine. I also have 23 8mg suboxones that I have been saving for this exact reason.
My tentative plan is to save the soma for sleep and muscle discomfort, and use the valium for anxiety as needed, as well as sleep. I think I can drop down to 2mg per day without too much trouble, but I really am not sure how to taper my dosages after that. Also, when is the best time to use the colonidine, if at all, considering all the other things I have to help me through withdrawls? My main issue is should I still continue IVing the suboxone as the dose gets smaller and smaller? I have the suboxone films which are very easy to split into very small doses.
Thanks to all the blers, I know I will get much better advice here than going to my doc.

 

[cj]

First of all you have plenty of comfort meds you just gotta make sure yuou dont blow through them too early in the process. The tramadol should be saved for when you are completely out of suboxone. I would switch ROA to sublingual it has a longer half life so that will stretch the sub pills. You need to find a dose that will keep you comfortable o start with then start dropping incremintally everyday till you get to where its unbearably uncomfortable then stay at that dose or a little above it till you feel comfortable dropping.
You have a very limited amount of sub so I wouldnt expect you to make a full taper your just trying to cushion the fall a little.

The tramadol and valium will be life savers once the sub runs dry. I assume you know about tramadols seizure threshhold around 500mg. The clonidine and soma I would save until the tramadol runs out they will help but wont prolong withdrawl any further. My basic summed up advice is start the taper with sub Then move to Tramadol tapering that as you feel comfortable. Also be careful thats alot of valium it would suck to end up with a benzo addiction.

 

[Codones]

I would switch your ROA if possible. Are you looking for a quick taper or a longer one? A quick taper I went from 24 mg per day sublingually to 4 mg with some help from clonidine. Two days later to 1 mg and stayed with that for three days. Clonidine helped tremendously with RLS and helped get me to sleep. What strength are the clonidine? I used .3 mg ones. Took 3 at a time. Tramadol will help a lot. 200 mg at a time should help, but the first few days of tapering or switching will still be hard, but not as bad as cold turkey. You have the right idea with the somas and diazepam. Use them to help sleep and with RLS as needed. Good luck.

 

[revned04]

to crimson junk, I think 20 8 mg suboxones is alot and plenty for a long taper. I'm on no real time frame so a long taper would be fine, I just don't want to be feeling shitty and turn back to opiates, which I really don't think will happen. Overall I'm not that worried, I think the needle fixation will be one of the harder things to over come. the only reason I sould like to continue shooting it is because when I take my suboxone sublingual, I have to redose twice a day, as apposed to IV, which can usually hold me for a full day. If anyone has a tapering schedule they have used, or from somewhere elese that would also be helpful, thank you guys so much.

 

[cj]

Ahh i misread your original post to mean you were banging 4mg 4 times a day my mistake. Part of the ROA recomendation was to ween you off the needle I know how hard that is if your against it thats fine just start dropping your dose. I dunno you but for me the hardest part would be not abusing the valium. The thing with a long taper is your going to feel shitty almost the whole time if your doing it right it just wont be as bas as cold turkey. Frankly with the amount of meds you have I would say fuck the taper just switch to the tramadol and valium and ween off with that. my .02

 

[Pegasus]

You have more than enough Suboxone to taper down to a very small dose, and to go as slowly as you need. Ideally, you'll want to be under 0.5mg per day by the time you jump off. Once you do this jump, the comfort meds you have can be used successfully, but I'd also use kratom to help with RLS and the other mild/ moderate symptoms you may experience. Suboxone withdrawal can be very drawn out and using the comfort meds for weeks straight is not wise!

The ROA you are using should probably change as well, especially since you have so many pills at your disposal. It will probably help to break your needle addiction separately from your opiate addiction. If you do it in steps like this, it should be a smooth transition to a low dose of bupe then to kratom, using the comfort meds as needed.

 

[revned04]

so like what about 2mg per day to start for 1 week, then 1 mg for a week , then .5mg a day if I'm not too uncomfortable. Would this be too fast or what is the normal rate for stepping down. I just really want to be able to continue functioning for school, work, etc. I believe, but may be wrong, that the suboxone exits the body faster IV than other ROA, so my withdrawls won't be as drawn out.

 

[5StarSquatHotel]

You are lucky you got all that to taper with. I am on 800micrograms and I wont be prescribed anything to jump off with bar the 8 10mg tamazepam I get a month but that is nothing. Good luck anyway mate.

 

[caseface99]

I agree with anyone who said to switch ROA's. Switch to 2mg sublingual daily and stabilize before trying to taper. Cut your dose by .25-.5 every week or two.

 

[revned04]

Damn, so I guess it means I have to stop IVing my subs. Oh well I knew this time would come. I was planning on using the tramadol near the end, the valium as I'm stepping down for the discomfort moving down to lower doses. Should the colonidine be used closer to the begining of the taper?

Currently I;m on 2mg suboxe a day IV, usually split between 4 times a day, so .5 mg at a time, since I will start taking it sublingually can I take it in 2 1mg doses, for 2mg a day, then after a week or so, .5mg twice a day, then maybe a week later .25mg twice a day for a week. Then .25mg once a day then jump off and use the tramadol, valium, and soma?

 

[revned04]

I ended up just doing it cold turkey since I had so many comfort meds. I'm taking the trams about 300mg a day and sometimes more, like 500mg and using the valium has a seizure reducer.I guess now I'm doing 400 in the morning and then 200-300 evening. Also I've been taking valium constantly so I always feel awesome anf floaty, probably like 120- 150mg per day+ Obviousley I haven't experience and withdrawl symptoms, I've been feeling really bomb. My problem is when I run out of tramadol will I get withdrals from that, and long do I have to be taking the valium to get withdrawls from that?

 

[DMVN8v]

Suboxone withdrawl isn't nearly the beast that dope withdrawl is (and methadone withdrawl is the absolute worst). But it still sucks. I always schedule it where I have absolutely nothing to do for three or four days and just focus on that. The key for me was staying busy and keeping my mind off of it. Watching movies, playing video games, whatever. I did it without any medications so yeah, I'm jealous of you. You'll be fine. And just take hot baths when your legs get unbearable.

 

[olsencorey0029]

I have found out that suboxone is a lot stronger than everyone thinks, I use Opana and come off of it with Sub - and a few tramadol or Klonis, sometimes a flexeral. You def. have enough comfort pills as one said up before but making sure you dont go through them extremely fast bc i have been there and done that! Suboxone withdrawal is pretty bad so tapering is a great idea for sure. . I dont know if anyone mentioned this but i never use suboxone subingualy i always snort it? about 1 mg at a time each 8 hours after WD kicks in. I have an amazing regiment for getting off opiates and for getting off suboxone if you need any new info. Also dont take an opiate to stop sub wd because it wont work!!! it just makes you feel horrible. I hope this helped some! I bet dmvn is correct about the beast of WD but be careful with suboxone wd it can be hellish. Goodluck best wishes go out to you!

 

[olsencorey0029]

yes you can start to wd from the tramadol too, how many days have you been taking it? I used this exact combination to get off subs about a month ago and i did not WD from ultram i simply waited a week and went back on opana ER.

 

[olsencorey0029]

oops also id say stop the diazapam, (valium) in about 7-10 days before you start a whole mess of Withdrawal ! I once kept going with the drugs that were helping me wd and didnt know what drug i was WD from. I think it was more than one and it was the most uncomfortable I have been in! Dont wanna see that happen

 

[revned04]

yeah i've only been on the trams and valium for 4 days and im almost out so that shouldnt be a problem. I'm more worried about the trams ive been taking and seizures, anybody got expeience with that, like what a max dose is and whether taking them long term cause the seizures to happen more?

 

[Pegasus]

^Yeah, tramadol is bad about inducing this... Going over 400mg per day or so is not recommended. Tramadol is another "less is more" drug, though the consequences for taking too much are more dire.

(I highly recommend kratom over tramadol for anyone debating between the two...)

 

[revned04]

yeah i didnt even think of using kratom for this. oh well withdrawls r almost done anyway, so hopefully ill ever have to worry about this again, thank god

 

[FacelessGenocide]

soma

Note...carisoprodol (soma) can make a lot of opiate addicts going through withdrawal have very bad restless leg syndrome especially if you are prone to this. Otherwise all good advice... also if you run out of sub trams or another opioid derivative a last result would be to buy a couple bottles of Imodium ad the active ingredient is Loperamide(search on BL there is many threads i believe on hereabout it.) which is an opioid derivative as well that doesn't cross the blood brain barrier very well take lots of them(a whole bottle which i usually parachute with a half gram of pepper which helps it cross a little better) and it will kill your physical withdraws i have done it in emergency a few time it works good for some, not so good for others just another idea. For all you people coming off any opiate or opioid good luck its tough but it can be done just get through the anxiety its the worst part...

 

[Znegative]

Honestly I don't have the time to read the whole thread right now, but I read the original post, and thought I'd chime in quick, so I apologize if anything (or everything) I say has been mentioned.

First of all, if you are injecting suboxne you should get a micron filter, you'll be doing your veins a big favor this way, and I can't condone you continuing to inject suboxone without one in the spirit of harm reduction.

Now, if you do have micron filters, I would continue to taper IV for a while, because in all honesty, it is the easiest way to accurately measure your dosages and know how much you are getting as the BA is pretty much 100%. The current dose you are on now is very high-to put it in perspective, sublingual absorption is only 30% of IV (which is full absorption). So 2mg IV is equal to roughly 6mg of suboxone sublingual. You mentioned injecting about four mg a day, so that would be similar to quitting a 12mg sublingual habit, the only difference is you will feel the withdrawals a bit sooner.

When I first started to IV suboxone, I was easilly able to jump from about 16mg sublingual, to 4mg IV, and then to taper down to 1mg IV/day. What I would do is to start making your shots smaller. If your doing 1mg shots, try out .8mg shots. I almost GAURANTEE that you will not be able to feel any difference, you could probably even drop down to .5mg per shot without much discomfort, the key is to keep yourself busy.

Once you get to the point where your .5 mg shots are feeling good and keeping you stable, try to subtract a shot from the day. If you were doing four shots, lower it to three. This will seem hard at first as we tend to condition ourselves to "needing" a dose at a certain time, but if you keep yourself occupied, it will not be too rough. After all, bupe has a long half life, and the ammount that you'd be taking per day at this point (1.5 mg) is still a relatively high dosage.

Once you get down to three shots a day, I would once again try to lower the dosage of each of your shots. You can probably drop by 100 micrograms every four days or so with little discomfort. If you find yourself feeling a bit uncomfortable at a dose, bump it back up 50 micrograms, and taper a little slower. I would not think about switching to tramadol until each dosage was around 70 micrograms. Tramadol is a very weak mu opioid agonist, and it also can cause seizures in high dosages, so you don't want to be popping tons of these things to feel normal. When your total buprenorphine intake is about 200 micrograms per day, I would test out a few tramadol (make sure you look up the safe range for dosing, I don't know it off hand). If the tram's seem to be effective, you can switch over, but I would try to use them sparingly, and rely more heavily on the soma and the clonadine. Even though tramadol is weak, it's been known to have some of the worst withdrawal symptoms, as it also has serotonergic properties-you don't want to just switch addictions. Anyway, I hope this is helpful. The key to success when tapering is to be patient and forgiving. There will be bumps in the way, you just got to pick yourself up and keep on truckin'.

Also, if you want to switch your ROA, make sure to look up the BA for each one. Sublingual is 30%, rectal and nasal are both around 50%, and sublingual with alchohol is 50-70%. I prefer to take my suboxone sublingually now, as I only dose 2 times a day and it lasts longer, but the downside is that it takes me longer to adjust to a dose, either way, your going to want to stick to primarily one way of taking the buprenorphine.