Bupe The Dreaded Suboxone Taper... Can I get rid of 99% of withdrawals?

Hi guys,

Here's the rundown:

Went to rehab last fall, and was prescribed 2mg suboxone. Like an idiot, I abused it for the first two months or so, as - I was actually opiate free when I started it - I found I was getting high as a kite on it. Over the next few months following rehab, I got my suboxone dose increased to 8mg gradually. All this time, I somehow got my family doctor to just prescribe it to me (30 days at once), since the stupid methadone and suboxone treatment centers do not work with people who have 9 - 5 jobs... living in Canada, I understand it's not common to have your family doc write you month long scripts for sub.

Two months ago, I landed my first full-time job since I graduated university (last summer immediately before rehab). In the few weeks before I actually started working, I managed to cut my sub dose down from 8mg (with some additional suboxone either IVed or snorted many days... stupid, I know) to 2mg, taken sublingual with no cheating. This essentially brings us to where I reside now.

This job is a WAY better job then I should probably have given my age and experience, and I so don't want to loose it over some stupid withdrawals... but I am determined to get off of this shit none-the-less.

Here is my plan (to taper from 2mg to 0mg)... I only have 2mg pills, as we don't have strips here:

- Buy a digital scale, accurate to a single milligram.
- Weigh out a single 2mg suboxone pill.
- Each day, take 1mg less of my pill.
- If withdrawals start to show, stay at current dose for a week.
- Continue to zero milligrams.

Does this sound plausible? Say the pill weighs 200mg... That would mean that over a 200 day period, I would take 200mg, 199mg, 198, etc.. until zero. If I follow this program, what sort of withdrawals would I be looking at? Surely any withdrawal I experience would have to be very minimal, correct? The only thing I could see throwing this off would be the inconsistent absorption % of sublingual administration, and I am considering switching to another RoA that is more consistent (but not I.V). I understand that sublingual is best for addictive tendencies, but when the amount you absorb varies day to day, it's not very practical for precision dosing...

I would really, really, REALLY appreciate ANY advice that anyone has on this topic... I really want to be successful with this, while not calling in sick for work (which i can't really afford to at this point anyway). Thanks in advance!

PS. Just realized: I already have the scale, as my father is a jeweler... it's a very accurate one.

I would truely reccomend doing a shorter taper than that. The problem with tapers is that you will be in very minor WD the whole time.

Drop .25mg every week or so depending on how your body feels. This will give your body time to adjust to the lower dose. That in turn will make your taper much easier physically and mentally.

Have you tried doing a super quick 1 or 2 week taper? Many people (myself included) find sub withdrawals to be minor.

Regardless of your choice, expect minor symtoms to stick around for a couple months.

kratom is the easiest way to get off sub, otherwise there will be withdrawals

I call myself the suboxone withdrawal expert of my condo complex - having done it soo many times and, like you, being the kind of person that would do anything to alleviate the withdrawals via unusual means.

I believe that tapering is the most difficult method to get off after a certain point. But buprenorphine, strangely, causes MUCH more pronounced affects when taken in smaller doses (I mean like 0.3 to 0.5mg). I'd suggest immediately dropping to 0.5mg twice a day - the first day will be a bit rough, the second day you will start to buzz from the doze, and by the third of forth day you'll be buzzing harder and wondering why you ever took such large doses before.

Once down to somewhere between 0.25mg and 1mg a day (depending if you taper a bit further - 0.2mg was the lowest dose where I still noticed solid effects from the bupe), I believe it is best to switch to either kratom or tramadol. If there is one you find less enjoyable, chose that one. A mild to moderate dose of either will stop the withdrawals and keep you functioning. Use the kratom or tramadol for two weeks, decreasing the dose after the first week until you jump off at a low dose (50mg tram a day or 3mg of kratom a day).

When I did this, I avoided 99% of the physical withdrawals. I woke up at 3am one morning after the jump - that was the only insomnia I experienced. The depression and lethargy that define PAWS, however, will materialize rapidly and be the big challenge for 6 months or so. But if you keep your eye on the prize (this is only temporary, I will feel so much happier in just a few months) then you can truck through it and enter the beautiful world of post-post acute withdrawals.

There is literally no way to avoid a buprenorphine withdrawal (from maintenance). The kick will be long, brutal and individual to you and your body. But from what I know, 16 mg or .1 mg of bupe is the same thing in regards to the almost impossibility of getting off the stuff. I'm at the point where it's THREE MONTHS without bupe touching my brain and then a huge ibogaine dose to clear the way to get off this awful drug (not that it didn't save my life, but christ, it's harder to kick than fucking methadone, THEY LIED!)

ALSO: I wish you the best of luck but I can only speak from experience.

I never found any problem with subs, I'm scripted 8mg/day and in the last week I stopped taking it and now I've been off of it for 8 days after being on it for 2 months and before that 25mg methadone/day for 2 years and on top of that I only stopped using down about a month ago after being on it for about 3 years straight. I just went to my sub clinic and my doc scripted me 4mg/every second day just as a precaution for cravings. But yea really I haven't been going thru bad w/d at all.

I can't speak from experience but my plan, when I eventually come off my subs, is to drop 1mg a week down to 8mg, then drop 1/2mg a week down to 0.5, then drop down to 0.25. At this point I will swap to codeine, according to the various charts 120mg of codeine is equal to 0.3mg of suboxone. So I will take (via CWE) 120mg of codeine 3 times a day. Reduce this by 10mg a week down to 10mg 3 times a day, then go to 5mg, then go to 2.5 and then finally jump. At that stage I'd be on such an absurdly small dose that any symptoms will probably just be psychosomatic (and a bit of shock at not having any opiates in my system for the first time in years), and because codeine has such a short half life, they will be much shorter in duration (never understood why they don't swap people to opiates with a shorter halflife when jumping off subs/methadone). The whole thing will take nearly a year (in fact I might stretch it out to a year and a day, just for the aesthetic of the thing).

I understand that Canada has OTC codeine as well, although mixed with caffeine, which might be a problem, but if it isn't, you should be able to replicate this on a much shorter timeframe and have pain free tapering. Unless your tolerance is low enough that the codeine will get you any kind of buzz (although I can't imagine how it could, with the caffeine), in which case it may not be such a good idea. But consider it. The swap to a drug with a short half life could mean the difference between 3 days of symptoms (if there are any, which theoretically there shouldn't be) and 3 weeks.

bigzip44 said:

There is literally no way to avoid a buprenorphine withdrawal (from maintenance). The kick will be long, brutal and individual to you and your body. But from what I know, 16 mg or .1 mg of bupe is the same thing in regards to the almost impossibility of getting off the stuff. I'm at the point where it's THREE MONTHS without bupe touching my brain and then a huge ibogaine dose to clear the way to get off this awful drug (not that it didn't save my life, but christ, it's harder to kick than fucking methadone, THEY LIED!)

Click to expand...

That's my experience as well. Been off for almost 30 days and I'm still a little sick. The first 20 days where brutal. I jumped off at Round 1.5 mg after 5 years of maintenance.

Wow, completely forgot I had posted this thread, and found it just now while about to post a thread for the exact same thing I'm sorry everyone... does anyone else notice their memory is SHIT on suboxone? Like, I wouldn't be surprised if Sub (or other opiates for that matter) have some sort of anti-nicotinic or anti-cholingergic effect on some small scale, because my memory is impaired as shit on them. Pardon my Quebecois.

Anyway, so I am currently at 2mg still, and about to start this taper. Citiokid, I am sending you a private message regarding the suboxone taper info you outlined, as I get the feeling that your intelligent and have done your research (as well as "independent field testing" ) on this matter.

Larc, Burn Out, bigzip, and crimsonjunk: I see what you are saying, but I really have a hard time understanding how significant withdrawal is an unavoidable process... I mean, I can see how the final jump will be tough, since Bupe can be prescribed in less-then-a-freakin-milligram-doses for pain, but I don't see how the taper results in completely unavoidable shit-tier bad feels no matter what (and for the record, I am by no means discounting your anecdotal experiences of this, but perhaps your tapering technique).

For example, I was intending on tapering my dose down by 1mg OF THE WEIGHT OF THE PILL every 3 days or so (my latest plans)... and last time I checked, my 2mg pills weigh around 400mg or so (I think... its been a while since I weighed one)... So basically, If the pill weighs exactly 400mg (for the sake or argument), then I would be reducing by suboxone dose by A QUARTER OF A PERCENT every three days; I cannot see how this is going to generate withdrawals of a magnitude that is physiologically even barely noticeable. I think that tapering can be fairly painless, given you follow an insanely gradual reduction with a very accurate sub-milligram scale. I think what f*cks most people up with the suboxone taper is that they don't realize just how potent the shit is... once you realize that it is prescribed in micro-milligram doses for pain, then you come to understand just how slowly a taper is going to have to happen to be relatively painless.

Burn Out: I would be interested in knowing whether or not you are still clean, as I have been debating using kratom for withdrawals, but seeing as Kratom has gotten me high as a kite in the past, I've decided again'st it... I feel like the odds of relapse would be greatly increased if I used just a bit too much of it one day, and felt some non-suboxone-moderated-euphoria... I am going to avoid it if at all possible.

Crankinit: The codeine pills in Canada are shit because of the amount of caffeine that comes in them... you can precipitate the caffeine out if you know what you are doing, but its hardly worth the effort for shitty codeine... especially when you are coming off subs. Honestly man, I would think good Kratom would work better, which I have used successfully (well, not entirely, since I am posting this lol) to get off of Poppy Seed Tea in the past. And before somebody says that poppy seed tea doesn't work, please f&ck off: I failed a drug test with one of the most massive amounts of morphine my past drug Councillor had ever seen drinking solely poppy seed tea... it works, and works well if you know what you are doing. But yeah... Kratom is good for that stuff.

...

Finally, once I have been off of the sub and into PAWS for a period of time, I have decided that I am going to try two drugs simultenously for PAWS: Selegiline at 2.5mg a day (possibly BID), and Naltrexone (not at a low dose - I don't buy that at all). My theory is that Selegiline will help with me getting my dopamine system up to speed again, and the naltrexone's antagonistic blockade on the Mu receptors will cause massive upregulation... I plan to take the selegiline and naltrexone for about a month (if I can make it that long), and then stop the naltrexone abruptly, while slowly weaning off the selegiline (or possibly staying on it indefinitely if the effects are O.K.)... I don't see why short stints on Naltrexone have not been researched more for treatment of PAWS, as the logic seems to be pretty sound... and I mean at the full terrifying 50mg daily dose... not the 4.5mg low dose placebo.

This post is a mess, but fuck it, so am I until I'm off this shit.

Well, I don't plan on getting off of Subs anytime soon, but if it's not up to me, and that dreaded day comes, has anyone had any success using Loperamide for when they tapered down low enough on Subs???? I've thought about Kratom(getting the regular, and also tracking down some of that psdeo mitirygaine anolouge and use that for a SHORT period of time then to regular kratom...or pods or seeds, just no pills.... But was just curious about Lope for this issue as it would be the cheapest... It would keep me outta w/d when on oxy when I would eat a 72 count bottle of em(144mg,overkill I know, shit also raised my tolerance.) And soo true about people with 9-5 jobs and the clinics! Shits annoying, talking about done' in particular w/ me, might be able to work it out if I didn't live in such a rural area, but damn, shits impossible it seems...