Posted by shelliR on March 1, 2002, at 15:03:00
In reply to Re: Addiction » shelliR, posted by Elizabeth on February 28, 2002, at 16:01:18
Hi Elizabeth,
Re screaming in pain:
> My god. That's terrible. The doctor should have known better.I can't believe that he took me off over 100mg of methadone to transfer me over to buprenorphine. From everything I've read, if someone has been takig a large dose of methadone, one should work on reducing the dose of meth down to less than 50mg before the switch. Also I'm wondering if he might have given me like 0.08 or less of bupe, because he gave me one compounded cube. Which of course would do nothing for withdrawal. I have never seen those hospital records; I'm going to try to get hold of them.
<I feel responsible in a way since I encouraged you to try opioids, even full agonists, and I'm very sorry for that. I'm just glad nothing happened to you that couldn't be reversed. Doctors who say that opioid withdrawal isn't dangerous don't have any idea what it feels like (and what people can be compelled to do to themselves as a result).
Elizabeth, absolutely *do not feel ANY guilt*.
I was taking vicodin for several years before my first post on PB, for premenstrual discomfort AND depression.
My first post, (I just did a search), was about taking opiates for depression:
www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000603/msgs/36063.html
So please, do not take on any blame. It has been (and still is) really great for me to have a place to be able to talk about using opiates for depression. Anyway, at one point, I remember you questioning my pdoc when he kept increasing my dose of oxycontin up and up.<Ahh. How's the Temgesic? How much are you taking?
Today I took 0.4mg x 2 and almost no chest pain/depression.
< Huh. I didn't feel high, although it definitely did make me dizzy and lightheaded, and sort of speedy/jittery, when I first started it. Are you having any side effects? I found that I had to start at 0.15 mL in order to adjust to it so I wouldn't be vomiting all the time.
No side effects yet except I may have to start eating ground flax seeds again to get my system moving. I put them in yogurt. They worked really well for me when I was on the oxy.
>Lamictal is good for a lot of people. I hope that it works for you.It worked twice before, but I was also taking nardil. I had a huge, uncomfortable water weight gain though, and will start a diuretic immediately this time if I start to gain weight. The trend was been to keep people on the same AD which has worked before and augment. This of course assumes that the combination is better than the adjunct alone. My new pdoc doesn’t think that the nardil had anything to do with the success of lamictal because the it had already pooped out. This is a different viewpoint than I've heard before, although my last pdoc thought that the lamictal could work solo also.
> Addicts who take Temgesic often have to use mind-blowingly high doses (16 mg????!!!!). I think that might be in part due to poor absorption via that route (as well as to high tolerance, of course).why do you think the absorption is lower sublingually? I haven’t read anything which implies that.
One thing I read from a buprenorphine/detox information website interested/confused me:
"It is particularly important to avoid using other depressant drugs, such as benzodiazepines (‘benzos’), e.g. Valium, with buprenorphine. Using benzodiazepines with buprenorphine may lead to breathing difficulties, coma or death."
Is klonopin a benzo? (Because I know you take klonopin prn.) Have any of your pdocs mentioned this? I do use valium prn and stopped when I started the bupe after I read that. I’ll ask my new pdoc about it next week when I see him.
btw, are you feeling well enough to work or take premed classes?
Take care,Shelli
poster:shelliR
thread:93100
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020301/msgs/95972.html