To MAT or not to MAT , that is my question

[helpingout]

I’m struggling.
5 yr H user. Cut down to buprenorphine for a month. Switched over to kratom shots for another month. Switched over to kratom leaf for two years.

Recently started using 7oh more than I’m comfortable. Kratom shots as well.

Most clean time off kratom I’ve gotten together is 16 days. Continuously relapsing. My last stint was six days. Been using for about two weeks now.

Have been considering getting back on H but it’s not what I want. Don’t want to keep using kratom.

I’m considering MAT as an option but I really just want to be off the drugs. All of them.

I just keep relapsing. I’m being as safe as I can when I relapse. Choosing kratom.

But I don’t want to relapse. Or lapse.

I’m willing to kick again if that has to happen. Willing to try to stay off if I don’t kick.

I’m just really struggling with constant relapse.

Usually get pretty depressed as the reality sets in that I might have permanently altered my brain chemistry. That what
My brain thinks is happiness might never happen again.

I’m willing to try anything. Anything except revealing to a provider that I’m an opiate user in recovery.

I don’t want to end up discovering that my pain problems are legitimately connected to real issues and be denied opiate medications because of a MAT script.

Any and all advice please.

 

[BK38]

I’m struggling.
5 yr H user. Cut down to buprenorphine for a month. Switched over to kratom shots for another month. Switched over to kratom leaf for two years.

Recently started using 7oh more than I’m comfortable. Kratom shots as well.

Most clean time off kratom I’ve gotten together is 16 days. Continuously relapsing. My last stint was six days. Been using for about two weeks now.

Have been considering getting back on H but it’s not what I want. Don’t want to keep using kratom.

I’m considering MAT as an option but I really just want to be off the drugs. All of them.

I just keep relapsing. I’m being as safe as I can when I relapse. Choosing kratom.

But I don’t want to relapse. Or lapse.

I’m willing to kick again if that has to happen. Willing to try to stay off if I don’t kick.

I’m just really struggling with constant relapse.

Usually get pretty depressed as the reality sets in that I might have permanently altered my brain chemistry. That what
My brain thinks is happiness might never happen again.

I’m willing to try anything. Anything except revealing to a provider that I’m an opiate user in recovery.

I don’t want to end up discovering that my pain problems are legitimately connected to real issues and be denied opiate medications because of a MAT script.

Any and all advice please.

As someone who is 12 years clean off heroin (diacetylmorphine) and was a fairly heavy user ( not IV as ROA - I was snorting a lot of it for 3-4 years); I feel your pain and understand your predicament.

I personally suggest continuing to use Kratom leaf powder (from a quality online vendor - no gas station crap), breaking up your doses so that they are smaller so as to keep blood serum levels of 7-OH fairly consistent throughout the day and night without suffering too much. Then, reduce use as gradually as you can (I'm talking about tapering down a gram or two every few days or a week).

You may want some comfort medication to use at low doses for a max of two weeks; I suggest Valium (Diazepam - don't buy it off the street, it can be cut with or be anything, even if it's packaged and looks totally legit). I think a max of 10mg diazepam in the AM and 10mg at night is as high as you should go - trust me, you DO NOT WANT A BENZO ADDICTION (I have been dependent for two years, all legally scripted to me for C-PTSD and it's a nightmare at times - I'm scripted an insane 50mg a day). I don't know the legality of marijuana where you live, but I find a little bit of CBD heavy, lower THC strains (smoked) helps.

Honestly, if I were you, I'd just bite the bullet and consult your doctor, it's not worth your life (especially with respect to heroin and benzos).

Once you have a little clean time, you may be eligable for treatment for opiod dependence through psychedelic medicine and I suggest you go that route (in a clinical setting) if possible - you might even get paid for it!

I macro-dose maybe two times a year and it seems to factory reset my brain into not craving opiates.

Best of luck to you,

BK38

 

[negrogesic]

Yeah I agree with the above, switch to leaf for a bit and quit.

Only difference is that I wouldn't take tapering too far. Get down to maybe 25-30g and cold turkey. I found tapering kratom to be a pain, and the withdrawal isn't much different at lower doses.

Black seed oil, benzos for the first few days, gabapentin and clonidine will make it bareable.

Then start exercising to beat the paws. Kratom is the most defeatable opioid there is; everything else is more difficult.

Going on something like buprenorphine to get off of kratom is a bad move imo. Far more difficult to get off, easy to get stuck on, and daily buprenorphine use leaves one feel kind of dissociated, anhedonic and not "feeling like themselves".

The big question is how you plan to handle the PAWS. Daily exercise is the only thing that i found measurably works for opioid withdrawal.

The big problem with kratom however is that at any given time, one can drive down the street to pick some up, and getting readdicted happens very quickly.

 

[helpingout]

Yeah, Negrogesic, the PAWS is exactly why I’m back on kratom after a fourteen and separately six day stint. I just can’t seem to confront my sadness with anything but opiates. I feel so foolish. Today I definitely got sick from not having 7oh. Took some powder leaf and felt better. Wanted to get high and I picked up a kratom extract. Tomorrow I’m going to try just leaf and see if I can slow land this plane.

I’m nowhere in the twenty to thirty gram a day range. I’m in the extracts every other day range. 10g over the course of a whole day range.

As for BK38. You’re right. I got some lorazepam to get off but I ended up recreationally dosing it instead of using it as described. It’ll be a month before I get more. Might be able to get some from a friend. Got some gabapentin.

I’m gonna plain leaf it tomorrow. Might gabapentin it. Idk. But at least I’ve found a renewed desire to stop.

7 definitely calls to me pretty loudly. It provides an incredible euphoria. But it’s also extremely addictive and repose potential is crazy high.

I just need to get some plans in place because like negrogesic said I really am at risk of relapse basically everywhere.

Which I’m okay with because it’s a safe relapse. I’m not driven to blues or “percs” or anything like that.

I think I’m the type of person who if kratom weren’t available might have gone to the street or online to acquire opiates that would have me in a much worse situation.

And my sick right now isn’t terrible. It’s mild.

I can do this.

I went to an NA meeting and I’m doing smart recovery as well. 30% success rate when you do both. Throw blue light support in there and maybe I’ll be able to get off.

Thank you both.

Right now what I have available chem wise is just the gaba and possibly the benzos. No clonidine at the moment.

I really do not want to go to a doctor for this. I firmly believe that I can get off. But if I’m unsuccessful again I might have to take that advice.

I just hate the idea of having cancer and not receiving care. I know, from the experience of a member of my family, that a person can have cancerous tumors visible all over there body, and be denied palliative opiate care.

I do not want to have anything on my record that would even suggest to a doctor that they shouldn’t prescribe.

Separately I watched my grandfather also die of cancer, he had morphine lollipops, and the pain was still unbearable.

I do not want to give doctors any reason to deny me care. I truly believe they are more than happy to do so.

In some kind of sick way they remind me of the guards in the Stanford prison experiment.

The DEA gave them the power to do so by advising them in how to prescribe and now exercising that power is giving them some type of sick power over people that they are in love with abusing.

I hear there are doctors on blue light.

Hopefully what they read here helps them to understand how little confidence I have in their ability to care for people.

I am very untrusting of doctors being concerned that I am in pain and prescribing to alleviate it.

We might as well live in Japan.