TDS The Dark Cloud That Follows Long Term high Dose BUPE Use.

[sober.for.now]

I was on 16mg 2 yeas ago i droped down to 8mg subutex. Al together ive been on them altogether for 8yrs and before that Opanas and patches for 5yrs. A month ago i made the choice to quick taper for 5 days and just made the jump.............and holy shit was that hard but i made it out of the physical but this dark cloud is eating me alive. Its only been 2-3 weeks since the worst of the physical subsided but but my head is so messed up and not sure what to do about it other than staying active but im not sure if thats enough. i think i need some advice on how to kick this, i did this for my family but now im second guessing that choice bc i feel so fu**ing useless. Plus these thoughts im having are not me but yet there in my head. I feel so alien. Plz Help.

 

[sober.for.now]

O and just to share it. the withdrawal from patches and opanas was nothing compared to the shit i just went through. if i could go back i would have given BUPES the good old F**K-U Bc nothing i ever went through compares to BUPE withdrawal ............Nothing!

 

[dusk84]

In my experience... sorry to be a bummer... but nothing. Read very closely all the "success" stories you've read "it's an every day fight" appears in EVERY SINGLE ONE. So, in essence, it never fucking ends. I'm with you here bro, ready to top myself (if I wasn't a parent, and that was an option), that dark cloud hangs over me too. You gotta find something else, I have a legit script of benzos but with my history it was very hard to get, those help with anxiety/depression. Not really fun to abuse, but just at their right recommended dose produce a happy, peaceful feeling. Nothing compared to heroin or suboxone or other opioids, but definitely second best. Best part is, there's no real nasty side effects (your drowsiness will abide after awhile) like there are with seroquel, vistiril, and all that antahistamine-sedative bullshit they try to give drug addicts with anxiety/depression problems. They're not hard to find on the street, but I wouldn't recommend obtaining them this route because your supply will be unsteady and the withdrawal can kill you. Also (this is a problem I have right now) my suboxone doctor refuses to start me on suboxone because subs + benzos = death in a very small percentage of people. So if you obtain benzos, and decide to go back to Subs, you'll have to pick between one or the other.

Edit - For the unfamiliar, benzos (the most common) include Valium, Ativan, Xanax, and Klonopin. Though if your goal is not abusing them, I'd recommend against Xanax and Valium, they both have effects that seem to temp people to misuse them. I was lucky, you pretty much cannot just ask a doctor for a specific narcotic and get it, but I did. I told him I tried everything else and everything else sucks ass. That was the truth though, anti-depressants give me unwanted side effects (weird migraine like impulses of exploding pain in my head when I ejaculate, I am not joking), seroquel knocked me out 18 hours a day, and vistiril is so weak i wouldn't call the squad if a 2 year old swallowed an entire bottle. Thorazine caused unwanted twitching in my neck, making me look crazier than I was... etc... you get the point. It took me 10 years to finally get my script and now I have the Suboxone doctor telling me I have to give up what I fought years for to treat my heroin problem? Fucking quacks. I hate all of them.

 

[sober.for.now]

I know if i start useing benz ill just end up going back and start looking for a high. Plus i think benz will only make the depression worse in the long term. Im trying to find something that helps me get out not something that pulls me back into that world of searching for a high and dealing with shady ass ppl (Me Being One Of Them, When Im Useing).

 

[Ligaturd]

Buprenorphine has a long half-life. I would never recommend that someone do a quick taper and jump off after 8 years of use. It would have been worth it to do a long ass taper so the change wasn't so traumatic. You can taper down to 2 mgs pretty quickly but under that it would be worth it to go down by 0.5mgs a week or two until you get down to 1mg and then start going down really slowly by 0.25mgs at a time. It seems to me that once someone has been on opioids for long enough, well maintenance opioids, it might be worth it to just keep them on.

The post acute withdrawal will end at some point but when that will be I doubt anyone really can tell you that. It wont last forever but I can say that lots of cardio exercise and protein supplements (maybe even specific amino acid supplements as well like l-tyrosine) will help push your brain to return to a state of homeostasis. Try to be as healthy as you can be and keep yourself occupied and don't start regressing and feeling sorry for yourself. That's what gets us junkies is giving up. You absutely can get past this, just be patient and strong and know it WILL get better.

 

[Phil.McKeer]

Ligaturd nailed it on its head. You were using SO MUCH for SO LONG that the rapid taper you underwent was like putting out a house fire by pissing on it. With your level and duration of use, I would have employed a slow taper, dropping your daily dose by probably 1mg/week until I hit a dose of 1mg/day, then dropping to 0.5mg/day for AT LEAST A WEEK, then dropping to 0.25mg/day for at least another week. Then maybe doing some 0.25mg one day, skip another, 0.25mg the next, etc. for another week, and then, and only then, jumping off.

Your brain has become so accustomed to buprenorphine that it grew so many receptors, each expecting more bupe to bind, that when you tapered too quickly the plethora of empty receptors kicked you in your arse for not giving them what they had been getting for years.

If what you feel now without any bupe therapy is tolerable, keep going until you see the light. If not, I would get back on bupe, but NOT 8MG/DAY FOR YEARS. That's just ridiculous. I can't even imagine how much bupe you wasted doing that. Who told you to do that? Your doctor? He's an idiot.

In your case I'd start at 2-4mg/day and proceed as I outlined above. This, I predict, would be essentially painless.

Buprenorphine is for rapid detoxes off of full agonist opiates and should only be used for a week or two in the form of a rapid taper. Not 8+mg/day for years. The fact that doctors have their patients do this is quackery at best and absolute wickedness at worst.