Tapering Fentanyl to buprenorphine taper

[Tbdr]

I’ve been using the fake M30’s that have fentanyl in them for a while. But I’ve been tapering down for a couple weeks now. At one point I was using 15 of them a day. I’m done to like 4 a day now and can feel withdrawal / intense cravings come in in between doses. But I’ve hung in brought it way down compared to where I was. Does anyone have any idea how long I’m going to totally need to stop for before I can take some buprenorphine? I have the 8mg sublingual bupe tablets and I really want to get of these damn fake blues and start back on my bupe regimen. I’ve been through precipitated withdrawal several times and no how bad it is. Really want to avoid that. But I keep reading different things. Some articles say 24-48 hours, others say 72 hours. The longest I’ve gone in the last was 36 hours and got wicked PW symptoms, but I was still using at least 10 pills a day if not more. Now that I’ve tapered down a good bit, will 24-48 hours be a safe window to take somw
Bupe and not feel like I’m in hell afterwards? Thanks everyone. Any help / advice is greatly appreciated. Much love to all of you.

 

[VerbalTruist]

I would recommend a solid 24 hours between your last use of fentanyl. The recommendation is that you are actually physically sick before you switch to bupe. With heroin I have had to wait as long as 36 hours. With shorter acting opioids some people will say 18, but you don't know the composition of what you're taking and you don't want to risk precipitated withdrawal. Wait the full 24 hours. You want to go into it moderately, but not fully, dope sick. Certainly that isn't what you want to hear and I know it can be arduous, but precip. w/d is WAY worse, that I can promise you.

 

[Fornax55]

There's a lot of other posts regarding this. Fentanyl is lipid soluble and gets stored in your organs. There have been cases of people getting put into PWD from Suboxone even several weeks after their last dose of fentanyl, once their withdrawals had finished. I've tried 4 times in the last few months to switch to fent, even at low doses (<2mg) which I've found in the past is small enough of a dose that I can take it congruently with opioids without going into PWD. No such luck. Every time it exacerbates the withdrawal.

The Bernese method seems to be about the only thing that works for people dependent on fentanyl. It involves microdosing fentanyl while you're continuing to use your full-agonist opioid. Gradually increasing the amount of suboxone in your body until you can drop the fent. Early on it will still throw you into PWD, but you counteract this by using the full-agonist just enough to stave off WDs.

Others can explain it much better than me.

Also I just wrote another post on this, but if you live somewhere that you can pick opium poppies, do that instead. Way less risky, and much more easy to manage compared to Bupe.

 

[Hmah2018]

There's a lot of other posts regarding this. Fentanyl is lipid soluble and gets stored in your organs. There have been cases of people getting put into PWD from Suboxone even several weeks after their last dose of fentanyl, once their withdrawals had finished. I've tried 4 times in the last few months to switch to fent, even at low doses (<2mg) which I've found in the past is small enough of a dose that I can take it congruently with opioids without going into PWD. No such luck. Every time it exacerbates the withdrawal.

The Bernese method seems to be about the only thing that works for people dependent on fentanyl. It involves microdosing fentanyl while you're continuing to use your full-agonist opioid. Gradually increasing the amount of suboxone in your body until you can drop the fent. Early on it will still throw you into PWD, but you counteract this by using the full-agonist just enough to stave off WDs.

Others can explain it much better than me.

Also I just wrote another post on this, but if you live somewhere that you can pick opium poppies, do that instead. Way less risky, and much more easy to manage compared to Bupe.

Yah I’m about to go to my first ever clinic appointment tomorrow. I too am on fentanyl and I’ve already talked to 2 nurses there and they have both said more than likely I will be doing the Bernese method. I’m still scared because the PW withdrawals scare the crap out of me. I just don’t understand how I slowly microdose up and while still using and then one day just drop the fent and I’m supposed to be ok. But like I said this is my first time doing the medication approach so I’m not familiar with everything.

 

[Ikcorwan]

This is my first post, I didn't really skim through the rules and I apologize I just got a little excited when I saw this forum it's like a breath fresh air when it comes to questions. I had a similar situation and I started last month, I went to the VA for help and honestly I had no idea that the VA would actually do anything except for take more my pension money but they helped a little bit but just make sure you wait till you're in full blown withdrawal because I didn't,.. and it threw me into a serious spin... Please forgive me if I'm hijacking your thread but it seems like after I went from confetty to subs I haven't been able to get any feels of relief confetty provided... So there's no way I'm going to go back to the confetty when I've come this far, It's only a month but I really wanted this. What are you guys doing to take the edge off ? I don't drink alcohol and all I've got as far as options is Suboxone and loperamide, I can't seem to get any kind of relief I even tried taking about a week off the subs then 80mg of loperamide, still nothing. I'm pretty much 100% clean now but this is the very beginning and I just don't want to screw it up I just want to find some sort of euphoric relief... I'm just not sure whether or not I want to try the subs again maybe they'll have a different effect on my body? I don't know, but like I said this is my first post and I saw your thread and I'm in a similar situation. If it's worth anything or not, I took my last dose of confetty about a month ago and I'm actually doing okay, it's just that feeling that there's something missing... that's going to be hard to overcome... I just don't want to ask my doctor this shit.. yet.

 

[n3ophy7e]

This is my first post, I didn't really skim through the rules and I apologize I just got a little excited when I saw this forum it's like a breath fresh air when it comes to questions. I had a similar situation and I started last month, I went to the VA for help and honestly I had no idea that the VA would actually do anything except for take more my pension money but they helped a little bit but just make sure you wait till you're in full blown withdrawal because I didn't,.. and it threw me into a serious spin... Please forgive me if I'm hijacking your thread but it seems like after I went from confetty to subs I haven't been able to get any feels of relief confetty provided... So there's no way I'm going to go back to the confetty when I've come this far, It's only a month but I really wanted this. What are you guys doing to take the edge off ? I don't drink alcohol and all I've got as far as options is Suboxone and loperamide, I can't seem to get any kind of relief I even tried taking about a week off the subs then 80mg of loperamide, still nothing. I'm pretty much 100% clean now but this is the very beginning and I just don't want to screw it up I just want to find some sort of euphoric relief... I'm just not sure whether or not I want to try the subs again maybe they'll have a different effect on my body? I don't know, but like I said this is my first post and I saw your thread and I'm in a similar situation. If it's worth anything or not, I took my last dose of confetty about a month ago and I'm actually doing okay, it's just that feeling that there's something missing... that's going to be hard to overcome... I just don't want to ask my doctor this shit.. yet.

Hey man, welcome to Bluelight! I'm so glad you found us and joined

First things first, and to state the obvious, but please DO NOT go back to the fentanyl or any other opiates!!! You've come this far, and even though you're wanting relief, you really do not want to have to start from scratch again.

That is really awesome that VA helped you. Are you still in touch with them about this issue? Do you get ongoing counselling provided by them?

When you say "take the edge off" what exactly do you mean? After a whole month off the fent you shouldn't still be in withdrawals from that. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this but from reading what you posted, it sounds like you're looking for relief from psychological and emotional distress, i.e. you're still wanting to get high. When you said you want some kind of "euphoric relief" that was when I got concerned... (disclaimer: I have Complex PTSD and I am a recovering alcoholic and poly-drug addict, so I truly do get it).

Unfortunately sober life doesn't really offer much in the way of "euphoric relief", especially when you're only newly clean. Your brain is used to the instant relief that it got from fentanyl, and now it has to recover, rewire, and get used to natural/normal methods of feeling happiness and euphoria and relief, such as deep breathing exercises, meditation, drawing or painting, taking a walk in the sunshine and smelling some fresh flowers, exercising, playing with puppies, catching up with close friends and having a good laugh. Once your brain's dopamine expectations re-adjust, these things will start to bring you real pleasure and joy once again.

But you have to stay clean for a while to let your brain "forget" about the effect that opiates have, and to regain its natural levels of what those feelings of calm, happiness, contentment and relief really are. Is this advice relevant to your situation?

 

[STRYKA]

Just wrote long post and got deleted but short question I been taking suboxone for several years and I was given xanax with fentanyl in it. And I surprisingly feel it but I want to be careful. Any body thoughts? Have rhey had experience with this and what's their opinion?

 

[Ikcorwan]

Hey man, welcome to Bluelight! I'm so glad you found us and joined

First things first, and to state the obvious, but please DO NOT go back to the fentanyl or any other opiates!!! You've come this far, and even though you're wanting relief, you really do not want to have to start from scratch again.

That is really awesome that VA helped you. Are you still in touch with them about this issue? Do you get ongoing counselling provided by them?

When you say "take the edge off" what exactly do you mean? After a whole month off the fent you shouldn't still be in withdrawals from that. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this but from reading what you posted, it sounds like you're looking for relief from psychological and emotional distress, i.e. you're still wanting to get high. When you said you want some kind of "euphoric relief" that was when I got concerned... (disclaimer: I have Complex PTSD and I am a recovering alcoholic and poly-drug addict, so I truly do get it).

Unfortunately sober life doesn't really offer much in the way of "euphoric relief", especially when you're only newly clean. Your brain is used to the instant relief that it got from fentanyl, and now it has to recover, rewire, and get used to natural/normal methods of feeling happiness and euphoria and relief, such as deep breathing exercises, meditation, drawing or painting, taking a walk in the sunshine and smelling some fresh flowers, exercising, playing with puppies, catching up with close friends and having a good laugh. Once your brain's dopamine expectations re-adjust, these things will start to bring you real pleasure and joy once again.

But you have to stay clean for a while to let your brain "forget" about the effect that opiates have, and to regain its natural levels of what those feelings of calm, happiness, contentment and relief really are. Is this advice relevant to your situation?

Hey, it's really good to see some kind of support come through, I still stayed away from the fence and all even till now I haven't touched it since I don't want to go back through what I already went through. They started me on Suboxone and that really just kind of stretched the withdrawals out for me it didn't help at all, I started using methadone at a local clinic and it wasn't what I wanted to do because I had to go in every single day but now I feel normal to say the least. I was facing a really tough time where I couldn't get any kind of relief and yes I was really fighting from about 5:00 p.m. until I had to go to sleep, then sleeping was a big issue for me for a long time I'm finally starting to feel better little by little my emotions are crazy I still cry all the time but I was taking so much fentanyl that they're still finding it in my system I'm an overweight kind of guy too but they're still Trace amounts in my urine sample every once in awhile and it makes me feel like people are trying to mix up samples but I'm just trying to breathe and run the course of the program I know in my heart I haven't been using so all I have to do is just take the medications that I take every day for my new doctors take those prescriptions to my clinic they make a note of what I'm taking and I shouldn't have to worry about nothing. They gave me a oral swab test and it came back clean for everything, and then a couple weeks later I did a piss test and they were nailing me for fentanyl, it's been a long road and fentanyl stays in your body for a very long time it's something I don't understand but when this is over I swear to God I'm done. I smoke a lot of weed now never used it in the past ever because opiates were my go-to drug. It's hard to use anything after using opiates because opiates are so good, and nothing in the world beats the feeling. I was a very avid user so I can work out in my shop and not feel the pain it's something I got into after my wife left and it was going on for a solid 3 years I have a new girlfriend now and as soon as my habit started dipping into my finances I said this is over that's when I went to the VA and yes they will help anybody don't worry about them taking away your benefits I thought they would but they don't they just help you with your recovery. I'd love to keep in touch with all you guys and anybody that has questions please hit me up cuz this is important this is about your life here.