Author: Halo47
Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 11:19 pm
Hey guys, this is my first post on this forum so I’ll give a little background on myself. I have been on subs twice, the first time was for 22 months from 2004-2006. This proceeded being addicted to painkillers for nine months. Back then I didn’t do any research about bups/subs and after tapering down to a microscopic amount I jumped and remember feeling some withdrawal symptoms for about 3-4 weeks then feeling ok. One of the main problems I remember having back then was stomach issues. I had loose stool for almost a month and drank pepto bismol daily. Fortunately the problems went away after awhile. Before quitting subs I had also stopped smoking weed which I used to do daily. I remember 4 months after being off subs I smoked and the next day I couldn’t stop sneezing. A week later I smoked again and the same thing happened. Antihistamines didn’t help so I just stopped entertaining the idea of smoking. Some more background, I generally have a lot of anxiety and have taken alprazolam for over 5 years now, I am currently only on about .7mg/day.
Unfortunately I relapsed back onto pain pills in the fall of 2007, this time I took them daily for a longer period of time, until the fall of 2009. I was doing about 140mg of oxy a day by the end. I committed myself at this point to stopping for good. I went to see a sub doctor and started back on 8mg/day of subuxone. I slowly, probably too slowly, weened down month by month. Fast forward to this March and I went to my bimonthly meeting with my subdoc who said I should start to try to ween off completely. I had been on .2mg/day for about two months and felt fine. I am self employed so I don’t have to wake up early for work or interact with people daily so there was no reason for me not to try harder to finally get off. Also, I have been on the 2mg film strips for the past eight months or so.
Over the past six weeks I have gone down to .07 mg/day which I took for around two weeks. During this time going from .2mg to .07 I have had stomach issues with loose stool, and thanks to this forum I started taking immodium instead of drinking pepto bismol. My mood and spirits have been very good so three days ago I didn’t take any sub until right before bed I took a .03mg sliver to help me sleep. The entire next day I felt fine and went to bed without taking anymore. I took some clonidine which my doctor prescribed and said was non addictive(although I have read it can be addicting) and a half mg of alprazolam. About four hours later at 7am I woke up extremely restless with my brain racing. My body was tired but I couldn’t get back to sleep so I took a .02mg or slightly less sliver of film. Shortly after I fell into a sound sleep for the next four hours. I felt great for the rest of the day and went to bed, this time taking a Tylenol PM to help me fall asleep. I woke up after 3 hours again feeling the same way, so I took another .02mg piece of film. I got to sleep after that and have felt fine right up until the time I am writing this post.
I’ll update this thread with my progress during the next few weeks and I hope to get some advice from you guys as well. For those that have jumped is there anything that helped you with staying asleep? I don’t want to take too much clonidine or alprazolam before I go to bed and even when I have taken more in the past it only helps me fall asleep and not stay asleep. I feel like I am going to listen to my body and if I wake up completely restless tonite I will just take a very tiny amount of sub right before I sleep for a few more days before trying to jump again. This post is already too long so I will add anything else in a new post.
