I switched from methadone to suboxone a month ago, after having spent about five years slowly tapering to 10mg. Just in case anyone's interested, I waited about 50 hrs and the transition was essentially painless. They started me off at 6 mg of suboxone (which knocked me right on my ass), but after the first day I spent one week at 4mg, one week at 2mg, and one week at 1.5mg. Always sublingual, and always dosing once in the morning. At the beginning of this week, though, my doctor suggested going to 2mg every other day instead of further tapering my daily dosage. I tried it, got uncomfortably high on the first day and surprisingly sick on the second--much worse than the skipped methadone dose. I caved in by 3pm and took 1mg, which is where I'm holding now. I'm getting some RLS at night, and I wake up feeling pretty awful, but for the most part I'm stable.
I'd originally planned to be completely off before classes start up again on the 28th, which gives me about a week between taking my last dose and needing to be able to function. My main question is: should I even try? Or to be more specific, how is kicking 1mg after a month going to compare with kicking, say, .25 mg after 2 or 3 months? Is there any benefit to getting off quickly?
Also, does my experience attempting the alternate-day thing say anything about how fast I metabolize the stuff? And if so, what would that mean for the withdrawal? As I understand it, the recommendation for this dosing schedule is based on studies like
this one that say most addicts prefer it to daily dosing. What was completely unsustainable for me is apparently favored by 96% of BMT patients.
One last question: will imodium help me at all right now, or should I save it for the proper wds?