Author: hatmaker510
Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 5:16 am
I, too, must apologize that your post went w/o a reply for so long. I don’t know how it got lost or slipped through the cracks, but I’ll admit it does happen sometimes.
The general guideline (from Dr. Junig) for tapering (once the person is at low doses) is to reduce by 10%, giving your body plenty of time to stabilize at each new dose before dropping again.
britianyann – you said you’re suffering pretty badly right now and are on 2 mg and dropping by 1 mg every week. That’s a VERY fast taper and in my opinion that’s why you are suffering so badly. I would say your body is trying to tell you to slow it down. Do you have some kind of deadline that you need to be off suboxone by? If not, you might want to consider dropping your dose in smaller increments and not dropping quite so often. Doing it slower won’t only help your acute withdrawals, but it also should help you when it comes to post-acute withdrawals (PAWS) – and some people say that’s even worse than the acute w/d!
In general, a long, slow taper is the best way to stop sub treatment. The people on this forum that I’ve "watched" go off sub after years on it did it slowly and calmly and ended up barely feeling any withdrawals at all. It IS possible. Just listen to your body and take your time. Plus, the way I see it, it has to be better for our bodies to do a slow wean off any medication than to stop it too soon or too drastically. Oh and lastly, don’t EXPECT it to be horrible. The more we anticipate the worst, the more that’s exactly what we get. It seems to be the people who obsess over every little w/d symptom end up having the hardest time overall.
This goes way beyond my two cents (more like fifty cents) LOL. I hope some of this will help you out. Good luck to both of you on your tapers! 