Author: laddertipper
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 1:46 pm
| art wrote: |
| In fact, he was pretty discouraging. He’s been doing this for 3 years if I understood him correctly, and he went to great pains to make sure I had no illusions. He’s had *some* patients successfully withdraw from bup…or he might have said a *few*…
I’m really torn here. It’s beginning to seem to me that with all the other problems associated with sub…side effects…depression upon withdrawal…surgery concerns…it might well be preferable to try and taper from the opiates. They’re both rather grim options, but if one can manage the opiate taper, it seems like the better solution. I don’t want to complicate my life any more than I have to. Thoughts? |
Well, my question for you is CAN you taper off your drug of choice? If you can, then by all means do it. I think your doc is giving you a fair enough heads up about how tough it can be to taper off Sub, but I don’t think he’s painting a clear enough picture. It IS hard to taper off Sub. I tapered off 8 mg Sub after taking Sub for nearly 6 years, and for a while I was on very high doses. It took me nearly a year to taper off those 8 mg, but it is absolutely 100% doable. What makes it tough on people is that most of us don’t want to be patient. Also, there is a fear factor involved. I was so afraid for much of my taper and convinced that it was never going to work, that I had brain damage, etc. At some points, it seemed like my body would not adjust after I dropped my dose. However, that fear made tapering a million times harder. It is the unknown that is scary. If I knew in the beginning what I know now, I would have relaxed and tapered at a comfortable rate and known it would all work out in the end. So, it is entirely possible IMO to taper off Sub and be quite comfortable while you do it, so long as you are willing to listen to your body. The real question ends up being whether you can taper off the regular opiates. If you try and cannot do it, then I recommend you give Suboxone a shot, because there’s nothing grim about it after all.
laddertipper
