[13ghosts]

Well, folks, I wanted to check in again here because I about to start taking Subutex to get off the MS-Contin and Norco, and am curious as to how everyone else is doing. Clear sailing, bumps in the road? How is everyone?

Me, I got to the point where I started to blow through the norco much too quickly, taking 4 to 6 at a time, and counting my pills every ten minutes. I remember the last time I got clean I realized how much I would not miss counting pills. Now I am at it again, and that's a bad, bad sign. That hope that I received from this forum months ago...I held onto it, and cashed it in last night at a new doctor's office. He specializes in pain management and addiction to painkillers (seems like a great racket!) and I gave him my whole sad story.

I decided to get off these painkillers just like I got off methadone years ago--with buprenorphine....more specifically, subutex. If I am honest with myself, I know I just can't taper down. Every time I try, I just fail. I need to make the leap and just get off them, and subutex will allow me to do that.

I am just waiting to finish the bottle of norco that keeps calling my name, stop taking the 100mg ms-contin tablets, and start feeling some serious withdrawal symptoms before I start. The last time I did this I was coming out of rehab and buprenorphine therapy was relatively new. It worked, but two months into it, I decided I didn't want to be on any drug. I was down to 1/4 pill a day and though that just stopping would be fine. So did my doctor. We were both wrong, and I went through two weeks of hideous withdrawal.

So this time around there is no rush to get off the stuff once I start, and I am hoping it will handle my pain as well since my problems are very real and are not going to simply vanish. But I would rather be in more pain that worry about the addiction to opiates and all that comes with it. My memory is shot, I worry about tylenol and my liver, and I generally feel like I am abusing the "party favors" as I believe Guitarman called them, when I could probably get by with the MS-Contin alone. But even that has me worried as I only get sixty a month and two a day are working less and less. And going higher in the dose seems to be an dead-end street for me.

I have to be semi-human at family events this weekend, but next weekend is free, so I will stop taking my meds on Thursday night, and by Saturday afternoon I should be hurting badly enough to start the subutex.

That's it for me. Just wanted to check in. If anyone has any advice or suggestions, I'm all ears. And I hope this finds everyone else in good health.