Buy-Bye!

Time away from the blog has been time well spent, crew. As of 8/2/2009, I am done with my Suboxone treatment – just a couple months shy of 2 years. As my doctor said last time I saw him: Well, you sure are taking your time with this taper. Yes, I did take my own sweet time, and I did my Suboxone taper the way I felt was best for me. It was all part of a plan to get off Suboxone with minimal withdrawal and no unpleasant, lingering aftereffects like depression.

To explain the Liquid Taper for anyone who might be interested, I’m going to copy a post I made at a The Suboxone Talk Zone Forum – which, by the way, is a great resource for anyone who needs support in their Suboxone treatment, or just has questions about it. The forum admin is an MD & recovering addict, he treats patients with Suboxone, so he knows what’s what. It’s a good group over there – so check it out: Suboxone Talk Zone Forum.

So here’s the scoop:

A while back, Dr. Junig brought up (on his blog) one of the problems with tapering off Suboxone – the fact that you can’t get pills in low enough doses to taper comfortably. He suggested a way around this problem: dissolve the Suboxone pills in a small amount of water so that you can measure out smaller doses and taper in smaller increments.

Since I’d been “stuck” at about 1mg of Sub/per day for a while, and every time I tried to start skipping days between doses I got sick, I thought I’d give it at try. This is what I did:

I crushed an 8mg pill and dissolved it in 10 ml of water, so every 1ml of water would contain .8 mg (800mcg) of Suboxone. This was a reduction of .2mgs (200mcg) of Suboxone from the dose I was taking at the time. I used an oral syringe that meaured in mls (available at pharmacies, used for measuring kid’s cough syrup, etc.) to dose myself with a half a ml in the morning and half a ml at night. I know Dr. J is big on the one dose per day thing, but my doctor ok’d the 2 times a day because I have chronic pain issues and it works better for me that way. I keep the solution in an empty pill bottle in the fridge so it doesn’t get funky.

I kept the amount of water low so that the solution would be fairly concentrated, and it works really well. The dose does seem to hit me a lot faster than when waiting for a pill to dissolve though, which caught me off guard at first. As always, I am shocked at how strong a drug Suboxone is. Even at .4mgs per dose, I can definitely feel it when I take it.

So that was 10 days ago. I took my last dose of that solution today, and I will make up a new solution tomorrow. I’m thinking of using the same amount of water but only 6mgs of Suboxone, which will be a reduction of .2mgs again.

The drop from 1mg to.8mg produced only the mildest symptoms, some restlessness and a little irritability. Much better than what I was dealing with trying to go from 1mg a day to 1mg every other day.

Other things that have helped are hot baths, swimming, exercise generally and keeping myself distracted. The less I think about it the better off I am. I’ve noticed that when I read other people’s withdrawal experiences I feel worse. Hmm…

If you want to read the rest of that thread, you can go here.

Basically, I tapered down by .2mgs every 10-20 days until I got to .2mgs. I was going to go down to .1 and .05, but the summer’s almost over and I need to be ready for school, so I just took the plunge ten days ago. Here’s a description of how the first 5 days went – since then it’s been about the same but I’ll write more on that later (also quoted from the forum):

I took my last dose of .2mg at 8am on Monday – it’s now midnight (Friday am) and I’m feeling…uh, quite good actually.

What, you say? Good. Yes, good.

I’ve had a few moments of crankiness, but that’s mostly related to being tired and/or hungry. So far my symptoms have been pretty negligible.

Monday was fine, as I dosed that morning. Slept fine that night after taking 1mg clonazepam.

Tuesday I was a little tired. Got by with lots of rest, ibuprofin, reading…I also think I was beat from a long and busy week last week so I just needed some downtime.

Wednesday I was still waiting for the horrible withdrawals to kick in. Mostly I was feeling lazy, but restless. So I fought the laziness and cleaned my daughter’s room. Physically I felt fine. Seriously.

Thursday (today) Woke up at 4:15am. Oh shit! I’ve been taking clonazepam before bed and it’s been working fine. But I went to bed at about 11:30 Wed night and woke up at 4:15. I read for about an hour, then was having very mild discomfort in my lower legs. This could be w/d or could be my fibro, who knows. Took a hot bath. Figured I was awake, so I might as well do something. So I did housework (laundry & light cleaning) until it was time to get ready for work.

Went to work @ 10am and had an amazingly productive day. No physical discomfort and I wasn’t tired. My mind felt really clear and I was in a good mood. I did sneeze about ten times, but that was it. Got off work at 3:30, by which time I was feeling tired but still in a good mood. Went home, ate a sandwich, and took a nap – fell asleep with no sleep aids.

Got up, played with my kid, did some more housework (did I mention that my house is a complete freaking mess?), had some dinner, played online – and I’m still fine.

Will see how sleep goes tonight. Tomorrow will be 5 days since my last dose, I have to work a half day and then all day Saturday. I’m kind of glad, because it’s easier to motivate at work than it is at home and keeping busy really helps.

Other things that have helped:

Having easy to make, comforting yet nutritious food in the house: premade soups, sandwich fixins, cheese & crackers, fruit.

Kombucha Tea – it’s taken me a while to get used to this stuff, but now my body craves it. I really think it’s helping.

Ginger – ginger tea, ginger snaps, ginger candy – good for the stomach – though my stomach issues have been really minimal. Like not even as bad as just eating mexican food can sometimes do ya.

Rest, and when I’m doing some kind of work I just work at whatever pace is comfortable.

Exercise.

Keeping a positive attitude – just thinking about how hard I’ve worked to get to this moment, knowing that I’m ready and that I can do this, and looking forward to plans and goals.

So, to all of you who are worried that getting off Suboxone is impossible, horrible and hopeless, I offer you this hope. You can do it with a little planning, a lot of patience, support and considerable work. If you use your time on Sub to get right with your life, and if you take good care of yourself through the taper and withdrawal process, it doesn’t have to suck. It’s mildly uncomfortable – like no worse than having a cold. A very mild cold. It’s totally doable.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments, or like I said, head over to the forum for more info. I’ve got lots of other stuff to write about as well, so I don’t think I’ll wait five more months to post again.