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Opioids transitioning from methadone to suboxone

oi812many

Bluelighter
Joined
May 28, 2009
Messages
27
two part question... Okay hi guys and ladies. I have been on methadone for the last 7 months, my dose is 85mg daily but as of the last month or two I have only been able to go two or three times a week. I was a patient on suboxone for close to a year and switched to methadone because at the time I didnt have insurance and couldnt afford the suboxone. Now I have insurance, and the methadone is too expensive these days, roughly 500 dollars a month...anyways my suboxone induction is monday at 330, I plan on taking my last dose of methadone tomorrow, which is friday around 6am...it will be around 80 plus hours...

question one... will 80 hours be enough time so I dont get thrown into percipitated w/ds

question two... how long does methadone stay in your system, on average, they told me if I have methadone in my system, (urine) that they wont dose me...

can you please help me?
 
5, 6 days, upwards of 10 of youre a fat loser. But if you're in withdrawal, you can induct.
 
I don't know if 80 hours is enough when it comes to methadone. Methadone withdrawal didnt really peak until the 10th day or so for me. I have no experience transitioning from methadone to buprenorphine so unfortunately I can't be of more assistance. Precipitated withdrawal from 85mg of methadone is probably pretty rough. Ive been hit with narcan while on 380mg/day of methadone and I started spontaneously shitting myself it was horrific.
 
Is the methadone test used b/f induction a typical metabolite immunoassay (UA) or does it test for methadone itself? I suppose it depends on the clinic. Testing for methadone would require a different testing methodology but could still be immunoassay and cost about the same.

Reason I bring it up is if you're clear of methadone and but not it's metabolites and you're in w/d then I think the testing would be valid, but yeah, looking for inactive metabolites to be gone b/f induction is crazy, imo. There are no active metabolites of methadone (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11504799)

The COWs scale rating to determine when you're ready to induct works for most, but not all. Search SAMHSA.gov for the COWs score sheet. Be sure to use the one for long acting opioids.

When I inducted from 30-mgs of methadone we didn't do it right, It was 2008, first time my psych had done it. I went 72 hours no methadone and had no serious w/d going on - one puke and some RLS and no sleep - that was all and I inducted. How I didn't get PWDs is beyond me, I certaintly wasn't clear of metabolites, but obviously was of most or all methadone, but why I wasn't sicker after dropping from 4 years of 200-mg/day to 30-mg and then jumping is beyond me, I should have either been in hell b/f or after inducting, but it was cake. Fucking cake.

I was fortunate, many are not so...
 
This site is the very best wealth of knowledge online. The exact reason I came here to ask this question is because of the responses you have all given me. I appreciate you all so much, thank you for the well wishes I will NOT dose tomorrow, I was considering it because I have my son this weekend, just so I wouldt be sick around him, but maybe at the end of the day that is the better option. Much love respect and appreciation to you all...wish me luck!!
 
Well guys I didn't dose. I haven't taken methadone since Wednesday. I did however decide to do a bit of H so I could make it through the weekend without being super sick. So the methadone( by tomorrow) should be out of my system. The last time I did any H was last night, I hope and pray I'm in full blown w/d's by tomorrow afternoon around 5...im going to go to the gym today and drink plenty of water to try and flush anything remaining in my body out. Hopefully I will be in w/d's. I hope I didn't make a mistake by doing a bit of H.
 
Well it's been 24 hours since I did the h, still no w/d but I do feel it slowly coming. Slight pupil dilation, runny nose is starting, eyes just started watering a few minutes ago, legs are beginning to hurt.. the h i get is pretty strong stuff, but it should be on its way out of my system. I'm going to be dosing tomorrow at around 430 to 5 pm. I'm going to beg my provider to allow me to to small staggered doses of bupe, as opposed to a full 8mg dose like they did before as I just read a double blind study that suggested that small staggered doses Sent less participants who were dependant on 100mg of methadone into pwd...so im going to share this info with my provider see if they concur and will deviate from their standard practice..ive never ever prayed for w/d before but I'm very very looking forward to a rapid onset of the bads so I can make the switch successfully and comfortably...wednesday at roughly 10am was my last methadone dose with about a gram of h shot iv since then....come on liver do your thing!!!
 
Well it's been 24 hours since I did the h, still no w/d but I do feel it slowly coming. Slight pupil dilation, runny nose is starting, eyes just started watering a few minutes ago, legs are beginning to hurt.. the h i get is pretty strong stuff, but it should be on its way out of my system. I'm going to be dosing tomorrow at around 430 to 5 pm. I'm going to beg my provider to allow me to to small staggered doses of bupe, as opposed to a full 8mg dose like they did before as I just read a double blind study that suggested that small staggered doses Sent less participants who were dependant on 100mg of methadone into pwd...so im going to share this info with my provider see if they concur and will deviate from their standard practice..ive never ever prayed for w/d before but I'm very very looking forward to a rapid onset of the bads so I can make the switch successfully and comfortably...wednesday at roughly 10am was my last methadone dose with about a gram of h shot iv since then....come on liver do your thing!!!

Interesting, let us know what happens (I'm curious, and all reports makes me smarter).
 
Well I'm still not 100% into w/d....as a matter of fact I don't think I am at all. Unless my w/d is very mild...im scared to death..
 
Well...it didn't make me any "WORSE" BUT i can't say that it made me much better either. In fact. Even though it was 48 hours from that time I shot up, and 6 days since I dosed my 85mg methadone dose, I still don't think I was sick enough, and need to be even further up on on the cows index. I filled a 7 day script, so I'm going to wait 24 hours or so and dose again. I feel like I'm going to need a few days to a few weeks to compete the transition...im.going to keep you all very much up to date through the process, thanks for being bere for me folks...
 
Well...it didn't make me any "WORSE" BUT i can't say that it made me much better either. In fact. Even though it was 48 hours from that time I shot up, and 6 days since I dosed my 85mg methadone dose, I still don't think I was sick enough, and need to be even further up on on the cows index. I filled a 7 day script, so I'm going to wait 24 hours or so and dose again. I feel like I'm going to need a few days to a few weeks to compete the transition...im.going to keep you all very much up to date through the process, thanks for being bere for me folks...
How many doses did you take ? Just the 2mg ?

Now that youve inducted you can titrate your dose by 1 or 2 mg every few hours until you feel normal.
 
My advice now that you got past the potentially hell-ish part is to keep the dose as low as possible. Don't try to chase a high even if you feel one sometime in the next few days - it's fleeting and increasing the dose will not make it more likely to happen again, rather perhaps more likely the opposite.

If I could I would keep dose around 6-mg, but anything up to 12-mg ime is reasonably effective, but really for me anything above 8-mg is (now) essentially useless.

If your habit was big enough I could see a situation where up to 20 - 24-mg.day may be needed for the first few weeks but then a fairly rapid drop to 12- or 8-mg should be possible and I recommend that if for no other reason than if you need emergency pain relief it will be easier and more likely the ER docs would pump you with enough fent to overcome the bupe.
 
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