mlk....I went back a few pages and re-read some of your posts, and you are right, we have very similar stories! Thanks for helping me feel welcome here. I am glad you were able to confide in your husband; but for me, I think I just need to handle this myself. My husband knows I have "my crazy meds" (xanax, ambien) and I think he knows that I did not mind the lortab (now six years ago when I last had a prescription); but he would never understand why I would ever spend so much money on floral decorations! I am feeling stronger about doing this taper now that I know I'm not alone; this thread has helped me so much in that respect it is amazing.
As I said somewhere in my earlier posts, my next goal is to taper down to twice a day. (currently I take 3T at 7 AM, 2T at 1PM, and 3T at 7PM.) I'm thinking that I'll drop the 1 PM dose to 1T starting Tuesday, then after 4 days if it's not bothering me much I'll go down to 1/2T, then drop it to 0 after 4 days.
That's about as far ahead as I can think at this point! From the experienced guys...does it make sense to get down to 2 doses a day first? Then decrease either one or both of the remaining doses? I'm not looking for a full schedule to get completely off by a certain date, just more wondering what you all have felt was most comfortable as you tapered.
Bo, I hope you are doing ok; did you get to a doc about the blood pressure?
Hang in there everyone...
As far as pods go theres really no reason to be taking them more than twice a day. Pods last much longer than morphine, and even at once a day doses for my whole taper I didn't feel too bad.
But you should not feel a transition going from 3 to 2. You also *may want to up your 2 times a day dose initially. If you completely rid your 2T dose you may feel it a bit the next day. It won't be bad but if you wanna add 1T to your morning dose it will make the drop a bit smoother.
Than once you stablize at that frequency you can focus on dropping the actual dosage. If it was me I personally would do 4T in the morning, than 4T at night. Doing that you won't feel a thing dropping the frequency. But still stay there for a day or 2 because your liver will calm down a bit and slow down.
You have to understand the more steady the stream of alkaloids is going into your liver, the harder you liver is pushed to work. So it will burn off more and more drugs quicker and quicker. If you lower your cumulative dose, AND the frequency, your liver will be in a bit of overdrive at that point, and its going to burn through your 2 times a day doses quicker initially.
Thats why you're not stablizing really for wds, but I'd do it just give your liver a break. Your liver obviously doesn't upregulate or downregular like receptor sites, but its still a very complex organ and when you make frequency changes in dosing its still a good idea to stablize for a day or 2. That way one you DO drop your dose your liver wind up preserving the alkaloids a bit longer. Now this is just a theory, and I'm not a medical doctor, but I noticed when I use to dose a loooong time ago 3 times a day, when I'd drop back to once a day the dose seemed to last not even 6 hours. I very much believe because my liver was always in a state of overdrive like I mentioned before.
So consider going to 4t initially twice a day.
After that I would consider dropping a half a T every couple days or so.
Like this maybe:
Day 1
4T am - 4Tpm
Day 2
4T am - 4Tpm
Day 3
4Tam - 3.5Tpm
Day 4
3.5Tam -3.5Tpm
Day 5
3.5Tam - 3.5Tpm
Day 6
3.0Tam - 3.0Tpm
Day 7
3.0Tam - 3.0Tpm
Day 8
2.5Tam - 2.5Tpm
Day 9
2.5Tam - 2.5Tpm
Dat 10
2.0Tam - 2.0Tpm
and so on untill your off.
This is considered a slow taper, and I know towards the end I was dropping about a half a tablespoon roughly everyday (it was in gms towards the begining but I started doing "caps" towards the end, and 1 cap was pretty much the same as 1tbsp)
But I was prob dropping around .5tbsp a day and that was personally too fast for me.
The only reason it was too fast was the RLS really. LOTS of people don't get RLS the way I do, and if I didn't have that symptom as bad as I did, I could have prob dropped quicker.
Like right now at the dose I'm on (small dose of sub) I know if I stop today completely I'm not gonna have an hotflashes/chills/pains/nausea etc. All that stuff left and never really came back (I still get the occasional bouts though). It seems to me like once people get to the point I was at, they can jump off and be relatively ok.
Hamclamp did it and seemed fine, Jay Johnson did it and seemed fine. But for whatever reason I got "stuck" on my lower doses.
I still think so much of it has to do with speed abuse and what it did to my adrenal glands, so I definitely think Im an exception to the rule. Once you get down to 1T a day most likely you can stop and not really deal with anything but a few depleted nights of sleep. And in all honesty that xanax your on you could prob jump off in like a week and really be fine. I think a small dose of xanax alone would have killed my RLS and insomnia. You're on it already so consider yourself lucky in that respect (till you have to come off lol).
But I think you will have a particularly easy time because you're gonna be low, and you're already on a med that can help a lot at those low doses.
As for my blood pressure, this may seem like a joke. But I had my father take it at my mothers b-day party today. It registered 238/157. My dad said "this machine must be broke", took it again and it was higher the second time.
My family was just staring at me at one point, and said "maybe you REALLY should go see a doctor". My brothers GF thought of the idea to get a "charity care card" and I realized about a month back I was going to go in to get one because I'm eligible.
But for whatever reason it slipped my mind and I forgot that I can actually get free treatment. But the major downside is it takes 2 weeks to process, than I have to schedule the appointment once it gets approved. So it could technically be 3-4 weeks before I actually see a dr. I'm still going to do it cause I need beta blockers for school, but for now a "mysterious angel" from bluelight is trying to help me out. I won't talk about it in further detail but all I can say is we have some exceptionally compassionate people on this forum.
Its not a sure fix, but I think the plan should at minimum help a lot. At this point I'm not dosing everyday anymore, I kicked it down to an hour into consistent RLS. Like a took .15mg sub on friday, went saturday w/out it, and then sunday morning at 5am I woke up again kicking my walls. I couldn't go back to sleep, so I rolled over and swallowed another .15mg. I only have like 6mg in total left. So I'm going to see how far I can space my doses out and just use it at my worst points. It kinda sucks though cause it seems I can never make it to the 48 hour mark w/out getting the RLS. Last night was literally 46 hours and for whatever reason the RLS always come back like clock work. I'm just praying for the day I'll get to hour 48... or even 72, and won't have it anymore.
Almost like my brain is broke or something and doesn't know how to fix itself.
