Oh man this thread has all a sudden become too much and once again I realize its other posters making the same mistake I did.
Let me say one thing. WHO GIVES A FUCK if Jake is "using" the program? You people are drug addicts, not the virgin mary. And you are all telling Jake to do the same exact things you most likely fucked up while in the meth program. To "learn from our mistakes", well I hate to say, addicts don't learn from their mistakes, so drop it.
One thing I do not abide by is the concept that more of x opiate, will relieve y opiate cravings.
This is a basic fact of opiate abuse. The MORE you DO, the worse wds will be.
Thats WHY, no matter WHAT DOSE of meth you go on, down the road when you try to drop that dose at all, EXPECT cravings to come back no matter what fucking dose your on.
If you start dropping the dose your on now you'd get cravings.
If you were at 200mg and dropped from there you'd get cravings.
Higher dose don't "protect" from cravings with methadone, nor do sub, nor any opiate I know of. Thats almost like saying "when I'm high on dope I don't get cravings", no shit. But the point is anytime you come down from that dose the cravings come right back. THe ONLY way to systematically avoid cravings imo is to raise your dose a tiny bit everyday. Your body is ALWAYS going to be telling you in some way "give me more of that drug", thats the nature of opiates. It just seems like trying to avoid cravings with opiates is like trying to avoid breathing to live.
Thats why I don't understand this whole dose related/craving issue. And even when you drop doses, the cravings only take some time to pass, but if anyone here or Jake himself is considering on going on a specific dose to stop "cravings", you really should think about that again.
You are objectively adding more cravings to the end of your habit, when ever that may be. Your body will just learn how to tolerate a higher dose, make 100mg seem like 10mg, and it will always want more.
But when you come down from 100mg you have wayyyy more cravings to deal with. Coming off a smaller dose will make the rollercoaster a bit more stable.
What I would do is maybe don't agree with yourself or us. I think in a way you got your hopes up about 80mg and now if you do 40mg you're gonna feel like the forum forced the idea on you.
So maybe do 60mg if it helps in the autonomy department lol.
I still think however the main point here Jake IS THAT you have actually maintained yourself on a fairly "small" habit for some time now. 25-40mg of methadone isn't a lot. A couple of mg of sub a day wasn't too bad either back when you were taking it. And you were only really doing dope once or twice a week.
I just want you to see that you actually have a certain degree of control ALREADY over your habit. To me, by going up to 80mg, it seems like you're making your habit worse because some shitty uneducated institution of doctors says to do so. Thats affectively DOUBLING your habit Jake.
Its just something you really need to think about for a few days imo.
In the end though BECAUSE I don't see you tapering, I don't really care personally what dose of methadone you go on. Sure you are raising your habit but lets be real, its not like you're gonna start tapering it a year from now. I'm not saying that to doubt you, I'm saying it because you've merely admitted you hate wds.
Because of that, I see a detox in your future, not a taper. When ever you DO get clean, thats just what I see you doing. It was painless, fast and somewhat "easy". I think thats the type of solution you need to actually get clean and I think at some point after the meth you may give it a shot.
And someone also mentioned something about him going back to getting his meth off the street if the place doesn't allow benzos... what I'm saying is when he gets his meth off the street some asshole (whos already using dope in the program otherwise they wouldn't be selling their meth to begin) is profiting off of jake, breaking the rules of the program, and hes still getting meth essentially from the same meth clinics, just illegally.
So what you actually said is "its better for jake to get meth illegally, through a drug dealer whos breaking program rules himself, than for jake to to circumvent one rule (one stupid rule at that) and do it himself"?
This is where that mysterious little word "judgement" comes into play.
Jake, use your judgement.
People are saying your looking for excuses to "pick up another habit" and they obviously have no clue that you've already managed to pick up that habit. You've been taking methadone long enough already and by not going to the clinic you're not exactly avoiding picking up any habits anyway, so kind of a pointless arguement to make here. Are you picking up a LARGER habit if you go up to 80mg? Sure. But I still think theres something inside of you that makes you gravely scared of opiates, if there wasn't, I don't think you would have managed to stay on the small dose you've already been on.
And I DO think you'll work it out and do the right thing.
People are treating this kid like some deceptive criminalized drug addict and it seems a lot of you are merely displacing your own temperament/personalities onto him. Jake was not out robbing or killing people to get high. He doesn't steal and when he does accidentally it drives him crazy for weeks (long story lol). The kid is a good fucking person and I hate to see people here treating him like hes trying to get over on us or the clinic. It had NOTHING to do with that, the kids trying to get SOMETHING stable going on his life. Whether hes on 40 or 80mg as long as he feels stable thats all I care about.
And the last thing I will try to make you do is feel worse about taking a higher dose, if you need it you need it, but if you dont... you really should think about it. But don't think about it too much cause one thing I noticed about this forum is other peoples comments can REALLY make you feel bad about your habit simply due to how much utter shit people project here into other peoples lives.
I had no issues with paws till I came to this forum and was informed systematically about every single fucking apsect of them.
You don't always need to know everything you read on here, thats the only point I'm trying to make.
And Jake about the benzos, if you stopped today it usually takes 72 hours for benzos to get out of your system, not a few months. In fact no drug takes a few months to get out of your system except pot really (which is actually only a couple weeks most of the time). But look bro, don't worry about that shit. Focus on what you need to do to feel STABLE.
You can be on drugs and be stable. The thing is when we get on drugs they usually tend to throw our lives in all sorts of crazy directions. The concept I believe is to stablize yourself on them, once you have a good footing/foundation to stand on, THEN you focus on actually stopping. I'd just hate to see you beat yourself up anymore seeing some of the crap thats being in posted in here and KNOWING ALREADY how much you beat yourself up w/out other peoples help.
Breathe easy and keep us updated.
