Opiate Withdrawal

I was addicted to heroin for a little over a year. In the early stages of opiate withdrawal marijuana only seems to be effective in extremely concentrated forms i.e. tinctures, hash oils, etc. and even then it's still a flimsy piece of armor to fight the dragon with.. (cool metaphor, huh?)... but in the earlier stages of recovery, I've found it to be quite invaluable. post-acute-withdrawal-syndrome (Which can be known to last for several months after last use) is characterized by waves of anxiety, periods of insomnia (or other sleeping disorders), eating disorders, spasms, chronic and acute pain.. as we all know, that was pretty much a check list for the most common ailments treated by cannabis. Therefore i smoked a LOT of weed when getting off that shit and it helped me a LOT.. oh yeah, so did listening to Nahko Bear Medicine For The People!!! ......

I just thought i'd throw my two cents in considering i didn't see a thread on it. if there's a devil, heroin is him.. so if anybody out there is trapped in that same hell i was, just thought you should know that Marry can help you out of it... Been off the shit for bout 6 months now, feeling good, feeling free.

P.S. I found Indica strains to help me the most when dealing with this, and i think most people would agree... Indicas are generally better for pain relief, sleep, and spasms... and in some cases, Sativas can be known to cause anxiety .. but then again, that's my opinion... I'd love to here yours

Yupp, your right. I dont do Horse, never have but I am perscribed alot of opiat based pain pills and I get to rolling on those from tim to time. Like 10 a day type shit and then I stop. I hear is simiular to hoarse W?Ds and it sucks. I will smoke alot along with getting drunk just so that pain passes. If it werent for Mary, Id be a complete mess when I go thru this. Its been along time and I think I have control over consuming to many of those devil pills. Good luck with your addiction...

drinking, huh? Man i've tried drinking to mask the effects of withdrawal before... never really worked for me, always seemed to increase my nausea.. feel like i always regretted the decision to drink when i was "sick"... but hey, if it works for you, GO BEER!

I think Mary J will help for people that had an addiction that wasnt TOO bad or long. I was doing 300mg of oxycodone EVERYDAY for four years, then switched to suboxone for another three because I didnt want to be in "the game of finding and doing drugs" anymore. The sub. kept my tolerance WAAAY up, even on a normally small dose. Well when I kicked that, the shit I went through NOBODY could ever imagine unless you have been there. The first week was the worse (acute symptoms lasted for over a month) My body was burning the f-up but I was SOOO cold. Had 5 blankets on in 90 degree weather so obviously I was sweating which made it feel even worse. I could not for the life of me keep my body still. My legs were flying around like I was having a siezure. Yawning every 3 seconds, couldnt open my eyes, heart beat was sustained at about 140 BPM, sitting in the fetus postition throwing up and shitting my self. I was exhausted but there was no sleep for the first week. The forth day in I took two xanax bars, a couple muscle relaxers, and a few nightquil just praying I could fall alsleep or at least get more relaxed. Nope, didnt do shit. Actually made me feel worse I think. Normally if I were to take even one xanax bar I would be passed out for an entire day, but nothing worked that first week. Tried smoking weed. Made it worse for me.. After A month I was feeling alright. It took a year to feel normal again.

One thing I know works to curb withdrawal of opiates is a blood pressure med. called clonidine. It reduced heart rate, blood pressure, anxiety, makes you more calmed. It is reg. prescribed to addicts about to kick.

This was THE worse thing I have ever been through, and I guarentee I will never feel anything as bad as that first week again. It wouldnt have been as bad if I never started taking suboxone. I should have just kicked the 300mg a day of oxy in stead of adding sub to the equation. I think they should do away with sub as I have never heard of one single case where it has actually helped somebody on the road to recovery. It just makes it worse, but its a money maker for the doctors, so they wont admitt this.

My advice to people... If your on any kind of opiate no matter the dosage (unless prescribed for pain) get the f out NOW. Longer your on it the more you will regret it. I spent over 500,000 dollers on drugs. What a waste.

Ps. I know drinking does not make it better (maybe for sombody that was on a small dose) If I were to drink when I was in acute w/d. I probly would have blown my head off.

Congrats on getting off that crap!!

I was on the legal Narco's for 22 years (chronic pain).. been off since 6-12!! myself
will never go back to them again.. the W.D's suck my treatment hot baths + medibles I began tapering off... was on 3x 60mg morphine + 3x 90mg soma

It can be done but.. you have to decide on it.. and not allow yourself to get around the temptations again..


Smoking was great for instant relief... medibles were great for the W.D's and the pain and insomnia etc...etc..

I know EXACTLY what you went through, specially that restless leg syndrome.. kept me up for 9 days... not gonna lie, you scared me a little bit... I'm on Subs right now. 2 mg. sub lingual films twice a day so only 4 mg a day... Suboxone Saved My Life! i know it's got an opiate in it but since it has an antagonist that keeps you from feeling the euphoric effects of the opiate (and makes you sick if you take 'em) it Really gives you incentive to stay away from the stuff, and helps one get used to not being in a semi-coma all the time... i actually started taking it about a month after my last use because i was just still feeling like shit every hour of the day... been on it for about 4 months now and my doc plans to wean me off in the summer...

everybody's different, so everybody's addiction is different... find what works for you and DO IT!... Suboxone just happened to be what really helped me... oh and spending a lot of time with marry.

and yeah i agree with you about the smoking in the very early stages of withdrawl... it can definitely cause anxiety in some cases so tread lightly

I appreciate you sharing your experience
thanx

gioua said:

Congrats on getting off that crap!!

I was on the legal Narco's for 22 years (chronic pain).. been off since 6-12!! myself
will never go back to them again.. the W.D's suck my treatment hot baths + medibles I began tapering off... was on 3x 60mg morphine + 3x 90mg soma

It can be done but.. you have to decide on it.. and not allow yourself to get around the temptations again..


Smoking was great for instant relief... medibles were great for the W.D's and the pain and insomnia etc...etc..

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Baths are sooo good for wd! ! prolly spent 4 hours a day of my first week in my Jacuzzi !

i cringed when I read the 4mg a day of sub part... Thats exactly where I was too man, BUT I do know what you mean about saving your life. If someone has a bad addiction and is "fed up" and just wants to stop using thier opiate DOC, but is not in the right mentality to get completly clean yet, then suboxone can be VERY helpful. Although I would HIGHLY HIGHLY stress to get off sub ASAP. Longer your on it the longer the withdrawal will be and let me tell you it is much worse and MUCH longer withdrawing from sub than any other opiate, guarenteed. I would def try lowering your dose your self as your doctor is in it for the money and should have already had you completly off it. Try taking like 1.5mg twice a day for a week or two, then try 1mg twice a day, then go down from there. Your ganna want to be as low as possible before you kick. I was only taking about 1mg a day when I jumped and still, it was living in hell. Although, it may not be as bad as what you will expierence as I was dumb an stayed on it for years. (shakes head) Also I always felt better and got more out of sub on a lower dose. Its hard man, I know how it is. Dont get me wrong. I LOVED LOVED LOVED waking up on a rainy day and blowing 6 thirty's to my face, and I still miss it but I know the two hours of feeling awesome dosnt compare to the life of hell afterwards, let alone spending 300 A DAY on my DOC. I could have had so much shit.

Also, the "naloxone" in the sub does not do shit man. Before kicking my DOC i would take sub everyday in the morning usually, go to work, get out and then do 300mg of oxycodone. I NEVER had a problem mixing sub with ANY opiate including heroin. The suboxone company has even admitted the naloxone dosnt do shit UNLESS you IV it. So if you take it under your tongue then the naloxone dosnt even get into your bloodstream. I never got dope sick from taking sub and any other opiate at the same time like they will have you believe, and all my friends used to do the same thing.

I highly recommend anyone on sub to visit this website. http://www.heroin-detox.com/ It say its a heroin detox forum but it is for ALL opiates. It has a great subforum all about suboxone. You should def. read through that sub forum if your on it.!

congrats for getting off it man!

Thanks.. appreciate the advice

Played the opiate game for a few years myself. Loved snorting the 30's. Heard about the wonder drug suboxone. Played that game for 2 years. Weening down over a 1 month period. Then just quit one day. Coming off the subs was the worst thing i've ever experienced. Took me almost 2 months before feeling even somewhat normal. The not sleeping and the RLS for weeks almost drove me crazy. But, I made it. I think subs are far worse than any opiate out there. Another doctor, drug company scam. I have a buddy whose been on subs for over 4 years now. He thinks hes all set in life and wants to quit. I warned him about what's in store and he laughs it off. I suggest anyone wanting to quit opiates don't go to subs. Go through the shit once and stay away from subs!

zack66 said:

Played the opiate game for a few years myself. Loved snorting the 30's. Heard about the wonder drug suboxone. Played that game for 2 years. Weening down over a 1 month period. Then just quit one day. Coming off the subs was the worst thing i've ever experienced. Took me almost 2 months before feeling even somewhat normal. The not sleeping and the RLS for weeks almost drove me crazy. But, I made it. I think subs are far worse than any opiate out there. Another doctor, drug company scam. I have a buddy whose been on subs for over 4 years now. He thinks hes all set in life and wants to quit. I warned him about what's in store and he laughs it off. I suggest anyone wanting to quit opiates don't go to subs. Go through the shit once and stay away from subs!

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Spot on man... I had a friend once that was on like 1mg a day and was going to quit. He told me it was going to be nothing and he wouldnt even feel any withdrawal. I explained to him my expierence kicking that shit and he laughed at me, and told me it was all in my head... LOL two months after his last dose he crawled out of bed for the first time and told me it was the worst thing he had ever done and he was an idiot for not beleiving a suboxone vet. I got the last laugh.

WTG guys!!!! I was on methadone for years...didnt smoke MJ until i was 28 believe it or not...came off hard restless leg everything...i tried mj for stomach ailments i was told it could help, Boy did it...Also helped with sleeping, Ill be honest i dont LOVE getting high on mj, actually dont really like it. but put up with it for the Medicinal effects....GL guys and Recommend anyone needing to ease WD's give it a go. I hear Methadone is just as bad as heroin for WD's...

i smoked heroin for a few months while in thailand. pure smack right out of a golden triangle lab.

i brought some back with me. after 2 days without, i described what i felt like as having the flu. no throwing up just that shitty feeling. once i got a hold of what i brought back, i took one toke and felt immediately better. i mean like 2 seconds and i'm healed! lol i smoked a little bit every day for a few days and then a guy i knew sold the rest, which was the plan. he was annoyed that i smoked some.

i found that smoking pot definately helped. it smoothed out the coming off the opiates.

it's a hellofadrug. i wouldn't recommend it to anybody but the 2nd time i smoked it and the first time i got high, was the best high i ever had. ever. i can still remember it. it was 1975 and it was that good. the first time i smoked, it i threw up for about 10 minutes, the second time was the charm. the downside is, that great high gets harder to find. after a few months, i was smoking it just to feel not sick. i'd smoke it to feel normal.

stick to pot.

i agree Suboxone is only good if your on it for about 2-3 weeks maximum. otherwise it builds up in your system and your W/D's will last much much longer than with a short acting full agonist opiate. Buprenorphine, the main ingredient in suboxone/subutex has a half life of roughly 36-96 hours. so if u take subs even just once a day, they continue to build up steadily over the course of a few weeks unless you steaduly taper down the dose the whole time.
The suboxone strips can be easily abused too, as well as the Subutex pills. Bupe is very very strong when IV. its about 30% sublingual, 10% oral, and 100% IV/IM bioavailability. so when someone slips and starts shooting the bupe it can be very very hard to quit. just want to warn anyone considering it. plus the sublingual tablets have a maize starch base, which will cause infections very easily.

if you are stuck on suboxone there is a good way to get off IMO... taper the dose down to a minimum. Bupe has a cieling effect, so in a nutshell that makes it easier to taper w/o feeling any acute w/d's. a 12mg daily dose can easily be tapered down to a .5 mg daily dose within about 4 weeks or less if your good. then stay at that very small dosage for about 2 weeks if possible. this gives your body a chance to flush out the higher dosages of bupe, while not actually having to quit. and since bupe has that ceiling effect you should be able to do this with minimal w/d's. you WILL still have some w/d's, just try to remember that they are much easier to handle than the normal w/d's from opiates. if you are still having some acute w/d's after that... you can effectively use a WEAK opiate agonist to lighten up the w/d for a couple weeks. Im talking like HALF of a vicodin 7.5 every 6-8 hours. or maybe tramadol, or codiene. personally i had success with hydrocodone doing this. just remember if you decide to over do them your gonna be screwed again very easily. only use them as a tool so that you can still manage your daily life. then after about 2-3 weeks max you should be able to quit them with very minimal w/d. of course you will still have paws, but that effects each individual differently.

in repsonse to FatboyOGOF:

I feel ya... once you break that threshold and actually develop the NEED to do the opiate to feel normal, your addicted. only takes a few weeks of daily use even for a newbie. and spurts of opiate abuse cause addiction cumulatively. meaning each time u gamble with the devil for a spat, you greatly decrease the amount of time you can abuse opiates w/o getting hooked. trust me on that one, i found out the hard way.

i hated smoking heroin... yuck! except for the waste it causes, my fav route was snorting it. I never enjoyed the spinny feeling u get from IV/IM heroin. IV morphine gave the most incredible INTENSE rush. wow! very dangerous things to play around with. NOT worth it!
I watched my friend OD in my passenger seat of my car while trying to chase that rush. thankfully he didnt die, he came to on the way to the hospital... could have turned out different.

also keep in mind... you are NOT any better off messing with pharm-grade opiates either. Those are 100% pure opiates. which makes them typically just as strong or stronger than heroin. heroin is not even close to pure unless its VERY carefully made in a very good lab. the powder dope thats mostly on the east side of the US is probably 15-30% pure at most. for example: A 100mg Ms-contin if broke down for IV use is equal to about 2-3 average street bags of powder heroin. so if u abuse that Ms-contin... your just as screwed up as a heroin addict. dont fool yourself.

Pot is a much better choice.

Let's try to keep this site around. I been on opiates since '85 for pain got sick of taking pills & decided I was going to quit methadone,had been on it at least 10 yrs. I asked for help & got 8 days of sub the next year was the worst of my life & I had a lot of bad years to pick from.I don't think I need to describe it sounds like everyone on here knows. After a year on the couch (no life) I been back on methadone 2 years maybe 3 I don't even like to think about it. I think I can control the pain with weed,if I can find a way to get through the WD's & have any quality of life. I don't like pain but there must be a better way than opiates & I think it's cannabis. I just can't get it & methadone it's a gamble.I know that I can use less than half of methadone if I use canabis.Peace

what kind of a dose are you on. I never did methadone because everyone I knew that did was a "lifer", so I stuck to sub. But I do know for most people it can takes years of tapering down to be on a low enough dose to kick.

yeah its intense trying to stop subs/bupe. i can firmly back that up with experience. ive never had an extended bout with methadone. either way both meds are prescribed in intensely high amounts, for multiple reasons. unfortunatly this gets people screwed up in the long run. also both meds have such a long half-life that they are completly keeping you "high" throughout every hour of everyday. all this combined makes them very hard to use properly to taper off of opiate addiction. it CAN be done properly.

in my honest opinion... they should be prescribing opiates like possibly hydrocodone or something weaker to help control the w/d from the long half-life maintenence opiates, once someone has been on them long enough. even stopping from less than .5 mg of bupe will leave me w/d'ing very hard, never fails... its a combo of the taper causing w/d even if its a very slow taper, and the fact that your going w/d anyways. not to mention the ceiling effect coming into play here.
so you can CAREFULLY use a short acting opiate to relieve the intense acute w/d symptoms for the first 2-3 weeks or sometimes longer. after that if done properly you can stop the weak opiate and basically feel the same as you would anyways from the PAWS that you would be going thru had you stopped c/t w/o any other weak opiate to help.
the key is to not take ANY more than say 10 mg hydrocodone, or equivalent, a day MAX, period. this way you may still suffer a bit, but its only to help the extreme parts of the w/d process anyways. and only if you absolutely HAVE to have something to help. cold turkey can be done, it sure sucks, but it can give you piece of mind. imo if your going to smoke weed still c/t is less rewarding for a few different reasons that i wont go into detail about. its still very possible tho! ive done it before in the past.

so dont be SUPER afraid to take subs. just be very careful, and dont be afraid to stand up to the doctors if you think they are giving you too much, or arent doing something right. they are getting paid by you basically, so u gotta make sure you MAKE it work if you are serious about it.