Opioids What can opiate withdrawal be compared to?

[oliphill]

I just came off opiates. Was on 70mg Methadone and about 600mg to 1700mg heroin a day.

I had my last use up, then went into rehab. They gave me 70mg methadone on day 1, then 50mg day 2 then 30mg day 3, then nothing.

It was the HARDEST thing I've ever done in my life. I was so fucking sick. Lieing in the bathroom puking and shitting, but far more concerned about having massive unbearable physical aches and pains, my legs Killing me, whole skeleton trying to escape my body, pouring in sweat, absolutlely freezing cold, mentally at the absolute limit of unbearableness, can't be even slightly comfortable in any way or form or relax at all. After the puking and shitting stopped, pain feels worse in legs, cant really describe it as pain, but just UNbearable feeling. Like if you were held under water and you get to the stage just before you die and stay at that stage forever. Total fucking hell. 100% awake, experiencing all this for 12 days 24 hours a day, not 1 wink of sleep at all in this peroid. Start to get 20mins to 1 hour of sleep after day 12. ABsolutley NO energy, still restless cant sit down, cant stand up, can't lie down. Cold, weak, achey, fluey, emotional, feeling of doom/despair. Eventually after 21 days starts to get a TINY bit better. Getting a bit more sleep, falling asleep about 4am and waking up at 6am in a cold sweat feeling like shit. Slowly the symptoms go away, like really fucking slowly...

All of this knowing with one quick hit in an INSTANT it would all go away!

I'm 41 days clean now, I am sleeping ok now, but still no energy and a bit achey.

Fuck me, it was absolute hell. Hardest thing I've ever done. NEVER again!!!!!

 

[qwe]

I had my last use up, then went into rehab. They gave me 70mg methadone on day 1, then 50mg day 2 then 30mg day 3, then nothing.

jesus christ man

i strongly believe, with benzos and opiates, people need to be taken off very very slowly. the body can catch up, it's less disruptive, it's not sheer psychological distress, one can function, and one has less problems with post acute w/d if one tapers slower

i think abrupt cessation of drugs does more "damage" than daily use of the drug itself

american clinics and rehabs don't agree with me though..

 

[BananasAndOranges]

A Real Severe Opiate W/D is Like a benso w/d only its not deadly you just get the flu and reallllllly restless paranoid. Its fuckign horrible. Like hell if theres a hell. Fuck that shit ughhhh.

 

[oliphill]

jesus christ man

i strongly believe, with benzos and opiates, people need to be taken off very very slowly. the body can catch up, it's less disruptive, it's not sheer psychological distress, one can function, and one has less problems with post acute w/d if one tapers slower

i think abrupt cessation of drugs does more "damage" than daily use of the drug itself

american clinics and rehabs don't agree with me though..

Ridiculous isn't it. I didn't pay, insurance did, but this is at one of the most expensive rehabs in the country as well. I'm in a day care rehab at the moment which is government funded and they do it as a 4 week suboxone/subutex detox, and all the people on that detox i'm with seem fine.

I'm glad it was so hard though, shows me not what to go back to.

 

[TheTuneOfTurbo]

Honestly to me...it's felt almost just like coming down off a really bad acid trip. Has anyone else experienced really intense paranoia during the mental part of WDs?

 

[hale]

your body killing itself ouchchchchc

 

[puffj]

It depends on your habit, frequency, dosage, etc etc.

Without getting into so much detail like everyone else, suffice it to say that it won't be enjoyable. Infact, it will be miserable. The worst thing about it is that you know you can make all the horrible pain go away with one little usage. That's the hardest thing... knowing how quickly and how easily you can make it go away. It's like when you feel like you're about to throw up from food poisoning, and you're sitting in front of the toilet sweating, clammy, and breathing hard. Imagine at that point, that you could do something and within 50 seconds you would no longer be nauseas and feel like you did 50 seconds ago... how hard would it be to resist whatever would make you feel completely better. That's what's hard about breaking the habit.

The best way to avoid withdrawal is to taper. You have to want to not get high to taper successfully, or you'll find yourself using like you normally do. But if you truely want to quick, taper, go slow, and eventually you won't be using and you won't have gotten sick and awful feeling in the process.

 

[PinpointSteez]

You wimpy girl..Hydrocodone...you cant ask for a more pathetic opiate than those cat testicles. If you are going to have withdrawls from practicly over the counter pain killers then i suggest you try something for real and experience real pleasure and suffer the consequences. its probably worth it and you wont regret it.

ive been on 100mg of OpanaER snorted for 11 months and tomorow start my 5 day cold turkey experience. (first month at college, got ahead of my script, cant find any substitutes, long story.) THAT is withdrawaling. Not baby asprin like hydrocodone.

 

[newbie22]

ive been on 100mg of OpanaER snorted for 11 months and tomorow start my 5 day cold turkey experience. (first month at college, got ahead of my script, cant find any substitutes, long story.) THAT is withdrawaling. Not baby asprin like hydrocodone.

I don't agree at all. I've withdrawn from heroin, fentanyl, and hydrocodone. If you do enough hydrocodone the withdraws are just as bad. The better thing with hydros is it takes longer for your tolerance to skyrocket, and you're limited from taking a certain amount by the APAP. BUT, there is always CWE and just because it is hydro doesn't make it any less of an opiate.

Your argument?

 

[pegasys]

hydro w/d does suck, i thought it was the worst thing ever. Till IV heroin... oh and OT, pure hell.

 

[sveets]

i compare the feeling of withdrawal to the feeling i get after ive had a stomache virus and thrown up 10+ times. My body doesn't know if it is cold or hot and im always sweating and my head feels weird. Worse than the physical effects though in my opinion is the mental and psychological withdrawal symptoms. You fiend like youve neer fiended before and its hard to turn your mind off.

 

[tlks2Angels]

its the worst!!!!!!! i cant even compare it to anything bc its in a catagory all by itself... shit sucks

 

[Pegasus]

I'm going to go with "feels like a horrible flu with damn near the worst body aches and lack of motivation imaginable"...

 

[Sepher]

Better than 1000 orgasms....

Whoever came up with that whole 'better than any orgasm you ever had' thing could only have been a dealer? What a complete crock of shit that is.

I admit I know very little about the various Opiates our U.S. cousins have available to them these days, but from a long-term-ex-long-term Heroin addict's perspective, withdrawal from H at least is like . . .

Day 1 . . . . ok really. It's mainly anxiety coupled with the odd hot and cold flush. You're already feeling fucking awful and you know you're gonna start properly rattling before long, but most of the effects are mental at this point, the physical ones are bearable, and you're still fairly capable of getting it together enough to put a score together if you decide you're gonna bail.

Day 2 . . . a lot harder, cos you're feeling like death warmed up, you probably haven't slept very well, if at all, and you're wondering already if you're too far down the road to really do much about it, and that is a scary thought indeed, cos the one consolation of the Heroin addict in withdrawal is that they can stop it any time they choose. You know full well what's coming at this point, and it is quite scary. Scary enough that you've only rarely been strong enough to go beyond this point, and that has kept you addicted to the shit for 6 months, 2 years, 5 years, 7 years. You will probably do anything at this point to bail out.

Day 3 . . . . less said about that the better perhaps? It will be the longest day of your life, 'nuff said..

Day 4 . . . . ever so slightly better than day three. The second longest day of your life.

Day 5 . . . . not all that bad really, though by now you're probably clutching at straws and desperately clinging to anything that looks like an improvement.

Week 1 . . . the pain's completely gone, but it's still pretty shit.

Week 2 . . . still pretty shit.

Month 1 . . . just about sleeping by now.

Year 1 . . . completely over the stuff and never want to look at a bag again, but you still occasionally have really frustrating dreams about it, and sometimes wake up from those dreams thinking you're rattling.

Year 3/5/7 . . see Year 1 above.


Generally speaking, I think this is common for most addicts for most of it . . . .

No matter how comfy the bed / sofa / floor if you're unlucky, you will not be able to lie still for much longer than a minute before the wriggly-leg, broken-back, beaten-with-a-baseball-bat like pain starts, and you will gingerly move your beaten and broken bones to a comfier spot, which might be comfy for all of a minute before the pain starts all over. This will go on for some days and nights. There are 1440 minutes in a day, 10080 minutes in a week. That's a lot of minutes.

To alleviate the pain, you will sometimes punch yourself repeatedly in the legs, just to distract yerself a little bit, and milk every last bit out of how ever many endorphins you have left in you?

No matter what you take to alleviate sickness / diarrhea, simple fact is you're probably gonna puke all over yourself at some point. Several times. Worse will more than likely happen. In fact, those who don't shit themselves at least once get massive brownie points . . . Probably the wrong choice of words there actually, now I think on it?

One of the effects of Heroin is that it suppresses Noradrenaline uptake, so your body overproduces it to try and compensate while you're on the stuff, and in the sudden absence of Heroin you get a rebound efect that lets your Noradrenaline go absolutely mental with itself. That puts you into a permanent state of fight-or-flight that lasts for days, and days, and days, and accounts for a lot of the stress / panic / sleeplessness / sweats / blood pressure, etc. That's not especially pleasant.

The Noradrenaline then eventually breaks down into Adrenochrome, which according to some researchers is hallucinogenic. Some would go so far as to say that an excess of Adrenochrome is in some way linked to Schizophrenia. In any event, a shitload of an alleged hallucinogen coursing through yer brain ain't nearly so much fun as all them other hallucinogens you used to quite enjoy actually before the H waltzed into your life. That in turn leaves you disorientated, confused, panicked, and stressed still further.That's not especially pleasant either.

Do not even think about sleeping for at least a week if you're lucky, a month if you're unlucky. No, seriously. None of this 'you must have nodded off at some point for an hour' bullshit. I mean, do not even think about sleeping for at least a week. After being awake for a week or more, you will find your head is seriously inside out. Not just fucked up beyond all recognition . . . I mean seriously inside out. You will just have to cling to whatever you can that helps you deal with it. Just for the record, my record without sleep is around the 21 days mark.



Lastly, just so the post doesn't come across as entirely negative, or seems to be otherwise dissuasive for those currently struggling, the physical symptoms are completely gone by day 7, and you must remember that the main thing you need to deal with is the mental component. All you need to do is stick to the decision you made to come off. The mind is stronger than the body.

Sepher

 

[Levvytation]

Whoever came up with that whole 'better than any orgasm you ever had' thing could only have been a dealer? What a complete crock of shit that is.

Its from the film 'Trainspotting' lol. Near the beginning when Renton is going on about how pleasurable shooting heroin is. Of course he doesn't think that for long....things go rapidly downhill. Its a brilliant film btw....gets heroin addiction spot-on...

Anyway, pod withdrawal.....horrible. The details have already been posted, so I won't say any more about it except to say this:

I CANNOT STRESS HARD ENOUGH HOW MUCH CODEINE EASES POD WITHDRAWAL!!!

I've been off pods for months, however I am still addicted to codeine (I actually get high off it now, though I didn't for quite a while after quitting pods).

Codeine withdrawal, although not pleasant, is a walk in the park compared to pods.....2 or 3 days of feeling mild cold-like symptoms, diarreah (loperamide controls that even in low doses), & insomnia. Its an easy & reasonably cheap habit to maintain & it doesn't interfere with a normal lifestyle.

I consider myself lucky...my experience with pods gave me a glimpse of what addiction to the 'harder opiates' must be like & I doubt I'll be going down that road now.

Pods = lesson learned for me.

 

[rms0780]

I'll take a stab at this. I actually find Vicodin and Percocet withdrawal worse than OC. I can only attribute this to the fact that I take much more of these on a daily basis than OC, for many reasons (cost, dosage, etc...) These are the only three opiates I have experience with but I can tell you it's an absolute nightmare. I was snorting 3-5 OC-80's a day, which is bad, but not nearly as bad as some people I know. When I ran out of the those, couldn't find them, or ran out of money, I always had my legal script of Percocet, 100/month. I would easily take 15-20 Percocet a day. I haven't taken an OC in two weeks, but went through 60 5mg Percocets in 3 days. The last time I took any opiate, which was 4 Percocet at once to finish out my script, was four days ago. The last four days have been a living hell, but I have gone through this many times and knew what to expect. In a nutshell:

-Violent diarrhea and stomach cramping
-Hot and cold sweats at the same time (yes, that's possible)
-Extreme depression
-No appetite
-Sense that you are burning and freezing at the same time under your skin
-All motivation to do anything completely goes out the window
-0 sleep
-Constant yawning and eye tearing
-Much more that I can't think of right now

This is day four, and physically, I'm just beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. From past experience, I would say in another 2-3 days, I will be out of the woods physically, but then the mental challenge begins, which lasts much longer (lifelong struggle I'm told which lessens over time), and in many respects is tougher.

This is a feeling that is SO bad, you would never be able to contemplate it unless you were going through it. SO bad I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

 

[pumkin_escobar]

opiate withdrawl is like fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck + slamming your head on the wall + vomit and shit+ hot and cold + every depressed moment coming out at once + please give me a shot of heroin right now. thats opiate withdrawls

 

[jaystyle]

I can handle a flu or getting sick or hurt...

the thing that makes opiate withdrawal so hard is that the whole time you are INSATIABLE CRAVING opiates which will not only end your horrid pain, but put you in a state of pleasure. Theres no worse craving than abusing your drug of choice when you are in withdrawals...

The worst part about withdrawals for me is your fast beating heart--- even if you lay down, you cant relax. You are constantly feeling jittery and uncomfortable. The nausea, bone aches, hot/cold flashes, and depression/anxiety also are horrid.

 

[jamesBrown]

Whenever I was in seriously intense heroin withdrawals.....

....death seemed like a possible solution to the pain I was experiencing.

 

[Rexeh]

As a quite mild OC addict (40 mg/day) the worst is the cold sweat soaking your clothes and bed/couch IMHO. Then the leg cramps, sometimes I get the feeling my head is like a balloon being inflated which is both scary and painful. And the cravings knowing that a few pills would make you feel SO much better you only have the phrase "I want my OC's, I need my OC's, **** those damn pills, oh god I love my pills, etc." in your mind going over and over. 8(

Also you can't seem to get anything done, just hoping you have a stash of Benzo's and Weed to ease the w/d. Or maybe even some strong Kratom resin extract or Poppy Pods.

Withdrawals are pretty new for me, only a few weeks experience since having my prescription changed from 30 mg to 40 mg, but as a chronic pain patient there's not much to choose except accepting the fact that you took the risk you might get addicted.

However nobody told you how the Opiate bliss feels... *nods out with burning cigar in hand*


-- Peace o/