I have detoxed off of “Pain Killers” 3 times and my last and final time was off suboxone after being on it for 2 yrs and about 9 months…  This was the best and last path I had to walk on this shitty road. Just some quick background information for you so you know I’m not some novice putting my 2 cents in… Now, straight to what you are here for; some info on what I experienced or what you might expect coming off the sub.

My 6 Month Suboxone Taper:

1) During 2 yrs and about 9 months on suboxone; I went from 16 mg to 8 mg pretty quick.  I’d say within the first few months of being on the suboxone I dropped to this and it was not really planned.  I just dropped in dosage over time cause that is how suboxone works.  Stayed at 8 mg for about 1 1/2 years and change (when I mean "change" I mean 1 or 2 months).  I then went from 8 mg to 4 mg in a couple months.  NO PROBLEMS AT ALL.

2) In a 6 month period I went from 4 mg to 3 mg...  I then tapered to 2 mg in a few months.  I did this and adjusted from 2 mg to 3 mg down to 1 mg….back and forth till I felt right at 2 mg…I did the taper, I went at my pace… I didn’t let anyone “push me” or force me to taper.  The final month or so I went from 2 mg to 1 mg then to .50….. I only felt a little shady when I dropped big amounts; like when I would drop from 3 mg. to 1 mg. to see how it would feel.  I suggest you don’t do this.  You don’t feel any withrdrawal or shady sympstoms right away, you feel it 3 or so days later…  It’s not bad though…you can though adjust and do a 25 minute quick fix to feel better with a chip off your suboxone pill to make you feel better.  It’s funny how easy the “quick fix” is…but what a pain in the ass it is when it comes time to the ultimate repair work…ie. when you have to take the jump and get off the opiates or suboxone.

*Quick note*  90% of  what I have written below regarding my taper process and what I went through while coming off the sub was from my notes / journal during my taper / withdrawal from the sub… I have edited only a little bit because I now have a clearer head and some of the thoughts I had when writing this were blurred.  The following is what I went thru… Your taper and withdrawal process might go smoother or worse.  Talk with your doctor first, if you can.  If you have a stubborn or ignorant doctor, get a new Doctor before you taper or even if you just want to continue on suboxone.

One BIG point, just from my opinion.  There is nothing wrong with long term suboxone treatment or even lifelong treatment with suboxone; again that’s just my opinion… I just suggest that you should only quit if you feel like you have changed YOUR life SO much that, the person you were, is no longer alive…..or what I mean, your old self is gone mentally.

 SO….

3) Ok, D-Day minus 7:  I went from .50 mg to .25 mg and actually less, the rest went in the toilet and I had alot of suboxone left.  I suggest getting a $1.99 7 day pill box for your taper (that’s what my girlfriend did for me).  Sounds f-ing lame but it helps you keep track of the dropping process so you don’t cheat (you’ll only be f-ing yourself if you think about it and it’ll just take longer).  It’s just human nature to make yourself  ”feel better” and subconsciously you’ll take “just tiny bit more” and that will F**K things up.  I am not a pro at the taper thing, I f***ed up a bunch of times; went up down, back and forth etc.  Will power helped but by my girlfriend helped me alot  by breaking the sub up and putting them in the weekly pill reminder.  Support is great put ultimately it’s all you in the end.  I did feel a little “different” but not uncomfortable at .25 mg but I was ok.  I think it was more mental than anything at this point.

4) Last .25mg at 8am on a Sunday morning.  Went all day with NO PROBLEMS, slept fine and even had a steak that night for dinner.

5) (First +24hours)  Monday Day:  Morning…woke up fine, nervous though like I thought literally I would wake up with Death standing in the corner.  Went about Monday ok.  By the afternoon I was feeling pretty good, Cocky even..”Yeah F*** everything I read online, it ain’t bad, my taper worked or will”… Monday Night, actually slept ok…. Nervous still but ambien works great (I had written on my original site that Ambien CR “could or probably” would work better, NOPE, my bad….Bull Shit bad advice on my part!.  Regular ambien kicks your ass right away and puts you right to sleep and doesn’t “slowly” release like  Ambien CR does;  I suggest regular ambien).  An additional piece of advice and you can take it or leave it.  I would put the regular ambien in my mouth, but then bite it in two.  For me it seemed to work faster and when you feel bad…every minute seems to count.

6)  (Day 2)  Tuesday:  Morning…Uh…Thought I was ok, I was very optimistic.  Lost some speed and felt a little slow.  Tuesday mid afternoon felt like I was weighted down.  Uh oh…  This is where I am suppose to write about how day 3 was all out Thermo Nuclear War, The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited and or then the 7th Seal of The Bible was opened and GOD said unto me ”I shall let loose many apocalyptic pigeons and they shall shit all over your custom chopper….” and God smiled and it was ALL GOOD…. Well…  Let’s talk about day 3.

7)  (Day 3 early am) Wednesday:  Day 3 is where I should now be telling you that the 72 hour half life, once it’s up is not that bad.  Ok, sorry, just telling you the truth. The missiles launched…Castro,  Khrushchev, Kennedy never worked things out and the pigeons did shit on my chopper.  I woke up Wednesday morning around 3am or so and my girlfriend was talking to me, I freaked out I guess.  I was crying, shaking, sweating…legs were all jumping crazy style…  I was in pretty bad shape.  Killed the situation though and went into negotiations with another ambien and broke out the xanax or the big guns to suppress the living nightmare. (suggestion: If you got xanax (from a Doctor), take them (not to much or don’t take them if you have had some addiction issues with xanax / benzos), don’t take them forever also, just during this whole withdrawal process; so don’t stress about the f***ing posts on how you can get hooked on them; I mean come on, we’re talking about a 2-3 week time frame here).  35 minutes later I was asleep and slept ok.  Off of regular opiates, this would have never happened, being able to sleep so quickly even with the help of ambient and xanax.

8)  (Day 3 continued)  Wednesday continued:  Morning, woke up like I had the flu and just the flu.  No flu X’s 100, no crawly crazy feeling…  Surprisingly and thinking about it now; the cold sweats were not that bad either but I did get them.  I did have restless legs so I just went with it.  It wasn’t out of control, it just bugged. .  Another thing, I was and had been eating even though I was forcing it. 

(Day 3 continued) Wednesday Mid-Day:  Not good, same feeling, energy now going bankrupt.  Split town Wednesday night to a small place in outside of town and was there from then on out, or thru the somewhat ruff-stuff.

(Day 3 continued) Wednesday night: Slept ok, took 1 ambien and 1 (one) 2 mg xanax before bed.

9)  (Day 4) Thursday: Energy was gone, did ZERO except watch “suspenseful” movies to keep my mind occupied during just miserable, but bare-able conditions, bare-able to a degree I would say, still f-ing sucked.  Went for a quick walk that night and felt ok during that time.  No major stomach problems though, so laying around was not a major hassle.  Let me add, the stomach issues were not a “zero issue” but they were not horrible like coming off of oxy, vics or a full agonist.

10)  (Day 5) Friday:  Felt ok actually when I woke up…and felt ok, still shitty but “ok” for most of the day.  Went for like 5 walks and mixed it up with very short jogs (like 100 yards) throughout the whole day.  I was able to do this due to positive thinking though along with being angry about having to go thru this whole deal…now looking back on it.  

Walking or just doing anything physical; this makes the feeling or withdrawal symptoms go away fast for a short period of time though.  Even when you feel like you have zero energy to do anything; you just have to do it!  Trust me, it’ll help when it comes night time / sleeping.  Any tiny bit of help is better than nothing, hu?  You also have to force yourself to eat.  I did eat and the problems that usually follow with full blown opiates were mild but not good.  The stomach issues I had with full opiate agonist withdrawals is what I really hated, everything just going thru you and in turn this makes you so weak.  The Suboxone, even after almost 3 years on it, didn’t give me the hardcore stomach issues I have had before.

This condition of diarrhea dehydrates you and makes the “healing” process take longer.  This is just common f-ing sense…but as we all know; when you have no appetite it’s just f-ing tough to think about food.  I Ate pasta, lots of scrambled eggs, cheese and toast…I know, sounds stupid.  Eating this shit would have killed me and go thru me while detoxing off of full opiate agonists (like pain meds, full opiates etc…).  Since I have been thru the real thing 3 other times and knowing how bad it could be; I thought “What can make it any worse so might as well eat as much high protein and high fiber stuff as I can”. 

I was getting cocky again and stayed this way.  If I felt I wasn’t hungry… I ate, if I didn’t want to walk…, I walked (I sound like Forest Gump?)….and when I thought I felt ok I had a drink (not a good idea and I don’t suggest it at all). I drank (alcohol to be clear) Friday night and woke up Saturday feeling like I was back to how I felt on Thursday…ok, my bad on my part.  Keep in mind you are fighting to keep your body a float a long with trying to keep your mind together and on coarse so, again….don’t mess with anything that can trip you up or that puts you back.

11)  (Day 6) Saturday:  Relaxed all day, went on my walks, ate, walked…ate… laid around and so on.  Energy level still low, confusion, loss of creativity and in addition my anxiety level was running pretty high.  Where I was taking my time to do this was up in the mountains, so there was snow there…it was very cold… I actually was punching snow, like the hard packed shit.  I did this cause I thought it would help my brain release some kind of endorphins… Not sure if it really worked, cut my knuckles up pretty good though, but it did get my mind off of how I was feeling (which was like shit) even if it was just for a few minutes.  The stupid things we do out of desperation…

12)  (Day 7) Sunday:  Felt…..nothing.  Not good, not bad….just nothing.  That is better than feeling like shit I guess.  Maybe I did feel like shit but I literally felt like I was in a fog.  This part is hard to explain… I was just brain dead it felt like.  I did concern me at the time.

13)  (Day 8) Monday: woke up 3am wired.  Wide awake.  Monday was foggy and I was so tired from lack of sleep.  Still felt shady like Sunday but now I couldn’t sleep at night or during the day.  My energy levels were still low.  This is what I didn’t get.  I would be so tired during the day and the previous week I could sleep.  Now I was tired all day and come 10:00pm when I wanted to go to bed I couldn’t sleep at all, even with ambien.

14)  (Day 9) Tuesday: Though I did sleep or had slept kind of, it had been so light that I remember even being in a slight dream state at like 1am and thinking “I am not getting any REM (rapid eye movement) sleep”.  I am no expert but I do read enough to know that getting a deep good night sleep and being in that REM state is when your body really does the repairing of itself and this is important, obviously.  Being at day 9 and with night 7, day 8 and night 8 being the same, I felt like I was leveling out and that I would have to put up with this unfortunate now barely bare-able state for a while. 

I could function but I was very jittery, confused, dizzy and when I walked up a flight of stairs, I would get a bouncing motion in my brain.  This had not happened before coming off of hard opiates ie. being jittery, wired, fog like confusion and not able to sleep.  Keep in mind, hard opiate withdrawals, sleep is questionable….it’s like you are so out of it your body shuts down and makes you sleep or when you want to sleep that is when the shear nightmare hits and you are kicking like a mule and paranoia / anxiety is at its peak. 

Also, I kept thinking that I was at like day 14 (when I was really at day 9).  Keep in mind that the half life of suboxone / buprenorphine is 72 hours and you don’t feel “like shit” till day 3 or so.  Even though I consciously knew what day I was really at I couldn’t break this feeling or thought.  Any other opiate / pain med withdrawal lasts a minimum of 11 bad days, or it had for me.   Off regular oxy, vics, etc… When you stop regular opiates let’s say in the morning, you feel like shit that afternoon… You knew that the w/d’s started and that the clock was ticking till you’d relapse or if you hung in there, you could be in the clear in 11 or so days.   Off of full blown opiates I would feel shady for 11 or 12  days and bounce back fast after that (with 3 days of feeling a little off my rocker after day 11 or 12)…  Don’t get me wrong though, suboxone is still the best way to go cause it gives you time to break that “habit” and get your life back to normal.  Plus as I’ll write about this in another post; the sub detox is more of a pillow effect even though it feels like it lags due to the first 3 days of being in the clear, then it hits you, then it lags or drags on.  I would take the suboxone route every time though…much safer.

(Day 9 continued) Tuesday afternoon and evening:  After eating good, keeping myself force-ably hydrated and being overly stressed about real life situations; I was getting worn down mentally.  I was at this point questioning was this going to go on for weeks?  I wondered… “Am I going to be one of those people that I had read about in the “OH SO optimistic forums who took suboxone and that SOMEONE FRIENDS’ COUSINS’ DOG WHO SPEAKS ONLY ANCIENT LATIN had gone thru 4-8 WEEKS of w/d’s before they started feeling even close to ok again due to the LONG half life”?  Then you get the following line at the end of these idiots overly negative post…”Oh and by the way….everyone is different though so you might be ok”.  Wow!  Supportive, negative, stupid and totally contradicting.  These kind of comments really F**K you up; cause you now are wondering “Shit, am I going to be ok or am I going to go thru hell?…Is there any middle or gray area”?  Bottom line for me… I felt like shit, but not like I was in the literal sense of hell like regular opiates… The suboxone w/d’s, it just f**king bugged… I felt just so numb and brain dead.  I guess I would say at this point I was really wondering “Did I maybe do some damage to my brain”?  (This didn’t happen though, just telling you what I was thinking and feeling at that time).

15)  (Day 10) Wednesday:  Woke up Wednesday and am feeling “normal” again, kind of, or so I thought.  Feeling numb, no thoughts, zero creativity, didn’t want to do anything and if I did I couldn’t think of something to do.  I was also still dizzy or had this bouncing motion.  I want to add this also, not only did I feel my brain bouncing, but I would also visually see a bouncing motion, very bizarre and it did make me nervous. 

At this point, I thought I was or should be in the second stage (whatever that means) of coming out of this.  Cause of the lack of good sleep, I think or I now know I was suffering from sleep deprivation.  Wednesday did not improve, got more tired, edgy, jittery and felt like I was wired on a coffee IV drip nonstop.  What the F**K, am I going backwards?  It’s this back and forth feeling… One day you feel like shit, the next day for a few hours you feel ok… Then it’s back to the same shit, of feeling, just that… like shit.  Then new things start to show up, confusion…muscle aches.  Hey, I want to clear something up.  I would not classify them as “muscle aches” it was more like the cross section of my shoulders, my neck and the base of my skull were soar and cold?  It was just f-ing annoying.

(Day 10 continued) Wednesday afternoon and night:  This was getting ridiculous, almost getting worse.  Stomach was somewhat ok though, I felt soar across the top of my shoulders and looking back I had during this whole time.  I guess this was the crawly soar feeling from the suboxones’ point of view, which I was cool with compared to a full agonist effect / w/d’s.  At this point of time (Day 10) I just had shit I had to do, that I had to get done and I had to get back to normal, not only physically but also mentally and work wise. 

Venting time for Day 10:  At this point or day 10 of being in the withdrawal process, this is what I was thinking.

“Since I had tapered so much and for so long, I expected or felt like I WAS OWED a very easy way out.  Hey, I have been off all opiates for almost 3 years, I changed my life, I f*****g did my time, my taper and I changed my WHOLE F***ING LIFE!  I DID THIS ON MY OWN, I DECIDED TO GET CLEAN WITH OUT FORCE, WITH OUT SOME LINGERING CONSEQUENCE that if I didn’t get clean something would happen.  I changed my life cause I WANTED TO!  I don’t owe anyone or have to pay up for anything, I have done my time…I DESERVE a free ride….”  I wasn’t talking to God, the Easter bunny or some fat clay pot dude… I was yelling at my past, the person I was, the choices I made.  That person is still a part of me and either way, both of us co-signed on this “36 month loan” willingly…. Got to pay up sometime hu?  My time was up.  It’s either “Pay up or keep charging”, I opted to pay up.

Keep in mind the effects that suboxone (an antagonist) and agonist opiates themselves have on the brain when it comes time to face the problem.  It’s like the IRS and worse…They don’t seem to care about time, excuses or circumstances; one way or another you’re going to have to pay up.  New phrase: Death, Taxes and then there are Opiates.

(Day 10 night time)  Sleep was the same.  Light sleep but what was pissing me off now is that I had felt like REALLY ok a couple times for maybe 30 minutes here or 45 minutes there.  It was now just a tease.  Regular opiates, from my experience don’t do this as I have said.  When you jump out of the plane with straight opiates you don’t have a parachute and you’re gonna hit the rocks hard.  When you jump with suboxone you have a few positive options. 

#1: You get to pull the cord at 25′ off the deck

#2:  You have time at least to think about what you are going to do…

#3:  That you get to pull a cord at all. 

Still, I am not taking anything back I have said, it was still, in retrospect 90 Xs easier or let me put it this way….smoother than the hard crash off regular opiates where Hell feels like a resort.  I’m just bitching and explaining what “I” went through…

16)  Day 11: Thursday:  The day was chaotic, things had to get done, I still felt the same though, confused, dizzy, anxiety, mentally and physically tired but unfortunately “tough shit” things had to get handled.  So with an overstressed day, the lack of sleep, something was going to break and at Day 11, sure as hell isn’t gonna be me.  I thought at this point “Worse case scenario, Day 15 or 16 would be better, so only a few more days”. 

Thursday evening:  Going thru my e-mails while my 4yr old son was in the hospital and while I had been at the hospital for 2 whole days (while feeling like shit and feeling confused).  I had taken a small break from at least 3 of the 5 w/d feelings by staying busy and having to handle at the least 7 out of 10 things I had to do work wise to to keep my house; it was now 7pm at night.  I was though still working at 110mph cause I had to and the stress level I was at was still way high when…something came to my attention in a very subtle way. 

About 30 minutes had passed while in this unusual work mode and I just realized something, the gun was NOT at my forehead anymore; I couldn’t see it or feel it. I didn’t have the anxiety or that threat in my face or feeling that threat of any minute I would start feeling really shitting again.  Being in a crowded environment at the time, with family and staff around (I was working on my laptop so it was pretty mellow) I literally looked left and right and I mean literally.  I was thinking any second the gun is going to go off or the situation of  3 bullets and hearing “MEOW, MEOW” like from the movie the Deer Hunter was going to be the threat and anxiety that had been there the past 11-12+ days.  I let myself relax, I let my muscles relax and I “figuratively” pulled the trigger and thought about what withdrawal symptoms I should be feeling…  Just thinking that I felt like I had a 50/50 chance of the gun going off…. I heard a click.  They seemed to be gone…  (I was still not out of the woods or in the clear… I was still foggy but not really feeling that hard crappy feeling).

Thursday night:  I was burnt out.  Holy s**t I actually felt wiped out without feeling drained out.  There was actually conversations going on between two old friends in my head, Officer Neuron and Lt. Receptor were talking and seemed to be having a beer.  It’s like 2 old friends that hadn’t seen each other due to a falling out and now were shooting the shit and patching things up.  I went home, and fell asleep EASY.  This was the first heavy sleep I had in a week or more.  Keep in mind I was always drained, but sleep at night was just impossible.

17)  (Day 12) Friday:  Woke up early that morning and I woke up tired.  That was a big deal cause feeling tired from waking up was a big difference from being tired from lack of sleep.  It’s then that I realized I might be in the clear.  By about 11am or so I realized I got a Green light on day 12 (not 100% but enough that I could start to move on).  Mentally / physically I was at 90%, I still had a slight sourness in my shoulders but nothing that I cared about or that bugged me to the point that I couldn’t concentrate on things.

I still felt around 90% but it’s a hell of alot better than having felt at like 80%-85% and overall mentally feeling like I was regressing or deteriorating by 5% everyday.  So Day 12 was for me the end of this s**tty ordeal (to a certain degree).  I can say now of course that looking back on it, I don’t think it was that bad.  Again, most of all the stuff I posted up here was from my notes / journal I kept.  It kind of helps to keep one and check it to see your progress day to day…..I didn’t go over mine though or check my progress… I just kept notes.  I was just thinking common sense wise especially if you have to go thru w/d’s on your own (either way even if you have support, you really are going at it alone); it’ just s a good idea to see your progress so you have some kind of support even if it’s your own.

I didn’t feel 100% till day 25… Listen, what I mean by this is that at day 25, I felt back to normal…Kind of…. To elaborate on this; it’s hard to feel 100% after years of opiate dependence even if suboxone is an antagonist instead of an agonist.  You can use these terms but these words don’t mean shit to your f-ing brain…all your brain knows is that “the opiate bliss was there and now it’s gone”….and big terms, definitions and so on are…..just words to us…but they don’t mean shit to our actual physical mind… Our brains function on what it feels is normal or how the choices that WE have made have influenced how it works and thinks it should be working.

Suboxone can be a great tool so you can take a break from your drug of choice, from the PIECE OF SHIT PEOPLE that may have influenced your life…from the DOCTORS that push the oxy’s, vics, percs, fentanyl etc for just stupid reasons “You got a headache, here is an 80mg Oxy, you’ll feel much better”…from the personal choices YOU HAVE made if you got on this rollercoaster willingly or not….   Maybe something happened though where if you had to take them cause of a real medical issue, they (the doctors) either keep you on them, which is a majority of the cases and when a "problem" is raised or addressed by you they yank you off them cause they don't want to held responsible….  Suboxone can get you back on track… It's all up to you though. 

The above paragraph sounds like a f***ing commercial BUT, just so you know, I don’t represent the manufactures of suboxone.  This site is not a money maker for me but I keep it going since I get so many incredible emails and “thank you’s”…  Never thought me just ranting and posting up my mistakes in life would help others. I keep stepping this site up and will continue to do so.  I only hope that this site gives you just that…”hope”.