Author: jonathanm1978
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 5:40 am
Romeo is right here, I can attest to the very same thing with my Suboxone induction (when I transitioned from my habit — which started at lortab, up to 10-15 lortab a day, from that up to oxycontin, orally…then up to snorting oxycontin, and chopping up 2 or 3 80mg oxy’s per day)….
I was inducted at a methadone clinic, but now that I think back, this doctor had a scale in front of him that people here are telling you about, the COWS scale. They were checking my blood pressure..looking at my eyes…all sorts of things..so they were judging my withdrawals based on the COWS. At the time I had no clue..but I know now looking back..that’s what he did. Anyway, I had been off of ALL opiates for nearly 40 hours (was my doctor purposely torturing me with the longer time?? Dunno). They had told me on Wednesday when I left the methadone clinic that when I came back on Friday, I should not have ANY opiate in my system, and that if I did, they couldn’t give me Suboxone…so it scared me to death. Instead of telling me "you should probably start tomorrow morning, and go 24 full hours with taking any…"…they told me to quit right then, on Wendesday..to make "sure" it was out.
I was in HORRIBLE withdrawals. Felt AWFUL…but I think the doctor liked seeing people feel so bad, then he broke up the suboxone in 1/2 and gave me one-half of the pill (I had to leave, go to the pharmacy, fill the script, come back to him, and give him the bottle of pills)…
I think he liked watching people go from awful to feeling ok, because it made him feel like he was doing something great (when it was actually the meds doing it, not him)
But as soon as I had a full 8mg-2mg Suboxone and it was absorbed into my system, the chills vanished..the stomach problems leveled off, i wasn’t jittery and moody….it was almost like someone flipped a switch inside my head that turned me in a 180-degree opposite direction. I felt GREAT.
The key, i guess, would be to MAKE SURE you are going long enough without opiate in your system.
Now, I have "played" around with my suboxone treatment, when I first got into treatment….I wasn’t serious and didn’t take it properly.
I would go 1 week on Suboxone…2 weeks on opiates…another week on Suboxone…back and forth….
So how did I do this?? I don’t remember the exact times, but if I had taken Suboxone and run out, i would wait about 12 hours before taking an opiate (mostly I would sink back to Oxycontin from Suboxone…)
The last time I did this jumping back and forth was around July 4, 2008. I wanted to "celebrate" the 4th..so I decided to Oxy-party. And I snorted 2 80s on that Saturday…and after I did that, I said to myself "this shit doesnt work right anymore..why do I keep doing it?"
That’s when I got serious about my treatment, and I haven’t even SEEN an oxy since then, must less touched one. But I knew back then that I wasn’t getting that high that I used to get from Oxy before I had Suboxone introduced to my system. The high was never that good..probably because I was doing Oxy within 2-3 days of my last Suboxone use..and it was still in my system and blocking the Oxy from getting me high..no matter now, I don’t care to ever know that feeling again.
Suboxone can save you…or be a crutch. Depends on how you look at it, and how you face treatment. If you go into it with the mindset of saving your life, then Suboxone is your saving grace….but you have to be sincere and honest with yourself…and make sure that you’re never in a situation where temptation tells you that Suboxone isn’t that great, and that you should go back to the old ways, because trust me, the old ways aren’t what they used to be.
You’ve definitely got a bit of smarts about you to have the willpower and strength that it takes to get past the first steps into recovery. For me, the hardest part was thinking that I was doing something wrong by eating pills all the time. I kept saying to myself "i’m a good person, I just like eating painkillers sometimes."
Sometimes, to me back then, was $500 to $800 a week.
How many of us here wish we had the money we had blown through or snorted/injected? (I never injected, but I know Oxy is popular for that)???
I bet we could own websites like this one if we had some of that money back — JUST SOME of it!!! I know I could!