after I reached .5mg I began a process of skipping days. I would take a dose one day, then skip one day. Then dose again, and then skip two days. Then dose again, and then skip three days. Then dose again, and then skip four days. After four days clean I was finished. The half life has had time to catch up with itself.
We have found some people, for whatever reason, tend to stress out and suffer anxiety when it comes time to skip days. If that is your experience you can continue the standard 25% taper every four days all the way down to zero in lieu of skipping days if that makes you feel better. Again we are all a little different. The idea is to be successful and the skipping days is not written in stone. That is what worked for me and has worked for most others following this taper plan. But if you need to taper down to nothing instead of skipping days that is certainly a viable and acceptable option.
The reason for sometimes feeling w/d symptoms is the long half life of buprenorphine, the main drug that is in sub and the generic now available. To be very simple it can take days before we experience the w/d symptoms from sub. So this is why we wait for four days to allow for the half life which can easily be up to 72 hours depending on some variables. When we make it four days without symptoms we should be fine reducing again.
It’s not uncommon to have some minor side effects from sub as with almost any medication. There can be some depression, sleep problems, anxiety. So we suggest not taking the sub close to bedtime, get some mild to moderate exercise depending on your physical condition, there are things to do that will help lots of things. But stick with the same principles all the way down as far as you are comfortable. We are here to help at that point.
