Opioids quick methadone taper for heroin withdrawals

[Fiction Tales]

i've been researching the 'methadone miracle method' on here and other sites for the past few weeks. for those of you who haven't heard of it, the idea is basically to use methadone for a short period of time to ease you through the acute phase of withdrawal. i'm talking about 3-7 days here...any longer would increase the likelihood of getting addicted to the methadone itself in the process. i haven't really been able to get a definitive answer one way or the other about whether this method actually works....so i decided to give it a go myself to find out.

a little background: i'm coming off an eight month habit of anywhere from 1g to 2g of tar smoked daily. had about two months clean before this last run. been using opiates for about 5 years....starting getting sick for the first time about 3 years ago.

i couldn't really find any definitive info about dosing for this method...whether to take the same dose each day or taper or what. i decided to do a four day taper starting with 40mgs, and lowering it by 10mg each day, thus taking 10mgs on my fourth and final day.

today is six days after i took my last methadone dose (10 days since i last had any H). so far, i've felt hardly any withdrawals. here's a brief account of my experience so far ::

after i finished the last of my H, i waited a full 24 hours to take my first methadone dose of 40mgs (other places i read said to start your first dose at around 12 hours before withdrawals get too bad, but i decided on 24 out of......self loathing...?....not really sure). anyways, started getting pretty hairy by about 18/19 hours but hung in there. after i took my first 40mg dose, i felt a whole lot better after about an hour, but still not 100%. def still had some rls, sweating, temp control issues, etc...but toned down by like 80% of what they'd be cold turkey.

didn't sleep at all that first night, even on the 40mgs, but made it through by just laying there and imagining how bad id feel if i was doing th ol' cold turkey. next morning took my next dose - 30mgs. laid down and started feeling pretty good after about an hour. seems the 30mg dose added on to the dose from the day before, and combined in my receptors to completely block all withdrawals. i was feeling 100% a few hours later. slept fine that night.

took 20mg on day 3, and 10mg on day 4. felt completely fine those two days.

since stopping the methadone, i've so far felt basically 0 withdrawal symptoms, and its now 6 days and 4 hours since taking anything. have had some slight back and legs discomfort the last few days and maybe some cold flashes and am def fatigued, but besides for those basically negligent symptoms, i'm fine.

i gotta go out of town for two weeks in two days, and am starting to get pretty scared that once the methadone completely leaves my system im gonna go into full blown withdrawal. i really can't be sick on this trip..its for work.

what do you guys think:: has the methadone left my system in the previous 6 days and this method actually is a miracle? or is there still some methadone lingering in my system and once it's gone i'm gonna be fucked?

will log my progress over the coming days. thanks for reading : )

 

[KS78]

I stoped H twice this way and my experience was quite similar to yours.

I went to NYC Bellevue Hospital because of Heroin dependency. I was using around 2 bundles (1 gram) of Heroin in combination with cocaine intravenously. The first day, as soon as getting into the ward after many hours (they also have a floor for patients from various NY prisons/ jails which makes the security very strict), they gave me 40 mg Methadone (standard dose they use for Heroin withdrawal) and dropped it to 0 in 5 days. When I was leaving, they also gave me some Clonidine for PAWS. The whole thing was pretty painless after the 2nd morning at the hospital.
I think that fast Methadone taper is a good way to stop using.

 

[Fiction Tales]

thanks for your reply KS. what happened when you left the hospital? did you end up using, or if not, did bad withdrawals end up hitting you at any point? \\

im currently on day 7 of no methadone, and have had moderately bad leg and back pain the last 12 hours or so, but nothing comprared to full blown withdrawal. def manageable. also sneezing 6/7 times in a row pretty frequently. but besides for that im still basically fine.

very curious to see if im going to get better or worse from here.

 

[KS78]

Pretty much the same symptoms with you, it was very manageable. After I left the hospital, I stayed opiate free for a couple weeks but I kept on shooting cocaine. Then I started using again. Unfortunately, it took me a few more attempts to be heroin free.

The last one was a cold turkey without any meds at all. Once I was clean, I got a Naltraxone and after a few more implants I managed to stay clean starting from 2010 to a couple of months ago.

After staying clear of Heroin for that long, I couldn't turn my back to some good quality opium which I became dependent on but there's no comparison to my old addiction. Still I need to taper and break my dependency as soon as I can.

 

[Fiction Tales]

ha thats funny you kept shooting coke.... i was thinking of maybe picking up some crystal yesterday cause i was so ridiculously bored, but decided not to in the end. prob would have just ended up copping dope instead anyways haha.

anyways, if i don't end up getting any worse, this is def my new favorite way to kick a habit. i guess the methadones half life is just so long it kind of eases you through the withdrawals as it leaves your system slowly? prob best to not question it too much....

 

[KS78]

Poppy pods work great too. Since they have quite a long half life like methadone, they kind of ease you through the withdrawals too.

I live in Istanbul where we don't have Methadone at all, only Suboxone. For this reason, some people use dried poppy pods to stop using. The problem is that there's no authority controlling and dropping your intake so you need to be really strict with lowering the dose yourself.

 

[Fiction Tales]

never heard of poppy pods. im out in california. but yeah self tapering is usually a no dice situation.

have you ever used suboxone to kick? i've done it prob 10 times (using two or three 8mg strips tapered over like 5-6 days). first 72 hours is basically equivalent to cold turkey, at least in my experience. this methadone method has been much better so far.

 

[KS78]

I did the Buperenorphine taper and I don't like it at all because of the first 3 days being nearly like cold turkey. The only way I would choose it is if I don't have access to methadone or poppy pods.

 

[axe battler]

Wow, sounds like a good way to go about it. OP, it seems you're out of the woods if it's been 6 days, if you were gonna feel withdrawals, you'd be feeling them by now.
I've heard of others doing this too and say it's relatively easy compared to going turkey.
Shame I've been on it 2 years too long...looks like I'm fucked haha.

 

[Fiction Tales]

haha. i wonder if it would work in reverse order.....get on a short acting opioid like h or oxy or something for like 10 days till the methadone is out of your system, and then do a week longer suboxone taper.

 

[KS78]

People get off methadone by using heroin or other shorter acting opiates. In theory what you think could work. I only say theory because I never did it but I'm sure there're many people who did this.

 

[axe battler]

When i get off methadone, which won't be soon, I know I wont be able to drop down to 30, 28, 26....all the way to 0. I think I'll get back on subutex when I get to 30mg methadone if they let me. Then probably spend a couple years pissing around with low doses. Even on 85ml for 2 years, I still crave my dose in the mornings despite feeling very little from it. Liquid fucking handcuffs! Btw isn't that such a poetic stroke of genius!

 

[Fiction Tales]

this method works pretty good. it took a full 7 days i guess for the methadone to start leaving my system, cause that's when i started feeling a bit sick. got pretty achey and restless legs on the 7th day after my final methadone dose (11 days since i had any H). this lasted about 24 hours, but it was my only symptom and it was tolerable, especially after taking some gabapentin to help. slept for a bit after coming down off the gaba, and when i woke up i basically felt like i was in PAWS, which lasted about another week. compared to cold turkey is was much much better. the long half life seems to ease you off quite effectively.

def my new favorite way of kicking. personally i think it works better than a quick suboxone taper.

 

[Single KO]

Did something very similar to your method. works quite well for a heavy habit, although i found that it made PAWS last much longer than a normal withdrawal (PAWS, for me, lasted about a month using this method, and lasts about 10-14 days for a normal detox). But i def felt that it kept me out of the acute phase of withdrawal, and kind of eased me off the H. Again, the only downside was that it seemed to make PAWS last a couple weeks longer than usual for me, which can actually sometimes be even worse than the acute phase because of the mental aspect. thus would only really recommend this method for someone with a pretty heavy habit where a cold turkey is simply just out of the question.