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Opioids Complicated question concerning two physical depednencies

azgaza

Bluelighter
Joined
Mar 3, 2009
Messages
498
Location
Amsterdam
This is going to be a seriously long story even though it's going to be just a few questions but there's a lot of unqiue type details to the situation that might influence the answer to the questions; also I have adhd and as you'll read on I have nót had proper sleep the past week and that tends to give a very talkative loads-of-words-and-sentences style of conversation. I apologise ahead :)

I have a set of questions relating to the fact that I may or may not currently have been become physically dependent to an opiate; the question is mostly to do with the fact that if you've gone through withdrawals before they eppear sooner and more intense the next time, atleast that what I heared and what I"m worried about. Before I can ask my questions I'll have to post a bit of a background story since its pretty complicated.

The past week I've been going through what I guess would be 'mild' GHB withdrawal; I stopped taking it without tapering a week ago thuesday; before that I had been taking it every two hours or so for six days and before that I was two days off it and before that another five days of bi hourly GHB dosing, the history before thát was weekend. I'm actually in all seriousness nót a huge fan of GHB, I like it, if I didn't I wouldn't have done it that often, but I like it about as much as I like alcohol; I exclusiely only like it in the company of other people, in my life I'v litteraly done it alone only three times all of which were in between insignificant and lame. The context of my usage is mainly my GHB addicted boyfriend, I spend the weekends at his place and most of the weekends I take GHB with him a part of that weekend because it leads to very open conversations, good atmopshere, opennness, affection, being on the same level and great sex. While he goes on being an addict the rest of the week I go home to my own life in which GHB plays no role at all, I don't even ever think about it. However the weekend before those 6 days I had done my first time MDMA with my boyfriend which by the way was awesome but because of that I stayed around at my boyfriends place longer because the experience had sort melted us together even closer then before and we just had to have the afterglowish time together. As you might guess though, we kept doing GHB alll those days before physically we were a bit dead from the heavy high dose MDMA experience and the GHB worked absolute wonders, making the total time of 24/7 dosing for me personally 6 days.

We'll skip some time ahead to last week thursday; two things had happened: I noticed the last two nights I had a bit of trouble sleeping the night through without waking up and that in the day time if it had been a while to my next dose a GHB I would feel nauseous so I thought if I quit NOW I might be just in time avoiding withdrawal; also my boyfriends order of fentanyl had just arrived that day and I do not mix downers ever; risky stuff. I ended up with even though I was on fentanyl most of the time going through some pretty serious withdrawal symptoms: severe insomnia, hearing voices who's sayings where mostly absolutely random, nausea, sore muscles, anxiety, worrying with the focus on anxiety and the sensory disturbances besides hearing of voices I would also hallunicate touch and when trying to sleep see beyond horrifying images; mentally I was clear headed and knew exactly what was going on, my logic, deduction, problem solving abilities etc. were not affected. I did not want GHB even though it was within arms distance and I was around a person who was taking it every 3-4 hours. In fact, early in the withdrawal my boyfriend actually recommended me taking some GHB a few times to which I told him 'No, I want to be done with this as fast as possible and the only way to do that was to simply not take any anymore; I figured every extra dose would add to the time of this suffering and that would be the last thing I wanted, and seeing how I was capable of quitting cold turkey I would NOT want to ruin it.

Either way my sleep was awful; first two nights I slept on GHB because logically I saw no other way and reasoned not sleeping might make me insane; took 1.5 ml the first night for sleep, slept 2 hours, took 0.4 ml the second night for sleep and again got like 1-2 hours; the third night I managed to sleep naturally ( well, on fentanyl actually), and the night after that I did not sleep at all; night after that I slept 7.5 hours without waking up and without nightmares which made me think 'yay its over' but its not because its 10.30 am while I'm typing this and I haven't slept yet. After that I again stayed up a full night and after that one got 10 hours of nearly continuous sleep due to exhaustion. Three days ago was the last time I heared voices but I still feel not quite myself and the insomnia is persistant.

I never want to take GHB again, to me personally its not worth its downsides at all; also my boyfriend simultaniously has been quitting his 24/7 GHB habit starting the same day after months of the 24/7 usage without pause and years of addiction which all throughout my own withdrawals I had been helping him with, talking sense into his paranoia, making a tapering scedule for him and helping him with his bouts of severe confusion but that is another story for which I'll make another topic in another subforum; this is already getting FAR TOO LONG.

So this leads us to today; my GABA system is still somewhat out of balance, but other then the 1.5 and 0.4 ml og GHB the first and second night of the withdrawal I have been free from all drugs that mess with the GABA system :) Yay for me. I wish I had time to celebrate but the upcomming weeks will be tking care of my boyfriend..

The thing is; I have been using fentanyl (self made nasal spray) since thurday every day throughout the day; it helped for the physical withdrawal symptoms from the GHB; kept my heart rate and blood pressure nice and stable and on the (safe :) ) and it was nice distraction. Now that means I've used fentanyl for a week now, which I assume is too short to provide withdrawal. However; in december I used fentanyl on and off for 5 weeks and also codeine in between which ended in a brief and intense physical withdrawal from thát (much more bearable then the GHB story, seriously), after that I had a break from strong opiates for four months or so, the break was from early januari to last week.

My concern is that its being mentioned that people who went through a withdrawal from an opiate before will get it faster next time. Tomorrow I'm going home where my mum lives, she's leaving for holiday in two days and I have to arrange some stuff and do quite a few things with her before she goes; this is very important, after that the house is mine for ten days. She does not know I ever did GHB, she cannot know and she shoudln't know since I've decided to never do it again, i'm more inclined to drink urine from a stranger then GHB after this :\ I am still not fully recovered though and on top of that I only have the fentanyl at my boyfriends place, its ours but he keeps it here, she's unaware of that too. I myself háve actually had issues with psychological addition (althoug not with opiates or GHB) with ketamine and my mother would perish if she found out any of this. She's also very stresed and exhausted herself and really needs her holiday so I have to be very fit, healthy, happy and leave her confident she has nothing to worry about.

So my question:
- Tomorrow I will no longer be on fentanyl; how large is the chance for serious withdrawal after 7 days of being on it constantly? Its nasal spray and I've been physically dependant in the past once before. Is there a risk? If so, how bad would it be?
- I have in case of the worst: hash, xanax, loperamide and ketamine if there would be withdrawal. IF there was serious withdrawal, would taking xanax just one night to sleep bring the GHB withdrawal back or something like that? Can I do that? I don't want to take xanax but if i have to spend all saturday with my mother on a high energy day I MUST have slept before hand and if the fentanyl turns out to have been too many days in a row then I will need it to sleep for sure.

If it weren't for her I'd not be worried; would I go home to an empthy house I would think 'no problem if a fentanyl wiithdrawal occurs since I have hash so that I can eat, xanax so I can sleep, ketamine to feel no pain and loperamide so all i have to tolerate are the intense cold sweats, shaking and exhaustion/stressed-outness-mix for two days.

Oh by the way I keep saying tomorrow but that kind of meas this afternoon. Any advise or insights to what I should do or what might happen to me these two days?
 
I have little experience with GHB, but can tell you a week of constant fentanyl is going to produce withdrawal symptoms. How much were you using? I wouldn't expect the withdrawals to be unbearable.

In my countless opiate detoxes I often times felt the withdrawals getting worse and worse and the time it took to produce these symptoms lessen considerably over time. I attributed a lot of this to my own head producing most of it, not all though.
 
I'm not sure on the exact dosage; but earlier in the week more then I normally would've due to the GHB withdrawals;I just realised another question; what dosages of loperamide should I use with the goal 'getting things done and capable of participating in activities'. I wouldn't have to be fit, just good enough to tolerate an active day.

I really want to avoid taking the xanax; are there any non gaba-related sleeping aids that that would work with a (mildish) opiate withdrawal?
 
Guess its all ok now; I got a withdrawal from the fentanyl a lot like the one last time; maybe milder since I'm not shaking like last time but as I was then I am covered in sweat, its not dripping of me its streaming of me haha and I could percieve this air as warmer... not as bad as last time though I think, also I told my mother the truth about the GHB withdrawal and that I did use fentanyl for a week and that I may áctually be a bit ill (I do have a horrible cough). There are no consequences and the reaction is ok I think she isn't aware of the fentanyl withdrawal, I hope she won't be as I'm trying to hide it but yeah I think I'll be ok.

And I can honestly say now that I think GHB withdrawal is much worse then fentanyl withdrawal I'd much rather be shaky covered in sweat then hearing fucking voices.
 
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I keep answering to myself in my own topic hope that's ok; I got the most epic cough of all times today and yesterday is it as if my lungs and troath are covered in itchy barbed wire I must add I was already coughing while ON the fentanyl so I do have a virus, tonsils hurt too must be the no sleep that the GHB withdrawal brought onto me and now I'm kind of forced to drink codeine cough syrup or I have no chance to even as much as breathe. I drank around 40-60 mg of codeine in cough syrup today; any idea how much this will impact the withdrawal? I can taper the codeine if I must but without I can't breathe. Any good cough supressants that are nót an opiate that anyone knows of? I'll go look for some dxm tomorrow in the hope that it helps just as well but any other home remedies that are none opiate would be really helpful.
 
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Well that did not go well at all; after the codeine the fentanyl withdrawals came back worse as I'm one of those epic metabolisers of codeine and even with the tolerance from spending a week nodding on fentanyl only 30 mg of codeine stopped all withdrawal and even got me slightly high which wasn't even my intention. The withdrawals returned worse and I was doing quite a bit of ketamine to cover them up a bit / ignore them which led to developing K-cramps of amounts that normally do not cause them in me; I was lying on the floor feeling as if I was actually dying the amount of pain was unreal so I made the unsane decision to do some fentanyl because I couldn't handle K-cramps in a fentanyl/codeine withdrawal :\ Did it for another 6 days of nodding the whole time so after that the withdrawals AGAIN where pretty bad but this time I tapered with loperamide to control it and to top it all up I got a bacterial urinairy tract infection; which I thought was K-related since I had been doing quite a bit of that during all the times not on fentanyl; much more often and in higher amounts then I had been doing for the past months, but the UTI started out of nothing and I got it under control really fast with water and cranberry meaning it was probably bacterial after all; what a pain though. That was three proper weeks of fucking pain.

From now on I'll be a LOT more careful; fentanyl no more then 2-3 days in a row ever because after what I've done with the substance so far any longer WILL cause withdrawals; which I still find the substance worth it, but I'd rather avoid having them again nonetheless. I just a day ago read the sentence 'I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired' and really; that sums it up. My body is finally normalised although I dream really, really intensely with lucid dreams, nightmares and sleep paralysis mixed up and a lot of deep psychological terror about recent events and older nasty memories.. atleast its not all such a mess anymore. These are all things that I 10 years ago would nót have ever expected to happen to me; although maybe I actually would've expected.. probably not to this intensity though.
 
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