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Methadone Question

I have been sober off of pain meds and heroin for almost 6 months and for about 5 months I have been on Methadone Maintenance. I am only on 30 mg per day and I have been telling my counselor I still feel sick. I did put a paper in to the doc asking for increase.... what I don't understand is that I dose in the morning and I feel ok after like an hour or 2, but then towards the evening I feel almost just as bad as I did when withdrawaling from opiates. And I take meds at night to sleep, but I wake up like feeling like I am withdrawaling kinda and I dont feel good until I dose again. I dont know if that calls for an increase, but I have felt like this for a few months and I tell my counselor and she just blows me off. Why would I feel like crap hours after I dose? I know it last long in my system, but I still do not get it. It kinda makes me want to use in between doses and I want my sobriety. If anyone knows why this might be, please help me understand!
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Avatar universal
thank you for all of your feedback. i was trying to get on suboxone, but i couldnt afford consultations. i receive SSI every month so its not muc to work with. i definately am not wanting to get on a high dose. i did get a 5 mg increase and it seems to calm the edge  i started on 5 mg when i started they brought me up by 5 every 7 days til i reached 30 but once i reached 30 i still felt like ****. i want to get off of it soon but i am so nervous of what it will be like.. and how many mg i should decrease by each time i taper down my dose. my clinic is only open in mornings... so i cant split my dose. and i cant have takehomes because i am on a benzo.  and i am definatly not trying to "get high"  it doesnt make me feel that way at all.  does suboxone make u tired at all? i heard it does.. but i wanna know if anyone takes it if they feel tired cuz my clinic says methadone is really safer than everyone thinks but i dont know cuz when i went to pick up ultram the pharmacist wouldnt let me take it home cuz i am on methadone...but my doc at clinic says that nuts that she wouldnt give me the ultram.... which was prescribed for pain. dont really care if i dont have that cuz i take ibuprofen anyhow sorry i am straying and rambling.  ty all for your input
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
ya, i was definately not saying he was just wanting to get high. i made that mistake once i started the clinic.  its a good thing that at his clinic its so hard to go up. i was at my clinic for almost a year and the only time i had to see the dr was the first day i was there.  the way ours worked is you started at 30 your first day and every 2 days you went up 5 mg until you were at 60 mg. they took you to 60 automatically unless you requested them to stop taking you up. once you hit 60 you just had to fill out a piece of paper. there was a list of detox symptoms on the paper. you just put acheck by the ones you were "still having" and turned the paper into the dosing nurse every wednesday and on thursday you would go up the 5 mg. not once did they ever verify that i was ACTUALLY still feelin bad. they also did a urine test once a week. and they let you chose when you wanted to take it.
Helpful - 0
185545 tn?1331074866
A serum level and a peak and trough test will settle any ambiguity regarding whether or not this person is genuine or fishing for an increase looking to get high. I dont really want to speculate why this person feels the way they do. I do however acknowledge that there are so many possibilities and the tests i suggested will either confirm or eliminate some of these.
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Avatar universal
i hear you saying he should increase or split dose but if  i read right he had been on 30 for a few months..   i may be wrong but if he has been on that set mg for the month or 2 why would his symptoms not have evened out by now? meaning say he did a few 80's a day and got on his 30 mg a day dose.. wouldnt his detox symptoms be gone by now.. atleast the ones from the oxy habit?  again i could be wrong..everyones body handles stuff different i just know that even my dose at 110mg i would start thinking i was feeling bad at night when i would lay down.. but i think alot of my problems were more mental than physical.
Helpful - 0
185545 tn?1331074866
Hi there. It sounds like your dose maybe too low. 30 mgs is really only a starting dose. During the stabilising process, your dose should be titrated every 3rd or fourth day until you feel comfortable.
Its possible that you need to either increase or split your dose or both. This is easy for a medical proffesional to determine. Ask for a serum level test and then ask for a peak and trough test. The results of these will indicate whether or not your current dose is sufficient.
Good luck and let us know how things go.  Regards Jeremy..
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
henry, was your clinic also like this.. they are happy to take all 28k you spent there.. but if you came a day and didnt have the money they would turn you away.. or atleast it was an act of congress to be able to dose oneday without the money to pay that day? my posts are always rambling i just have so much to say to people that are following in my idiotic footsteps.. bottom line in my humble opinion is .. methedone for me and my wife was a life saver.. but at the same time it helped make it worse under the illusion that it was making it better. its only 12.50 a day and we rarely had detox symptoms was our way of justifying it.. i felt better coming off a needle habit with heroin than i did the methedone.  same as oxys.. atleast when i was coming off those i could get a little sleep each night .. i would wake up soaking wet and freezing and have to change clothes but atleast you can sleep. when we cold turkeyed 110mg of methedone 20 some days ago it was atleast 10 days befor i could shut my eyes.. even after taking a few trazadone and xanax out of desperation to close my eyes i still couldnt sleep or even lay still for 2 or 3 minutes. your on 30ish mg now and feel kind of bad in the evenings.. do the 1mg a day detox or whatever your comfortable with and quit the program while your ahead.. or you will find your self stuck at your clinic. im sure you stand in line and hear the people talking about how they have been there for 5 or 6 or 10 years.  hopefully your decision is easy.. im sure it wont be.. but atleast consider the advice that the other 2 and myself have given you.. the clinic is disguised as a blessing if that makes sense..
Helpful - 0
569676 tn?1315641158
Follow these guys advice, as they are giving you some sound information!

I was on Methadone Maintenance for 7 years at doses reaching in the hundreds and hundreds of milligrams a day.  I just found some statements and added them up.  Over 7 years, I paid my MMT clinic $28,447!!!!!  And still the only way I broke free was a suboxone switch.  I know this isnt for every one, but keep your dose as low as you can while still avoiding cravings!

Perhaps you are a fast metabolizer like I was.  You are probablly feeling wd's worse in the morning because 1 it has almost been 24hrs since your last dose, and 2, night time while we sleep is when we metabolize and breakdown opiates.

Perhaps talk to your doc about a 10mg increase, but doing a split dose.  20mgs in the morning, and 20mgs in the evening.  This helped me quite a bit in the early days of my MMT.... later once you are a bit more stable, you can try singly dosing.  All clinic rules are different, but its worth looking into!

Best of luck!
Henry
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
Hi . I am also a methadone user from a clinic,highest dose was 30,and that was for a fairly nasty habit of pills for over 10 years.Been on the methadone 5 years,and in Jan. started to taper and am now at 3mg.
During that 5 years I wondered if I was in W/D half the time,like you said.But I refused to go up,and not once used anything else.
What the posters above are saying is true.If you have gone this long,please don't go up.You will just have to pay the damn price again to go down.We all pay the price,and you are close to being paid off.Drop SLOW and steady,adjust the timing,if you need to.
Good luck my friend.    karl
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
i was on 110mg of methedone for a year because of an oxy then a heroin habit. man dont increase. if you go to a clinic that offers suboxin and you have the money to switch i would suggest that or i would suggest a slow taper.   its 27 days after i came of the mdone and im still crapping water and not sleeping much. definately i still have no energy.  like gnarly said, it puts your addiction on hold. most na meetings wont accept you if your on methedone.  i know everyone says the same thing about it.. but its because they have all been there.. i felt better off my gram a day heroin habit off 50mg but i went to 110mg without ever having to see a doctor.. atleast your clinic wont allow you to do that.  the only thing using while you are there will do is risk failing your urine test and gettin your dose cut in half or even kicked out.. all clinics are different. like gnarly said if it comes to dosing up or using i would dose up.. but you are going to have to come off it eventually so lookin back on my stupid decisions i wish i was in your situation instead of mine. call your local detox centers and ask if they take methedone patients..  i know where i live where oxys are the biggest buisness in town there are tons of free detox centers.  they are alot of help.  they give u medicine to help you sleep and for your blood pressure and also for depressions.  they make you go to meetings and get you setup for outpatient programs when you leave. i chose not to go and my wife chose to go.. and she is my biggest influence right now becasue she is doin so much better mentally with everything than i am.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
Hi and welcome to the forum....sounds to me like 30 is not doing it for you...coming off heroin most have to use around 50 to not feel withdrawals and hold you over all day...however I dont recommend going up in dose unless you cant make it without it jeopardizing your sobriety....methadone is a monster to come off of the lower you keep your dose the better off you will be...also the shortest time possible is also best..I came off 150ml of the stuff and it was pritty ruff ...but around 25 or 30 is where you start to really feel it...if you could start to taper now you would save yourself a lot of grief and break free of the stuff but if it would put you in the position of using again dont do it use the time your on it to build up your foundation with aftercare such as N/A orA/A and get yourself strong enough to kick as soon as you think your able...methadone dosent cure your addiction it only puts it on hold ...good luck to you and God bless....Gnarly
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