Quitting/Tapering Thread.

[spacejunk]

Good stuff man.
Keep up the good work!

 

[polo792]

Hey all, some of u may remember me or not vut i do see some familiar names...
I have been off the grid for sometime and currently im trying to kick the H. Was using bout not much at the start but then got kicked out of home so since then i have been staying at a mates place to get clean. But what was only a small habit from using once or twice a day no more then 0.5g btw my bro n i has now become using close to 1.0g a day btw the two of us. And usimg bout 6 times throught out the day.
We dont habe much subs if any we only have bpit 2mgs each and rest are pills like valium, sandoz, catapress, dieptrams and a xanax.
Going to try and reduce how much we use back tho only once a day. No more then twice and tge amount would be about a pt btw the both of us. Will have ice with the H to take the RLS away. Just wanted to get some advice in regards to how many days would it take to WD to be over.

 

[Crankinit]

Well, it took a lot longer than I expected, but Sunday night, by odd coincidence, was the 4 week mark with no subs. I won't write up a big play by play, since most of you can probably imagine more or less how much fun that 10 week period was.

Anyway I'm in a relatively good place. Still wake up with shitty cramps after 4 - 5 hours of sleep, but nothing a hot shower followed by a walk around the block can't deal with. Other than that, the fatigue and occasional bouts of sweating and joint aches, I'm doing quite well. Eating well, exercise twice a day (managed to start running again last week, which has helped enormously), got my daily meditation practice back on track and I can usually manage to get out and do shit for a few hours every day, although if I over exert myself I do crash pretty hard when I get back. Finding the right balance of exertion - rest seems to be the key. More to the point though, there are are tangible day to day improvements, even if they're sometimes quite small, so I figure as long as I can keep myself headed in the right direction then things should keep improving especially sincce it is, relatively speaking, early days.

Oddly, the psychological side is a bit more than I expected. I figured the hard part would be the physical symptoms and the grind of dealing with those and maybe some big resurgence in cravings (which so far hasn't eventuated), but it feels like the subs were actually numbing things out quite a bit more than I thought. I know everyone says exactly that, but it always just felt like one of those things people say, the assumption that if you're on an opioid then you're not getting the full range of emotional experience, even if you feel like you are. Maybe "everyone" is right in this case. It's hard to describe, except that the world seems a bit more vivid and intense than before. Quantitatively it isn't a massive effect, but the process of adapting to the slight but constant increase in input can be a bit jarring at times. But it is, I think, a good change, although I'd guess it'll take another month or two to adapt.

So that, hopefully, is that There's still the valium, but I don't anticipate as large a problem there, and it looks a lot more manageable from this side of the suboxone. I figured I should leave this for posterity instead of disappearing into the ether like so many other BLers have done (not that I'm QUITTING BLUELIGHT FOREVER AND EVER, but this place is pretty dead and most of the old crew seem to have moved on, so...), and of course, say thanks to those who've offered good wishes and input (and apologise to those who I suddenly stopped replying to - I found the whole thing easier if I didn't ruminate on it too much, so I avoided long update conversations for the most part until I was over the hilltop).

 

[Halif2]

Sounds like you're checking all the right boxes in your recovery journey, crankinit. When I read your comments about jumping off subs a few months back I got the feeling that you were in a very realistic headspace and ready to see it through. It's great to hear that it's going very well.

I understand why you wouldn't use Bluelight much - reading and writing about drugs is the last thing you want to do while going through a marathon opioid withdrawal - but I hope that you will hang around and just check in now and then. You have a lot to contribute.

 

[chugs]

Well, it took a lot longer than I expected, but Sunday night, by odd coincidence, was the 4 week mark with no subs........so I avoided long update conversations for the most part until I was over the hilltop).

That's no hill top that was fucking Everest!

congratulations. And remember the gear isn't worth the trouble., its not even good anymore. I hope that i can do what you've done in a few years time.

 

[Crankinit]

Sounds like you're checking all the right boxes in your recovery journey, crankinit. When I read your comments about jumping off subs a few months back I got the feeling that you were in a very realistic headspace and ready to see it through. It's great to hear that it's going very well.

I understand why you wouldn't use Bluelight much - reading and writing about drugs is the last thing you want to do while going through a marathon opioid withdrawal - but I hope that you will hang around and just check in now and then. You have a lot to contribute.

Thanks man - the bluelight thing is a bit weird atm. Doing a lot of work to figure out where I fall on all the drug stuff now that I've (I think, I'm pretty sure) moved past my love affair with opiates. Not sure if I want to try and take all my drug geek/HR knowledge and try parley that into some kind of real world contribution, or put the whole thing behind me. Also not sure to what degree I want different classes of chemicals to be a part of my future lifestyle, and how much I want to put behind me. what I do know is that I have to be done with opiates - they're an all or nothing love affair for me. But I find myself trying to figure out the right balance with booze, psychs, weed, etc. And oddly, after 5 years off the stuff entirely, I'm having a really fucker of a time with meth. Going to have to figure that one out, I didn't quite H and pills just to become a full time piphead, but I had a few heavy binges in the last 6 months and that seems to have really set off the dormant wiring.

Also finding it weird hanging out on bluelight without the oldschool crew (miss you guys! you know who you are), although I have to admit it's also nice to be able to just post shit without feeling self conscious about people I know irl reading it.

That's no hill top that was fucking Everest!

congratulations. And remember the gear isn't worth the trouble., its not even good anymore. I hope that i can do what you've done in a few years time.

Thanks bro - I'm 100% sure you can. I know I went years thinking the best I would be able to do was limit myself to weekends or something along those lines, but here I am, 6 weeks with no opioids in my system. Longest I've gone since 2010, which blows my mind. For years I thought I would never be able to live without opiates, I couldn't even conceive of it. Now - well it's not all rosy, I'm still on valium, and seem to end up breaking out the sweet puff once a month or so, but I genuinely don't have any cravings for H or pills unless I really work on going down that train of thought and digging up the nostalgia. I mean when I get tired or cramps or w/e I find myself pondering it, but after the last 3 months it's pretty easy to remember that it would just prolong my shittiness in the long run. I don't even feel particularly tempted to dose from my leftover subs, let alone going to the effort of finding Harry or pills. Probably helps that I haven't shot up opiates in 4 years, but still. If you'd told me when I started subs that one day I'd want to not only get off subs but off all opiates, I'd have thought it was bullshit, but this is where I'm at I guess :/

Anyway massively appreciate the support, much love to the AUDD crew.