Subutex And Opiate Withdrawal - My Story

I'm a 36 year old male and I work as an executive for a global corporation (not trying to "show off" but it plays into my story a bit further down). I tried opiates for my first time at 18 (1997) when I had two wisdom teeth removed. The Dr. at the time prescribed me 30 500MG Vicodin's. It was love, rather infatuation, once the effects of the first pill kicked in. I know many of you have exactly the same story and you know that wonderful warm feeling you had the first time you experimented with opiates whether you received a legal prescription or otherwise. In fact, I could hardly believe how good I felt, no physical or emotional pain it was if I was laying on a cloud of cotton candy. I actually took that prescription as prescribed and enjoyed the 10 or so days I was on it. Once I was done, that was it, I didn't try it again for years but I never did forget how wonderful it made me feel. 

Fast forward to 2003/2004, I started dating a girl whose brother was a pain management Dr. She worked at his practice on the East Coast and had loads of prescription medication at her house which her brother had given her from the tons of samples the drug reps would leave with him. At first I thought this girl was an addict but the funny thing was that she NEVER ingested any of these meds. There were Vici-Profen, Percocet, Muscle Relaxers, Seroquel, and injectable Dilaudid! Now I had never heard of most of the drugs she in a cardboard box in her closet but I had hear of Percocet and Vici-Profen. She gave me a few here and there just to get a little buzz every few weeks until later that summer when I was helping her carry a new dresser up the stairs of her two story house. The dresser itself wasn't "that" heavy but I twisted in just the wrong way as we turned the top of the stairs and felt a lightening bolt of pain throughout my entire body as I collapsed to the ground. I couldn't believe the excruciating pain I was experiencing (turns out I had torn a muscle in my lower back), this pain would be almost laughable compared to the withdrawal I would have a few years later. 
To make a long story short, her brother the "Dr." was also heavily addicted to Dilaudid (which I never tried thank God) and wrote me huge prescriptions for anything under the sun. This lasted for a year or so until a medical board investigation almost shut him and his practice down for over prescribing narcotics. My cheap and easily accessible supply was almost immediately shut off. Keep in mind I was never into drugs prior to this, sure I'd tried weed and coke a couple of times but nothing really appealed to me, until the opiates that is. At this point I was used to eating 6 Norco's (Oxycodone 10MG) just to get out of bed in the morning and another 6 or so to round out my day. I had maybe 12 or so left when the Dr. cut me off, no problem I told myself worse comes to worse I'll have withdrawals for a couple of days...no big deal...YEA RIGHT! 

By the morning of day two I was freaking out, I had a high position in another company at the time which demanded me to be at the office almost 100% of the time. This may not be obvious to most people but when you become an executive there's really no such thing as "sick-time". You have a number of responsibilities and are expected to go well beyond the call of duty. I was freaking out because as each dreadful minute passed I was feeling worse and worse. I did some research online and learned about the firs of two "miracle" drugs I ended up trying throughout my struggle to sobriety. It was called Methadone and it would take away ALL of your withdrawals. YIPPIE I thought, now I have a solution to this horrible problem (I'm sure you can see where this is going). So I drove my new BMW 7 series to the "clinic" which was in one of the worst neighborhoods I'd ever seen and I grew up in a major city on the East Coast (NYC). At this point however, I didn't care, I was barely able to drive that morning and I knew things would be getting a lot worse as time wore on. I parked my car worried that I wouldn't see it again and proceeded down the sidewalk to the dilapidated clinic. Along the way I saw a number of individuals which fit my "idea" of drug addicts. At this point my ego refused to even fathom any relationship between myself and these "addicts". In my head, since I hadn't (up to that point) done anything illegal to score my DOC I was "better" than these people. 
I sat in the waiting room, feeling like death, for over two hours until I was able to meet with an Indian (form India, not American Indian) counselor who asked me my story. Well, I wasn't about to throw my Dr. under the bus no matter what questions this guy asked. He informed me that I would have to take a drug test and wait around for the results before he could dispense any Methadone. GREAT, I thought, the withdrawals were getting really bad at this point. A month or so later (it was really just an hour but you know how time crawls when you're hurting with withdrawals) the little Indian man proceeded to inform me that he could NOT give me any methadone that day because there were still opiates in my system. This made me REALLY freak out, I didn't think I could go another day feeling like this. "OMG, what the hell am I supposed to do, I took the morning off work to come here and I have to go back to work this afternoon!!!" I commented with a shaky voice. The guy basically told me he couldn't do anything for me until I tested negative and to try back the next day. After some further protesting from me he advised me to go to the ER which I did. Four or five hours later I left the ER with 15 500MG Vicodin and took nearly all of them that day which barely took the edge off. I was back at the Methadone place the next morning at 7:00AM (which was usually the time I was neck deep at work in the office). I finally tested clean for the opiates and was given my first dose of 45MG liquid methadone. Another, more powerful and terrible infatuation began that day. One that would lead me down the road to hell...
I struggled to make it to the dispensary every day and had to continuously come up with new excuses for work. Among the many "wonderful" things opiates have brought me is an uncanny ability to lie to EVERYONE in my life. To this day NOBODY knows that I'm currently an addict, no one!
As I was finishing the methadone treatment and my doses were minimized to 5MG, I started feeling withdrawals again although these were already much worse than the ones I'd previously experienced and I was STILL taking the methadone. I only had another dose and they would cut me off, I was on a 28 or 30 day program. I knew I wouldn't be able to deal with the hellish withdrawal that would soon follow so I had to think of a way of getting my hands on more. Now I was an upstanding citizen if you will up until that point and rarely did I have any issues with the law besides a speeding ticket or two so I didn't know any drug dealers to feed my habit. After much debate I knew what I had to do and it was really risky. I went over to my girlfriends house while she was asleep (I had a key to her place) and snuck in and "borrowed" the keys to her brothers medical office. I don't want to incriminate myself but let's just say I had an almost unlimited amount of prescriptions for methadone which I would drive to various pharmacies to have filled. *NOTE: I have altered some details of my story to throw off any authority figures out there looking for targets. I don't know if this happens or not but better safe than sorry I always say.

Fast forward another year, I was now taking as much as 120MG of methadone per day!!! CRAZY I know but I was an addict with an almost limitless supply. I had moved to another state a year or so later and my "method" for getting new pills was coming to a quick end. One day I found myself without ANYTHING and the following month was the most hellish experience of my life to date. I came closer to feeling what eternal damnation must be like. I had to quit my job because there was NO WAY I could make it into work in the zombie like condition I was in when withdrawing COLD TURKEY off 120 MG's of Methadone which I had been taking for the better part of two years. I also had to breakdown and tell two of my family members because I couldn't move let alone feed myself. Thank God that they took care of me albeit to say they were highly disappointed and shocked is a gross understatement! I had no choice but to suffer through this and other than taking a number of OTC sleeping medications (none of which worked) I did this the old fashioned way. 

I promised myself once I came out of this horrendous ordeal that I would NEVER AGAIN USE OPIATES of any kind...famous last words. I was clean for about a year and then I started dating the craziest woman I've ever had the displeasure of knowing. She did everything to emotionally destroy me and it worked. I couldn't concentrate on work and I was having tremendous anxiety attacks. I went to a Dr. and was diagnosed with GAD (general anxiety disorder) and was prescribed Xanax. As I stated before I was never into any other drugs and this included benzos. I hated the Xanax because I could barely stay awake taking this stuff. I stopped and the anxiety continued, next time I visited my Dr. he prescribed Tramadol. He told me it was a mild non-narcotic pain reliever and it had some success as an anti-anxiety medication. I gave it a shot and low and behold I started feeling great again! Please don't think me an id**t, I did my research after taking the Tramadol and I was aware that it was indeed an opiate-like drug but I not only became an expert in lying to others but I mastered lying to myself like most other addicts. I started a regimen of four 50MG pills throughout the day but like most addicts I quickly outgrew this and began taking more and more. Soon I told my Dr. that I didn't like taking the "number" of pills I was taking and if there was a form of Tramadol that I could take only once or twice a day. As addicts we are naturally manipulative so I knew well beforehand what I was fishing for, Extended Release 200MG Ultrams. Sure enough my Dr. had an epiphany while hearing my story of angst and prescribed me the aforementioned meds.

The ER's are supposed to be swallowed whole and 200 MG's of the drug are consistently secreted into your system. I didn't want to wait this long so I would bite them in half which would give me one heck of a nice high. One a day turned into 2 and 2 turned into 3. At any one time I was taking 600 MG's of Tramadol and all at once. I did this for a year until I moved to another state yet again for a new job. I had roughly a months supply of meds and as I was running out I simply called my prescribing physician and told him I had moved and not had a change to find a new Dr. He promptly sent a well known national pharmacy a new script for 90 days...I was safe! It's funny though, no matter how many pills or DOC an addict has it's never enough and we are always stressed and worried about where and how we're going to score our next fix. As the 90's approached their end so did my cache of pills....I called the Dr. again once I was a day or so from running out and asked him to refill them just one last time. This time the answer was no and I began to seriously worry about where I would get my next fix. Now I've never known any real drug dealers especially in a new state so that avenue had always been closed to me and I wasn't about to drive around the worst areas of town in search of my DOC. It wasn't for fear of being robbed or killed but it was for fear of getting arrested. The biggest nightmare of my life is to end up in jail or worse yet, end up in jail while going through withdrawals...UGH!

I've always been quite the resourceful fellow and I decided to go to an Urgent Care. I talked of horrible back pain and even had my MRI slides from when I tore a muscle in my back, they had no idea the injury had occurred years earlier. I also told them that I didn't like "Narcotic" medications like vic's and percocet and I prefered something much milder and NON-addictive like Tramadol (Ultram). I would tell them what my previous Dr. had prescribed and they would happily write me a 30 day prescription relieved to discover I wasn't some "drug addict" hoping to score some opiates...little did they know. For those of you who don't know, Tramadol has is a much lower classified drug than say Vicodin. Most Dr.'s are so happy that a patient wants something other than a straight narcotic for pain that they write you a script for the stuff without batting an eyelash. After hearing the amount of 200's was taking one well-meaning although moronic Physician's Assistant informed me that Ultram now made a 300MG ER and I would only have to take one of those...SWEET!

I abused the Tramadol for the next couple of years when someone I worked with offered me some Oxy's and even Methadone...Like the id**t that I am I got hooked on those again as well. Fast forward another year, I moved once again to another state for a phenomenal executive job and lost my professional drug dealer. So what did I do now you ask? Same thing as before, went to a number of Urgent Care's got my meds and all was well until one fateful day last year. I pulled my usual routine at the Urgent Care but made the mistake of telling the PA to please give me something with little to no Acetaminophen. This must have raised a red flag for this guy and he told me he'd be back with my prescriptions. He came back and asked me the last time I'd taken any narcotic. I flat out lied to him and said my mom and given me a couple of yellow vicodin (norco) for the last coupe of days for my horrendous back pain before I could make it to the Dr. (hoping he would write me a script for that exact medication). He looked me straight in the eyes and said "You're lying to me". I had an instant panic attack but tried to keep cool although I'm sure my face turned as bright red as a ripe tomato. "Excuse me I responded, what are you talking about?" Well, it turns out that this particular state has a Federal program which tracks ALL of the controlled substance prescription any patient has at any given time and this PA had run my name so he had a list of the 250 or so Norco's I'd picked up just a month earlier, and the ones before that, and before that, etc. I was caught red handed so what did I do? Did I admit to lying and tell him I needed help with the problem...NOPE....I pretended to be really upset and that he must have mixed me up with someone else. He told me to leave and I said no, let me talk to your supervisor. He then said "Why don't we talk to the police instead?"...MORE ANXIETY..."Fine, I responded why don't we do that" and I followed him to the front desk while he actually called the cops (remember my biggest fear boys and girls me+jail=LIFE OVER. I actually stood there while he spoke to the cops and told me they were on their way and to wait in the waiting room. I calmly said fine and walked into said room where I made a hasty retreat out the back praying as hard as I've ever prayed for God to help me just this once. I was petrified the cops would arrive just as the elevator doors opened. Once I made it outside I was certain they would arrive when I walked up to my car. Let's just say I walked briskly across the lot to my car and "calmly" drove out of there trying not to attract any attention to myself. I have a fairly expensive foreign sports car which would be easily recognizable had anyone from the Urgent Care seen me drive in or leave. I made a left onto a major street and who do I see pull into the Urgent Care lot not 5 seconds later? That's right, a patrol car!

That friends and neighbors was a HUGE wakeup call, my life was mere seconds away from being over. I would have lost my job, my family and my friends. The next morning, again suffering from withdrawals, I made a number of calls until I was finally able to see a Suboxone Dr. that very day. I was experiencing pretty strong withdrawals by that afternoon but nowhere as bad as my methadone withdrawals a few years earlier. 

The Dr. is a great, well informed guy...and VERY understanding. He put me one 16 MG's of Subutex and didn't give me a hassle over what I'd done to myself over the last several years. I've been on Sub's for the better part of a year until roughly 53 hours ago. It took me almost a year to tapper from anywhere from 24 MG's (yes, I know that's more than originally prescribed but I'm an addict, what do you expect?!?) to 0.5 MG's 53 hours ago. BTW: I was on the .5 for a couple of weeks before finally biting the bullet and stopping all together. 

So here I am once again, in the first stages of what's sure to be a long, painful, and daunting experience. At the beginning of this epic novel I told everyone that I was an high-level executive for a fairly large corporation and this is where it comes into play. I do not have the luxury of taking ANY time off to recover except for weeks which are going to be difficult as well because I'll HAVE to spend time with a girlfriend who has absolutely NO IDEA that her boyfriend is a major opiate addict. No one knows my story other than you fine people, not my family, not my friends, not my colleagues, not even my Dr. knows the whole tale. I'm not an optimist nor am I a pessimist, I consider myself to be pragmatic. I've heard many people say that "God will never give you more than you can handle..." well, I don't really buy that because who would one then explain suicides? Certainly those folks had a heck of a lot more going on that they could handle. That's not me at all, I'll NEVER go down that road because I have to much to live for. 
I guess I just finally wanted to share my story with someone, maybe someone reading this is going through the exact same thing or something similar. I know this is going to be horrible, especially going through this all alone and pretending everything is fine even at a meeting as I'm sweating like a w**** in church and feeling as though I want to crawl out of my skin but it's the price I have to pay. We ALWAYS have to pay in life, sometimes it's a little, mostly it's a lot, and sometimes it's with everything you have. 

In closing, I do believe in God, there is too much wonder in the world for God not exist so I ask all of you to say a little prayer for me. I'm 53 hours into a long and perilous journey, I hope to see all of you on the other side.