3 ms·

> I am doing a version of this myself (minus the padded room), using buprenorphine under the supervision of an excellent case worker and doctor. Wow, that's ab

> I am doing a version of this myself (minus the padded room), using buprenorphine under the supervision of an excellent case worker and doctor. Wow, that's absolutely awesome. > It's taken 5 years, but I'm down to 1.6mg from 32mg at the start, and 24 works in the future I'll be off it entirely (and taking a month off to go down to my family's holiday home on the beach here in Australia, for the final withdrawal symptoms). Niiice. (I'm actually in .au too (Sydney area), I agree that some of the beach environments are really nice. Cool.) > One weird thing: even with my much lower dose, the acute withdrawals every morning are mostly the same. Hah. I figured it might be like that! (Unfortunately!) > A little less bad, sure, but still rather terrible. Mmm. > I just put up with it, because it's better to be productive and able to move forward with my life after 6 years of heroin addiction than go back to where I was. Indeed. And kudos for having the strength - as I said in my previous comment, not everyone has the willpower to strong-arm a rewired reward center into doing things completely differently. Survival of the fittest :D > Interestingly, opiate replacement therapy done with heroin itself has had quite good results. The downsides to buprenorphine and methadone is that the withdrawals are rather "drawn out" compared to heroin and morphine. The upside is that the fact they last so long in terms of binding is what makes them excellent at stopping a user from bouncing back and forward between the two (in theory anyway; a given users metabolism means this isn't always true. I could've easily used heroin any time during my treatment as I metabolise bupe and methadone extremely rapidly -- I just chose not to. It wasn't worth it.) I see. Yeah, buprenorphine isn't heroin. It's very good to distance oneself. So... when you say buprenorphine works great in terms of binding, I get the impression that you mean that the effect lasts longer, and that it is needed less frequently? That would have helpful practical ramifications, yeah.

girvo 9y ago
> So... when you say buprenorphine works great in terms of binding, I get the impression that you mean that the effect lasts longer, and that it is needed less frequently? That would have helpful practical ramifications, yeah. Exactly, yeah. For most people it will "hold" them for 24-48 hours. Unfortunately for me, it only holds me for about 12, but that should hopefully mean that my final withdrawal symptoms are more acute and less drawn out. I'd rather a week or two of agony than months of less-intense but still terrible shit!

girvo 9y ago

> So... when you say buprenorphine works great in terms of binding, I get the impression that you mean that the effect lasts longer, and that it is needed less frequently? That would have helpful practical ramifications, yeah. Exactly, yeah. For most people it will "hold" them for 24-48 hours. Unfortunately for me, it only holds me for about 12, but that should hopefully mean that my final withdrawal symptoms are more acute and less drawn out. I'd rather a week or two of agony than months of less-intense but still terrible shit!