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Fast Taper from Buperenorphine

SteeleyJ

SteeleyJ

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May 24, 2006
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I recently lost my insurance and am taking 12mg of bupe per day for the last 18 months. I have myself down to 4mg a day and have 1 sub left.
I plan on taking 2mg for 3 days then 1mg for 2 days and trying to get off the opioids alltogether. I've been on one opioid or another for the last 7 years.... the last 3 being a combination of heroin and bupe.

Im terrified to detox because the temptation to just go buy dope is high for me but I can't afford to do that.... i've got a family now.

I have a rough idea on what to do but would like some input..


I have at my disposal modafinil, a few clonazepam, beta-blockers, and enough d-amp.


Plan on buying xanax a few vicodin to sleep.
 
Shit...it hasnt been hard to go from 12 2 4mgs? People say Subs arnt hard to get off of, either they havnt taken them for more than a month or they dont know what thier talking about. I hate when people say "Subs arent hard to get off." Well Ive detoxed off of everything oxys,percs, heroin, methadone,xanax & suboxone. I found it just as diffucult as meth. I got myself down to 1/8 of an 8mg pill(i guess that would be 1mg lol) & couldnt get passed that. I ended up using. I know people who have done it, & i guess the key is to go slow. It seems as though in youre case that cant be done. Get as many Vicodins as you can,xanax would help but Vicodins would be much better. Hope it works out....
 
I did something really similar. It's a fucking beast. Honestly you should try to talk to your doc/pharmacy and get a partial fill on a script.

Every time I tried to get off bupe I did a similar taper and every time it was just as bad as dope withdrawals....except it lasts about 3 weeks.

Kratom helped me sleep, bendryl, lots of baths.

I'm finally off opiates all together but damn quitting suboxone took like 3-4 weeks before I felt normal.
 
Yeah, i've detoxed off alot of things any sub withdrawl is a little different but still absolutely horrible. I'm down to my last 1mg this morning and i'm already starting to feel it.... I called my dealers already but luckily there hasn't been any h around my city in around a week. Guessing someone huge has clamped down, i'm happy though that it's missing. I'd have fallen before ever kicking if it was around like usual.
 
16 mgs more of sub would make all the difference.....I ended up getting kicked off suboxone and going to rehab in summer '11. The rehab did a taper that went down 2 mgs a day, starting at 16mg and ending at 2mg, straight to zero! It made no sense to me at all. I never took 16 mg when I was prescribed suboxone, not even close!
I was fine until 48 hours after my last dose of 2mgs. It was a thirty day rehab. I was fine for the first 8 days I was getting the suboxone, and then I was sick and unable to sleep at all for the 11 days after that!

All the while, the medical staff at the rehab was acting like I should have been fine because they "tapered me down". It's unbelievable how clueless they were! You have to really break those things down into as small of pieces as you can and do a 2 week long taper between 2mg and 0, that's why I said, another 16 mgs would give you a lot of breathing room. There's a whole thread devoted to different tapering schemes somewhere on here.

I understand how hard is is to stay away when you know what will make you feel instantly better but you have to try to stay strong....I was prescribed sub for uears but really hardly touched it...I was on H the whole time and pretending to be stabilized on sub.
I have stayed off dope since I left rehab though.

Oh yeah, I don't know about modafinil but I have used d amp later into the withdrawals. A week or so in a low dose seemed to make me more able to move and function and didn't increase my anxiety. Although, you need benzos to negate the effects later on, and you can't overdo it. I tried to tell a doctor about my little expiriment of treating opiate withdrawal with amphetamines and he though it was a horrible idea....I'm not the only one whose said it helped them though.

if you can get just a couple more subs would be huge. I wouldn't take any other opiate because that'll just reset the whole process,
Good luck.
 
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Keep it up and good luck man!

Sub tapers definitely are better off if they are more drawn out and if you go down to incredibly low doses. I don't think I'd even want to jump off sub if I'd been only on 1mg a day for a while. The only times I've gotten off it I've tapered down to around .1mg.
 
That's terrible about the insurance leaving you on your ass like that.

My one piece of advice would be to only use the vicodin when things get really ugly. Use as little of it as possible for as short a duration as possible.
 
Update on this... I fell back into heroin after 6 days sick. Spent 7 days on .25 of heroin a day and then 7 days ago decided fuck it and just dealt with the now heroin withdrawal. Pretty much done with the acute phase.
 
I think your best bet is what you've already done. I would switch to being dependent upon heroin and use your clonazepams to help during the 3-5 days of acute heroin withdrawal. Good luck man.
 
That advice is horrible. The reason for this is people just assume that "Oh if you do heroin you'll ONLY go through heroin w/d." This is just patently false. You were on bupe for 18 MONTHS. You switch back to heroin, kick the heroin, great. Now you STILL have to deal with PAWS from bupe.

You really think your body has suddenly forgotten about the 18 months of insanely potent partial agonist that was floating around in you? Stuff so potent that it literally blocks heroin from getting you "high". You think a few days of heroin and heroin withdrawal will undo that? Its honestly rotten advice that people give out all too frequently here on BL. "Oh switch back to other opiates it'll be better, only 5 days!" Yes, great. You've gone through another acute phase. Now you've still gotta pay the piper.

Bite the bullet. The more opiates you do (of any form) the more drawn out, prolonged, and severe the repercussions will be. You know what a heroin relapse will do to you more than anyone. I know what it'll do to me, and its nothing thats better than going through bupe w/d.

We're not even delving into all the other negative repercussions starting up heroin again could have ie not being able to STOP?! Just one other issue that gets thrown on. Which clearly was an issue for all of us the first time. Otherwise we would've never started the subs. Really dont' hope you have to start ALL OVER again.

If I were you I'd get Medicare/Medicaid (whichever it is), get your ass to detox or some sort of inpatient setting. You really are asking for a shitload of trouble. You are not setting yourself up for success.

I wish you the best of luck
 
DooMMooD said:
That advice is horrible. The reason for this is people just assume that "Oh if you do heroin you'll ONLY go through heroin w/d." This is just patently false. You were on bupe for 18 MONTHS. You switch back to heroin, kick the heroin, great. Now you STILL have to deal with PAWS from bupe.

You really think your body has suddenly forgotten about the 18 months of insanely potent partial agonist that was floating around in you? Stuff so potent that it literally blocks heroin from getting you "high". You think a few days of heroin and heroin withdrawal will undo that? Its honestly rotten advice that people give out all too frequently here on BL. "Oh switch back to other opiates it'll be better, only 5 days!" Yes, great. You've gone through another acute phase. Now you've still gotta pay the piper.

Bite the bullet. The more opiates you do (of any form) the more drawn out, prolonged, and severe the repercussions will be. You know what a heroin relapse will do to you more than anyone. I know what it'll do to me, and its nothing thats better than going through bupe w/d.

We're not even delving into all the other negative repercussions starting up heroin again could have ie not being able to STOP?! Just one other issue that gets thrown on. Which clearly was an issue for all of us the first time. Otherwise we would've never started the subs. Really dont' hope you have to start ALL OVER again.

If I were you I'd get Medicare/Medicaid (whichever it is), get your ass to detox or some sort of inpatient setting. You really are asking for a shitload of trouble. You are not setting yourself up for success.

I wish you the best of luck
Click to expand...

holy shit somebody saved me 10 minutes...

this is 100% spot on;


Best way to quit taking Bupe is taper down to .25 every 3 days for 3 weeks. then stop and have some comfort meds and a BIG plan;

Switching to short acting agonist to quit Bupe is just pointless; failure and relapse risk REALLY high


Truth is though Bupe IMO is harder to quit only because of the duration is so god dam annoying;
 
I know about the PAWS....already experiencing it. I've been trying to keep busy and work out to keep my mind off it and try to get my endorphin production rolling again. Boredom and insomnia are not good but... like you said gotta pay the piper.

I switched back to heroin as a relapse.....then decided i didn't want to go back to that lifestyle and just stopped and dealt with the acute. One thing keeping me going is that I do not want to do that again. Now i sit and think one day of heroin won't hurt......and i gotta talk my ass right back out of it reminding myself of that 7 days.
 
SteeleyJ said:
I know about the PAWS....already experiencing it. I've been trying to keep busy and work out to keep my mind off it and try to get my endorphin production rolling again. Boredom and insomnia are not good but... like you said gotta pay the piper.

I switched back to heroin as a relapse.....then decided i didn't want to go back to that lifestyle and just stopped and dealt with the acute. One thing keeping me going is that I do not want to do that again. Now i sit and think one day of heroin won't hurt......and i gotta talk my ass right back out of it reminding myself of that 7 days.
Click to expand...

YOU know what is right and wrong. You know 'one more time'' can lead you years from now spun out if your still alive and not in jail in a worse place with the same problem..... WITHDRAWAL. I think you are doin great, but you have had enough or you need more to realize that rode is a ONE WAY. You need to man up and go threw the wd. My advice on comfort is Kratom and immodium.
 
See if you can find some more Suboxone, even if it's just a few more tablets, and do a very drawn out low-dose taper. You'll go through acute withdrawal while adjusting to the low dosage, but then when you come off of it completely, it won't be as bad as going from a huge dosage per day to a low dosage rather quickly. Just my 2 cents.

If you cannot get more Suboxone, beta blockers, benzos, and other medications will definitely help.

Finally, try to get some health insurance. I wouldn't want to be living in America without it.

Best of luck!
 
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