Heroin how much benzo to cold turkey from heroin?

[DustnRoses]

I am ready to stop doing heroin, and I have a large amount of suboxone, from an old prescription, but I'd really like to not have to use them...preferably, I'd like to just quit cold turkey, with the aid of some benzos. I've never in my entire life had a problem with benzo's, so I'm not "trading one addiction for another" but how much would one need to zombify himself for the 4-6 day period of acute withdrawals? I currently have about 5mg alprazolam, 3mg clonazepam. I know I'll probably need more...that seems like enough for maybe 2 days...? With no benzo tolerance? Anyone know from personal experience or more benzo dosing knowledge than me? I'm pretty naive when it comes to benzos.

BTW my habit is about 1gram heroin smoked per day...sometimes a little less (maybe 1 gram per 24-30 hours). Currently I have 3 grams, and am trying to taper/space out my use, to hopefully soften the blow of the withdrawal. I've only been using for about 3 weeks...I was about 6 months clean, did about 2mg of sub a day for a week, then started doing heroin for 3 weeks, and here we are today.

 

[brighton]

So 4 weeks of opiate use all together?
Totally stock up on loperamide, it will help possible even more than benzos. Start with 6-10mg and taper up from there.
With no benzo tolerance, try 0.5mg clonazepam a day (equal to 10mg diazepam) with 0.25 alprazolam (equal to 5mg diazepam) as needed up to twice a day.

 

[DustnRoses]

Yes 4 weeks of opiates all together, but because of my long history of opiate abuse, it legitimately only takes about 3 days of constant use to develop dependance, where I will most definitely experience some degree of WD. So, while 4 weeks may not sound like a long time, and some may say "you wont even have a hard withdrawal.." that is definitely not the case for me. I know that at this point I'm in for probably a good week of feeling crappy, if I quit cold turkey.

You really think I'll get by taking such low doses of those? Only .25mg of xanax? and .5 clonazepam? I'm not doubting you, I'm just surprised, as I was under the impression that I would have to take about 1mg at a time to feel relief.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I understand how you feel with the 4 week dependency, I get the same. I agree with the above, when I go through w/d from oxy after a few weeks of use, I take 0.5 alp at night and loperamide during the day. It takes about 2-4 days for the opiate w/d to stop for me, and the xanax helps me sleep. Clonazepam is better IMO as it has a longer half life and will last you through the next day too, the same dose for me would be good - 0.5 at night. This is without a benzo tolerance though. For me I have quite a tolerance to benzos, so I take about 20mg of valium or 2mg of xanax/clonazepam at night.

 

[cook]

I'd get some phenibut and then dose benzo's on top of it, it dulls you mentally pretty much and you don't need that much benzo's.

My recipe would be 2-3 grams of phenibut a day + 1-4 mgs of alprazolam at worst days and then quickly tapering depending how dulled you want to be. Take phenibut in the morning and dose lighter doses of alprazolam during the day, in the evening take a bigger dose of alprazolam but more preferable some sedative benzo like valium (20-40 mgs) for the night. You are going to need heavy dosing if you got no other meds but then again it's no problem for a few days if you have no benzo tolerance/addiction issues. The danger of heavy benzo use during withdrawal is that it may increase the risk of acute relapse, so make sure you don't have any easy access to dope.

The phenibut is not necessary but I found it greatly decreases the need for benzo (but they still work together great) and therefore is beneficial if you don't have access to load of benzos. It is also very long acting to it's a good "base" medication for dulling the mind completely.

 

[5 meo dmTed]

So 4 weeks of opiate use all together?
Totally stock up on loperamide, it will help possible even more than benzos. Start with 6-10mg and taper up from there.
With no benzo tolerance, try 0.5mg clonazepam a day (equal to 10mg diazepam) with 0.25 alprazolam (equal to 5mg diazepam) as needed up to twice a day.

This is very much true. Don't overdo the benzos! I'm on 4mg/day (sometimes 5) clonazepam, for anxiety and with no tolerance, .5mg twice a day would have me out of the sick, along with .5mg alprazolam as needed throughout the day. Use the benzos for a couple of days, two or three. Long enough to make 100% sure you won't have precipitated w/d's (trust me, worst experience you'll ever have...) then switch to your subs and taper down quickly as you're comfortable. I know it feels good to come off cold turkey, but this will be easier.. Be safe, and good luck to you on kicking, my friend! Sounds like you'll do better than me, I was too weak and started going to a 'done clinic. 130mg/day and rising weekly (occasionally chewin up an oxyneo 80 to keep the sick down or to get a little boost from my dose.) Ate 15mg/oxyir this morning cause I woke up with the good ol' wet spot without the fun oh well. I'm rambling. Again, keep it safe and stay strong, we can all do it, it's just the anxiety of having to give up your DOC that really gets us, I think.

Best wishes and best of luck to you my friend,
dmTed

 

[Znegative]

God Damn it, I just lost a long post I wrote in response...


Anyway, my point was that using benzo's to knock yourself out so that you can be zombified through opiate withdrawal won't work unless you take a dangerously high ammount of alprazolam or clonazepam (or whatever other benzo you can get your hands on), and this could definatey end dependency and a seizure. I've personally known several people who hardly ever used benzo's try to knock themselves out during opiate withdrawal by consuming absurd ammounts of alprazolam. Both ended up having a seizure (and neither of them fell asleep either, they walked around in a blacked out haze for about 36 hours first).

The best GABAergic's for opiate withdrawal that I have tried are Gabapentin or Lyrica (essentially Lyrica is a stronger version of Gabapentin, with less wonky side effects IME though others may argue otherwise). For some reason by themselves they feel similar in some ways to opiates. They will totally kill RLS, relax your muscles in general, sometimes make you nod in a GBL fashion, and can even be stimulating to an extent. They are very strange pharmaceuticals, with varying effects depending upon the dose. For withdrawal though I would start off with 300mg of Gabapentin, or 75mg of Lyrica (I think Lyrica comes in 75mg dosages, someone tell me if I'm incorrect please).

If you can't get those, use loperamide. 20-30mg should definately take you out of most of your withdrawal symptoms. Strangely enough, I've found that it even takes away my depression though I have always taken pretty high dosages (then again I've only used it for methadone withdrawal). Start with 20mg, wait around an hour or two and if you are still in withdrawal, take another ten milligrams. A lot of people claim loperamide takes hours to kick in, but I've always been able to feel reliefe within 20-30 minutes. I don't know how it will effect you, but it should help for sure.

If you don't want to use loperamide (which really does not, IME, increase constipation upon increasing the dose, nor does it induce a constipation any worse than any other opiate...), use the benzo's (no more than .5-1mg of either alprazolam or clonazepam at a time) to wait at least 24 hours, and then dose 2mg of suboxone, and perform a short taper with that, something like, 2,1.5,1,.5,.25, jump. You could probably even get away with jumping off from .5mg and deal with the residual effects. Also, if you do this try to save some of your benzo's for insomnia, and for when you jump off. I would use Xanax honestl as its shorter acting and since you don't have a problem with them, as long as you don't go over kill, it should be easier to avoid dependency with a short acting benzo vs. a long acting one (clonazepam).

 

[mrtrippe]

I'd reconsider a benzo taper without some form of supervision... most benozos, especially short acting ones such as alprazolam, can have great amnesiac effects and could lead to you taking far too many and eventually a seizure... Check out Gabapentin like Zneg said...

 

[DustnRoses]

Wow thanks for all the replies, reminds me what a great site this is...so much helpful advice that has probably helped countless people.

In regards to loperamide, I usually take a serving of Miralax once every other day while I'm on an opiate binge, so my constipation is never too rough. Miralax, IME, is the only thing that combats the opiate induced constipation...while it's not a laxitave and doesn't actually make you GO, it makes it such an easier task when yo finally do. So loperamide doesn't really concern me as far as the constipation goes. I've taken it before, in similar situations, with good results. In fact the first time I ever went to see a Sub doctor, I told him it'd been about 48 hours since my last opiate, but I'd taken loperamide to hold me over, and that was why I wasn't covered in sweat and feeling like death was knocking at my door...he dismissed this as placebo...shows how much these doctors know.

Mrtrippe, I actually had an experience one time where I took 4 mg's xanax early in the morning, after calling in sick to work..(about 6am) and woke up around noon, with a phone call from my Uncle, whom I was living with at the time, asking me if I'd taken out his truck (very nice Ford F-350). I said no, of course not, I'd been in bed...that's very strange to even think I would take out his truck for no reason....but I was the only one home at the time, and it was parked half way up the curb....so we came to the conclusion that it MUST have been me, in my retarded benzo'd out stupor. I realized after that that dose was way too high, and I'm lucky no one got hurt or killed by some stupid drugged out teenager driving his uncles truck in his underwear at 8am.

 

[Alex000]

If you do quit CT, I would suggest waiting to dose ANY benzos until you start feeling opiate wd's. From there, 0.25 mg clonazepam 4 x daily (0.25 mg every six hours) sounds like a decent dose for round-the-clock help. I would not go much higher than that, because clonazepam is a subtle benzo, and you can end up taking way too much easily feeling that you are "fine" on higher doses. Beware of that. As for the alprazolam, I would suggest using it only for sleep, so that you don't end up constantly gobbling alprazolam on top of the clonazepam during wd's due to discomfort - bad idea. Try 0.5 mg alprazolam for sleep, and if you really need to, you could try 0.75 mg, however I would try to stick to 0.5 mg at night (or lower, if effective) because you are on a pretty good dose of clonazepam for someone with no tolerance, already, and both clonazepam and alprazolam are QUITE potent despite how they might feel. In short, 0.25 mg clonazepam 4 x daily (0.25 mg every six hours) and 0.5 - 0.75 mg alprazolam at bedtime. Even if the alprazolam does not put you to sleep, so to speak, at 0.5 mg, it will still exert a relaxing effect which is good to have at nighttime when trying to sleep - it is better than nothing, and more alprazolam is not going to do the trick and work some sort of wd's-begone magic. 1 mg clonazepam daily is a pretty good dose for someone with no tolerance, and 0.5 mg alprazolam at bedtime is pretty big on top of that clonazepam dose with no tolerance, even if it might not seem it. Do not try to zombify yourself - try to allow yourself some relief with the symptoms, yes, but make sure you are still "there" and not "out to lunch", so to speak. You do not want to be absent-minded on huge doses of benzos, even if it sounds attractive. Trouble can result.