hi everyone - i have been coming to to this and various other forums for a while now, and i feel like i owe it to the addiction web forum community to post my experience, and maybe i will help someone.
my sweet wonderful boyfriend and i have been addicted to oxycodone, mainly in the form of instant release roxicodones - but also occasional oxycontins and percocets - for the past year and a half. once we tasted the withdrawal, we would do anything to avoid it...so we would take methadone once in a while to keep the withdrawals at bay until we could get more oxy's, but never more than a couple days at a time. well, for a while we could not get anything except methadone so we bought about 2 weeks worth of 15-25mg a day. our last dose was 5mg of methadone and then we ran out. it was the worst withdrawal hell i have ever been through. the nights were the worst, but the days were so horrible too. all we wanted was to get through the work day and go to bed, but once we were in bed, there was no sleep at all. horrible...so bad...anyway...
so on day 3 of the worst withdrawal of my life i decided to go to the doctor. i was looking to get suboxone but i couldn't find any certified doctor on the suboxone website that had an appointment for me. so i picked a random doctor from my insurance plan. by the grace of god, this doctor actually was certified to prescribe suboxone, and started me on it right away. i felt better immediately.
the important part of this story that i think will help someone else is the relapse: 1 1/2 weeks into the suboxone regimen, my dealer called with roxicodones. we bought 14 30mg pills. i thought we'd be wasting them and get no high if we did them with the subs in our system so we waited about 24 hrs then started taking them. 3 days later we hooked up with 18 more 30mg roxi's and took them all over the weekend. i didn't get as high as usual, and generally didn't enjoy it all that much.
we took our last roxi at 7pm sunday night and by monday morning, bright and early, i was in withdrawal. monday sucked really bad, but i was afraid i wasn't sick enough to take the suboxone yet...i was scared of precipitated withdrawal. well i took the suboxone at 5:30pm as soon as i got home on monday, and it worked like a charm. i felt better immediately, and i actually felt better than i had felt on the roxi's those days i was abusing it.
the 2 things i wanted people to get from this story are: (1) the consistency and normalcy of suboxone is better than the roller coaster high of oxycodone, and (2) if you fall off the wagon for a few days, the precipitated withdrawal will likely not be an issue. just wait 12-18 hours and take your suboxone. you don't have to go through a sleepless night if you can take your last dose of a short-acting opoid in the morning.
good luck everyone. i am still struggling. my doctor wants me off the suboxone and i need to convince him that i should be on it for a while (months or years). but that is for another post...