Detoxing off Methadone

[tomma]

I've been slowly tapering off of a 15 year Methadone maintainence program for about 2 years now. Roughly dropping 5 milligrams every month or so. About a month ago my dose was at 3 mgs. At that point I really didn't feel to bad during the day although the nights were horrible due not being able to sleep.

At that point I decided to just stop the meth all together, rather than prolonging the agony of dropping from 3 -2, then 2-1 etc. I stopped altogether about 3 weeks ago and have not slept more than 3 hours a night since. What makes it worse is it's not a simple toss and turn all night, it's an almost indesribable twisting, knawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that forces me out of bed, even though I'm so tired I can't hold my head up.

I've tried having a couple drinks before bed, over the counter sleep meds, even got some halcion from a friend, all to no avail.

How long can I expect this to last, or is there something I can do to lessen the pain in the meantime?

[littlebit667]

I will message gnarly to make sure he sees this!  

[ImDONENoMore]

lkat - welcome!  Also you might want to post a new qustion this thread is pretty old.

Good luck to you!  :)

[LKat]

(continued from previous message)

P.S. I forgot to mention that I started tapering on September 9, 2011 and it is now October 24, 2011. Everyone told me to start out fast because it would be the hardest when I got down to ten mgs. I don't know if it is psychosematic or true but that seems to be the case. I just spoke with my doctor....She's really going out on a limb for me, helping me. She's not my pain doctor, he abandoned me because I chose a school test over his test which I could have gone to the next day but he wouldn't let me. Anyway, we'll my awesome doctor, Dr. G. She said that she is going to prescribe something for the abdominal pain (non narcotic of course), klonodine sp? for the overall symptoms, and something for the heartburn, and recommends motrin/advil/tylenol for the headaches/fever, melatonin to help me sleep and she gave me something for the nausea already. Anyway like I said, I started this tapering process on 9/9/11, and it's not 10/24/11 and I am hoping to be done with this before too long. According to your previous post, your detox from 150mg took 90 days? Is that the case? Did you do it on your own like I am or did you have help? I'm scared here, and I could really use a friend. My doc also said that the symptoms with my kidneys are also more than likely just because I need to drink more. She said I shouldn't worry unless I have cloudy, brown, or bloody urine and that the last blood and urine exams that I had read healthy along with my blood pressure and everything else. Is floating abdominal pain a symptom? What can be done to keep me from kicking so much at night? ....my poor husband. He's so great, I feel like **** putting him through this. He's wanted me to get off this evil medication for years and now I am but it's not over yet. How much longer do you think this is gonna take? I just want this crap out of my life. It is the f*cking bane of my existance!

[LKat]

(continued from previous message)


     Then at this point, my father was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. I had to go up to where he lived frequently. Sometimes that interfered with my ability to make it to a prescription pick up before closing on a Friday or something like that. But apparently trying to reschedule when you can pick up your prescriptions, is a big no-no, even if you have been a perfect patient for years. I suppose the last straw was when I decided to go to college one more time... only this time I had to take out student loans....I am currently going to school to be a Medical Assistant. We had a big test about 2 weeks into my first class and I all of the sudden got a call from my doctor's staff saying that they'd been trying to reach me for days, (not true, my phone is always on me and there were no messages) and that I had to come in right away for a random drug screening and pill count. I didn't want to miss the test. Plus, I had dropped one dose worth in the sink that month so, I would have been short for the count that day. I told them that I was unable to come and that I would come tomorrow. But they called me back and immediately said that I was discharged (ejected from the practice). The doctor wrote me one month's worth of my prescription and gave me a list of doctors in the area. I called some of them, some wanted a referral from my previous doctor who doesn't give them to discharged patients, one of them (oddly enough the one who was willing to take me and was close to my house which I'd been thinking about switching to for a long time.) didn't prescribe methadone at all, and all of them except for the one near my house had at least a month's wait time to get in. So, I made the conscious decision to do the one thing that I knew I had needed to do for years, get off of methadone. I went to my family doctor and told them what I was doing. I was only worried because I had run out of medication twice before, the one time that I mentioned to you (the first time) and another time about a year ago. When that happened my abdomine hurt really bad and I was urinating frequently. It felt like my kidneys were on fire. I had to take nearly double my dose to get them to stop. Anyway, I started tapering at 90mg once a day. (I've been taking my medication once a day since a year after I started it because it always made me fall asleep in class or on the road if I took it in the afternoons). My tapering schedule was taking off 5mg every 2 days. At first, until I got down to 80mg, it was scary and uncomfortable (perhaps anxiety enduced), but as I continued, it got easier. At about 25mg, I had to have a tooth that had been bothering me pulled, so I took 25mg in the morning and 10 in the evening for a day and then 30mg the next morning. I continued tapering from there. I am now down to 10mg one time per day. I went down to 8.75mg without too much trouble for two days but all of the sudden when I got to 7.5mg, I started having severe withdrawal symptoms (anxiety, tremors, hot/cold flashes headache, fever nausea, frequent urination and worst off al kidney pain, which scared me) just as if I had gone from 80mg to nothing again. I had to take 30mg to get the pain to come down enough to tolerate. Today, I took 10mg in the morning. My husband recommends that I break up the dosage at this point, taking 10mg in the morning today, then 7.5mg in the evening, and then tomorrow taking 8.75 in the morning, then 7.5 in the evening and continuing that for 2-4 days, then dropping a bit off each day. I started this process from 90mg once a day with the equivalent of 225 10mg pills (some are 5mg pills) and I now have the equivalent of 48 10mg pills left. I want to get off of this methadone demon without the severe pain. I have had moderate discomfort throughout the process but I can't stand that abdominal pain. What should I do? I am also losing my medical insurance at the end of the year. In addition, I can't miss school, if I do I am screwed on so many levels. Please help me if you can...anyhing you can do or advice you can give would be greatly appreciated. I am currently 26yrs old, I don't drink, and I don't smoke. I used to party recreationally but never got into any drugs seriously. I had only one instance in the past that I felt that kidney pain when someone had poisoned my drink (spiked it, whatever) with something that I have no idea what it was. My kidneys hurt for a few days and then I was ok. Any input? I have a lot of respect for your insight and from what I've read on here, you know your sh*t, Thanks again for your time. Please get back to me on here ASAP.

~L Kat

[LKat]

(continued from previous message)


     I continued at Johns Hopkins for two years (at this time I was attending community college and trying to get a degree in Respiratory Therapy and I was living back with my dad) and during that time period they increased my dosage to 10mg 2 times a day. At age 19, I met the man of my dreams and moved down south to be with him. During my time with my ideal guy, he noticed that the antidepressants I was on could be the cause of my mood fluctuations and my depressions (I weighed 230 when he met me) and recommended that I come off of them. So, I did. Within a few months, my emotions were back to normal and within a few years, I got down to my current weight of 134lbs). I lived with him for a while and looked around and finally I found another doctor down here and proceeded to switch into his care. This place was different though. (At John's Hopkins, you had to be there every month, on time, no changes in appointment no matter what with your meds for a count every month and with your veins primed and ready for a blood test, blood volitals test and also a urine test. Every month was an hour long appointment with a certified pain doctor who touched and poked and asked questions. I could always leave my doctor a message or call his underlings directly if I needed anything. At the new place, I was seen once every 4 months by an RN and sometimes the doctor would pop in for a few seconds at the end of the appointment. I would get a solo appointment with my doctor at least once a year. These appointments lasted maybe 15min. They relied mostly on what I wrote down when I entered the office. I was urine tested about 1 to 2 times per year. Unfortunately in the last year, the price of those tests went from $99 per test to $1000 per test, and those prices are both with insurance. There is no way to reach this doctor, he has no voice mailbox, and you cannot leave him a message via his underlings...so if I wanted to talk to anyone I had to talk to his nurse. She was nice, but deceitful.) Instead of giving me one increase in two years, I was given like four increases in four years. First he took the 10mg 2 times a day that I started at his office with and within 6 months, that became 10mg 3 times a day. Then, he changed it to 15mg 3 times a day. During this time, I realized that the money I had saved for college wouldn't last the wait time to get into the clinical part of my Respiratory Therapy education and so I switched majors to Interior Design (I should never have done that....I didn't know it but the economy was going dowwwwwwwwn.) Within another year or so, he had upped it again to 20mg 3 times a day. After about a year on this dose, I was diagnosed with something called Idiopathic Traumatic Enduced Condylar Absorption (the best simple definition is that as a delayed reaction to my accident or as my husband believes, a reaction to methadone, which he blames for all my problems, and I'm starting to believe he's right about that. It is a condition where basically your condyles or TMJ a.k.a. your jaw joints are being discentigrated sp? and they need to be replaced with artificial ones.) I had the surgery and my doctor, in coordination with my masculofacial surgeon raised my Methadone level to 30mg 3 times a day for a 2 month period while I was healing and then without any tapering let it drop back down to 20mg 3 times a day. During this time, I had just finished my Interior Design degree but with the economy crash and the popping of the housing bubble, it was useless. After about a year and a half at this dose, I was a bit concerned with how hight he dose was, so, I asked for a change. He didn't taper me off, he just said here take this, and gave me a prescription for Morphine MS Contin 60mg once a day. I experienced horrible withdrawal and I told him this, rather than help me through it, he just said well, I guess you'll have to stay on the Methadone. He said my only other option was a spinal implant that would electrically stimulate my nerves and block the pain. That option came with many risks, like paralysis, electrical current interruption or displacement, interference from other devices and much more. I declined, so instead he upped the medication again to 25mg 3 times a day. I was doing ok on this dosage for a while, still worried though.

(continued in next message)

[LKat]

(continued from previous message)

     I think that I wanted to find a way to get back on pain meds because of my emotional condition at first, that and I had just started university and was lonely. However, about 6 months into college, I developed sever carpal tunnel in my right wrist, most likely due to compensating for my left hand for so long. Once my right wrist became imobile, it was only a matter of days before the left one developed the same symptoms (because it was not compensating and still at a reduced capacity). I spoke with the same hand surgeon who did my amputation and he agreed to perform the carpal tunnel surgery on my right wrist and that it should dissapate in my left wrist as soon as it heals. (During this in between diagnosis and surgery period, my arms were both in these huge imobilization braces....I looked like MegaMan.) Anyway, once the surgery was finished, I was put on vicodin for the pain for a week or so and then nothing.
     (Oh, and by the way, by the time I was done with all this carpal tunnel business, I had failed out of university. I mean I couldn't type and the pain of everything was horrible. I stayed in the dorms anyway, I mean it'd been paid for, I might as well stay with the friends I had made. Either way, I didn't continue there.)
     I am not sure whether it was the carpal tunnel or what, but my phantom limb pain in my left hand increased drastically. This caused me to seek out a pain specialist. First, I tried physical rehabilitation and things like cortizone injections directly into my amputation scars. Accupuncture and massage were also a bust. So, as recommended by my doctor as a next step, I went to Johns Hopkins where they tried something called Gabitril, which did absolutely nothing for me, and then Neurontin, which just made me so sleepy that I passed out (sleep not fainting) randomly in random places....that was unsafe).
     The doctor then decided to place me on a drug that I knew little about, M~E~T~H~A~D~O~N~E. I started out at 5mg twice a day. Unfortunately, my tolerance grew quickly and I started having wierd pains within weeks. But by this time, I was already trapped. The reason I knew this was because this a**hole of a boyfriend that I had at the time stole my debit card and most of my methadone and split. I only had the two 5mg pills left in my purse and still 2 weeks until my next doctor's appointment. It was agony, or so I thought (I now know the meaning of true agony). I suppose it was worse because at the time I didn't understand what was hapening, I thought I was going insane. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't feel anything but depression, anxiety, and fear. Finally, I took one of the two 5mg pills I had left and discovered that I felt slightly better. Then, when it was time for my appointment, my bp was 150/85 (it's normally 115/65). Anyway, they wrote me another prescription, I took the pills and felt better. (It was almost like when you are really thirsty and then take a drink of pepsi, or your favorite drink and it's just like aaahhhh. Ya know?)

(continued in next message)