starting methadone/ on heroin and want bupe

[Dominick]

i have a few questions reguarding starting methadone, its beena w hile since ive gone to the clinic. is it okay for me to goto intake and start today at 7am if i am up right now at 1:30-2:00am and just did my last bag of h.mi really dont want to get withdrawals and know i could take my bupe tomorrow buit it hasntbeen wokrking for taking my withdraals away and fast enough its not doing its little "trick" it used top do and make me feel fine. all my sickness used to go away.
i hav e a perscribtion to bupe, i havbe a bottle of the 8mg pils, and am suppose to be on maintence 16mg a day. so after i goto the clinic for a few days i wanna switch to bupe and ride it out on bupe maintence

but i have a heroin habbit i am quitting today

so should i go get on methadone? witll they start me on 20mg like usally

will 20mg make my withdrawal go away? (i got a 4-5 bag a day habit pretty large tolerance)

after i take `done for a few days, how many days(hours) should i wait till i bupe "up" i know methadone has a long half-life should i wait a REALLLLLY long time?

thanks

- omerta
Dominick

[underide]

20 mils is what everyone gets started on over at our clinic. Might be different in your country.
It really depends on your tolerance, but i'm guessing that 20 mils wont be near enough for you with your 16mg of bupe habit.
They should get you up to at least 60-70 within a week, and youll probably need to go up to at least 100mg in the end.
But its all up to you.

I'm on 85 mils of 'done now.
If I could do it all over again I honestly wouldnt go over 40-50 mils, as i do intend to get of this shit eventually, and now it seems that dropping as little as 5 mils causes great discomfort to me.

Done is some evil shit but i cant live without it
Good luck, whatever you decide to do

[rachamim18]

In America the initial dose is almost always 30, outside of correctional settings but I do know of private clinics that start as high as 80. The AMA guidelines are pretty interprative so it varies but the overall average is 30.

Tolerance and w/d is subjective and highly variable so noone will be able to tell you whether 20 will be wnough but if it is not, tell your provider and they will surely increase you. Most clinics do so at 10 mgs. per day but some do it at 10 mgs. every 3 days so again, it varies.

Methadone has an insanely long half life , it can actually be as long as 60 hours (not a misprint) in some reare unlucky people, or perhaps lucky depending on how you look at it. Most though are in the area of 22 hours.

As for doing Bupe again, why would you want to switch back and forth? If you just prefer Bupe for some reason, why not simply take your medicine?

[MorFinatic]

Im exactly where your at. I just started methadone today, after being on h for about 5 months straight. Before that I had been on bupe maint for a year and a half. I had already tried a few times to get myself off the dope with subs that i still had left over. Each time was too painful and didn't work like the first detox with bupe, so I kept going back to the dope. This is my 1st time with methadone. They started me on 30mgs and I don't feel too bad. We'll see how the next week goes....

[Diluted]

My suggestion, from personal experience,
is not to get on methadone.

I'd go straight to Suboxone. But, yes, I will admit, my life did get stable on methadone.

No - the three month detox in a daze was not fun. It was hellish.

Forgeting to pay on Friday and having them do an admin detox until I could scrounge up $70 makes you realize you're nothing but a number to them. (460005) [went in 05, 460 patient on roster. Kinda like JAIL.)


Liquid Handcuffs.

But yeah, it did give me a stable life. and double dosing was fun. Tagament and GFJ on a D.D. makes life bareable.

[tptptp]

you can't feasibly do this.....to switch from methadone to subs you have to be on 30mg or less and then you have to wait a good while to avoid precipated WD's which means you will likely be in done wd's for a while before dosing and or possibly precipate WD....done is the hjardest thing to switch to subs from.

so yeah even if you take 20mg/day and it holds you, you're gonna end up waiting LONGER in WD to dose up on your subs then you would have. It's gonna hurt either way most likely.

[Duckfeet]

I kind of want to co-sign what TP wrote. If I were intending to get on subs, I wouldn't switch to methadone first, since methadone has such a long half-life. High-dollar clinics often switch people from methadone to oxys for a week, *before* going on subs. And I've found that it doesn't take a lot of methadone to hold me, 20-30mg will usually do the job. The heroin isn't as pure as I always think it was, and the methadone is....

Having said that, I haven't had any luck with subs myself, but I've been at this a long time, and it seems long-time heroin addict often don't. Subs get rid of the physical symptoms of kicking, for me, but the craving is so bad as to make them worthless. I tried'em twice, seriously, and both times went back to heroin.

Trouble with methadone is me. Even tho 20-30 held me, I want a buzz, so I kept creeping up, telling myself it wasn't...but in hindsight, I think I was doing what I always do: go way up trying to get high, then scramble way down after a while, since I don't like the effects of methadone either, after I've been on it a while, but it does work, at taking away the craving for street drugs...

It's a fucked deal: Legalize Heroin!!!


you can't feasibly do this.....to switch from methadone to subs you have to be on 30mg or less and then you have to wait a good while to avoid precipated WD's which means you will likely be in done wd's for a while before dosing and or possibly precipate WD....done is the hjardest thing to switch to subs from.

so yeah even if you take 20mg/day and it holds you, you're gonna end up waiting LONGER in WD to dose up on your subs then you would have. It's gonna hurt either way most likely.

[mikells43]

go on bupe ur life will get better, the reason ur life isn't getting any better is cause ur still putting shit in ur body. hows the bupe supposed to work if u dont take it only when u dont have any dope or feel like qutting. get on it and stay on it. wake up sick tommorow, break half of a pill in half and start with 4mg. use the w/d scale on naabt.org to get the most benifit of the subs. there not liquid handcuffs

[tptptp]

In this shitty state of affairs any habit is handcuffs, some just more then others. Bupe just doesn't hack it for me anymore, it was nice in the beginning.....not to get off topic. I have cheaper and better alternatives then both! but not legally......so much for a "free" country.

[Canis aureus]

Well in USA where you could get monthly carries I wouldn't call it any sort of handcufs anymore. It's up to you.

But to the toic, I was also on bupe first, and it did not do a shit to cravings or pains. I had leg achesd all the time while I was on bupe (couple months), then I switched tomethadone (in finland they put everyone on bupe, at least in the time when I streted).

Methadone works well to me, very well indeed.



Anyway, take subs if you want, but don't take methadone first.