Well I have another Q. It seems pretty obvious that I don't have nearly enough to do a comfortable taper, but what about the timing of my decision to come off suboxone in the first place?
I was just recently hospitalized for a severe depression induced incident where I found myself sitting in my car while it was running inside my closed garage.
This incident came about due to the convergence of several stressful factors in my life which I don't feel like getting into. I don't feel like what i did was a legitimate suicide attempt, but it was definitely a cry for help.
I had been on suboxone for about a month prior, but I was receiving very very minuscule amounts of therapy from a psychiatrist, but no drug group sessions or any kind of real talk therapy, and I wasn't going to meetings. My suboxone doctor is very unprofessional.
I was hospitalized after what looked to be a suicide attempt and I was in the Psyche ward for 8 days, and now I am going to a partial hospitalization program that meets 5 times a week for 6 hours a day. This program will last about 2 weeks at which time I am going to be referred to another group therapy and other types of outpatient treatment.
Now these therapy sessions are very very good compared to the therapy I had been getting from my old psychiatrist and I feel like I have a lot more supports in my life that will help me stay sober. I also feel MUCH less depressed than I did just a little over a week ago when this all started. I really do feel like I can take a solid and earnest attempt at sobriety without the aid of suboxone, but my doctors and this Nurse Practitioner that I saw all tell me that it's too soon, and that too much stuff has happened in my life recently for me to be able to honestly stay sober.
I have gone cold turkey off opiates before, and I am willing to do it again.
Given this little bit of background that I told you guys does anyone think it's too soon for me to go off suboxone now, or is tapering down a good idea if I feel really internally committed?
Pros/cons?
The desire to get off suboxone came to me in the middle of a work-out session i was doing yesterday evening, but the seed was planted by a few different people.
Here's a little about my totally ridiculous Suboxone doctor that I am seeing: He has literally thousands of books on every single subject imaginable (usually art and travel books, and some coffee table books and political books) scattered around his office and piled up in huge stacks as soon as you walk in the door. He has no secretary, which makes setting up appointments and getting him payments nearly a crapshoot, he forgets to sign his name to checks and then charges late fees when they don't go through, he doesn't go through insurance so the copays are very high, he prescribes just enough so that I am forced to see him twice a month, he doesn't even know all there is to know about the drug itself (he told me that the naloxone prevents you from being able to snort or IV the pill, which I later found out was untrue), and he has me on way more than I feel like I need (16mg/day). My opiate habit was less than an 80 of OC a day, and I never had a really steady supply.
I just want to be away from him, and I want to be away from the world of opiate maintenance in general(both legal and illegal). My nurse practitioner who i saw today said to me "well you got yourself on the opiates so you are going to have to withdraw sometime, you might as well just put it off." I thought that was a highly illogical thing to say to me. The shorter time I'm on it, and the less I take, will both have direct impacts on the type of withdrawal I experience. I don't want 6 month long PAWS or anything like that.
i'm getting sick of hearing about this "wonder drug" and I am getting sick of deferring to the "doctor knows best" mentality.
Oh, the other thing is that I am currently on some very good anti-depressants, Wellbutrin, Mirtazipine, and Geodon, so I am prepared to handle some withdrawal right now. I want to stress the fact that I AM NOT feeling depressed at all ever since I got out of the hospital. I feel ready to take on sobriety full force. I want to do it sooner than later.
