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Here's my third heroin blog and my struggle with this poison.
Since my last blog I've been using everyday, more often and more dope. My tolerance has never been so high. I didn't even try to quit since then, but I'm going to give it another go after I finish my bag of dope, which will be later today. This time though, things are a little different.
I spent $30 on this prescription drug called suboxone (buprenorphine) to help me quit, when I could've easily spent that money on dope. I'll get to the suboxone later.
So tomorrow (later today it's 4:00am) I'm packing all my stuff and going back to school. It's a 2 hour drive away from my house and away from my dealer. I'm going to be living with "good" students who don't do anything worse than drink and smoke pot. They are very motivated and are doing well in school. I'm going to be living and hanging out with a much better crowd; they have no idea I use heroin and I plan to keep it that way. I believe and hope this change in environment will help me quit. Of course that's not enough but I need all the little help I can get.
Now getting dope sick (withdrawing) in a new environment with a bunch of people I just met won't be fun, I mean even withdrawing at home where I am the most comfortable is torture. Being bed ridden for days the first week of school isn't exactly the kind of start I'm looking for but that's where the suboxone comes into play.
Suboxone = Buprenorphine
I call it either subs or bupe
Suboxone is a prescription drug to help people with opiate addiction quit with minimum amount of withdrawal symptoms. I'll try to explain and keep things simple. Basically, buprenorphine is an opiate, but has stronger affinity to opioid receptors than heroin. So when I start feeling sick, I take some bupe and I won't be sick anymore. So what keeps me from using heroin again while I'm on bupe? Since the bupe has higher affinity to the receptors, it'll block all the receptors and leave no room for the heroin to get attached to my receptors. I won't be able to get high off opiates while I'm on it. Why can't I just abuse bupe, since it too is an opioid right? Bupe has little to no recreational value to those with a high opiate tolerance, although it might be enjoyable to an opiate naive person. So it would just be a waste trying to abuse something I can't even get high off of.
An interesting thing is that I HAVE to wait until I start getting dope sick to take the bupe. If I take it while I'm still high off heroin, the bupe will rip off the heroin from my receptors and replace it, causing me to get sick. This is called precipitated withdrawals. If I'm high off of heroin and take the bupe, I'll have very bad withdrawal symptoms.
I have to use this drug very wisely. I have about a week's worth if I take it once a day, which should be enough because it stays in my system for a while (long half life). So during the week I'm supposed to be violently withdrawing from heroin, the bupe will keep me from getting sick. Bupe itself is addicting and cause withdrawal symptoms as well, but a week isn't long enough for me to get addicted. So if things go right this time, I'll be able to get off heroin without too much agony.
I've never used bupe in my life and can only hope that it'll work the way I want it to. If I'm done with the bupe and still feel sick, I'll take some Valiums or Xanax (won't get addicted, don't enjoy benzos enough) to help me get through it.
Wish me luck guys. Cheers 
Special thanks to Corrupt
 
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good luck, people have done it, it's possible
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damn. touching stuff. I sincerely hope, you manage to quit for real...Otherwise...you problably know yourself...
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Best of luck man! Much love and respect
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Good luck to you sir! Looking forward to next blog.
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I know many ppl hooked to subs, if its the same thing I think it is. theres not much heroin here where I live.
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I'm glad your doing your best to quit, do your best.
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I highly recommend that you stack a judicious amount of benzos with the suboxone, particularly at night when you're trying to go to sleep. By judicious, I mean a dose that will still have an effect without the benzos in of themselves becoming a problem. Just use smart and you should be fine.
Make sure you DON'T JUST CHANGE ADDICTIONS FROM DOPE TO SUBOXONE!!! I cannot stress this enough. If you think Heroin withdrawal sucks, I can assure you, Suboxone withdrawal is its own beast because of the drugs extremely long half-life. No joke. I would recommend something like a two week schedule where you slowly but surely reduce your daily suboxone intake.
Then, when you're off the suboxone completely, I would recommend you still judiciously apply some benzos to your daily meds. Rebound anxiety can be a serious, serious pain in the ass and if you're trying to get shit done for school its just going to make things harder. Marijuana is also really helpful in this regard and if you don't already know, Mary Jane REALLY helps mitigate withdrawal symptoms like anxiety, loss of appetite, and of course the big one: nausea.
In fact, once you stop taking benzo's of any sort, that anxiety can start to creep back into your life and thats where cannabis really helps out once again.
Its a thin line to tread but honestly, its better than just going cold turkey. Withdrawal symptoms are terrible to endure, I mean just TERRIBLE!!! For anyone who doesn't know what they feel like....good for you. Its the most awful thing I can imagine. Vomiting up bile until you pull a stomach muscle, ridiculous anxiety, roller coaster emotions, insomnia, various kind of mental, physical and emotional pain all rolled up into a death ball of hurt. Although the hurt is your brains way of trying to get you to quit, strangely, we take it the other direction and use it as a justification to keep using .
GOOD LUCK MY FRIEND! STAY POSITIVE and YOU CAN DO THIS!!!! Trust me, in the grand scheme of things, kicking the dope is the easiest part in spite of how awful those withdrawals can be. After you're clean and you've been dope free for something like 3 months your brain will be close to being totally balanced again and hopefully you're taking the steps you need to establish new pathways in the brain for a life that doesn't revolve around dope and getting money for dope etc.
Again, good luck and please keep us updated!
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Good luck man, getting out before it totally ruins your life is extremely important.
Its going to be tough, keep us updated.
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Seems a bit much to start school and quit heroin at the same time. I understand the reasoning, but it's gonna be hell for you
Hope you succeed.
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10387 Posts
but I'm going to give it another go after I finish my bag of dope, which will be later today
I never understood this, if you're gonna quit then do it proper and quit right away, not finish what you have left and then quit.
Anyways, good luck, hope you can make it.
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A few days back I read an interesting article on NPR about how the environment contributes to your actions without your knowledge.
The gist of it was that about 20% of all the US soldiers in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. When they came back to the States after one year, 95% of those people (so 19% of the 20%) were still clean, which is incredible. Normally it is a 90% relapse rate, and someone tried to figure out why. The theory is that because the environment difference between the states and being in Vietnam at war was so great that it made it easier for the soldiers to not relapse. They compare it to when a smoker sees the entrance to their office building it makes them want to smoke because it is the environment where they smoke.
With this in mind the move to school should help you, but by no means will it make it easy. Try reading up on this article and try some of the things they suggest in it. I'm sure there is more research on this subject on google as well.
Best of luck when you go back to school!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/01/02/144431794/what-vietnam-taught-us-about-breaking-bad-habits
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One piece of advice I would offer is not to decide to try and quit after you finish your current bag of dope. If you want to quit enough, then you should force yourself to do it immediately, not at some arbitrary point in the future. In my (albeit limited) experience, this kind of thing usually only leads to more postponing. By throwing out your remaining dope, you essentially commit yourself to trying to quit (force yourself into it, if you will). You will also have a better chance of succeeding, as your mind will want to justify your its decision to throw out the dope by successfully quitting, and thereby not having wasted the dope.
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good luck, i lost a cousin to heroin and she was 17 at the time. I miss her everyday. its good to see your making a conscious effort to get out of the hole your in.
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I probably don't have an idea of the kinda of shit you are going through but if you fail again why not consider check into a recovery clinc of some sort where they force you to go through the withrdrawl rather than trying to beat it on your own.
I'm having trouble quitting smoking T_T and I can just imagine the effort required to quit heroine.
Good luck, team liquid is behind you.
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