Just to vent..

[8L4YN3]

I will spare the details of life before this point, but around mid 2010 i started opioid replacement therapy. Ending up on 140mg of methadone for over a year. In mid 2011 i met the current love of my life and mother of my 3 month old daughter(who's doing awesome!). By march 2012, i had decided that i wanted off of opiates altogether, so between March and October i reduced to 20mg of methadone.

This was fairly brutal in all honesty, i was in a mild state of withdrawal this entire time i swear. I then switched over to suboxone, 32mg, and continued my tapering. I got to 6mg and it was getting too close to my daughters birth for me to continue with tapering and stuff so i just stopped, and stayed leveled out at this dose, which was cool, suboxone has some awesome holding power.. I had hoped to be off it before her birth, but apart from going through traumatic cold turkey, it wasn't going to happen in the given time frame, so i'm guilty about that.

Anyways, so come to the 12th of this month and i've absolutely had it with my clinic and their bullshit hoops to jump through, i mean they are more worried about diversion than my life getting back on track, how can i work when my commute to the chemist is like 25 minutes each way by car, and i don't even drive, so utterly impossible to get to work and the chemist daily, all via bus, maybe possible but not sustainable, i'd burn out.. exhausting as hell, so obviously i needed takehomes, so my plan was to get 5 takehomes a week, and work that way, turns out i could only get 6 a month, after a massively long wait and appeal to some bullshit tribunal who turned down my initial request for takehomes based on previous iv abuse of methadone takehomes. Basically: you were once using your takehomes intravenously, so now you're never getting them ever again..

I got frustrated, i thought fuck this, i have one way out of this, jump off this dose now so i can be well enough to work and be unaddicted ASAP. So i did just that, come the 12th of this month i have my last dose of 6mg, buy an ounce of weed, some alcohol, dig in, and prepare for battle.

I felt next to nothing until about day 4, day 5 shit gets more real. Now this is not like a full blown heroin kick, no, this is slow drawn out torture. At that point my symptoms were very intense weakness, intense akathisia(honestly this has got to be one of the most sanity robbing things a human can experience), intense leg pain. After about 8 days of this i caved and ran back to my clinic, had one 2mg dose, then got mad at myself and didn't go back in the next day and instead dug in again for another fight. This time i get another week into things before it gets unbearable, so i load up on codeine and dxm.

I'm currently on a waiting list for an impatient detox and may have up to a fortnight to go on my own, doctors are wankers and wont give me any diazepam or even clonidine, the clinic wont give me shit because i'm not their responsibility anymore and i must see a gp for any drugs, i tried 3, all were super awkward and flat out said i have to get the clinic to prescribe things, goodluck finding a doctor to take responsibility for me... So here i am, waiting for a call from the detox place. I'm keeping my sanity with about 400mg of codeine twice a day and about 100mg dxm twice a day, not helping nearly as much as you would think..

I have one main symptom and that is this fucking leg-bone pain. It's brutal. It constantly feels like their is ice packs pressed up against my bones, or there's termites eating my bones from the inside, my legs feel like two freezing cold steel rods, honestly, all i can feel is bone, aching bone... I don't know if any of you guys got them 'growing pains' in their legs as children, but it feels very much like that, a dull ache, but intense.

I find all that helps is codeine obviously, plus baths so hot i can JUST stand the heat, that kinda takes it away completely while im in the bath, and improves it substantially for about 10 minutes after, then its back to aching legs.

Right now i'm just using the codeine, and i'm continuing to use it because honestly i can only just handle how i feel and i can tell i'm losing tolerance on codeine anyways so i'm not going to make this any harder, just bide my time, let my tolerance continue to drop then once i get into detox it's no opiates just diazepam, clonidine, norgesic and whatever else they will throw at me.

Everything feels so wrong with my body. However i'm lucky i can sleep, but honestly man if i had a gun next to me when i first woke up... This is when it's the worst for obvious reasons, and i instantly dose up on dxm, then codeine, then i jump in the bath. But man this is hard.

Guess i just wanted to vent and hear some success stories and have some people tell me this will actually get better and improve...

 

[Jarhead]

Well, I don't know if I can be of much help as to the fact that I have been on fentanyl for over (must be 5-6 years), and abuseing it for the last 2. I have gone through some of the worst WDs many times in the past. I honestly felt like I was going to die.

I have no idea what I have done or what changed but when I burned though my monthly prescription in 10 days (100 mcg fent a day), I braced for yet horrible WDs again. Yet they never seemed to come, I seemed to go straight into PAWS. So many times before in the past I prayed to god that if he just let me get through the acute WDs I'd never again do opiates. Well I guess he granted my wish because its now day 7 of the fent. Cold turkey. While I always thought the acute WDs are the hardest, the PAWS is proving to be no joke in and of it self. So I've decided to not look a gift horse in the mouth and, TAKE MY LIFE AND LEAVE WITH IT.

Like you over the past 7 days I have been hit particularly hard be the lack of motivation, fatigue, and emotionless detachment. Every morning has been a real fucking BITCH! I liken it to a very old car starting in the winter, it takes a looong time to get going, and once it does, it just isn't running on all cylinders.

I have moments, sometimes minutes, sometimes up to 2-3 hours that I feel normal. Understand that the mind (and the body) is an incredibly power thing. Instead of normally dwelling on how I could or would get a "fix" every waking min. I know "try" and spend my every waking min. on what things I can do to create those mins. Of feeling normal, and then how to expand those mins. into 1/2 then to an hour. It's hard (don't I know it). But if it was easy...addiction wouldn't be such a very real deal, and this forum wouldn't be here.

I'm sorry to hear about your red tape troubles with your healthcare system. Your choice of words leads me to believe that you are located in the UK. While there are situations where you need others to help, know that to really quite it, YOU need to tackle your addiction. Own your pain and addiction, because when it comes down to it, it's not the clinics rehab or docs its you that will end up winning. It has been my experience that addicts only truly quite when there has been an "event" in their lives (mostly negative events). Sometimes positive event to, let yours be the birth of your baby. I have a 6 and a 9 year old. They are everything to me.

Good luck, and let me know how your doing since I'm fighting this battle right beside you and others. It isn't impossible.

 

[neversickanymore]

Hope there no next time.. but if there is just jump.. i found that you can only feel so bad.. jumped off 150 methadone pd plus 260 roxy pd plus 6 mg xanax pd.. did it in august of last year.. about end december or beginning of january my mind cleared.. I'm happier than I have ever been.. ever... not because im off the drugs, but thats amazing.. change your thinking and you change your perception.. life is how you perceive it.. we really do choose how it is.. If i can be as happy as I am so can you.