Anyone else here terrified of opiates? I have refused painkillers after broken bones because I know how my personality, and smoke cigs and pot, and drink like a fish on occasion. And Ive seen the opiate addiction curve happen, and dont trust myself enough to even test a prescribed dosage.
Probably not an unhealthy attitude. I would never judge anyone for making the decision to take opiates, but they can absolutely hijack your life in a crazy way. Looking back in hindsight now that I don't generally feel strong cravings anymore, the power of the whole thing still gets to me sometimes, that a stupid little chemical could so compromise my life path, my actions and my morals.
And I was relatively lucky - I'm fairly certain that really the only difference between me and the rest of my circle of friends from back in the day, who are still out living that life (bar one), is that I have a family who are willing to put up with my shit (well, ignore it, anyway) and give me somewhere to crash, no matter how sick or fucked up I was, and a doctor who was willing to go above and beyond to get me up and going again.
It's also worth bearing in mind that there are absolutely alternative ways of dealing with a lot of the issues which drive people to opiates in the first place. Although I was already a heavy user of other drugs, I only turned to opiates when I started getting severe back pain (I was also depressed and blah blah blah, but I just had no interest in downer type drugs before I needed them for pain - I'm actually pretty certain if you can dig up the old FOH site archive, you can find a post from when I first took codeine). The kind of pain that had me spending hours in hot showers trying to relax my muscles, eating shitloads of panadol/ibuprofen when I had no opiates, and once considering the possibility of extracting lidocaine from a dental medication to inject it in my back - fuck knows how that would have turned out). I spent at least a couple thousand seeing doctors and getting tests done trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, but they all just blew me off when they couldn't pinpoint something on an x-ray.
After I got onto suboxone and became serious about not using H, I was forced to start looking into alternative pain management, and through some weird combination of a daily stretching routine, some light yoga and tai chi, meditation, increased exercise and improving posture, the pain faded and eventually disappeared, something I never imagined would happen.
I saw easily at least a dozen doctors, and not one of them said "hey, there's shit you can do for pain that doesn't involve pills, surgery or injections." I mean I was glad the giant twisted knots between my shoulderblades were gone, but I was also pretty fucking pissed off.
Anyway, such is life.
They are gonna schedule that shit soon from what some greenhouse guys i know were telling me. Grab a bush now and plant it before the Gov takes that shit off the market.
Didn't the FDA back down on scheduling it? Last I heard I'm pretty sure some politicians had actually come forward after a massive movement to keep kratom legal emerged.
I've never tried it, since it's scheduled here in Aus, but I've heard a lot of good things.
Also, firm believer that if a person doesn't really want to quit, they never will. I have a friend who has been on H for years and now he is going to the Methadone clinic but he has told me he does not want to quit and would be on Methadone the rest of his life. He simply doesn't want to stop. For me, when I got cut off, I finally said fuck this I am going to stop and just go through the withdrawals no matter how hard they are. Basically, the two rooms I were in for the next week or so, was my bathroom and my bedroom.
Don't miss the daily search, the hoops to jump through sometimes, and most of all I do miss all the money wasted.
KRA!
There definitely needs to be an active drive to quit, that's for sure, although I don't think it's enough in itself. Some people just have shitty enough lives that, realistically, they're likely to never be in a situation where they have the tools and support and motivation they need to get it together long enough that they can reach a place in their life where they don't feel the need to medicate. But I think most middle class addicts with a supportive family can sort themselves out, given enough time and treatment (not so much the rehab roundabout as proper therapy to try and figure out what your deal is), you just have to keep them alive long enough for them to find a reason to want to stop.
Also I hope in the future doctors gain a better understanding of suboxone. I'll be completely honest, since the DEA decided to be dicks and I got told by two pain clinics I "was too young to be on this regiment of pain medicine" I started juggling various other connections for mostly oxymorph or H and dealt with withdrawal a fucking ton. Got tired of doing that after a year and was scared of someone in my professional life finding out, so I acquired a lot of suboxone. Was on Subs from December 2014-April 2015. Had weaned down to less than .25mg every other day. Even coming off of that, I experienced some of the worst withdrawals I've ever dealt with from a mental standpoint. I did a lot of research on subs, ended up back on acetylfent from late April to August 2015 as I couldn't deal with the mental of sub withdrawal.
Towards the end I tapered way way down on AF by making lesser and lesser nasal sprays. Mid August 2015 I started a two week rapid sub taper, and combined with some benzos here and there for sleep, it was the most painless time I've ever quit opiates. I have slight cravings every so often, especially when I try to game now, but I feel like I've finally torn that dragon off my back. I definitely never experience PAWS in the manner I did when I first attempted coming off my Oxymorph/Oxycodone regiment or when I attempted coming off subs the first time.
TLDR: look into rapid tapering. I know it sounds nuts to go back to your DOC for a short time, but it may be worth it just so you can rapid taper on subs.
Ok that's interesting - I've been thinking about doing something similar myself, dropping down to 1/2mg or so and then swapping over to an equipotent dose of codeine, then slowly reducing the codeine over a week or so. Since the codeine is so weak, I'd be able to taper down to minute doses that would never be possible with suboxone, and it has a short half life, so the withdrawals would be wrapped up in a few days instead of weeks. In theory, anyway. The problem is, I've never heard of anyone who's done it before (I also need to be able to get the codeine - they've been cracking down hard on it here the last few years, and a lot of pharmacy chains track it with a database like pseudoephedrine).
