Post acute withdrawals are absolute hell. Fentanyl WDs are brutal, but fortunately they don't last as long as heroin WDs. Shorter and more intense.
I was speaking strictly about medication to help sleep while going through the immediate physical WDs.
Medication helps get through that physical part, but there isn't much you can do long term to avoid the mental shit. The mental part is rough, and time is really the only thing that helps. Time away from fentanyl.
Methadone as a long term solution works for plenty of people. Suboxone is another option. In either case, seeing an addiction specialist is not a bad idea. Going through in-patient rehab or an IOP statistically helps stay sober in the long run if that is what you are looking for.
It's important to note I'm not talking about pharmaceutical grade fentanyl which is FDA approved but the current analogues on the streert which are lipophilloc much like methadone and have elimination half lives at least as long as methadone. Sometimes longer. Sometimes shorter. On my last run I did a gram of the shit over just a couple days without taking my typical dose of bupe (8mg) and it had me off my ass for about a week, 3 days high, the other 3 vomiting profusely and sweating golf balls sized drops of sweat because my girl at the time tossed my stash and instinctively I took a sub the next morning after my last dose. Big fuckin mistake..... lol
Normally they induce a patient on a standard 2mg dose of Buprenorphine within 24 hrs max of their last use based on the COWS scale; but one who has been using one of these analogues will be thrown into 6-24 hrs of Bupe induced PW and when I tell you that shit is a doozy man, I mean it. I accidentally popped 2 50 mg naltrexone when I was on 125 mg a day maintenance methadone and it's the only thing comparable. I basically just put myself in a benzo coma for a few days, that and the delirium made time weird for a while, but once I could actually pass out from pure exhaustion things got better and eventually I got back on my subs. But every time I go grab that "just one bag" now, I can't take my subs for up to 72 hrs.
You hit the nail on the head with the z drugs, but I'd read up on some of the current medical literature coming out about buprenorphine induced withdrawals. As a Bupe maintained patient myself, I'm terrified to take my subs now and want to switch back to methadone, but on methadone you're shackled to a clinic and the lines are not fuckin short, and the hours suck dick.
Addicts using street drugs are actually extremely limited right now when it comes to treating acute withdrawal in the US. In Canada the Bernese method has been approved amd shown to be effective at bupe induction but I don think you could pay me enough money to lock myself back up to a fuckin methadone clinic multiple times a week having to fight motherfuckers tryna "bum a smoke" just to step in front of you in line when you been standing in the mf cold/heat for an hr just to dose forst cause your metabolism is fast and you're sick before the 24 hr window. (That's why I quit my last clinic and methadone cold turkey and don't regret the shit one bit.)
The advice you gave is standard protocol for FDA approved drugs in the US, but it doesn't apply to "heroin" in North America. NOT anymore at least. Unless of course you have some bomb connect sending you bricks of opium and you synthesize your own diacetylmorphine, you're pretty much fucked on dope rn. Methadone is the "best" option and it's just trading a shit sandwich for a shit sandwich with sprinkles on top. Most methadone patients titrate up and stay on maintenance, they dont detox. Very few actually ever choose to get off of it, again because it's a lipophilloc full agonist opioid, which just causes the same if not worse withdrawal symptoms than the drugs you were addicted to before. The Germans designed the shit during ww2 ffs.
It's time we get some better treatment option beyond bupe and methadone and I think if you read a few of the recent studies involving bupe induced withdrawal on fentanyl positive addicts you'll find what I've said is accurate, again so is what you're advising for acute withdrawal, specifically sleep. But honestly it doesn't work for this new shit. You just gotta suffer through it. No way around the sick this time. It's back to the dark ages for us insurance or not. I got Hella ambien and klonopin and it won't do shit unless I take 10 tablets of each at least. The withdrawals are just too intense.
Only way to stop getting dope sick is to get through being dope sick. Instinctively you wanna sleep til its over and that's possible in some places, theyve started doing medically induced comas for ultra rapid detox. That's pretty much what I'm gon do next if I can't DC the bupe on my own by the end of the month... it's just too much stress added to the equation and methadone is way too controlled when given as a treatment for addiction specifically rather than chronic pain for it to be convenient for most people. It's just the way things are man. Detoxing sucks donkey dick but kicking cold turkey is a mighty fine deterrent to early relapse if you can get through the first week and learn to make it a mind over matter thing. Bc that's really all it is.
Edit: forgot to read the last two paragraphs and were basically saying the same thing, injust wanna be specific with the fact I'm talking about long lasting fent analogues. I've seen some of the best addiction specialists and been in some of the cushiest rehabs insurance will pay for. Even IOP only lasts as long as you stay in the program. Once it's all on you to stay clean, that's when the real fun starts. And by fun I mean the least fun ever.
Like I said man, mind over matter. People places amd things. That whole thing. I'm at the point I'm actually about to buy into fuckin NA or AA because I'm just so sick of being given drugs to stay off drugs that just do the same shit, but less effectively. Shits an exhausting cycle.
but that's why on my trip to Europe, balls deep into a 150-300mg m/24 Hr/7 Day (365 per year) oxy habit at the time , chose London as our landing zone. We had a road map of ever store that sold cocodomol within 10 blocks of our hotel and as soon as we checked in we went out to the stores in a circle and started in ioppodote ends of town from one another, communicating the whole time to figure oitbwhichbspot was best n shitnlikensome people would let you grab 2 a day n shit ya know. We hit like 6 stores per day each and actually enjoyed tourist shit in between stops and left London with about 160 boxes of panadol/cocodomol between us.
