Fancie

Hello all,

I am new to this forum but so far I have found it extremely useful. I have been on a MMT for about 2 years now and feel like I am ready to be done with it all.

I was able to complete college, grad school and a great job all throughout my days of using. Once I get on methadone I guess you can say I abused it as I continuously increased my dosage until I got to 20 mgs. It was then that I lost my job due to "nodding out" at work and my life fell apart. As a result my family and friends hate the program and strongly discourage it. Honestly, had I known the level of difficulty of getting off would be so high, I probably would have never started. I was looking for an easy way out to not have to experience any w/d symptoms.

Dummy me, right? lol Its been 2 years since I started and am now down to 31mgs. Everyone told me that it gets brutal once you get below 40mgs and so far it has not been bad at all. Other than the fact that I always seem to be extremely HOT and get cold chills all the time. That I can live with though.

My doctor is giving me the option to continue to taper or switch to subs. I can not afford to take a lot of time off of work to detox. I do have insurance and I work for a bank so it is really conservative. I would not want to let them know about this. I do have sick time and 2 weeks vaca if I needed to take a short amount of time off. I recently started dating a guy who does not know about the program and I would rather him not, at least right now so I would prefer to not have to use all of my vaca for this.

I know everyone is different and we can not give out medical advice, but I would like to know based on ppls personal expriences which is the best route to take, a slow taper or switching to subs. I am leaning towards to slow taper bc common sense tells me that would be better than trading one for another- not my ultimate goal. My sister also uses subs and I know she is still getting high and just using them to keep her from w/ding when she is out of her DOC.

Some people have told me switching is the best way to go though and others said they immediately got kicked into withdraw when they switched from done to subs and it was a nightmare. My doctor just keeps saying the choice is mine without any real guidence. I use the doc at my program and while he encourages exercise and a healthy lifestyle, I am not sure why he will not give me more information on my decision. Any thoughts, experiences or words of encouragement are welcomed and greatly appreciated. I know this is a long post so I appreciate your time.

Thanks in advance,

Fancie <3