Well sometimes things happen beyond your wildest dreams. I had never planned on jumping off of subutex in the fashion I did. It was to be a long and allow taper with the help of a compounding pharmacy. This was not to be.

Once I was clear of the kidney stone and did not need surgery, I found myself in an interesting scenario. I had been on sub for almost 4 yrs. To get some pain relief I switched to oxycodone for 21 days. No sub for 21 days.

The oxy was horrible. I got palpitations from it, which is,listed as a CNS side effect. Most people don't experience this it seems. Ut it was profound for me.

So I switched back to sub. At day 7 on sub I decided I am done. This is not for me anymore. Much to the chagrin of my family, I stopped the sub.

Within 24 hrs the fun started.

I feel like a 99 old man with a temperature regulation problem. I am cold and cannot get my internal heat going. Cannot sleep and anxious.

It has now been around 100 hrs....my theory is that it takes 7 half lifes with the sub to leave your receptors. So this is roughly 240 hours or 10 days. And thats just the receptors. And then there's the PAWS.

I am taking it day by day. Can't work. Can't sleep. But I am eating. This is good.

I am a brave man i feel. 4 yrs of sub at 6 to 10 mg...and then nothing.

I was using he oxy to try to mitigate the detox symptoms, but it just causes anxiety and palpitations while it does get rid9; the temperature regulation problems.

Ginger helps a lot. A drug called hydroxydine which is an old school anti histamine reduced nausea and helps with anxiety....like benadryl. Used a lot in opiate detox in prisons.

When will my body learn how to regulate its temperature ?

Today is only day 4....was on the ub for 7 days with a 21 day break, and was really on it for 4 yrs.

This is hell.

In this case the treatment is worse than the the disease...meaning subutex is awful if you need to stop it....your life stops....

Day by day I suppose.

Never intended to go off like this....but i am at day 4...why stop now.....maybe I can do it !

It would not be as awful if you did it the way you were supposed to and tapered buy you already know that. Do you have any subs left? If you do it might not be a bad idea to take like .25-.5 mgs, just enough to ease the withdrawal symptoms for a couple weeks and then stop. Even then its not gonna be that great of a way to stop but you seem like you want to stop it as quick as possible so I dont know what to say. I honestly wouldnt do it like that tho man you are making it way harder on yourself than it needs to be. If it were me Id probably take 1mg and if that stops the withdrawal wait to take another 1mg until the WD surfaces again and so on until you are down to .5 then down to .25. You were on it for for 4 years so a couple more weeks being on a small doesnt isnt going to hurt and will make it more bearable.

Yeah, I'm afraid you're in for a rough ride there cowboy. If you're determined to ride that bronco until it quits, you can surely do it. You sound exactly like me at day 4 or 5 because I quit at a high dose too, although I didn't jump from 6mg plus.

As far as the body temp goes, for me it was one of the last things to return to normal.

I'm afraid sleep took me quite a while to master again as well.

The anxiety steadily improved and then I went on Clonidine for high blood pressure and the clonidine almost knocked the anxiety out completely.

If you want more specifics you're going to have to ask me point blank because I really do not want to superimpose my withdrawal experience onto anyone else.

Like suboxOWNED says, you may be better off trying to do a proper taper, although I hate for you to lose those 4 clean days?? That's a hard decision man.

Man you are in for a rough ride but that being said does not mean you can not do it. But i think you would be better doing what suboxowned mention over what you are doing now just cause its gonna take alot longer the way your doing it then doing a proper taper. you dont even have to do a slow taper just read about rapid tapers. theres a member on hear who has had great success with a rapid tapper and is doing great right now. i just think this would be better for you so you dont have to go threw a living hell cause its prolly not to safe to just stop like you did.

but at the same time you have those 4 days clean so that puts you in bewteen a rock and a hard place or however the saying goes lol. BUt honestly i would just take even a couple crumbs to help you with your temp and sleeping. cause i can promise you not sleeping makes things a 100000000 times worst! Cause your body is already in strees from WD but adding no sleep with WDs is by far the worst things i have ever felt.

please keep us updated

Or, you could restart suboxone at a very low dose, like crumbs to take the edge off.

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mmmm donuts!

I didnt fully understand - did you go cold turkey from 10mg? If so it defenately shows will and determination that you got through 4 days. I stopped from ~0.30mg and i felt a slight improvement on day 5.
Hot thea (herbal without coffeine) should heat up you body. Showers seem to get the pulse down. Get plenty of fluid so you wont dehydrate from diahrea. If day 5 and day 6 only seems to be worsen and becomming unbearable then you could take the top off with a low dose as other suggested. On the other hand if you feel the w/d is manageable your strong will might carry you through.

Whatever you decide - lots of positive thought:)

Mantaray......Jamez's post was short and to the point and I couldn't agree with him more! I'm not a doctor nor an expert on buprenorphine (or much of anything else for that matter) but in my experience with working my own way off Suboxone and in the past with detoxing off full agonists......I just have to ask.....Why, oh why would you do this to yourself at this point? You've been on bupe for a long time. You had a wrench thrown at you with the kidney pain and having to switch over to agonists for a few weeks, so you're really just kind of "all out of whack" right now. You were on the full agonists long enough (in my opinion) to really muddy the water in terms of tapering off the Sub.
I think I understand your desire to just be done with it all as well as anyone could. I'm in the boat with you. I want off EVERYTHING so bad! However, I am not willing to suffer like I did when I detoxed and went through months and months of PAWS after quitting full agonists. Why should I have to suffer that way again? Why should you? Why should anyone? Really....what is to be gained? Obviously I can't tell you what to do....you have to decide for yourself (hopefully with the help of your doctor) but please reconsider what you're doing. I am basicaly doing what Jamez suggested to you. I've been on Suboxone for 16 months, tapering almost the entire time and spending the majority of those 16 months at or under 4mg/day. I am now taking a crumb (~1mg or less) on basically an 'as-needed' basis. I have found that so far I can get into the third day without dosing, but at that point, I begin to feel the w/d symptoms to the point that I'm unwilling to continue to on without a dose. I know that eventually the doses will continue to get further and further between and I will at some point no longer need the drug. But to drop off from where you were, in my opinion, is a bit misguided.
Again, my opinion only, but so what if you "lose those 4 days" of sobriety or however many? What matters more is what happens 4 weeks, 4 months and so on from now. How long are you going to be able or willing to be almost nonfunctional? How long will your loved ones 'put up with it?' Is it worth it? Man, I don't think so. Like I said.....I totally feel you on wanting to be done! But you can make this so much easier on yourself by doing a more proper taper and therefore (I believe) reduce your risk of problems down the road such as relapse, ongoing PAWS, unbearable dysphoria, etc. So please reconsider just allowing yourself a very small dose as needed so you'll feel better and be successful in your sobriety long-term.
Of course the other option, which you're probably aware of, is to see your doctor or go to the ER and seek comfort medications as others have mentioned.
That's my 5 cents for what it's worth. I wish you the very best.....truly! But doing this the hard way doesn't mean a thing. Although at this point I'm pretty sure that there is no easy path to getting off Sub, there are certainly easier ways than what you're going through. Whatever you decide to do.....take care of yourself.

Congratulations on getting sober and having the courage to try and stick it through. Stay strong. There is no shame in having to go back on sub or take a little as needed.

Please keep us posted on your progress. Hang in there. You have my best wishes.

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P.L.U.R.

Hi mantaray - hope you're doing OK. I'm wondering how much oxycodone you were taking for the 21 days? And how much Sub did you take during the 7 days you were back on it? During the 21 days you were on oxy all of the Suboxone built up in you system probably cleared. I think it takes a week or more to build up a steady state of sub when you start (or re-start it). So I guess I'm wondering if the withdrawals are more from the oxy than the 7 days of sub (especially since the withdrawals began after only 24 hours, and people with a high level of bupe in their system usually don't start to feel withdrawal until about day 3). You could be seeing light at the end of the tunnel soon. The question is, once you get through the withdrawals, do you have a plan? You mentionned that your family was chagrined about you going off. I'm thinking they're concerned about your safety. I hope you have some support in place. I went off Sub abruptly, and ended up deciding to go back on a much lower dos because I wasn't ready to go it alone. I'm not saying this is what you should do, I'm just saying don't hold yourself to a plan if it's not working for you. Stay safe and good luck.

Many of you may remember from my other posts that i have lived through 2 months of he'll with a kidney stone that finally passed. It was during this time that I went off subutex 10mg and switched to a short acting full agonists, oxycodone hcl.

I mentioned that I was off sub for 21 days, and on the oxy for that period. During the first 5 to 10 days, the doses of oxy was high...I started with very low doses, but it seemed as though the sub was knocking it off the receptors....this forced me to gradually increase my daily dose of oxy to as high as 250to 300mg. But as mentioned this was only during the first 0 days coming off the sub.

After 12 to 15 days coming off the sub, I was able to decrease the oxy to achieve efficacy. Between days 15 to 21, the oxy doses were brought down slowly under 50mg daily. The last few days, I went down to 15, then on the last days 7.5mg.

Like i mentioned on several posts, I had a very bad reaction to oxy. It stimulated my heart like pure adrenaline, causing tachycardia and palpitations that are debilitating. This rendered the oxy useless to me, since i couldn't work or function nwith the heart palpitations. It also increased my blood pressure to 200/100. Very scary. I know it was the oxy, since my bp was normally 130/80.

It could be he combination of being on sub for 4 years at a range of 4 to 8mg. I only increased it to 10 to get extra pain relief during the kidney stone period. During the 4 years prior, I was on never more than 8mg, and on average was on 6mg.

Well, here's the essence of it all.

After reading all the posts, and suffering for months from a combo of things, I decided to take the advice on this forum.

In the middle of the night, ii took a chip. It helped. The body temp warmed up, and my mind felt a sense of normalcy for a moment.

I cannot miss anymore work or drain the people i love for my inability to function and contribute to life. The stone has caused me to miss months of life already. My body is already weakened from the weight loss that the stone caused.

Therefore, this is the time to jump of sub.

At day 5 in the wee hours of thte middle of the night, I took some sub.

At this point my decision is to go on a daily dose of 2mg, and go back to the original plan, which was the slow and gradual taper, where you reduce the sub by 10% per month.

So for the first month it will be 2mg, then the next month 1.8mg, etc. All with the help of a compounding pharmacy that has the ability to make subutex lozenges. They compRe them to the stardust candy squares.

It will take approximate 20 months to go off the subtext with this method of reducing 10% per month, with the starting ides being 2mg.

This decision only comes after much suffering and meditation. Yes I was off sub for 4 days....but I couldn't see an end to the suffering. And I need to re enter society at this time.

What I can say to all here, during the 21 days that I was off sub, even though i was on a short axing full agonists, I would often go 10 hours between doses. After 5 hours of taking an oxy, as it was wearing off, i could FEEl my emotions and it was an overwhelming sense of joy and sadness.

I laughed and cried T the same time. It was a rush of four years of stored and/or stagnated emotions. This was most interesting. At that moment there was no subutex in my body, and th oxy had worn off. I could feel the beginning of what feeling your true spirit and nature feels like.

I would say it was more crying than anything. But it was true. This made me realize that the sub has been depositing and compartmentalizing all those feelings and emotions for years. It was good to feel and that is what inspired me to jump off sub after going back on it for 7 days after going off the oxy.

Yes, I could have been experiencing and oxy detox combined with a sub detox. But to me it felt more like a sub detox; temperature regulation issues, chilliness, felt like I was wearing a 1,poo pound astronaut space suit, fatigue, inability to feel comfortable in one's body, insomnia, stomach crampinesz, slight diarrhea. The boggy was the temperature and heaviness.

This was enough to take me out of commission. I often thought about the thyroid gland and if one could somehow stimulate that glans during detox fo warm the body by taking aynthroid at a low dose....but this is playing with fire and in ni way a good idea, as stimulAting the thyroid gland would have side effects such as insomnia,, etc.

All in all,, the long taper makes the moat sense. The hardest part for me was not knowing when the suffering would end. I have often hears from friends who have detoxed from natural opiates that the duration is shorter than with the synthetics like sub, etc.

Natural opiates seem to produce a detox period that is of shoer duration than the man made synthetic stuff such as sub.

Thank you all for your non judgement and support.

I'm glad to hear you decided to go back on a low dose and taper off. Chances are you will reduce or remove all that discomfort. You said something like you weren't sure if you were detoxing of oxy or sub or both...(something like that). I just wanted to point out that to the brain it's all the same. An opiate is an opiate is an opiate. But maybe I misunderstood you.

Anyway, I hope this new method is easier for you. Hang in there.

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-As I have grown older, I've learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is a piece of cake.

-I'm only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand.

To echo Hatmaker, I too am glad you chose to go back on sub...you were in for a wild ride that you weren't ready for, it was thrust upon you and that's usually a recipe for disaster.

About the thyroid gland stimulation, you're right about playing with fire. I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. Danger Will Robinson!!

Anyway, I am sure glad to hear from you. You have been on my mind man.

Work your plan going forward and keep in touch to let us know how you're doing.

What indifference a day makes!

Feel like myself today...it has been months that I have felt human.

The advice on here was sound. I was dancing with the devil jumping off that way.

Great to feel good.

When you MASTER tapering you will gain a confidece that you will stabilize after a certain # of days, You did not have that, You will get that confidence by going slow, there is no other way... it took me 9 months to go from 2mg to 1mg and don't kid yourself it was still real tough , get used to being on Suboxone for awhile and DEAL with it !!! There are worst things, Good Luck, Mike

Mantary,

I'm glad your feeling better I think your new taper plan sounds like a great one Keep up the good work

Glad you're no longer in distress. Sounds like this was the right decision for you at this time.

The only thing I can suggest is to try and start as low as possible. I feel like you might be able to do 1mg/day and be fine after your recent detox. 2mg is still a pretty high dose at 2000mcg. This is just a suggestion though. I would save money, and cut the taper time down.

I wish you the best of luck in your taper.

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P.L.U.R.