Set Pratcice- ending Buprenorphone.

[DeadCat (OP)]

First, a little background I had been a daily H user since abut 1989 after a few years , like mst users, I stared to feel like it was time to break the cycle and not NEED H to function.Well, Easier said than done. I did the usual things; home kicks, tapers, state spnsred "spin-dries (5-7 day methadone tapers), methadone clinics thtat were so strictly structured i rebelled and waked off.

In short, I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I wnted to be  high sometimes but didn't wnt t have to get hight to function. On the other hand one thng I LOVED abut dope was the binary life: Every single day  had a mission: get high or suffer. Every day hustlng up the money, or singly (decent) paychcks to get throgh the 2 weeks betweneach aoycheck with afew tough day a the end. I got really resourceful (like one good dopers0 and leaned to sell to my friends  support my own habit, divert tings to sell (I reviewed boks s evry week I could bringa chpping bacg of bks to the used bks stores all vr Boston and that would last for a couple day. I made connectins txt would cover e all wek and I'd sttle on payday, etc. Like theysay "necessity is the mother  of invention.

But as timewent by I get arresteed a few ties and 4 time out of didn't cooperate at all and thebusts wers so small in a twn awsh in drugs that nDA wanted to ck me up over aaanything les than a brick.

In 2003 (?) burenorphine (Suboxone) by prescription became a legal treatment for oipod dependence.Because it was a one a month prescription and minmum meddling by doctors, most of them just didt understand addictin medicine and it all worked pretty well. I could chip all month,stay clean the last wek before my visit and pass my UAs.

Fast forward a few years,ihad health insurance and my new (3rd or 4th bupe doctor) was writing me 16 mg a day which I accepted becasue like all good junkies, I wanted a stocpile for a rainy day Then some utter bullshit happened when ashohole cops arrested me becasue I had my LEGAL bupe int an old prescription botle (of my own) and they said because the bottle label was out of date they drugs were illegal. Of coure this was 100 totally npt true butI had to make several court appearancs to get the dA to tos the case.

Now,after 13 years of being outside the daily heroin game, I know if I quit the dupe, I woudn't really be indanger of slipping back into the junkie life. All my old running dogs are clean or dead or moved far away. There is nobody on my corner anymore, everyting is by cell phone and after my littlw sister died of a heroin/fentanyl OD the lustre is off thedope like.

That all being said,I want to know from those of you who have done it, what i the best wy to get of the suboxone train?  My doctor says "just taper dwn toa uple mgs and quit" which I KNOW is esir said than done. The other oprion inriques me taper down and then switch to a short acting full against, tape then quit and face much shorter and less intense w/d.

Anther idea is to leae teh country, rent a motel on the beach in some country that doesn't prescribe opiates, load up on comfort meds and spwnd a mnth or two suffering in silence.

I want to move back East and when I don't I don't want to bring this habit with me. In fact, I'd like the option to get high once in a while and I just don't believe the 12 step dogma the says any "slip" pushes you over the edge. Ive "slipped"  once or twise and I find itit's very put it dwn and le it go afterwards

Anyone who has found a good way to quit dupe either first hand or thrugh friends , I'd really welcome yor experiences.

Thank you .

-DC

[Taytoechip]

Are you totally shit hammered right now or typing with chop sticks?

[Taytoechip]

Micro dosing man.
Jumping off at a couple mgs is reckless and is bound to be extremely painful. Also absolutely pointless unless your stock dries up. Theres no reason to rush to kick only to find yourself right back where you started. What are you currently taking now? To give yourself the absolute best chance of success, the length of your taper will depend on what your dose is right now.

[Esoteric Anhydride]

Don't be shy buddy, I'll field some of that blame for ya, what's fair is fair, right?

Just don't go off talking any fat chinese plastic BS tho - it's all about that bamboo or GTFO.

[Snout]

I tapered off of bupe and I was amazed by how powerful the shit is. At the end I was taking about .33/mg a day and I would be sick without it. Also, the sickness was strange in that I would have different symptoms on different days. The main one was leg pain.
     There's lots of info online on tPering. If you are on strips, you can use a whole punched and then cut the disk into wedges. I just eyeballed crumbs of crushed pills, I was in Canada when I did it. You gotta taper very low,like to .25-.33mg/day, then start skipping days, then quit.
      Switching back to real dope and tapering quick sounds good but dangerous.

[smalls]

The idea of switching to a short acting full agonist intrigues me. How long would you have to be on, say, norcos for it to truly result in a shorter WD than bupe? Would one week be long enough? Seems like no, to me. I'm inclined to think you'd hafta be taking norcos for at least as long as the bupe WD would last, so like 3 weeks...

Anyone have thoughts on this?

[Zoops]

I'll bite.

I jumped off bupe at about 0.25mg. It was a tiny sliver of a strip. I started at around 6mg/d. I say "around 6mg/d" because I would take more sometimes and less other times. I actually could get a slight buzz from it when I decreased down to under 1mg. I could take like 4mg and be kinda high, when my normal dose was under 1mg.

The detox in Fairfax county, VA has a rapid buprenorphine detoxification protocol that they use. They start people coming in off the street, who are in W/D, on 8mg X2 days, 6mg X2 days, 4mg X2 days and then 2mg X 3days, and then you jump. I was pretty surprised when I found out that they make you jump off at 2mg. I don't remember hearing any of the other patients complain about being super sick after they d/c'd the bupe. Maybe if you're only on it for like 7-10 days, it's o.k. to jump off at 2mg.

As for the thing about switching to a short-acting opiate, you would only need to take it until all of the buprenorphine left  your system - maybe a week. I've switched from being buprenorphine dependent to being methadone dependent in a matter of days before (taking bupe, then took methadone instead of bupe for about a week, then got PWD when I finally re-dosed with bupe), and more recently, like last week, I switched from being PST dependent to being furanyl fentanyl dependent in about 4 days - long enough for all the PST to basically be out of my system (I ran out of the fent stuff and got sick as shit as soon as it wore off). I wasn't on furanylfentanyl long enough to have gotten a habit from that alone, I was already opiate-dependent. I barely could choke down enough PST to get well after that. It was scary.

[smalls]

Thanks for answering my Q @Zoops . When you jumped off at .25, how long did the WD last? Anecdotally it seems like bupe has a longer WD than other opis, like 3 weeks compared to 1 or 2 weeks. P.S. I'm glad you pulled the reins on that furanyl fentanyl before shit got outta control.

[Dog Food]

I agree that tapering as low as possible is best.  Get the 2mg strips/tablets if you plan on tapering that low, its way easier to get accurate amounts.  At my lowest point on sub, i was cutting a 8mg pill into quarters, then crushing a qrtr into powder, and making 6 lines out of a 2mg piece. I could then do one of those lines in the morning at 7am and another one at 7pm.

Now i was iv'ing it tho, so i was getting a lil more out of each 1/3mg shot, But since i was shooting it, the half life was at 4-5 hours instead of the 35-70 hrs from sublingual use.  This meant that the duration was about the same as oxy or heroin instead of sublingual bupe or methadone.  I then could get a similar length detox as a short acting drug like dope, but with a less severe w/d that bupe has.  I had plenty of times where i didnt have time to do my shot before work, and waited till after work for a whole 24hrs since the last third of a mg.

I never did fully quit, but i could tell that the wds wouldve been shorter.  The only better way would be to microdose then switch to a few perks or so per day for a week. No matter what we do, just remember that there's ALWAYS gonna be some kind of pain, whether its acute wds or all the way down to the wds.

[DiCaprio]

I would say taper off as low as you can go and then if possible take the 2 weeks off with comfort meds and just suffer. Really the kick is going to be unpleasant either way you do it. After the physical, its the mental aspect of it you need to set your sights on. It'll be like a whole new life. Get all the comfort shit you can and only do it if your 1000 percent about it. I relapsed a shit load of times.... Just my 2 cents.

[Guts]

If you've got the resources and the time, ibogaine could be an option. If I ever wanted to truly try to kick again, that's the way I'd go.