Author: Romeo
Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 10:40 am
Hey feeb, did ya eat lots of turkey yesterday?? Did ya have mashed taters, with gravy and dressing?? OMGosh, I’m making myself SOO hungry!! 
Like you, I quit pain meds and I could NOT handle the PAWS/crushing depression that came with it. I gave up after 30 days and started back on pain meds just to end the frickin’ PAWS. Somehow attempting to quit and failing miserably triggered me to abuse my pain meds like never before. I finally got up to the point of spending about $85 a day chasing damn pain pills down. It became a part time job for me. I would go to work all day, then I’d chase pain pills down with the rest of my free time. Sick shit.
I FINALLY discovered Suboxone in 2007. I got on it and stayed on it for 3 years. I stayed at a pretty high dose, 16mg to 24mg, for the most part. When I finally decided to get off of Suboxone, I completely buggered up my taper up and ended up jumping off a decently high dose, in the neighborhood of 5mg. I was scared crapless of PAWS and the crushing depression that was gonna accompany it, but the crushing depression never materialized? The acute wd was pretty harsh, but the PAWS were manageable. The PAWS sucked, don’t get me wrong, but the PAWS I experienced from jumping off a high dose of Suboxone was NOTHING like the PAWS from jumping off of pain meds.
If I were you, I’d get on Suboxone. I’d get stable, at a fairly low dose if you can. Then I’d start working on a taper. I believe if you taper yourself off of Suboxone, you’re giving yourself the best shot at minimizing PAWS. Of course, you should do all of this at YOUR own pace.
Also, like Tear has said a few times now, PAWS and learning to live life without drugs can be a blurry line. I’m currently in the "learning to live life without drugs" phase and it’s certainly difficult at times…..could easily be mistaken for PAWS at times.
