Opioids Successful methadone tapers...?

[phatass]

I would like to hear some stories of successful methadone tapers, what was the hardest part, what helped you (medication, sport, family...?), how fast did you taper?

I'm currently at 40mg down from 90mg, i have 40mg of diazepam/day and 400mg of meprobamate/day... I'm trying not to take all my diazepam at the moment and keep it for when it gets really tough...

I'm asking this to people who have actually succeded in getting rid of this shite...

thx (i posted this in OD hoping to get more answers than in BDD)

 

[whitechocolate32]

i don't want to be a downer, but when i was on methadone a few years ago, i missed the needle and i would still buy dope and try to get high, it never worked..so i started buying crack, and the next thing you know, i was as bad on crack, while on methadone, as i was on dope...it never took care of the problem, just made me substitute crack for dope...i had to quit everything to be clean.......i heard it works for some people though...me personally i've never seen it work all the way through...

 

[whitechocolate32]

only when i stopped everything completely and started lifting weights and going to a ton of meetings and finally joining the army was i able to stay clean

 

[ingannilo]

these success stories are certainly the minority. I'd think a very slow, very gentle taper would be best w/o substituting benzodiazapines (or any other drug).

 

[WatMyConditionIsIn]

i went from 160mg methadone down to 30mg over the course of about a year i think. at first i could drop 10mg every 2 weeks and when i got down to around 60 or 70 i could only drop 5mg per 2 weeks. it was a long fucking taper but i never noticed any serious wd effects. i came off methadone at 30mg because i was SO fucking tired of being a slave to the goddamn clinic and doctors. also, towards the end of it i had started to use IV heroin and cocaine (i had never used heroin before going on methadone, I was on methadone for script pills, poppies, otc codeine, etc...) and pissed dirty so they wanted to take away my carries. I had gotten take home doses of methadone after being on the program for only a month or two and had been used to not having to drive every fucking day to get the shit for 2 years so there was no fucking chance i would be able to go back to having to drive for 45 minutes each way every morning to get my methadone. i wasn't into the H that badly but was using a somewhat serious amount of cocaine IV so i said fuck it, now is as good a time as any to get off the methadone for good and get away from IV drug use. coming off methadone at 30mg/day was not that bad at all for me. no shits, no vomiting, just moderate sweating and insomnia. i did end up going to a few doctors for ativan and xanax and i think over the 2 or 3 weeks it took to get over the methadone i probably had in total about 10mg of xanax and about 20mg of ativan. and i was not using the stuff every day i would get a bottle of 20 1/2mg pills and eat about 5 or 10 of them at a time just to knock me out. in retrospect and from a relative standpoint, IME it was VERY easy to deal with methadone wd's. pods were much more severe in the acute symptoms of wd and lasted almost as long. i did end up relapsing on mscontin and oxy about 5 or 6 months after quitting methadone and eventually settled back into poppy pods and OTC codeine (codeine due to price and availability, pods because of the same reasons plus the high is way better and longer lasting than any other opiate i have tried) for about a year until i finally bit the bullet and went to rehab for 2 months. ive been out about 3 weeks and am completely opiate free, and honestly dont even really feel like doing them anymore. i even moved back to the city where i had been on methadone and had gotten into the IV heroin and coke (vancouver) but am just not interested in that kind of savage drug abuse anymore. me being clean from opiates is not due to me not having any connects either because i could go on the web at any moment and order a box of pods for cheap but i just dont see the point anymore. sorry that was a bit long and looking back on it i dont even know if it counts as a successful methadone taper. i guess its kind off a gray area because i did taper of methadone and was clean for almost half a year before i returned to opiates. important thing is im not a slave to any opiate now

 

[pkt]

I have never been able to taper off methadone, kicking methadone is worse than kicking the dope...

bupe has been the only successful drug i could taper off because if you do it the right way you can avoid getting hardly any WD's at all.

 

[projump2001]

I have a long way to go I am on 7Mg per day

Hi, I am not a doctor but I feel everyoe knows there own body better than any other and I feel my method might help but it can only be done after 1MG of methadone from clnic and than you are on your own, the socity is not setup for this kind of treatment but if it works i am going to try for myself.

1MG of methadone is where the real tapper starts in my humble opinion.

I have been on Methadone for 5 years now. I started with 80mg and now I am on (let me check the bottle) 7mg. Ok so anyway no with drawls so far... but from what I am reading it’s going to be hell when I get to 0mg or who know maybe it will get to be hell at 2mg I just don’t know yet.
Anyway I can’t say if it’s going to be easy or hard because I don’t know but I am going to try the following.

I have been going down 1Mg every two weeks, and I know that is a lot but my clinic will not do .5mg and that saddens me but if I can get down to 1mg I will self taper from that point on.
I am going to try .9 mg for two weeks and as follows
Each two week decrease
.8, .7, .6….. All the way down to .5 than.
Each three week decrease
.045, .040, .035, .030
If I can make it that far this will be over a year from 1mg down to .030mg
This is where its gets monotonous
.029, .027, .025, --- all the way down to .02
Same with the .019 group down to .010
And down to .009 all the way to .005 (I know that is more than 10% but I am going to deal with it because you can taper for your entire life if you are not careful)
At .005 Mg many times less than 1mg I will go to a 90 day detox
There is a small shot that this can be done without wanting to kill one’s self or serous vomiting but if I do feel that way I don’t think it will be really really bad to come off 100th of a 1 mg methadone dose.

 

[projump2001]

I want to add that i do not regreat anything i have done, I would rather suffer some withdrawl than not have felt the feeling of heroin at all.. I am curous and that is my nature. I also feel anyone who regreats anything is going about life all wrong unless it had to do with hurting another animal yes that includes humans..

I also believe in no pain no gain, so if its years on methadone or serous withdrawl the fact is its painful and that needs to be so for a person to not want to go back to the drug, after all if there was no withdrawl to heroin i would marry it.

I went to AA a few times but i found it hellish, I would not mind going again when i am off methadone because than maybe I will be in true recovery, anyone who thinking they are in recovery while on methadone is lieing to ones self, its still an opiat last time i checked, maybe i missed somthing..

 

[IknowIsuckDude]

I would like to hear some stories of successful methadone tapers, what was the hardest part, what helped you (medication, sport, family...?), how fast did you taper?

I'm currently at 40mg down from 90mg, i have 40mg of diazepam/day and 400mg of meprobamate/day... I'm trying not to take all my diazepam at the moment and keep it for when it gets really tough...

I'm asking this to people who have actually succeded in getting rid of this shite...

thx (i posted this in OD hoping to get more answers than in BDD)

How long have you been on MMT?
I was for 1,5 years at 65mg and got away really easy
I took of 5mg of the dose every time i felt ready for it. Sometimes this took 3 days sometimes 4 or 2. When i got below 30mg i lowered the dose only 2 or 3 mg. I did what i thought was best. I was lucky i had total freedom in this . I did not feel sick when tampering. I started to get insomnia at 15mg. And started feeling very uncomfortable at 10 that was when i started with the benzo's.
Jumped at 7mg
I was sick for 3 days and after that i only was feeling very cold all the time ,for a month or something. I took loads of benzo's and smoked a lott of weed some loperamide and codeine.
But what made the W/D the easiest is my mindset.
I was really really motivated to quit. I was sick of that shit and happy to come off. And i was very ready for a heavy withdrawal but nothing really happened it was a walk in the park looking at most of the heroin withdrawals i have had. I had this same mindset when tampering.

I stayed clean for about a year but i relapsed.

 

[iParker]

i know, old thread. came across it in google. I was on MMT for 1.5 years and did an 8 month taper. Honestly, it was bearable until i got down to 10mg (my max dose was 90mg). Then when i got to zero, i did fine for the first two days. Then on the third or fourth i started taking kolonopin to help with the muscle spasms (which really helped me out alot) im not abusing them, just taking them as needed. mainly at night time. I've also been taking a crap ton of amino acids and drinking as much water as possible. That really seems to be helping with the depression. It has now been 2 weeks and i'm feeling alot better. Still have problems sleeping, and still and little irritable, and achey but over all, im starting to feel like myself again.

 

[Denverbound]

Slave to Methadone

You know I am in the same sitauation, I cannot afford the cost of this crap anymore, but I am frightened to taper I am currently at 65mg I read that 5mg a week might be a good taper but I do not want to be sick and not be able to sleep and ext... I have gone through some serious heroin wd and I do not want to feel this way for a month or longer, I hear that it takes a good month to get back to "yourself" I don't have insurance to get Benzo's I am just in a messed up situation, however I have a friend in SLC who has tapered with hardley any problems however she never got above 30mg. Good luck, I am in the same boat!!

 

[RyanonMethadone87]

whats wron u can do it . dont do it wrong tho

i don't want to be a downer, but when i was on methadone a few years ago, i missed the needle and i would still buy dope and try to get high, it never worked..so i started buying crack, and the next thing you know, i was as bad on crack, while on methadone, as i was on dope...it never took care of the problem, just made me substitute crack for dope...i had to quit everything to be clean.......i heard it works for some people though...me personally i've never seen it work all the way through...

wow dude that was a downer big time lol dude u can do anything u put ur mind to i started at 15 mg of methadone and then went to 180 then went to 40 mg i just finshed a methadone research study to prevent people getting high off the flippin oxys so now im geting off im here with ya u can do it bro. just gotta put ur heart and soul into it an d keep ur mind busy . be around friends or familey if u dont got none of those then stay on the internet u can always find firneds on here lol where u from.it can be like

 

[RyanonMethadone87]

it seems impossible im 23 went on it a year ago and boy was that a mistake oxys almost ruined my life i feel like this has this methadone but they tell u how ur making the right choice when sucking it up and letting the oxys get out of ur system is the easy route that takes like 4 days tops pain wize methadone i was off for 5 days and went threw tourture it wasnt even close to oxys methadone come off was the worst whos with me with that.??? anyone? anyone miss for more then 4 days there dosage all together..
and what happen?

 

[SubDude]

I would like to hear some stories of successful methadone tapers, what was the hardest part, what helped you (medication, sport, family...?), how fast did you taper?

I'm currently at 40mg down from 90mg, i have 40mg of diazepam/day and 400mg of meprobamate/day... I'm trying not to take all my diazepam at the moment and keep it for when it gets really tough...

I'm asking this to people who have actually succeded in getting rid of this shite...

thx (i posted this in OD hoping to get more answers than in BDD)

I successfully quit MMT when I was 20 yo [about 38 yrs ago] but had only been on it a few mos and back then... this Miami VA clinic didn't tell you what dose they were giving you. I know it was high though. I told them I wanted off and they brought me into a 90 day inpatient and lower my unk dose until I was off... Don't even remember WD's because I didn't expect them and didn't know much about them anyway. That should tell you something about the mental aspect of it.

I quit a couple of other times but relapsed very quickly....

Most recently I didn't technically get off it [ort]... simply switched to subs from MMT 2 yrs ago and am taking 1/2mg of that. Down from 12mg. I think it's easier to taper lower on bupe vs methadone. Getting off... IDK

Before switching, I was on MMT [this last time] for about 15 yrs and the only time [I personally saw] a guy successfully taper off was after he slowly got down to 5mg [about 2 small drops of liquid] and stayed there for several months. We use to tease him and try to encourage him to finish it off. He just kept coming back for his monthly TH's. Then one day... he was gone. We later heard he finally tapered 1mg a mo until he got down to 2mg and walked away with clonodine and seroquel.

BTW... We got the clear liq in small bottles which was bitter and no syrup. This was the only one [I know of] who did it on his own terms and we never heard of him relapsing. Now there were plenty who did quick forced tapers which simply sent them to other clinics or to the street.

I personally miss MMT as opposed to BMT mainly because I haven't been able to finish off and quit subs. I don't want to discourage you, but I will give you a "fact" my subs dr told me. The most recent research among ORT patients is 80%+ relapse rate. I don't know what methods they used or how they came up with this rate but it doesn't surprise me.

My advice is continue to take it slow... 3-5 mg a month and at some point just say fuck it and be done with it. or else switch to bupe and try. Believe me when I tell you [from my experience and IMO] many more are eventually motivated to quit bupe than meth... Sorry... wish I could have helped more.

 

[hydrochron]

I'm just curious do you plan to switch to subutuex when you get down to 30mg? If you make the switch and taper down you could do it!