For about a year my spouse has been using the medication Suboxone to help with his withdrawals from OC. He has finally decided to quite his use of suboxone and is starting to ween himself off by using proper aids such as vitamins, adequate fluids and exercise, etc. Throughout the day, as he remains active, his withdrawals seem to affect him less. It's only during the night when he goes to lye down when the aches and pains begin to surge through him causing him discomfort and irritability. He is doing very well so far and I'm supporting him 110% along the way. However, he is more irritable than usual and it's caused him to scream and yell and act in irrational ways over small mishaps that wouldn't typically affect him. I understand it's a part of the withdrawals, but being the emotional lover I am it can often be difficult to stay strong when the person you love is transforming into a complete stranger and using so much anger. I want to be as calm and comforting as possible while we go through this together. Any advice, tips or tricks I can use when dealing with one of his angry episodes? Or is there any aids I can use to comfort him to keep his mind off of the withdrawals? Any advice or similar stories would be appreciated.. Thanks!
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How to deal with a withdrawing S/O?
- Thread starter lycia
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Swimmingdancer
Bluelight Crew
It's so awesome of you to help and support him through this! 
Having a compassionate supportive partner is absolutely one of the most helpful things for someone quitting an addiction and/or physical dependence.
When he gets irritable, the best thing to do is not react and get angry yourself, try your best to remain calm and polite. You could tell him you know what an extremely tough time he is going through and you are really proud of him and ask if there is anything you can do to help. Try not to take it personally and remind yourself that his brain chemistry is out of whack right now. All you can really do in regards to his grouchiness is to change your own behaviour: try to be as calm, soothing and comforting as possible and make him feel loved, understood and not judged. I know for me (I am in the process of tapering off methadone right now), my partner's compassionate attitude towards me has really helped me to have fewer irritated outbursts. If you can constantly remind him how much you love him and how brave he is being, that may help him to have fewer outbursts, at least fewer directed towards you. You could try gently talking to him about it when he is in a better mood, like say you know he gets frustrated easily right now because he is feeling so crappy and you know it's not personal and you really love him and support him in what he's going through. When he is annoyed about something, try not to feel like he is annoyed at you, and either leave him be to cool off or ask him what you can do to help (see which one works best for him). For example if he is, say, freaking out because he is worried about being late and can't find his sock, maybe you could say something like it's going to be ok, I know how stressful getting ready is and offer to help him look for the sock or get anything else he needs ready to save him some time. Just using that as an example, I know I get stressed out about little things like that right now, but you could apply the same principle to many situations. But for some people they may just need a few minutes alone to calm down.
The night time is often the worst time, because we don't have anything to keep our minds off the withdrawals and they seem to feel worse at night as well, plus the difficulty sleeping and aches and pains are really miserable. Does he take his Suboxone in the morning? Sometimes that can make a difference, for some people it helps to start taking it at a different time of day or splitting the dose up into 2 and taking half in the morning and half at night. I also take some supplements to help with sleep and listen to some sleep music like binaural beats, put on an eyemask and make sure my bedroom is really comfortable and a nice peaceful environment.
Keeping busy and active is important, even keeping the mind busy. Watching a good movie or going on a bike ride or having a friendly conversation can help keep one's mind off how shitty and anxious they are feeling. I highly recommend yoga, and it can be calming before bed.
Also reading about addictions (and withdrawal) can be extremely helpful. If you both understand what is going on in his brain can make it easier to deal with. Really I have a ton of advice, so let me know if you'd like to talk more.
Best of luck to you both
The Dark Side forum is probably the best place to get emotional support, but you may also want to check out Other Drugs and the threads on opioid withdrawal if your partner would like to know about things to help with the physical withdrawal symptoms (some meds and supplements will help with the mental symptoms like depression, anxiety, insomnia, etc as well).
Having a compassionate supportive partner is absolutely one of the most helpful things for someone quitting an addiction and/or physical dependence.When he gets irritable, the best thing to do is not react and get angry yourself, try your best to remain calm and polite. You could tell him you know what an extremely tough time he is going through and you are really proud of him and ask if there is anything you can do to help. Try not to take it personally and remind yourself that his brain chemistry is out of whack right now. All you can really do in regards to his grouchiness is to change your own behaviour: try to be as calm, soothing and comforting as possible and make him feel loved, understood and not judged. I know for me (I am in the process of tapering off methadone right now), my partner's compassionate attitude towards me has really helped me to have fewer irritated outbursts. If you can constantly remind him how much you love him and how brave he is being, that may help him to have fewer outbursts, at least fewer directed towards you. You could try gently talking to him about it when he is in a better mood, like say you know he gets frustrated easily right now because he is feeling so crappy and you know it's not personal and you really love him and support him in what he's going through. When he is annoyed about something, try not to feel like he is annoyed at you, and either leave him be to cool off or ask him what you can do to help (see which one works best for him). For example if he is, say, freaking out because he is worried about being late and can't find his sock, maybe you could say something like it's going to be ok, I know how stressful getting ready is and offer to help him look for the sock or get anything else he needs ready to save him some time. Just using that as an example, I know I get stressed out about little things like that right now, but you could apply the same principle to many situations. But for some people they may just need a few minutes alone to calm down.
The night time is often the worst time, because we don't have anything to keep our minds off the withdrawals and they seem to feel worse at night as well, plus the difficulty sleeping and aches and pains are really miserable. Does he take his Suboxone in the morning? Sometimes that can make a difference, for some people it helps to start taking it at a different time of day or splitting the dose up into 2 and taking half in the morning and half at night. I also take some supplements to help with sleep and listen to some sleep music like binaural beats, put on an eyemask and make sure my bedroom is really comfortable and a nice peaceful environment.
Keeping busy and active is important, even keeping the mind busy. Watching a good movie or going on a bike ride or having a friendly conversation can help keep one's mind off how shitty and anxious they are feeling. I highly recommend yoga, and it can be calming before bed.
Also reading about addictions (and withdrawal) can be extremely helpful. If you both understand what is going on in his brain can make it easier to deal with. Really I have a ton of advice, so let me know if you'd like to talk more.
Best of luck to you both
The Dark Side forum is probably the best place to get emotional support, but you may also want to check out Other Drugs and the threads on opioid withdrawal if your partner would like to know about things to help with the physical withdrawal symptoms (some meds and supplements will help with the mental symptoms like depression, anxiety, insomnia, etc as well).
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BDD probably isn't the best forum for this type of discussion. You might have better luck if a Mod moves this to The Dark Side.
As for W/D tips...lots of advil, try to keep entertained with light-hearted bullshit movies etc. Depression during W/D can be a bitch, especially after the acute phase, but the fact that he has a supporting partner to help him through the bad times is definitely an advantage. Good luck.
As for W/D tips...lots of advil, try to keep entertained with light-hearted bullshit movies etc. Depression during W/D can be a bitch, especially after the acute phase, but the fact that he has a supporting partner to help him through the bad times is definitely an advantage. Good luck.
twato
Bluelighter
If any of this is considered triggering material, please kindly delete it, as apart from some edits I replied in BDD, and I'm not fully familiar what is considered a trigger on TDS.
On topic, loads of hot showers/baths and valerian root tea (buy the shredded stuff for making tea, way more effective than the. "extracts" you can buy in health stores). Imho the latter is preferable to real benzos in this case, as suboxone WDs can last quite a while if you've been on it for longer time spans, and you REALLY don't want a benzo habit. Those sneaky things help great at first, but tolerance sets in very quickly when using daily, and benzo withdrawal is objectively worse than opiate withdrawal. Seizures aren't fun, and there's nothing that really helps except more benzos.
So I disagree with the advil, valerian root and chamomile tea may be weaker, but you don't run the risk of swapping one addiction for another. This tea combo is also great for combatting troubles getting to sleep. I like to complement it with low dose DXM (120-150mg/55kg, yes, I'm skinny as fuck) once a week to take my mind off the symptoms, and 50mg benadryl every night to help me sleep (25mg will suffice at first, tolerance builds after a while, but not too quickly). Read up on these substances first, if you decide they might help: both are very powerful drugs in higher doses.
DXM (Dextromethorphan) is a dissociative and can be fun tripping on (if you don't mind the somewhat heavy bodyload and next day afterglow a.k.a. contented laziness and somewhat slowed down thoughts, but in a comfy way). WARNING: for these purposes, only buy products that contain only DXM as the active ingredient. Mixed products will often lead to complications ranging from nausea to brain cell death up to terminal liver damage.
Even when withdrawing from opiates, a high 2nd / nearly 3rd plateau can be enjoyable, simply because you're somewhat dissociated from your bodily aches. Combined with MJ, it feels like a completely new drug, extremely interesting synergy.
Simply google for "DXM plateau weight dose" and use BL's search engine for more infos, trip reports etc. Don't overdo it please, the rule is to wait one week per plateau of the last trip. Of course, I didn't heed this during my first real heroin WDs and spent 4 days literally dissociated from my body and the rest of the world. My brain took a good month to function properly again, at least I think that now...
Benadryl on the other hand, or rather its active ingredient DPH (Diphenhydramine) is a deleriant. I'd only take a high dose of that if it was forced down my throat, no way would I actually want a trip like that. 150mg will get you a nice body buzz, higher doses tend to lead to hospital stays or jail, and you don't even remember wtf happened, because you were delirious the whole time (you can check trip reports on Erowid (just google). Examples for other deleriants are datura and other anti-cholergenics. Interesting reading, but way more horror stories than good things. Still, great for sleep and opiate potentiation at low doses (DPH, I mean).
You already mentioned exercise; that's perhaps THE BEST WD REMEDY there is, release of endorphines ftw.
A healthy diet will also help big time, provided his appetite plays along. Personally, I've always used marijuana for the munchies effect, but that isn't for everyone, so protein shakes and loads of veggie soup are an alternative, easy to keep down and nourishing. Some vitamin supplements can also help, although fresh veggies and fruits would be preferable, as the vitamins in these are( absorbed more efficiently. Try to keep as close to his "healthy" weight as possible, this is really important. I lost about 5kg the last time I withdrew, I looked like a skeleton until I had regained my usual skinny frame (took half a year, I don't always eat healthy).
Oh, and get some cheap loperamide (generic immodium) against the shits. Also, high doses will nearly eliminate all WD symptoms if he feels he needs a days break from everything. Takes about 2 to 3 hours to fully kick in, as a starting dose for overall relief I'd suggest 40mg, that's the lower end of doses I can recommend for complete relief, it really depends on the persons tolerance, but I've taken up to 100mg in the past, all WD symptoms were gone for a day, and the constipation isn't worse than that from other opiates. In fact, 4mg of subutex blocks me up far worse than 60mg loperamide, but afaik there aren't any official test results and I don't know your spouses tolerance, so better start low (30-40mg are perfectly safe, even for opiate naive folks). Lope lasts a full day, so redosing is easy, just keep the long comeup in mind and redose after 3 hours, if necessary.
That's about all I can think of right now, apart from one last thing.
Take good care of yourself too. You may not have a habit, but you're still deeply involved. This may be called co-dependency, I'm not quite sure right now, but I suggest looking into the concept.
Please make sure that YOU have someone to support you during this hard time, be it a good friend, an understanding relative or a professional. Your wellbeing is just as important as your spouses.
All the best & lots of strength, to both of you.
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Tripman
Bluelight Crew
--> tds
Swimmingdancer, This bit of information has been extremely helpful! Thank you much.. I'm new to Bluelight and registered with the intent on connecting with people that are going through the same experience as myself. That being said, I posted this thread in a forum that looked best fitting for this topic, however, it looks like I should have posted this in the Dark Side Forum. Can I transfer this thread or delete it entirely? Anyway, we both have bikes that we ride often, but it's hard to get him up and moving especially towards night time. He was also an avid week smoker for 7+ year and stopped cold turkey with that. He says it has affected him very positively and he has no desire to smoke again.. BUT that was a good tool for him to calm his aches at night. He's picky too, so sometimes sleeping aids like melatonin aren't in his best interest. So I'm wondering what else I can do to help him sleep. Massage? I'm sure that has to help!
Swimmingdancer
Bluelight Crew
It has already been moved to The Dark Side. The Dark Side is the best place for emotional support. If you'd like more info on medications that can help, then there are a lot of threads on that topic in Other Drugs (let me know if you'd like me to post links to some), and twato has mentioned some above.
That may be tough that he has quit smoking cold turkey recently, as he may have the withdrawals from smoking on top of his buprenorphine withdrawals and he doesn't have the advantage, like you said, or using cigarettes to relax. A great replacement/alternative if a person wants to use nicotine without the health risks of smoking are e-cigarettes, but it sounds to me like maybe he wouldn't be interested.
Does he dislike the effects of melatonin? There are a lot of other supplements that can help with sleep. Personally I don't like the effects of melatonin during my taper/withdrawals. The supplement I would recommend most is magnesium with calcium, it doesn't directly make you sleepy but it can help with insomnia and with withdrawal symptoms. It really does make a difference. You have to take it daily though.
Massage is a great idea, provided he is up for it of course. Sometimes coming off opioids/decreasing one's dose can cause a person to have really sensitive skin, where things that might normally be pleasant feel painful or tickle. So ask him if he would like a massage but don't take it personally if he feels too physically uncomfortable. I know for me it really helps, but I am not always in the mood if I am feeling sensitive and sweaty - it's more the idea of it that I don't like at those times, often if I actually do it it I find I like it, but having that mental idea that it wouldn't feel comfortable can be hard to overcome. A bath or even a long hot shower is great too.
I totally know what you mean about it being hard to get moving! I feel so fatigued and sore and I just want to lie around all day, even if deep down I know I will feel better if I go on a bike ride. Start by trying to encourage him to go for walks or rides with you when he's feeling at his best, not his worst. And go for short easy ones when the weather is nice so that it will be a positive experience and not too hard. If he felt a bit better afterwards last time he went for a ride, remind him that it did help. It's important to get outside and get some physical activity, but it can be extremely hard to get motivated when you are having withdrawals. It has to do with "sickness behaviour", see Wikipedia.
I'll write you some more later.
That may be tough that he has quit smoking cold turkey recently, as he may have the withdrawals from smoking on top of his buprenorphine withdrawals and he doesn't have the advantage, like you said, or using cigarettes to relax. A great replacement/alternative if a person wants to use nicotine without the health risks of smoking are e-cigarettes, but it sounds to me like maybe he wouldn't be interested.
Does he dislike the effects of melatonin? There are a lot of other supplements that can help with sleep. Personally I don't like the effects of melatonin during my taper/withdrawals. The supplement I would recommend most is magnesium with calcium, it doesn't directly make you sleepy but it can help with insomnia and with withdrawal symptoms. It really does make a difference. You have to take it daily though.
Massage is a great idea, provided he is up for it of course. Sometimes coming off opioids/decreasing one's dose can cause a person to have really sensitive skin, where things that might normally be pleasant feel painful or tickle. So ask him if he would like a massage but don't take it personally if he feels too physically uncomfortable. I know for me it really helps, but I am not always in the mood if I am feeling sensitive and sweaty - it's more the idea of it that I don't like at those times, often if I actually do it it I find I like it, but having that mental idea that it wouldn't feel comfortable can be hard to overcome. A bath or even a long hot shower is great too.
I totally know what you mean about it being hard to get moving! I feel so fatigued and sore and I just want to lie around all day, even if deep down I know I will feel better if I go on a bike ride. Start by trying to encourage him to go for walks or rides with you when he's feeling at his best, not his worst. And go for short easy ones when the weather is nice so that it will be a positive experience and not too hard. If he felt a bit better afterwards last time he went for a ride, remind him that it did help. It's important to get outside and get some physical activity, but it can be extremely hard to get motivated when you are having withdrawals. It has to do with "sickness behaviour", see Wikipedia.
I'll write you some more later.
Missykins
Bluelighter
One works closely with their physician to make certain that the taper isn't done too quickly which will greatly minimize the effects of withdrawal.
Twato, very informative..Thank you! He's been taking aleeve and claimed that helped some with minor aches during the day. I think I need to get a better control on dealing with his spouts of irritability, remind my self to keep him calm and not fight back, and lastly find a way to ease his pains during the night. I've tried the late night conversations in bed to keep his mind off the withdrawals and it's worked so far! He still squirms about and can't lye in one place, but he isn't complaining and he gets so tired to the point where he passes out. All of this information has been very helpful though.. For myself, though, I need to find a source where I can let out my frustrations and hardships when going through this. It's difficult to find that one friend or acquaintance that is willing to listen to me vent about a topic that's rather negative and will not judge my partner. I do appreciate all the help, though!
This is true in most cases and I'm sure we have all had different experiences, however, from my knowledge Suboxone should only be used for a weeks to a few months at most to help with the withdrawals from opiate dependence. In this situation, my s/o's physician has suggested he stay on it for longer, maybe even life. We both thought this was ridiculous and have researched our physician's advice. Our insurance is limiting and currently in our area there are no openings for other doctors, so we decided to take this upon ourselves to get him off of Suboxone once and for all. We're basically doing this on our own and have already stopped the script.
Swimmingdancer, once again, very helpful! Right now we have gathered the essentials for a recipe called the Thomas Recipe. If you haven't heard of it (Which I'm sure you have based on your knowledge) It's a blend of different vitamins and minerals and certain fruits that should be taken daily to help with energy and the reduction of withdrawals. So far it's been doing great and it would work better if I could get him on that darn bike we bought lol. Your words are very encouraging though and I've seen improvement in our relationship through this time. Quitting smoking has also been very positive. I some time ago and since then he had tapered down quite a bit since he lost his smoking partner lol but it's been two weeks since his last high and he claims to be doing great! I'm hoping we can keep this up.
BiggDirty01
Bluelighter
I am not sure how long of a habit your husband had, but as this moves out of the acute withdrawal stage (the really horrible physical type symptoms) I would start looking into helping your spouse develop a support system to help him maintain now that he has moved on from the Oxy.
A drug therapist would be an excellent starting point, or even an outpatient treatment program. The outpatient program I went to met twice a week from 6:30-9 with a family night video or discussion on Wednesday from 6:00-7:00. Having an outlet for the rush of emotions that come with getting clean from opiates can be a bit overwhelming and potentially triggering, so it really is important to have some kind of professional support.
The other support is to look into 12-step groups in your area. There are many different denominations: Alcoholics, Narcotics, Cocaine, Marijuana, Pills, even Chronic Pain Anonymous. These are easy to find with a simple Google search.
Lastly, get your husband a physical with his/her Primary Care physician. You never know what kind of damage could have been done while using, and his doctor could prescribe medications for anxiety, depression or insomnia.
Hope this has been useful information. Feel free to PM me if you would like further info or to discuss further! Good luck
A drug therapist would be an excellent starting point, or even an outpatient treatment program. The outpatient program I went to met twice a week from 6:30-9 with a family night video or discussion on Wednesday from 6:00-7:00. Having an outlet for the rush of emotions that come with getting clean from opiates can be a bit overwhelming and potentially triggering, so it really is important to have some kind of professional support.
The other support is to look into 12-step groups in your area. There are many different denominations: Alcoholics, Narcotics, Cocaine, Marijuana, Pills, even Chronic Pain Anonymous. These are easy to find with a simple Google search.
Lastly, get your husband a physical with his/her Primary Care physician. You never know what kind of damage could have been done while using, and his doctor could prescribe medications for anxiety, depression or insomnia.
Hope this has been useful information. Feel free to PM me if you would like further info or to discuss further! Good luck