Bupe taper? A little help!

[will430]

I'm prescribed 16mg of sub a day. i only take 4mg currently. Can anyone help me with a good taper plan as i wanna try to kick this shit all together. Recently i tapered myself from 12mg to 4mg. Now i wanna know what can i do now? Should i reduce 25% every four days? I wanna be off this stuff but at a realistic pace.

Anyone who is on subs or has actually gotten OFF of subs please help me out as this is my new dependency. : ?

 

[j0nj0n]

Do you really need 4mg?? I would try 2mg and see how you feel.

I feel once I have built up the subs in my system I need less to maintain. Right now i'm taking .25 twice a day and most of the time I don't even need that second dose. But if i'm coming off of a heroin binge I need about 3mg to feel good for the day.

Just lower your dose each day to a tolerable amount. Then if possible try skipping a day which for me is doable. If that's too much then your plan at reducing every several days is a good start.

 

[Leaping Gnome]

I've used it and it's a bitch to get off from the long 1/2 life. Not too long ago I ran out of my meds for a week and used and old script of Suboxone I had. When I went back on my script I had to use about twice the mg's a day to stay out of WD for almost 2weeks.

Even though you are only taking 4mg a day, you have a lot more built up in your system! Suboxone 1/2 life is 37 hours. In 37 hours the 4mg will drop in 1/2 to 2mg...but every 24 hours your adding another 4mg into the mix...so before it's even dropped by 1/2 you have added another 4mg. One dose will take about 11 days to be out of your system with the 1/2 life dropping every 37 hours.

I got that from an 11 day graph that I d-loaded from the NAABT site about Suboxone. It shows that @ 16mg a day by day 5 you will have 40mg in your systom.

Anyway, get it down to what you can stand every day. Then start skipping days if you can.

Leaping Gnome

 

[HCandKROD]

Cut 4mg in half =2mg for 2 or 3 weeks. Cut the 2mg in half =1mg for 2 or 3 weeks then keep cutting the pill (I assume) in halves to slivers for 2 weeks to a month at a time. You will have minor withdrawals when you quit as I know I did but no sin goes unpunished.Keep to a schedule and you will be ok fairly soon.Good luck

 

[Swimmingdancer]

How long have you been on bupe? That will make a difference in how quickly you can taper and how bad your withdrawal will be. Of course each person is different as well.

The point above made by Leaping Gnome about bupe's long half-life is also relevant to tapering. Since it builds up in your system, when you first make a drop in your dose you won't feel the full impact for around 10 days when the amount in your system stabilizes. So if you make the dose cuts too close together they can effectively add up on you and feel worse. I think your plan of dropping 25% (of whatever dose you are on at the time) each time is sound but you might want to take more time between dose cuts. Depends on how quickly you want to get off it. You might also want to try to space your doses farther apart, see how long you can go in between doses instead of just taking it every 24 hrs. Really you need to find what works best for you personally, but at the same time try not to languish too long at a particular point in your taper out of fear (this is easier said than done - it's easy to get stuck at a low dose).

There are a lot of threads on bupe tapers and things to do to help opioid withdrawal symptoms - let me know if you need help finding them.

The mental aspect is usually the hardest part so make sure you are getting support with that. Best of luck

 

[Leaping Gnome]

I found the National Alliance of Advocates for Buprenorphine Treatment (NAABT) site with the graphs I spoke of. There is more info there than you ever wanted to know!!!

http://www.naabt.org/sitemap.cfm
http://www.naabt.org/tl/Bupe_half-life-graph.jpg
http://www.naabt.org/tl/16mgs-11day-37halflife.jpg

Leaping Gnome

 

[will430]

Thanks guys for the wealth of information aswell as a taper plan. What do you think if i decrease right now to 1mg and force myself to that point for a week then just C/T.