Restlessness is a real pain during W/D

[Dead-Head]

This probably has been covered somewhere in here. Anyways hello everyone, I just joined but have been reading on here for years.

Ok so for the past 8 months my dog has been using morph, vics and patches. Recently he decided he cant live his life like this anymore so he picked a date and tried to quit.(not his first time around). His problem is he cant get over the restlessness, mentally and also his legs. He is on a low dose of morph, about 30 mg per day at night so he can sleep. Does anyone know of anyway to combat the restless feelings? He doesnt have any other symptoms really, not super sick or even cravings really. He is committed but he has a busy daytime life so he has to sleep at night. He has tried xanies without much success and the restlessness drives him insane. He will surely never get himself into this situation ever again. Thanks for your help

 

[villian]

You best bet is probaly to taper. You can dissolve your pills in a set amount of water and just reduce it every night.

something like.. dissolve a 30mg morphine in 30ml of water and taper down 1-2mg per night

 

[shady4091]

Don't bother with the "my dog, my pet whatever, or SWIM here.

Restlessness was a bitch for me too when I first quit poppy-seed tea. There really wasn't anything that helped me, I'm sorry to say. I tried weed, upping my Seroquel dose to seriously uncomfortable amounts, gravol, and nothing helped me sleep or kept me from tossing and turning. But I didn't try Loperamide until just recently. It's done wonders for my Codeine withdraw so far. 14mg seemed to completely eliminate the withdraw from a 240mg a day Codeine habit. If you're taking your 30mg morphine orally and that's all you're taking in a day, that's equivalent to about 90mg of Codeine a day which isn't too bad. Don't aim to totally eliminate the withdraw though, that will just prolong things. I only took 14mg because I was extremely skeptical about it helping at all, but it absolutely did. It takes a long time for it to take full effect though, about 4 or 5 hours its seems. It's worth a shot.

 

[Dead-Head]

I will try the Lope, might be a good plan. Anythings worth a try. The restless BS is the only thing thats really keeping me from stopping all together. Its almost like I took a adderall or something, which I never cared for. Im down to such a low dose that I think ill try the lope and if it doesnt work...well Ill just suffer it out. A couple nights and I should be alright. You get to a point and you just gotta say enough is enough. Thanks for your help guys, much appreciated

 

[paranoid android]

Gabapentin helps restless legs alot and is a miracle in opiate withdrawal for that. As for general restlessness get a punching bag or something and work that adrenaline out of you.

 

[95Land]

I was prescribed Clonodine during my first rehab visit. It's a blood pressure medication, but it also really helps with painful, restless legs. I'm guessing it relaxes the blood flow to your legs, thereby calming them(somebody correct me if I'm wrong.) Wouldn't be very hard to get it scripted as it's non narcotic. If you've got a doc you're honest with.
I'm in the same boat as far as general restlessness. I'm on day 4 of my detox after a 3 week dope run. All my physical symptoms are gone besides a little stomach pain and the inability to sleep for more than 4-5 hours every day or 2. It usually lasts about a week for me.
It doesn't bother me too much, as I just got laid off, and am just hanging out. Otherwise I'd find some benzo's or one of that odd family of sleep aids(Lunesta, Ambien) to help me through. Though in the OP's case, of course you always wanna be careful mixing any dose of opiates with benzo's.
I hope you can stick with your vow to make this your last detox. I've gone through it around 10 times and it just gets more intense. Get out while ya can.

 

[theseeker]

Dude- restlessness is one of the worst symptoms of opiate w/d- I totally feel you. When combined with sleeplessness, it's like some medieval torture. There's just no escape. While it may feel like the problem is in your legs, the origin of the problem is really in your brain. All that time taking opiates stopped transmitters in a certain region of your brain from being released . So when you stop taking opiates, it takes a while for that region of your brain to fire up again and relieve the restlessness. It has nothing to do with the muscles in your legs or anything like that. Some people swear that Lyrica really helps. Is there any possibility that you could just taper your dose over some fixed period of time? This would really help you with the downside that the w/d would be drawn out as well.

 

[Ninae]

Try a high dose of Magnesium, it relaxes the muscles. General restlessness is often caused by lack of Magnesium.

 

[Larson0]

CLonidine was the most effective for me. didn't matter how much valium, weed, lope, anything. this was the one thing that got me albe to sleep more than 30 minutes.

a clinic may give you a prescription. its very cheap to buy without insurance too.

 

[Sepher]

I'm guessing it relaxes the blood flow to your legs, thereby calming them(somebody correct me if I'm wrong.) Wouldn't be very hard to get it scripted as it's non narcotic. If you've got a doc you're honest with.

Not quite. This is for Dead-Heads benefit, so please forgive me if this comes across as me being all tedious internet pedant? Fucking hate tedious internet pedants meself, I really do! :lol: One of the effects of opiates is to suppress noradrenaline production, so the brain has to work harder to produce it in sufficient quantity to keep the body in some kind of balance and counter the effects of the opiates. When you stop taking opiates it takes a while for the body to rebalance the amount of noradrenaline it's producing so you suddenly have an excess of the stuff swimming round your system, and since it's one of the key neurotransmitters responsible for the fight-or-flight response to stress and fear, you end up with a lot of the classic symptoms of withdrawal - restlessness, accelerated heart rate, high blood pressure, sweating, nausea. Clonidine and its newer analog Lofexidine are designed to suppress that overproduction, and then you taper off them so things can come back more gradually to some kind of balance.

I didn't tolerate Clonidine well, finding it played havoc with my blood pressure leaving me feeling woozy and occasionally faint. Lofexidine was better for me, but both help lots with the restless legs thing where you just want to punch the fuck out of them and make them stay still for longer than a minute at a time. I still felt twitchy and restless on them mind, and sometimes wondered if they were even doing anything, but that's because I had no way of knowing how much worse I'd have been without them. Doctors will be a bit cautious prescribing them as they can lead to rebound hypertension effects in their own right if not tapered properly, but should be pretty readily available.

 

[95Land]

Not quite. This is for Dead-Heads benefit, so please forgive me if this comes across as me being all tedious internet pedant? Fucking hate tedious internet pedants meself, I really do! :lol:

Not to be an ass either, but I put "I'm guessing" and "somebody correct me if I'm wrong" in there for a reason. So no worries.

 

[xxsicknessxx]

i agree the legs and the sleep are the worst WD issue I had too. No matter what you do you just can't sleep or get comfy. I hate it. I have tried everything for sleep over my 9years of abuse and addiction I can say this. First off using anything every single day for sleep is a horrible idea. It would only make things worse and worse. The only drug that works for me anymore and I am 7months sober. However I have horrible HORRIBLE sleep issues. Its really one of the last issues I have to deal with. Everything else is ever permanent or I can deal with my self. The sleep is bad I take TAMAZAPAM every other day sometimes I go two days with out taking it. Its just enough to help me sleep, and get more sleep. I don't get addicted and so far no tolerance. I rec. what ever you use skip a day here and there. Its better to loose sleep now then later. Get what I mean? By taking drugs to sleep your only increasing the problem. Xanex isn't a great sleep air IMO. Serquell got to the point where I get horrible leg pains, ambian and drugs that work like it don't work anymore from using them to much. I can't use trazadone im allergic. But tamazapam is long lasting and works really well. Maybe look into it. Also get off the pain killers morphine is a bad one IMO to be taking. Get on suboxon it will keep you from abusing drugs and it helps me sleep a lot.

Sure I take a sleeping pill once awhile and one suboxon a day but IMO Its a lot better then snorting ox and smoking Fent. I am stable and I can sleep with out anything I can nap, I can handle everything, My memory is great, my health is back... life is good. I feel like I used to feel getting high every day now. I miss that super high peak I can't reach in normal life but I don't miss the huge CRASH