Opioids my opiate dosage reduction (on the road to being opiate free)

[trickfire]

**Please inform me if the location of this thread is out of place so I can post in the appropriate forum.

Hi I am planning on trying to cut my opiate dosage in half over the next few weeks. I would say I have a "moderate' oxycodone addiction. My current dose at one time for a mild buzz is 60mg ir, and that is 2-5 times daily. I have only been taking opiates less than a year and only within the past 5 months has my dosage been above 25 mg at one time. I am not ready to completely kick the habit, so my short term goal is to cut my dosage in half. I do intend in the near future to completly quit opiates altogether. I know there are many tips and tricks on how to minimize withdraws and have an easier comedown. Here are some the things that I plan on doing:

- I plan to stop taking entirely for 48 hours
-I plan to start exercising
-I am going to be smoking marijuana because it reduces my anxeity and for a little bit gets rid of withdraw symptoms
- I hope to try to start eating more and healthier

I need moral support on my journey to being drug free, and I hope by starting this I can get some help from you guys on how to get through this. I am scared on what comes up next and I have faith in myself to accomplish it, but still yet I am fearful on how I am going to feel. Please, if there are any tips or help that you guys can give me it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you very much for reading.

 

[Dexed]

This would be better suited in OD.

 

[nuke]

--> od

 

[papa]

Here are some the things that I plan on doing:

- I plan to stop taking entirely for 48 hours

I don't think this is wise. Taper is the way to go. You can make the first taper a steep one, but you'll have to stretch the time between the first taper and the second taper. I was taking 320mg of oxy a day when I started my taper. I had been on that dose for about a year. It took me three years to build up to it. There was no way in hell that I could bear to go without oxy for 48 hours at that point. I was forced to take a steep taper because I only had one month's supply to use for my taper.. I dropped 80 mg the first day and stayed at 240mg for about 4 or 5 days before I dropped again. make your first reduction your biggest. Then make your next reduction about half as much as your first and so on..

I was such a pussy when it came to withdrawals that I put off making reductions longer than I should've. Since I was running out of my last script, I had to step it up at the end and I was sicker than I thought I would be but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. I was down to zero in about 7 weeks. I've been off of oxy since september 2010.

Good luck to you ..

 

[muvolution]

I have withdrawn more times than I can count... I was using over 100mg of IV hydromorphone a day and I did a 7 day taper. 100mg to 50mg to 25mg to 12.5, etc....

papasomni gave great advice also.

 

[trickfire]

Ok thanks guys, but yeah going ct for a short period will help jump start the whole process. Basically from that point I will start the tapering. I'm not sure exactly how I want to do it, I don't know whether or not to cut my one time dosage down or to cut my daily dose down.. Like I said I take 60 mg at once but my short term goal is to go back down to 30 mg for the same effect. Does anybody halve any tips for me to cut back down to 30 mg?

 

[papa]

If you want to go from 60 to 30, just do it. You won't get high and you will withdraw, but there's no way to go from "up here" to "down there" without withdrawing.. you're going to have to pay the piper..

If you keep using, there is really no way to go from 60 down to 30 and achieve the same effects ..tolerance will return very quickly..

It's going to be tough. But if you're a recreational user, the one advantage you have over a pain patient is that you won't have to deal with the chronic pain that put you there in the first place..

 

[rave23]

godspeed unknown stranger, godspeed.

I thought i throw in my experiences with reducing opiate dosages when dependant.

It's possible, but it takes 100% of your dedication, willpower and courage, and a determination made out of German Thyssen Krupp Steel.

I had myself a habit of ingesting some 24mg of Hydromorphone a day. 4 - 8mg in the morning, and 12 - 20mg at night, and sometimes in between. Needless to say, i got high as fuck, until i eventually just felt a mild buzz, to the point where snorting 20mg's had me feeling nothing but normal.

Yeah, that's stuck in a bad place. I started banging the hydro, which was a mistake. i'd shoot 8mg's twice a day, just to feel normal. Scrap that. i didn't feel normal. But to keep on functioning, i had to shoot myself up twice a day. I'm sure you know what i mean when i say feeling normal. You don't feel normal. You feel smacked up, and ready enough to take on the day, where without, you're just a tired, sick wreck. After about a month of this, i wanted out.

I started reducing my IV dosage, by 2mg every three days. Now let me tell you this, it sucked monkey balls. I'd shoot 6mg, and i was left hanging somewhere between high and withrdawals. It wasn't cool. I barely could inject myself, knowing that i would deny myself the feeling i was looking for. Determination. Shooting 6mg twice a day and i actually stayed on this for about a week. Some progress, i might say. I was constantly tired, achey with a nervous gut from hell. I can't imagine what it must have been like kicking the shit cold turkey. Well, actually i know what it's like, and this was a cakewalk.

So i reduced to 4mg twice a day, and for the frist two days of this, was in what seemed like bad, bad withdrawals. I still think it was my own mind playing tricks on me to get me to inject 8mg again. I stuck this out, loathing that i had to shoot up a dosage that wouldn't get me where i longed to be so bad. However, every time i shot up i felt better. Never a 100%, but mind you, i was trying to get off this shit.

I stayed on 4mg twice a day for another week or so (yeah, i said three days, but this was going differently than i was expecting). I then felt like i was needlessly torturing myself continuing to shoot up an ineffective dosage. So i broke my bond with the needle. The next day, i went to snorting 4mg twice a day again, and fuck my life, that did very little.

However. withdrawals came on, but in muffled intensity. I then said fuck my dosing regimen, and stopped snorting it altogether, except when i couldn't take it no more. Then i would snort a bump here and there, until i was consuming no more than 4mg over the course of a day. I then realized the rest would be like ripping off a bandaid, and quit alltogeter after staying on 4mg a day. Yes, there was discomfort. But i found most the WD's were mental at this point. Like, feelings of intense nothingness. I wanted to feel something so bad that i considered shooting up again, but hey, that was a laughable though.

It has now been three weeks since i've been off the hydro, and everything is leveling out again.

If sick, twisted torture is your thing, gradually reduce your dosage. But be advised, that Mental withdrawals will kick in 100% as soon as you take a dosage that doesn't get you high anymore. Your mind will want the high feeling again. The less-than-effective dosage keeps your body from going into physical withdrawal, but you will still experience mental cravings from hell. Watch out for that!

Also, good luck, once again. May your ventures be successful.

 

[gomorrah]

I tried what you did. I can't tell you what to do, I can only tell you my experience. I tapered, tapered, tapered. Smoked weed. RELAPSE! Eventually i got back to using again too much. So i went to rehab. All or nothing.

 

[muvolution]

wow dude, reducing that quickly while shooting it sounds torturous. I just say fuck it and stop all at once for a few days, get good and sick, then only taper if I absolutely have to.

You're a sick fuck. haha.

 

[waldo777]

I came here to post on same subject worrying it was OD material, glad I can post here and receive some advise based on more than just experience. ( Though in the end experience is probably the best teacher, my pain is making me hope for a solid scientific answer...)

I was taking 800-1,000+mg (over a gram some days) of oxycodone orally via crushed and partially disolved 80mg OP Oxycontins. Cut down to where I've been taking 480mg per day...due to circumstances had to taper drastically and have been taking 150mg's a day for the past 4 days.

My question is: When tappering and when one has a fixed amount of oxy per day; is one better off taking larger (bulbous) doses less frequently, or making each dose smaller--thus taking smaller doses more frequently?
Essentially, is there any chemical, neurological/psychological benefit to taking a fixed amount of oxy via a smaller amount of larger doses, or by a larger amount of smaller doses.

I recall something about how the effects from opiates are not directly proprtional to the amount ingested, where at some dosage the effects are greater than one would suspect. Is that true? And if so, does it also hold true when talking about keeping w/d symptoms away?

Thanks in advance

 

[Opiates4lyfe]

The next 10 days are going to be hell for you if you stop all at once but if you really want to do it i'm sure you can. The first part of the process (admitting that you might have a problem) is over and it only gets harder. Eating healthy will help but there's really no easy way around the withdraw symptoms, if there was im sure you'd know already.

Best of luck!
You can do it!

 

[rave23]

wow dude, reducing that quickly while shooting it sounds torturous. I just say fuck it and stop all at once for a few days, get good and sick, then only taper if I absolutely have to.

You're a sick fuck. haha.

oh believe me, i was crawling up walls wanting to shoot more. But my determination to get out of this was bigger than my desire to shoot up and only feel normal again. I had to fix myself. On a limited budget too.

In reality, there was about a week or so between each reductions.