crzydiamond
Bluelighter
So I ended up taking the patch off after like 20 minutes... Backed out of my initial decision. Should I expect to feel something in like 8 hours or what?
No... If you had it on and took it off after 20 minutes and didn't feel anything then or within the next half hour you're not going to. Why would you think you'd feel it 8 hours later?
Brief explanation of how patches work as you seem to be confused. When you put it on your skin the drug is transferred at a certain rate (whatever patch is--like 50 mcg/hr) thru the patch membrane into your skin. It sort of pools in the layer of fatty tissue under the skin and is released into the body. Even when you remove a patch there is still some built up there, so if you have one on and feel it's too much taking it off doesn't keep more from going into your system. But still it's not like an 8 hour buildup. Maybe if you constantly wore a patch for weeks it would have a few hours buildup but from one patch it wouldn't.
Wearing a patch if you have any sort of opiate tolerance is usually not scary dangerous. It's when people heat them to accelerate rate of drug coming into skin, chew them, and particularly IV them that the ODs tend to happen. Because with those methods you're not getting a 50 mcg/hr dose, you can get MILLIGRAMS at once rather than micrograms, and thus OD.
Which is why wearing the patch is safest
But really once you take it off you can't re-wear it. It messes up the membrane. A friend is prescribed them and I heard that directly from her doctor. In fact he prescribed her to change every 48 hr rather than 72 hr due to them not sticking.
Oh, and when wearing them--they don't hit max effect for the first 12-18 hours. It takes usually around 3 hours to really start feeling it once you put it on. So there is not point to putting it on and taking it off in an hour saying you'd don't feel it. It needs time to work