Is it possible to gradually reduce opioids? I need help with tramadol, I've never tried to taper off and I think I've gotten nervous several times if the dose is too low, and I'm going through a horrible time in my life...
My dose is 750-900mg a day for about 2-3 months now.
I've dealt with tramadol withdrawal before, but right now I just can't stand it enough to try cold turkey
Yes you can, here's what I did, though I was not near your 750-900 mg a day dosing, nonetheless you will quickly discover a sweet spot so to speak, where you can easily subtract your does downward and still be able to easily maintain. If you are at 750, try dropping it to 650 for three to five days, allowing your body to reestablish equilibrium, then drop it again to 550 and watch how you respond to it, there will be some initial discomfort but it should be quite transitory. At some point you will hit a wall, where your body says wtf are you doing?
At that point lock in your dosing for a couple of weeks, then resume the downward taper. I can tell you with rock solid first hand experience you do not want to place self in a situation where you just are forced to CT tramadol above 300 mg a day, you will not wish to CT from even 300 a day, or 200 a day. What I did was at a certain point, I began in quartering up a 50 mg tab in four little pieces with a pill chopper, 12.5 mg a piece, and the last month of my tramadol I was taking no more than 12.5 mg of tramadol and doing just fine on it, and that after nearly 12-years of 300-400 mg a day use every single day!
That said, I still was forced to CT the tramadol as I personally was never quite caught up to the md's tapering schedule, so I was forced to drop altogether from just under 200 mg a day, which has resulted in in significant wd symptoms, specifically no sleep, mild cessation anxiety, and some mild rls. Other than that, if I had been true to the taper, it was a piece of cake albeit tedious, which if I had been true to the taper, would have been all but painless! I know you can do so, and the time to taper is when you have a good steady supply of the substance from whence to embark upon said taper, you do NOT want to be forced into this at the last minute as the taper could easily take you several months!
