Author: laddertipper
Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 1:10 pm
| magister wrote: |
| I have been on Subutex for about 16 months now. Starting on a 8mg a day dose, I worked down to 0.8mg a day about 6 months ago, but am feeling a bit trapped at this amount. It has been difficult to stick to this level, which is why I have been at this level for so long. A similar thing happened when I reached 2mg a day, I got stuck there for awhile. Sometimes there is psycholgical issues to contend to which hold up progress, once worked thru I was able to get from 2mg to 0.8mg pretty quick.
I have been able to have days were I was OK with taking just 0.6mg and even an occasional day when 0.4mg was enough, but then I would get some negative thoughts and I would have a bad day and go over my 0.8mg a day, and use the pills I saved from the days where I felt good, and take 1.2mg….the very worst day which happened 1 or 2 times is I took 1.6mg. Things would then turn around and I would get back to 0.8mg and even have a good day at 0.4mg. Despite all of this, I have actually run out before my next prescription pickup, and I would start to feel W/Ds within 24 hours of my last dosage. I went 48hrs total before it was time to pickup the next script. Now I read this…7 weeks? When I was at 48hrs I was in 2 minds, like if I just did 1 more day I would be over the hump, but at that point I was already feeling so bad. And you jumped off at 1mg, which is a bit more than I am taking….I am now feeling more trapped than ever, I am not sure I have the will power to make it that long. I think perhaps the subutex builds up in the body, in the bone marrow or wherever so even thou we have tappered down to a very small amount, there is still quite a bit built up there. I did a day where I just took half a 0.4mg pill for 0.2mg and by the evening I was feeling pretty bad. I guess honestly the past 6 months I have focused more on psychological issues dealing with my negativity and frequent bad moods and irritability more than trying to reduce. When I put in the effort and put effort into will power and discipline I can do a 0.4mg day even though by the evening I am feeling a bit stressed….if I tell myself that I will have some in the morning I can get thru it. I still sleep well on 0.4mg. Thing is I have only been able to hold steady on 0.4mg a day for 2-3 days due to my emotional fluctuations, but I see by your post I will need to hold that level for 2-3 weeks to help reduce the w/ds when I finally jump. I did see someone mention mention spacing out the doses, so perhaps doing 0.4mg once every 2 days. Not sure if this is going to help, as u get right to the edge and then reverse. All I want to do is get out of this with the least amount of w/ds possible, as I feel after 16 months I sometimes start to think that I could just get used to using this daily. My doctors have said that it should be easy for me to come off 0.8mg, but I have gone 2 days without before and the w/ds I felt were still pretty bad. One doctor asked me if it would be much worse than having a cold, I didn’t know how to respond to this at the time, but I understand now she had a bias and didn’t really understand how bad it can be. At least when u have a cold u can sleep and actually sit still and rest it off. Anyhow I guess I should thank u for letting me know the truth although it is making me feel much more worried about this. The at first told the doctors I would like to jump with some clonidine, but they said that usually for subutex this is not used, but I can see now that it would be very helpful. |
I know where you are coming from, as I’ve been stuck at 1 mg for a long time now. Well, it’s been around 2.5 months or so. I still have symptoms, actually. I tapered to this point and the symptoms always disappeared. This time, they’ve hung around. I think it has gotten somewhat better, though, because I am able to sleep on 1 mg, whereas for a long time I couldn’t sleep much at all. It is just very, very slow!! We just have to push through, and I personally don’t believe that it’s all that smart to try to drop when we don’t feel the drive, desire, and motivation to go further into the discomfort. Better to stay at the same dose and work on getting more comfortable, both physically and emotionally. As far as jumping, I don’t see how people do it from anywhere around 1 mg. It’s amazing how fast I get sick and how sick I get when I don’t take even a part of my little 1 mg.
I did look up the bone marrow thing, because I’ve been clueless and to why this has gotten so difficult. From what I can find, ‘they’ tested hamster’s marrow and it did not contain the Sub. I think Methadone goes into your marrow, but it doesn’t appear that Sub does, at least not from what I could find. Thank goodness, right?
laddertipper
