chrisinphx

Why suboxone vs just tapering my doc? Well for me personaly there were multiple reasons. I had done all the reading and understood the negatives that came along with suboxone treatment. First and foremost having a lot of prior experience with recovery I understood that just not taking the doc was not my ultimate goal. My ultimate goal was to find a way to have hope again and to find joy in life and people without the help of my doc. I knew that this would be and is till currently a very long road and would require a lot of work. My first step was to start totally fresh with everyone in my life and with myself and a clean slate meant no more dishonest or negative behaivors so scoring dope or pills even from a doctor when i knew i was abusing them would have only tainted my rebirth. Another issue and step i had to adress was a physical one. Unlike a lot of junkies ( i use that as a term of affection and i use it to describe myself as well) I was very overweight and out of shape I had gotten up to 300lbs. My eating and lack of excersize in my opinion was just another addiction and another negative behavior that needed to be addressed in order to truley change my way of thinking and my life. Going through withdrawals and the depression that comes with while being so unhappy with myself already was a failure waiting to happen. I realize now that i could go on forever listing the reasons and giving examples of why I chose suboxone vs. tapering my doc. I guess what I have sould have said was simply that suboxone has given me the time to prepare myself physicaly, emotionaly and mentaly to the best of my ability for the jump off. I feel this will give me my best chance at success. BTW today my morning dose was less than .25 and i weighed in at 185lbs. Good luck on your personal journey all.

dragonfire613

Good and informative post Chris... thanks for sharing.

and great job on getting healthy again!

24hrsatatime

Congrats and thanks for laying out your thought process. I hope that some of the folks who see suboxone either as a cure or as the devil in disguise will read your post and see that it's not a mindless decision just to avoid w/d. Congrats on your success and on your recovery program. I too am tapering and am very active in much more than taking my suboxone. I too see it as suboxone giving me the time to be able to get the skills I need to live without using. Thank you for pointing out that there is much more to recovery than just not taking your doc in such an eloquent manner.

I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers. Recovery is a journey, not a destination and you seem to be having a wonderful journey.

NFI

Man I'm not even trying to speak like I have any hard facts, just a simple "IME"
I chose not to do Suboxone for a couple reasons:

1. I was afraid of becoming addicted to something I actually had prescribed to me.
2. In a search for less WD symptoms I was not ensured of a softer dismount so why prolong the end result?

Yesterday I was actually dialing a sub treatment center and hung up.
I assumed it would be days before an appointment and decided again I'm simply going to mow through.

Tough times but you're doing well at such a low dosage.
Should be time to kick off soon and that is really cool!

Take care.

24hrsatatime

NFI I wish you well on your journey and truly hope that abstinence is successful for you. If it's not, before you go back to the streets and your drug of choice, take another look at suboxone. You mention becoming addicted to suboxone. I won't deny that I am physically dependent on suboxone, even now that I'm tapering down, but I don't feel like I'm addicted. To me addiction is more of a disease of behaviors. Like doing the drug no matter what the consequence. Going to any lengths to obtain the drug. The constant chase, manipulation, lies, stealing....I could go on forever. NA says that an addict is a man or woman whose entire life is controlled by drugs. I don't engage in these behaviors with my suboxone. I've never had any desire to try to take more, in fact it has been just the opposite for me, after about two weeks I started a volutary taper. You also say that you're not guaranteed a softer dismount, and you're right...there are no guarantees in anything. But I can tell you that I have had virtually no w/d symptoms during my taper. I went down from 4 mg to 3mg last week and it just so happened that I was going through some really stressful crap, and still I had no w/d symptoms. I don't know what will happen as my taper continues, but for me I do know that abstinence wasn't the answer. Being on suboxone has given me the opportunity to be relieved from my obsession and compulsion with using so that I can work on the real problem...me and how I deal or don't deal with situations. I have benefited so much from my time on suboxone and my life has changed completely. I am no longer living in the hell of addiction plain and simple, regardless of the fact that I would probably have some physical symptoms if I jumped now. I believe that even if that happened my time on suboxone has allowed me to gain the tools that I would need to cope with it and not return to using and I know that I couldn't have worked my program and gained those tools if I hadn't allowed myself this time on suboxone to heal and deal.

I'm not saying for you to run out and get on suboxone. All I'm saying is that if you can't maintain your plan of abstaining, give it some thought. I may be dependent on sub right now, but unlike when I was on my doc I function normally and I'm weaning off. It's certainly a much better alternative than returning to active addiction because you couldn't maintain your goal of being abstinent. I've known lots of people who were "clean", but they were still living in active addiction and I will pick my suboxone treatment over that any time.