I am a long-time reader but first-time poster on BL. I know this is an old thread, so please forgive me if I am in the wrong place. I really need help with Suboxone tapering and minimizing withdrawal. I was on pain meds for seven years for a back injury, and though I didn’t abuse them for a high (don’t get any), I did begin to abuse them to improve the efficacy. At the time I stopped nine days ago, twice a day I was chewing 75 mg of MS Contin plus taking orally another 30 mg (105 mg twice a day), coupled with OTC Codeine (Nurofen) 8-16 pills at 11.8 mg Codeine per pill. I know all the stupid parts of this.
A new doctor, who had no business or adequate experience prescribing Suboxone, gave me the sublinqual 8 mg strips and insisted I switch over. He started me too early, and I went into massive precipitated withdrawals (been through wds once before, and I know the real thing – though this was accelerated and horrific). He had no idea what to do but to take more Suboxone, which just made it worse (total 24 mg first day) and woozy. Eventually, after reading everything I could find on the web and Blue Light, I decided just to ‘rude it out’ and see if it improved. I had 24 hours of the full thing. Day 2 was better, but it was still as if withdrawal was going on and just partly masked by the Sub, and day 3 was worse than 2, even with a bit of a dose increase.
So I ignored my doctor’s advice and began to reduce the dosage every day quite rapidly, dropping either 25% or 33% a day. Every day I felt a lot better, though some of that may have been the long half-life of the Bup building in the system. My tapering from day one to ten went as follows: 24 mg, 16 mg, 18 mg, 12 mg, 9 mg, 6 mg, 4.5 mg, 3 mg, 2 mg, 1.5 mg. These are totals for the day, taken in three third sized doses. So I have only been on Suboxone 10 days, and I have dropped from 24 mg to 1.5 mg.
My question is how quickly can I jump to zero, and should I do this before the Bup begins to build habituation in my body? I have read that people get down to small doses of .25 mg and still get wds, but that is usually when they’ve been on it a long time. I also don’t want to find out that I am just postponing the opiate withdrawal, even having experienced much of it anyway. I know everyone is different. For me, opiates are not exact replacements and affect the receptors very diffently. I have actually had wds from one med while trying to switch to another. The Sub felt exactly like that. So I am keen to avoid getting hooked on yet another med that may not be serving much of any purpose. The only symptoms I am having now is really bad anxiety in the latter half of the period between dose 1 and 2 of the day. Any advice would be very, very much appreciated.
asap