Withdrawal symptoms taken care of by butrans patch?

[Munchy26]

I just recently started a butrans patch to help get me off opioids not because of addiction but because of the failure rate in people using them and my doctor told me sooner or later they would fail for me in one way or another. I have a couple of withdrawal symptoms right now one of them being my back and certain areas of my body are extremely warm and uncomfortable. the other is i am getting really bad anxiety and I hate drugs like xanax.

I was on methadone 30mg and morphine 120mg daily then was switched tot he fentanyl patch to get me off those then i switched to this patch. I have severe back pain and Hidradenitis suppurativa which tends to cause me quite a bit of pain. I am worried I will feel like this for a long time and that the patch wont help. the only thing that has helped is an opiate and I am refusing to take them.

[Munchy26]

yes

[femmy29]

Are you on the 20 mcg/hr butrans patch?

[marycarmel]

Check out the substance abuse forum.  There is a lot of information there on coming off methadone.  Pay close attention to gnarly; he is an expert.  Maybe you should even private message him.  He'll tell you the best way to do this.   Even though you're not an addict, the support and resources you'll get from that forum are invaluable.

[Munchy26]

Yea my doctor knows about them but really isnt telling me there is anything he can do. I am just extremely worried that i will want to go back to methadone just to avoid the withdrawals and I am so far into this i dont want to go back.

[marycarmel]

I don't know anything about the Butrans patch.  Hopefully someone will come along that has some knowledge of it.

The Fentanyl is tough to get off. And methadone is, from what I've researched, probably the toughest due to its long half life.  The morphine is like most other narcotics.  There are websites that calculate the dosage when changing meds in the hopes of avoiding withdrawals.  I don't know that it's as simple as that, though.  I tapered from high doses of many narcotics, including Fentanyl, and had mild to moderate withdrawals throughout the whole taper.  I likely tapered too quickly though.

Even though you're dependent rather than addicted, you can probably find some great information on the Substance Abuse forum.  It helped me tremendously when I was tapering.  There are a lot of things you can do that will minimize withdrawals as you're going through this.

What does your doctor say about this transition?  Is he aware of the withdrawal symptoms you're having?  There are other things he can give you (non-narcotic) that can help.