I can totally relate and want to ask this question myself
My cousin per say is taking 80 to 120 mg of OP's a day. He has been doing so for about 6 weeks. Before that they had not taken any pain medicine whatsoever.
He wants to know how to responsibly get off of the medicine. I am not experienced to advise him how to do so. He is worried that if he does it cold turkey he will get sick.
Is this true ? Can he do it cold turkey or should he try to taper off the medicine ? Also, he does not get the medicine from his doctor but from the streets so he cannot call his doctor
and get a lighter prescription.
I am hoping some more experienced people from this forum can answer this question. I am so glad this forum his here.
6 weeks is not very long at all. It's possible he may still have little or no dependence.
Only way to find out for sure is to try. If he's found that what he takes today is less effective than the same amount when he started, it's more likely he has a dependence.
If his dependence is still small or nonexistent, I suspect he'd be much better off just stopping rather than tapering. Since tapering is just more time to become dependent to it.
Way I see it that's what it boils down too, whether or not he's dependent, and if so to what degree and how much withdrawal he can tolerate.
What I would recommend, is just stop the pills and see what happens. See if he starts feeling sick. If he does, see how it goes, if it becomes intolerable, resume the pills and taper instead.
The only danger I can see in doing that is that there's a chance that if he is dependent, and he let's himself be in withdrawal for several days before deciding he can't continue, he should probably take a bit less than normal to start with when he resumes the pills. Just in case his tolerance has dropped a bit in that time.
That's the best advise I can think of from my experience. It's worth noting though my experience with oxycodone, and pain pills in general is kinda limited. I was a heavy heroin addict and any time I've taken those time release oxy pills they haven't affected me at all unless I was really sick in withdrawal.