Author: robx46
Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 11:55 pm
| Rpmcmurphy wrote: |
| So, I gotta tell ya, I don’t know what’s gonna happen here but I’m doin it anyway. I’m 60yrs. Old and I have been an addict since I drank my first beer at 15. Years of drug addiction, heroin, codeine syrup, pills, pot, methadone (10 yrs. in the 70’s and 80’s), always a high dose, Valium also always a high dose, speed, coke, and qualludes, mandrex, preludin, etc., etc. Locked up regularly. Stealing, possession, robbery, in and out of prison. Got the internal message in 1988 if I don’t change I’m gonna be a ward of the state till I die. Started going to meetings in prison, kept it up when I got out in 1991, sober till 2002, big relapse on opiates, sober 2003 till 2007. Relapses both on Vicodin, somas, benzos. Suboxone in 2007. I never got over 8mgs. daily and that was only in the very beginning. 2008-2012 mostly 2-4 mgs. a day and the last few months on less. A 2mg. strip lasts almost a week for me and I’m even almost less than that. NOW, all that to say this…I am scared to go through wd on this stuff. I have kicked methadone three times in jail and prison but the last time for that was 1979. I do want off this stuff and beat myself up pretty bad for still being on it. I’ve had the experience of recovery and truly owe my life to AA, NA, etc. I’m encouraged here cause I do believe keeping the secrets adds to the shame. I happen to work in the recovery field so really only my therapist and doc know the complete truth. My plan is to keep tapering. I commit to continue to taper. Thanks for being here guys. I go back and forth between "I’m making worse than it really will be" and "I’ve been on it so long it’s gonna be miserable." And I do believe in the power of our brains and how it affects our reality. Lots of love, RP. |
Wow what a long road it has been for you! But I think I have some good news for you. Well for me, if you read my story I was on sub for nearly a decade, much of that time being on as much as 24mg. Today I believe is 30 days, a solid month of being on nothing. Any physical wd are most definitely gone & certainly the more annoying acute wd’s went away after a couple weeks. Then I would start having 1 good day & 1 rough day, which is better than all rough days. Not sure if I’m still back to "normal" yet because honestly I have no gauge as to what normal is for me anymore. I’m still adjusting physically & emotionally, but I wouldn’t call that wd.
You are already nearly down to where I was where I jumped off completely. If 2mg lasts a week, if my math is correct that is almost .25 where I jumped off. & you might have been on smaller dosages even longer than I was. As far as intensity of the wd’s if you jumped off now, it really isn’t that bad. I know you’ve been through much worse than this will be. Yes it still sucks a little, but you’ll be OK. For me it was more the longevity of some annoying symptoms more than the severity.
Sleep trouble for a couple weeks was kind of tough.
I don’t know if you have a work schedule or what that is like. If you have a point coming up where you have a week or two off that would be a great time. If not you can just try to power through it. Or other people have even done more extreme tapering to where they might only have a small amount of wd over a longer period of time which might help if you don’t have time away from work. For me I didn’t want to prolong things any further after I spent a couple weeks on .25mg & I had a nice couple weeks without a lot going on that I took advantage of.
I talk about some wd’s, but some good things happen in that time too, even when I was a little sick. Music could really affect me again & stir up a lot of emotion, but in a good way. I almost never listened to music when I was on sub, just didn’t do much for me. I feel more social now. My brain is maybe a little sharper & I got some wit & personality back that I knew I lost. & like I said earlier I think all that is still in the process of fully returning. Also some of my body’s endorphins are probably still trying to figure out what to do with themselves after being dormant for a long time. Most importantly at this point I think is that I’m definitely feeling overall better than I did when I was on sub, & that was the main goal all along.
So yes you probably are making this worse than it will be in your head. & no you won’t be miserable. Miserable is what I would call some of my worst wd experiences. With how far you’ve already tapered down, I don’t think it will fall into the miserable category. I was even able to eat pretty well every day through these wd’s. Back in the day during some nasty wd’s that just didn’t happen.
When you go off, start thinking about the positives in what you are doing & you goals. Focus on that instead of the bad stuff, & some of the good things you’ll start to notice along the way. Know that things will just keep getting better. I think you’ll be glad you did it & found that some days or weeks of feeling some discomfort wasn’t a very big price to pay. & if things do happen to get really bad, I guess you can also go back on sub. I always had that option here, it just never got to the point where I needed to act on that.
Good luck with whatever you try to do!
Rob