Let me say first off, for all I know if you do a taper over the course of many months, coming off
Suboxone may be as easy as my doctor tried to paint it out as being! But I wouldn't know because I got my insurance cut and cannot afford to stay on the damn things... $600 a month is a little much to pay for medicine when you're making about $1,000 a month...
This has been my experience. I had been an on/off drug abuser (as many of us are) for many years. Finally, I started injecting
Oxycontin and moved on to heroin. Eventually my friend died and that snapped me into reality. I was in a pretty good position to go forward in my life and decided "now is as good a time as any" and moved off Oxy onto the Suboxone.
It worked really well. In fact for the first two weeks I was on it I could "feel" it. That's because my doctor put me on 24 *$%#&*ING MILLIGRAMS! Apparently that is WAYYYYYYY more than all you guys are taking. Seems to me that most people are taking betweek 2mg and 12mg, not 24mg. Anyway, I stayed on that dose for about a year and a half... finally I tapered down 8mgs by myself.
The first 6mgs? Not too bad. I mean, it did kick my ass enough that I didn't want to even try to taper again for 6 months. Next taper I did was 2mgs... I found myself very psychologically touchy and very uneasy. It was still really rough; the 2mgs were almost as hard as the first 6mgs!
Then I waited a month and took the bold step to move down 8 more mgs since I couldn't afford it. BAD IDEA. IF YOU CAN MANAGE TO NOT DO THIS, DON'T DO IT! I came totally unraveled... I was pretty much psychotic and wanted to kill myself all the time. It wasn't from the withdrawal... it was more like my brain chemistry. I felt like I had no control over my thoughts and my head was filled with depressing thoughts 24/7. It almost destroyed everything I had going on and took about 10-14 days to really start to get some balance. It really took a toll on my body and my life...
Well... I was still on the 8mgs once I got that taper done and wanted off that asap. I just wanted to be back to my "normal" self, with no opiates of any kind, so that in a few months I could be back to being happy with life. I was trying to figure out how to get around the psychological aspects of it (so I could continue to work etc) and it seemed like most of the message boards I was reading were saying (and bare in mind I'm not talking about this forum as far as I know) "Get back on some sort of opiate, like Hydro or something and then ease your way down"... I saw this a LOT of places and it started to sound like the "run of the mill" way to handle it...
Well then I got in a really bad car accident and thought "This is my ticket out of here. They will prescribe me some stuff, I have no tolerance anymore, I'll just take what the doc gives me and be off it in 10 days or so! Amazing timing..."
Way way way wrong assessment. I would have taken a constant supply of 15+ Vicodin 5/500's minimum just to maintain my head. Instead I find myself, now almost 2.5 weeks later, trying to do "maintenance" (which isn't, honestly, something I want to be doing) because I ran out a while ago and I am having trouble finding the time to just go home and kick. I work Saturdays and have tried to start kicking on Friday so that I MIGHT be kind of ok by Tuesday and it doesn't work. I need more time than that. Point is, I may have been able to distance myself from the psychological fall out from the Suboxone but now I've basically ended up with a habit again all because I hoped that I could rapidly get off this stuff.
Bottom line... take time to taper. It is psychologically tough for some, maybe not for everyone; I found it to be pure hell. I don't recommend this "take drugs to get off sub" thing I've read on so many of the boards. DO NOT TAKE SUB FOR MORE THAN A FEW MONTHS IF YOU CAN HELP IT. Everyone I have talked to said it ends up being as hard as
Methadone when you do that... and I think I would have to agree with that. I mean think about it, yeah you can't really feel it but do you want an opiate in your brain for that long (if you ever intend to get off it)? I was on it for 2 years, I wish I had been on it for 2 months.
Anything that is a "magic bullet" like this has to be somewhat suspect. I mean think about it... you went from having to take drugs how often? To putting stuff under you tongue and being straight all day? I know how it has the ability to get you out of that hell (and quickly) but I would not recommend it as a long term therapy unless you intend to never get off it. This drug has only been around 7 years and was only approved for "long term" use recently (within the last two years I think). We're all canaries in the coal mine on this one. I know that it can get you out of 'junkie hell' quickly but at what cost?
I'm not totally knocking it... It helped me a lot initally. I've probably just gone about it the wrong way recently... but think about what you are doing because you don't want to risk your health and sanity by trying to save your health and sanity... and as much as I don't jive with the whole NA mindset, you're probably better off doing this for a month or two and then finding some consistent psych treatment or a counselor or something. You don't want something like this in your body for a long time. Just because you feel great right now, on it, does NOT mean you're gonna feel great down the line off it. Please take care of yourselves and hopefully some of you will take SOMETHING from what I've said here...
What to do??? 
I just found out and I am so scared 
Linear Mode
