Hi all,
My own experiences with mother PST vs bupe is that I'd take the pod WD over bupe WD any day of the month. I too have battled a long time with dependence on pod tea, then seed tea (seed cola, more accurately). Twice I've got on bupe, and twice I've then switched back to the tea when in proper bupe withdrawal, it's just too painful (particularly from a mental point of view, the anxiety is incredible). It's worth noting that conversely, I've quit the tea many times without bupe, with a little help from acid and DMT when going through that hellish day 3 off the tea. It's the staying quit that I have trouble with, a familiar story.
Pod tea has properly unpleasant WD, but at least for me it just resembles a bad case of the flu with anxiety thrown in for good measure. Bupe WD, on the other hand, feels wholly unnatural - pure unadulterated Foulness that just don't give up, even weeks later.
I'm just offering my two pence into this debate because I too viewed bupe as a miracle when I first started on it. The second time, I was forced into a bupe program, and complied because my hands were tied for reasons I won't go into here.
I've been a tea abuser on and off for about 8 years now. I'm still on it now, at a low dose. I'm still fighting the good fight. My 40th birthday is looming in a few years, and I'm determined not to be on the tea by then. We'll see how it pans out.
Reading your stories of such high daily fixes of seed tea, there's something else id like to mention that I have noticed. As has been mentioned, we drink this stuff for the morphine above all else. Logic dictates that what with tolerance and the rest, higher doses must be taken progressively. What I've found is that at high doses (above 500g in my case), the other alkaloids mask that lovely morphine, especially when accumulated over days, weeks and months of habitual tea drinking. This results in never feeling high, and a proper shitty comedown when you try to quit.
I would emplore my fellow tea addicts to taper down, for more reasons than one. Firstly, it'll minimise the withdrawal when it comes to quitting. Secondly, it keeps the levels of those unwanted long lasting alkaloids down, meaning that towards the end of the taper, you'll enjoy a lovely morphine melt with that morning mug of tea. I'm down to 200g a day now (down from about a kilo a day a couple of months back), and I'm feeling pretty good. I get my daily melt, and hopefully the cluck won't be quite as grim when I make that jump yet again. Hopefully this time I can crack it, I'm getting too long in the tooth. I certainly don't want the bupe replacement therapy again.
Good luck to you all, one day we'll have this monkey kicked.