My Personal Experience/Thoughts About Suboxone - For Those Who Are Considering Treat.

MindOverMethadone

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 9, 2011
Messages
109
If you're not interested in my drug use, skip the timeline. Go down and read the bottom few paragraphs...

I feel like I've been trolling these forums excessively, but It was the only place I could turn to for help. I know there has to be others out there who like me. A little background history on my drug abuse:

January 2009: Friend of mine gave me an assortment of hydrocodone 7.5's and some oxycodone 10s in exchange for a little bit of herb.

I remember feeling like I was on top of the world off ONE of those percs. Good times :)

February 20009: By this time I had acquired a sort of "tolerance" and required about 2-3 percs to obtain the same high. By this time I had been using either daily or at least every other day, depending on whether or not my buddy had some.

May 2009: By now, I was using daily, my tolerance had shot up to the point where I now had to take about 6-7 Percs to achieve the same high. I would go into withdrawal when I didn't take any, but now that I look back, they were very very minor. I wish I could go back...

Summer of 2009: My buddy "T" had just moved back into town and had developed an OC problem in his hometown. He introduced me to the what I would now consider my drug of choice. I remember insufflating a 40mg tablet and projectile vomiting about an hour later...felt amazing before and after.

Winter 2009: My tolerance was incalculable by this point; I could sometimes achieve a high with 80mgs, but then some days, I would need at least 120. I knew I was in a world of trouble...

**I'm going to skip a few months here, because until the following summer, I had been doing the same thing, except now I was needing about 200-300+ mgs of Oxy to achieve the same high. I just couldn't afford it anymore...

Summer of 2010: I had finally discovered what I then considered a miracle drug called "suboxone". I would take tiny bumps (.5mgs) of the stuff and feel GREAT! I vividly remember the first time I ever touched the stuff; The high was superb! Felt good all day. But after re-dosing at day 2, the effects were noticeably...non-existent.

From this point on, it was a constant battle of quitting and relapsing for a couple of months; I was getting the subs off a buddy who was selling his script to get OCs. I was tired of paying his inflated prices and decided I needed help: I checked myself into a methadone clinic and thought that it was the best decision I had ever made!

Now a little sidenote here: If you ever find yourself in this position, make sure whoever the hell your doctor is, that you tell them that you do NOT want to get on a long-term maintenance program. I cannot stress enough how painful and intolerable the withdrawals I went through were, due to the Suboxone.

So I was started on 40mgs of Methadone and I hated it. It made me super drowsy and I couldn't function throughout the day. I had prior experience with suboxone so I decided I would pay the extra 7 dollars/day and go with the Subs. Now, these people at the clinic?...they all seemed to be set on me being on this shit for a long time. This guy was talking months! That sure is a lot of money in his pocket!! After a couple months of staying "clean", I decided enough was enough, and tried CTing (cold turkey) the stuff...Wow. Nobody had told me how powerful this stuff was. They prescribed me 4mgs a day, twice daily, but only took 1mg a day because I knew that's all I needed.

I stopped going to the clinic and decided I was going to do this myself. I got my last script of Subs from the clinic and gave them the finger. PEACE OUT YOU BASTARDS!! I had been given a weeks supply of Sub, which to me was more like 3 months worth.

Now, the biggest mistake I made while trying to quit the subs was trying to get high on my DOC. I though to myself...well if I use my DOC long enough to the point where the Sub is out of my system, I would only feel the withdrawal symptoms of my DOC right?...WRONG. I tried and failed, ended up getting back on the Subs. Over the next couple of months, I was constantly either using the subs to maintain, or taking a couple days off to try and get high on my DOC. Wasn't really working. The subs do a great job at occupying your receptors, so it requires a much higher dose of your DOC to feel the effects.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON DRUGS IF YOU ARE ON SUBOXONE. Jesus Christ I regret that so much. I have spent countless amounts of money on OC's with nothing to show for it. I didn't even feel good on them. They just eliminated my withdrawal symptoms.

Anyway, So i finally ran out of the subs and I knew it was only a matter of a day or two before I would start to feel like SHIIIITTT so I decided to spill the beans to my girlfriend (who I was had never told by the way), my friends and family members. I got really lucky because my parents had just purchased a place out of town and I knew what had to be done...I moved...left everything I had behind (car, my own apartment...freedom). I knew I wouldn't be able to obtain any sort of opiates out here so I moved. Well...here's what I'm trying to get at...

So I move out to XXXXX to cold turkey a .25mg sub addiction thinking it would be a piece of cake. I couldn't have been more wrong. Even at that low of a dose, because I had been taking it daily, it had built up in my system and it was going to take longer than a couple of days to get over the acute withdrawal stage. All I can say is...It was HELL. Hell for about 12 days!! Believe it or not, it didn't get any better, even by day 6. Not even by day 7. Not even by day 8. Maybe it got better a little bit, the RLS, vomiting, muscle aches sort of diminished, but very slowly. I'm now on day 14? 15? I don't even know anymore. But I feel MUCH better.

Pretty much the moral of the story is, there is no easy way out. I wish I could go back in time and just quit the OC cold turkey, instead of trying to quit the Subs. Whoever said they had little to no withdrawal symptoms when they quit Suboxone got really really lucky. I was taking a quarter of a mg and still felt like complete shit (for 2 weeks). I'm still lethargic and bit depressed, but nothing some good old exercise and conversation can't help.

TIPS:
1. Methadone for one week (low dose: 10-30mgs)
2. Short-term suboxone taper (low dose 1-2mgs or even less) for one week
3. QUIT (I used xanax to help combat the anxiety and for sleep)

Suboxone is one powerful drug...

If not, you better plan on being on that shit for the rest of your life 'cause it's by far the toughest thing I have ever had to go through, physically and mentally. I've been in a lot of physical pain AND mental pain, aside from withdrawal (Broken bones, loss of family members and a very close friend who committed suicide) and this was on par.

Now as for how to ease the withdrawal symptoms, there are very informative threads here on these forums that seriously, without it, I might have contemplated suicide. So thank you all who try to help in The Dark Side.
 
very good informative post bro. I'll never forget 260mg of methadone on maintanence , was an utter zombie , it wrecked me , as a person i lost my soul my body went to shit . I was being tapered so slowly , I got to 160mg and walked out of the clinic with my middle fingers high... wow was I in for a nightmare. 7 weeks later I still had the legs kicking and after two months I had my only kick of benzos in my LIFE (I've been RX'd benzos for 15 years, I am 25). I was / am prescribed to 120 2mg xanax and I never ever even had come close to using the stuff more than 2 days in a row, 3 days a week tops for my anxiety attack. But methadone (and suboxone as I was on it @ 32 mg for 1 1/2 years) are the hardest , longest kicks I've EVER endured. I quit both cold and ended up with tremors for a week waiting to slip into a coma :( it was a hell on earth experience for me.

Keep your head up man , and keep fighting the good fight. I've been there done it, went back for second for god knows why !!! I am trying with all my will to never go through this shit again it destroyed my body and my mind really took a toll wandering if I would EVER be normal again. When you have opiate wds for MONTHs it is honestly a dangerous dangerous place, I was highly suicidal. Please everyone who reads this excellent OP post take heed from it and my own experiences. These are some extremely long lasting powerful drugs!!!
 
^I think the biggest mistake people make is that they think these drugs are easy to come off of it if they taper...not true. Heroin, in my opinion, is easier to kick than this shit. I'm sorry to hear bro :/ God I sympathize and feel your pain. Kind of makes me want to shed a tear, when I think about hard it was for the past two weeks. I can't believe I've made it this far...

You keep your head up too man. You're about the same age as me dude!! The way I look at it, think about ourselves in 10 years and how badly we would kill to be back at the age we're at now...right? Kicking the habit now is our only choice :( But you're right, a month of withdrawals, and suicide and anything bad we can think about consumes our mind and soul.

Other people have successfully quit, so can we. They're no better than we are. My shit stank, so do theirs. Chronic.
 
Bro I've not recreationaly used opiates for awhile now and I feel ten fold better. It IS POSSIBLE. I can't promise I won't fuck up, I won't do that and let myself and those who love me down. I can promise I will never stop fighting and so far so good.
 
Positive thinking like that is the only useful tool we have at our disposal. Like I've mentioned before, this is a fight we have to face on our own. Support from other members on these forums, family members, friends, loved ones, even a simple nice gesture from a random stranger; I am a firm believer that the world is more good than evil. We just need to stay positive.

And I'm with you 100% when you say that you cannot promise you won't fuck up. I can't either. No one can. Never say never, right? As long as we try our best, we're on the road to success. Stay positive my friend, you're not alone.
 
Wow MindOver, I was planning on tapering off Bupe and still attend university, but from your description that seems like a no-go. I have heard from a decent number of people on BL that Bupe withdrawals, if done correctly, are protracted but relatively mild, at least after the first couple days. I guess that shows are varied people's reactions can be to Bupe.

I guess I'll be finding out for myself in a couple weeks.
 
I'm an advocate of bupe, don't take me wrong. Just not long-term. The weak, such as myself, are not able to just "quit". Easier said than done. But if you can get off of the bupe within a week or two, I think you'll be fine. If not, plan on having some longggggg dragged-out withdrawals. Mild as they may be, they will be present for at least a couple of weeks. I promise you that. Oh, and start off LOW. that is so key. Also, try and wait as long as possible to take your bupe. You don't need it every day at first. Like I've mentioned, it's a very very powerful opiate. There were instances when I only needed to take it every 3 days. I just took it every day 'cause I was scared. Please take my advice and keep me posted.

EDIT: Okay I read your post wrong, if you're already on the bupe, good luck! Only thing I can recommend is taper to the point where you're consuming GRAINS of that shit. Get to as low of a dosage as possible. Maybe that's where I went wrong. Maybe .25 mgs was too much?
 
Thanks MindOver, I appreciate any info I can get on Bupe WD. My plan is to wean down to .25mg/day and then start taking it over other day, to prevent buildup in the system. My main concern is that it will affect my schoolwork. If the WD is bad enough that it compromises my grades, then I'll probably choose to WD at the end of the school year.

Nicely written personal account, I think these can be very informative to others in Bupe maint.
 
Erik I would highly recommend you do it at the end of the school year. I needed about 14 days before I could actually function. I left school/town my Junior year, second semester (taking a break now, strictly due to opiates). That's a very good idea though, try and get down to .25 mgs or even less, and PLEASE try to take it every other day. Go as long as possible between doses. But just take my advice, do it at the end of the school year! Your grades WILL drop if you do it now.
 
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