Bojangles69
Bluelighter
- Joined
- May 20, 2009
- Messages
- 1,758
This thought was becoming more and more prevalent in my mind lately just taking an objective look at my current perception of tapering and comparing it to the last time I cold turkeyed.
So I asked myself whats the number one reason *I* chose to taper?
And the answer is simple, to reduce pain and stay functional while getting off opiates.
The key phrase here I'm focusing on is "to reduce pain".
Now I look back about 4 years ago when I went to detox, and remember EVEN WHEN I was at my peak on day 3, I vividly recall playing ping pong with the other patients and still having a good time and laughn with them. In fact, I wasn't really sick at all. Detox had given me such a specific and effective cocktail of meds, that I basically experienced minor wds for only 6 days, pretty close to the intensity of the begining of my taper.
I started my taper on May 14th, expecting to be off by Jun 14th, and having the rest of the summer to work, get in shape, and just live my life for once.
So how is it, that I originally estimated 4 weeks to drop this habit, and now I'm 4 days shy of **3 fucking months** tapering? I couldn't possibly be that big a pussy =] theres just no way lol. 3 weeks of that time was spent maintaining on 1 specific dose during vacation. So technically I've only been tapering for 2 months and 1 week.. but STILL, wtf?!
I only remember a slight case of RLS for those initial 3 days of detox, I've been dealing with RLS for 3-4 weeks now, and finally just got rid of it. But its not just that its so many other symptoms that seemed to have been drawn out by this taper and I think I know why. I honestly believe when you cold turkey it forces your receptors to adapt at a much quicker rate than when you taper. I think when you taper you somewhat confuse your receptors into a delayed withdrawal syndrome, and even when you get low your body still has problems properly overcoming those symptoms.
I just can't understand for the life of me why I'd ever subject myself to this crap again.. tapering that is. To be in minimal wds for 9 weeks (and still going) vs being in minimal wds for 1-2 weeks with meds, the answer is pretty clear cut.
The ONLY real reason I tapered is because I had no access to withdrawal meds. But when I thought about it, I've ALWAYS had access to those meds. And when I think about it further ANYONE on this forum has access to those meds if they just use their brain. You don't need to see a dr if thats your hang up, I'm not advocating illegal activity but lets face it ordering a bunch of non controlled meds online really isn't that dangerous. And I've done it so many times before with controlled meds I question now why the hell I just didn't do this sooner.
I've been sweating toxic waste oil out of my pores for 3 months now, when I could have just took some clonidine and not delt with it.
My muscle aches, nervousness and restlesness, soma could have handled it all. Darvocets and tramadol aren't opiates, they're opoids, and I've noticed they don't really delay wds at all like actual opiates do. If you take 1 of them long enough obviously you risk addiction, but in terms of actually delaying wds I've never had either darvs or tram do it to me.
If I ever had to do it again, I'd do it the right way and just get the meds,
Soma
Neurontin
Clonidine
Tramadol or Darvocet
(benzo optional as neurontin has enough gaba effects by itself imo)
and THATS IT. If you have enough of each one of those meds, I really see most people minimizing their wds at least 80-90%. Maybe if you're coming off heroin it would help to throw in a benzo, but for most moderate habits I think those 4 alone would work perfectly.
I just can't help thinking how much pain I actually wound up going through with this process, when just going cold turkey with the right meds essentially produces the same threshold of pain, very minimal. I wasted money on tons of immodium (which helped a lot but never enough), kratom, diphenhydramine, 5-htp, melotonin, vitamins, OTC cold and flu medicine, so much shit that really didn't do much of anything at all. Why? Because I wanted to do everything legally? While I was ALREADY ABUSING AN OPIATE? What a lame excuse that was.
I'm not in a bad mood I'm just trying to be logical about this. I wasted essentially my entire summer with "minor" wds, which in all honesty weren't much better than all out wds. I mean RLS is RLS whether its minor or your kicking holes in your wall your NOT SLEEPING either way.
Same with the hot flashes and chills, I noticed whether they're severe or minor either way they both suck. And if you got to work as long as you have the right meds its not gonna be a whole hell of a lot harden than if your tapering. Unless you plan on doing it for 6 months or something.
Theres obviously exceptions to this rule, like the people who slam 30 bags of dope a day. But I had just as serious if not more serious of a habit the first time. And it honestly feels like the sum total amount of pain was not even 5% of all the shit I've experienced by tapering this time around.
But don't get me wrong if you can only cold turkey w/out any meds to assist you, than by far do a taper. But no matter what, if I ever have to do this crap again (which I'm obviously not planning on) I'm just getting my hands on the right meds and jumping off from day 1. Or maybe I'm going about this the wrong way, maybe those detox meds don't help everyone like they help me, but I really don't remember remotely as much bullshit as this time around.
Rant over.
So I asked myself whats the number one reason *I* chose to taper?
And the answer is simple, to reduce pain and stay functional while getting off opiates.
The key phrase here I'm focusing on is "to reduce pain".
Now I look back about 4 years ago when I went to detox, and remember EVEN WHEN I was at my peak on day 3, I vividly recall playing ping pong with the other patients and still having a good time and laughn with them. In fact, I wasn't really sick at all. Detox had given me such a specific and effective cocktail of meds, that I basically experienced minor wds for only 6 days, pretty close to the intensity of the begining of my taper.
I started my taper on May 14th, expecting to be off by Jun 14th, and having the rest of the summer to work, get in shape, and just live my life for once.
So how is it, that I originally estimated 4 weeks to drop this habit, and now I'm 4 days shy of **3 fucking months** tapering? I couldn't possibly be that big a pussy =] theres just no way lol. 3 weeks of that time was spent maintaining on 1 specific dose during vacation. So technically I've only been tapering for 2 months and 1 week.. but STILL, wtf?!
I only remember a slight case of RLS for those initial 3 days of detox, I've been dealing with RLS for 3-4 weeks now, and finally just got rid of it. But its not just that its so many other symptoms that seemed to have been drawn out by this taper and I think I know why. I honestly believe when you cold turkey it forces your receptors to adapt at a much quicker rate than when you taper. I think when you taper you somewhat confuse your receptors into a delayed withdrawal syndrome, and even when you get low your body still has problems properly overcoming those symptoms.
I just can't understand for the life of me why I'd ever subject myself to this crap again.. tapering that is. To be in minimal wds for 9 weeks (and still going) vs being in minimal wds for 1-2 weeks with meds, the answer is pretty clear cut.
The ONLY real reason I tapered is because I had no access to withdrawal meds. But when I thought about it, I've ALWAYS had access to those meds. And when I think about it further ANYONE on this forum has access to those meds if they just use their brain. You don't need to see a dr if thats your hang up, I'm not advocating illegal activity but lets face it ordering a bunch of non controlled meds online really isn't that dangerous. And I've done it so many times before with controlled meds I question now why the hell I just didn't do this sooner.
I've been sweating toxic waste oil out of my pores for 3 months now, when I could have just took some clonidine and not delt with it.
My muscle aches, nervousness and restlesness, soma could have handled it all. Darvocets and tramadol aren't opiates, they're opoids, and I've noticed they don't really delay wds at all like actual opiates do. If you take 1 of them long enough obviously you risk addiction, but in terms of actually delaying wds I've never had either darvs or tram do it to me.
If I ever had to do it again, I'd do it the right way and just get the meds,
Soma
Neurontin
Clonidine
Tramadol or Darvocet
(benzo optional as neurontin has enough gaba effects by itself imo)
and THATS IT. If you have enough of each one of those meds, I really see most people minimizing their wds at least 80-90%. Maybe if you're coming off heroin it would help to throw in a benzo, but for most moderate habits I think those 4 alone would work perfectly.
I just can't help thinking how much pain I actually wound up going through with this process, when just going cold turkey with the right meds essentially produces the same threshold of pain, very minimal. I wasted money on tons of immodium (which helped a lot but never enough), kratom, diphenhydramine, 5-htp, melotonin, vitamins, OTC cold and flu medicine, so much shit that really didn't do much of anything at all. Why? Because I wanted to do everything legally? While I was ALREADY ABUSING AN OPIATE? What a lame excuse that was.
I'm not in a bad mood I'm just trying to be logical about this. I wasted essentially my entire summer with "minor" wds, which in all honesty weren't much better than all out wds. I mean RLS is RLS whether its minor or your kicking holes in your wall your NOT SLEEPING either way.
Same with the hot flashes and chills, I noticed whether they're severe or minor either way they both suck. And if you got to work as long as you have the right meds its not gonna be a whole hell of a lot harden than if your tapering. Unless you plan on doing it for 6 months or something.
Theres obviously exceptions to this rule, like the people who slam 30 bags of dope a day. But I had just as serious if not more serious of a habit the first time. And it honestly feels like the sum total amount of pain was not even 5% of all the shit I've experienced by tapering this time around.
But don't get me wrong if you can only cold turkey w/out any meds to assist you, than by far do a taper. But no matter what, if I ever have to do this crap again (which I'm obviously not planning on) I'm just getting my hands on the right meds and jumping off from day 1. Or maybe I'm going about this the wrong way, maybe those detox meds don't help everyone like they help me, but I really don't remember remotely as much bullshit as this time around.
Rant over.