I am a recovering opiate addict. I have been through the severe withdrawal symptoms that opiates cause in your body. They were painful, excruciating at times and I will never, ever be able to erase that experience from my mind. Here’s the thing…I consider that to be helpful in my recovery.
The Slow Taper Method
I am a firm believer that if I was to have slowly titrated down with the help of an Opiate Receptor Agonist (methadone) or a Bupenorphine (Suboxone) over a period of time and all of my withdrawal symptoms were masked that my detox would not have had as much an affect as it did on me. I feel like I needed it to be a traumatic and dreadful experience so that I could use that as one more reason NOT do get caught up in my addiction again.
Opiate withdrawal symptoms usually start between 6-12 hours of no use. The symptoms can include but are not limited to: sweating, stomach cramping, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, muscle aches, hot and cold chills, bone pain, insomnia, panic, runny nose, dilated pupils and restlessness. Very unpleasant and very memorable. But that’s just it…it’s so memorable that I would never want to go through that again in this lifetime.
What about those who gradually taper down on a drug like Suboxone? I’m not at all implying that someone who has used this pain free method is in any way less serious about recovering from their addiction than I. Obviously they wanted and got help. What I’m saying is that by masking all of the pain associated with having to detox from opiates it kind of makes it seem like less of a deal than it really is.
The Rapid Detox Method
Another option for those looking to be cured of their body’s opiate addiction within say, a weekend and be back to work on Monday morning is something called the rapid detox method. This is a fairly new method of sedating a patient into unconsciousness while injecting drugs into their body that speed up the withdrawal process.
The patient is unconscious the entire time and feels no pain at all. They wake up and the most severe of their withdrawal symptoms are over. They are free to go about their business with little or no life disruption. To me, this is someone looking for a quick fix to a problem that just doesn’t have one. Plus, it costs a huge amount of money…like up to $15,000.00.
So Did I Detox With No Medicinal Assistance?
I did have medical help with my opiate detox. I went through an in-patient stay and was under medical supervision the entire time. I was given Clonodine as an aide to my opiate withdrawal symptoms. This drug is a blood pressure medication which has found to be useful in aiding a person through alcohol or opiate withdrawals. It lowers the heart rate and is thought to aid in the symptoms of water eyes, nose, diarrhea, and irritability. I still had a lot of those symptoms plus I felt like I was going to pass out every time I stood up thanks to the drop in blood pressure.
I don’t have the answer as to whether or not going through the physical pain of detox is more helpful in a person’s recovery as opposed to them being able to comfortably taper down…but it seems to make sense to me. It like when I was little and I didn’t really understand what the word hot meant until I touched something that my mother told me not to because it was hot. If I had never felt the pain associated with that heat I would have been burning my skin left and right. But I did feel it, one time, and it left such an impression on my brain that I never wanted to feel it again.
What Is Truly Important
I guess what it comes down to more than just what type of treatment you choose to seek for your opiate withdrawals is what type of aftercare you choose. There really is no sense in going through either the time it takes to taper down with the aid of Methadone or Suboxone, the money it takes to use a rapid detox method or the absolute hell of riding out your opiate withdrawal symptoms if you aren’t going to follow it up with an aftercare program.
Your recovery program is what is going to give you the coping skills to deal with life while not using drugs. My recovery program was very, very intense for the first 90 days as it should be. But I do have to say, I know myself very well. If I had not endured the horrific opiate withdrawal symptoms that I did…there could be a chance that I would be able to convince myself that it wasn’t as serious as I made it out to be. Luckily, I know different.
