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  • TDS Moderators: AlphaMethylPhenyl | paranoid android

On suboxone 9 months, relapsed, have some questions?

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DopeAllah

Greenlighter
Joined
Dec 8, 2012
Messages
21
Hello board, I hope your having a happy holidays. So I am 24, I first did percocet in 8th grade (13), and flirted with opiates until I was 19, and discovered a heroin connection. Held my disease at bay for a bit, but within a year and a half I was sick. For two years I have been an IV heroin user (usually .5g shots) daily. I then decided to clean my act up and began a long cycle of using, being sick, taking bupe, relapsing, etc.

During my last semester of college I decided I needed stability. And though I did not believe in maintenace drugs, took suboxone regularly for 9 months, with zero slip ups. Yet the suboxone and klonopin which I started taking at the same time really did not treat me right, I was distant from my gf, no libido, mood swings, depression etc. I decided I felt the same way on full aggies than I did on sub, except I did not get high.

So I decided to get off subs, and klonopin. The klonopin was easy for me, I guess since I never abused it, I got off easy (has been 2 and a half week since I took a kpin). The sub w/d on the other hand was not my cup of tea. Instead of feeling like absolute shit and then in 5 days coming out of my cocoon did not happen. It was too long, and drawn out. I decided to take OCs to readdict myself to pills, so I could only have to spend a week in w/d. BAD IDEA. I unleashed the beast and relapsed for a week and a half, maxing out on a gram of H a day. In 10 days I shot 10 grams !!!!! On Saturday morning I decided I'm done and want to ride this bitch out, sadly during my acute w/d (teary eyed, sweats) I found half a suboxone 8mg. around hour 36 I took a quarter piece, and this morning around 15 hours later took the second quarter. I am really pissed as I do not want to get readdicted to bupe, and would rather just battle through the H.

My question is. If i take no more suboxone will I still have the pleasure of withdrawing from a short acting opiate. Instead of the drawn out (though much more mild) process from long acting opiates. Feel fine now, I should be sick as a dog if it was not for the suboxone. Is it just gonna be a horrid mental w/d since I have used recently, or will I be back sick from subs after 4mgs in less than 48 hours. Confused. Wither way Im not taking shit, not even my old buddy klonopin.
 
Know what you are going through unfortunately. I have been seriously trying to get clean since February, and I have just gotten to the point where i am not relapsing constantly or going through withdrawal. I used suboxone from Feb to April and relapsed when i couldn't handle the month long detox. You will get there just keep trying and eventual you will get through it. Just know that it is going to be a long, hard battle, like many people here can attest to. Just try to remember all the reasons you want to quit. Being a junkie is no way to live:)
 
what dose were you taking the subs at? did you taper down at all before you tried to make the jump? after nine months on them at any appreciable dose, sub has accumulated in your system such that after a week and a half, the sub metabolites were still not completely eliminated from your body!!

on average, the elimination half life of buprenorphine is around 36 hours so even in a short/medium term taper situation you'll have to wait around two weeks before the bupe is even completely eliminated by the body. in practice, coming off bupe, you won't feel really bad until your third day of not dosing, and you won't start to feel truly better for for another 10-11 days when acute w/d is over. then, of course there is the "PAWS", i hate this term, it is really just your body returning to equilibrium after you have disrupted your neurochemistry for so long by introducing opiates on a constant basis. the length of this is of course proportional to the time that you spent continuously using opiates. so you are going to have to be prepared to pay the piper a little bit regardless.

sub can help but it isn't a miracle cure. when you take it, you're basically agreeing to trade a fairly short, miserable w/d (in the case of short acting agonists e.g. H) for a slightly less miserable but more drawn out w/d. that is to say, going c/t from H is taking 3-4 days off work and then being free, going c/t from bupe is feeling kind of like crap for two weeks, but still being able to more or less function. just try to convince yourself that you caught a cold...

i'm not sure you spent long enough time on short acting agonists to "reset" the characteristics of your w/d. honestly i'm not sure where your w/d characteristic is at right now with all the rapid cycling back and forth.

it's up to you if you'd rather continue with short acting agonists (i don't want to encourage a binge but you'll probably at least need two or three weeks to change your w/d characteristic) and try a relatively shorter c/t kick, or if you want to go back to bupe and try the jump again. but either way, you can't cheat the re-equilibration "PAWS" period. i'd say pick your strategy and give it a few weeks to stabilize before you try to jump again.

to really jump off bupe right, you need to get your doses down to ~0.125 mg/d or less before you kick. even then you're going to suffer a little. but if you're coming off long term bupe use, that's the only way it's going to be even half-way bearable.

the only way, imo, to come off larger bupe doses without being totally uncomfortable is if you're fairly naive to it and using it for no more than a week for rapid taper detox, say, starting at around 2 mg, tapering down, you could jump at 0.5 or 0.250 and be OK. but that's a different story than this case, i think.

personal data point: binged on H for four months over the summer, this was my longest ever period of continuous H use (never doing that again) switched over to ~1.5mg/d bupe and tapered down from there over the course of a month. felt acute bupe w/d for about two weeks, then another two weeks of re-equilibration. i felt basically back to 100% after around six weeks. you definitely have to have the will to want to pull through it, but freedom is a worthy cause.
 
I think you need to realise that a rattle is a rattle and if you want to give up you're gonna have to go through some pain matey. No easy way out!
 
and honestly i don't think there's anything wrong with smoking some bud, or responsible use of booze or benzos... if it helps you stay off opiates and resist the urge to use dope again, i say go for it... "comfort meds" can be invaluable especially during the acute stage. just my opinion tho.
 
I never took anymore suboxone than 2mg, towards the end I was just taking crumbs (.5mgs) in the mornings. I only did 4mg of sub this detox, and plan on using no more ever again. Hoping for another mini short full aggie detox/ crosses fingers.

I did test shots
 
There is no way that I am still withdrawing off subs after only 1. Maybe left over bits from my .5 jump off, but ater 10gs in over a week and a half, i doubt it.
 
I found that during my protracted methadone withdrawal (worst one by far, I've WD'ed from most of them) an unexpected miracle drug was Imodium. I started out taking about 20 pills (median lethal dose is sky high) and kicked it back to 4-8 a day within a week for reasons I'll elaborate on later. In short it only effects the GI tract opiate receptors. I never had many stomach issues but it helped loads with my worst symptom which is the FUCKING LEGS KICKING EVERY MINUTE!!! See, I'm still bitter. I know withdrawal can be subjective but if that's a big one or it's the gut give it a go. I didn't think it would work as well as it did but now I'm a believer. Just note that if you thought you were constipated on opiates, this Imodium is practically glue, especially in opiate tolerant doses so be sure to taper off or face impacted bowels. A few other thoughts, mostly generic: music, a drink or two if you're sure you're able to handle it, sounds like benzos weren't a huge deal so yeah if you can grab some sleep with them great. Keep the old lady around because the drive returns with a vengeance. I hope this helps.
 
Been over 36 hours since my last piece of sub. Got shivers, at least not full on sweats like I would of with the c/t H w/d
Oh and also forgot to add that the 9 months I was on sub, the last two I spent tapering to less than .5 and then jumped, kept my momentum till day 9 of that sub w/d and then relapsed. I then was clean for another 48 hours, and then used a SHIT LOAD of heroin in less than two weeks.

I figure tomm is when the half life of the sub is going to be almost out of my system. And the heroin w/d is nearing it's completion in a couple of days. Could I of just successfully broken my sub habit with a week's worth of bad decisions. If i tricked my brain and body out of going into acute w/d, I will be a happy man.

One things for sure, I will have BAD cravings. Quitting this way puts you back to square one (almost) mentally, yet at least I won't be sickly all day. Your hopes are stronger than the ties that hold them down.
 
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