How long do methadone withdrawal symptoms last?

City man, I completely agree with the advil advice... advil seems to be made for methadone withdrawal, it really takes the edge off. I can completely relate to your description of withdrawal... I remember having a kick like that one the first time I came out of a methadone clinic when I also had a dope habit. It was exactly as you described. It's kind of messed up but it's nice to know that you, me and whoever may be reading this is not alone in the toture of withdrawal... that it's normal to feel the way we do, did, etc. when going threw withdrawal. This last kick I had, am having, is very different then the rest. I didn't have intense withdrawal like you described, or maybe I possibly brain washed myself the first 7-14days, I was vomiting, didn't sleep, etc, but for some reason it didn't seem as bad as other kicks. HOWEVER, I have 30 days completely clean now and I still feel like there is an elephant sitting on top of me. I find it impossible to be at the level of activity I was before my kick. Actually, I feel I can hardly move at all. I'm eating and sleeping and level headed mentally but physically... it's bad... just as far as moving. I'm wondering if this is normal and when it will go away... haha, ofcourse, like everyone who comes here is wondering when this hell when end. To the guest that is on 28mg of methadone from vicodine habit... get off methadone and get opiates out of your life! The sooner the better! Hoping to be mobile soon. Good luck to all.

holy c**p. it's been 22 days since i stopped 80 mg of methadone COLD TURKEY. alot of people say that's too much considering i'm 5'1" and 111 lbs. but i figured after my battle with heroin i was desperate. 21 days of pure hell. for those of you who have no medical insurance there were only 2 things that took the edge off ever so slightly. a huge heating pad and tons of really hot baths with epson salt. the only reason i am out of bed today, i think, is because my mother couldn't see me like that and gave me ultram (a low grade percocet). she's only giving me 1 every 4 hrs but it's really helping. trying to watch as much movies as i can to keep my mind busy. good luck!

Ok, it took me 5 minutes to just get to the point I could type the subject line. This is absolute hell. First question: Why in the hell is Methadone manufactured?! ANYone who EVER wants to come off of it is going to have to live death for at least two weeks. I am currently on day 4. Low dose for not too long of a time, but I believe my last dose was 40mg. I went into rehab for it last summer as I was on it for a much longer period of time than this but OH MY GOSH! I didn't even think I would withdrawal because this last week was just a "binge". Really, I was taking it for only three weeks or so but I'm assuming that since I've already been highly addicted to it that my neuropathways remember it somehow and the addiction comes much faster. IF YOU HAVE QUIT METHADONE, PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T EVER TAKE EVEN JUST ONE AGAIN! I was stupid, thought I could use the rush for a month and then quit; no problems. WRONG. Of course, I've got the chills, sweats, fever, nausea and stomach cramps but the problem is that no one knows I was taking it. I can't tell any one what's wrong with me. I've been faking the flu and missing work for the last four days. God, I feel like a piece of sh*t. So, I know I'm not alone in my misery because I've read all of the testimonials here but I can't tell my family. I'm on my way to the doc right now because I promised my husband I would, but what it the heck am I going to tell her? To suffer through this alone... well, enough said. I don't really know what my point here was but to reach out and know I'm not alone (in the world at least) but in my home, I am. And this hurts. A lot. If you're reading this and quitting for the first time, make it your last. You won't regret it.

hi i am 23 and have been on illicit methadone for 5 years 80-100mgs a day.i had no idea tha hell that was coming when i couldnt get more. i went from methadone to hydrocodone 30mgs 3-4x a day to survive.i am noww out of lortab and iknow i am in for HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL. severe muscle aches and lack of sleep. the aches are tha worst!!!!!!!. and by tha way thecityman hit tha nail on tha head read his post and thats what i am going through. i dont recommend this but if u cant stand it get so doped up on xanax and u will not remember at least 1 or 2 days of it. better than nothin

i was on methadone for 9 months after a 3 year opiate habit, peaking at 150mg and coming down 10mg every week until i reached 20mg. if i had read this forum before i decided to stop at 20mg, i definately would not have... i made it 6 days without any ill effects and felt maybe i was just lucky. this dream was cut short as i awoke on the 7th morning sicker than ive ever been in my entire life. i tried taking an ambien to sleep but all it did was make me stop shaking.. finally i went to the emergency room where i was given ultram(tramadol), promethazine suppositories(seeing as i couldnt hold anything down long enough to digest), and catapress 1 week patches(which i had to ask for by name and had to go to 3 different pharmacies before finding a cvs with 1 box left) ... my biggest mistake was using the attivan i was prescribed to make me feel better as i tapered down, not realizing how late this withdrawl actually hits you. so let that be a fair warning to anyone... if you plan on stopping, prepare in advance, and dont set yourself up for a dual withdrawl of benzos and methadone like my dumb ass did. it is now afternoon in day 8 and i must say with this medication i feel 200percent better... but still 400percent from normal.

-c

I know exactly how u feel. I started methadone on advice from a friend who had been going to the clinic for years. Bless her heart, i thiink she really believes she has quality of life, maybe she does. As for me I never really considered managed addiction to be possible for me. I do wish someone would have advised me of the pain and misery of withdrawal. Friends if you are addicted to the common opiates, hydrocodone. oxocodone, morphine, fentanyl, etc. let me tell you that i was there and after only 5 days in a detox center i was already feeling like a new man. I made it fine until i came home and found some percocets and thought i could take them and be fine. I made that mistake but the point is, the withdrawal, though bad, was over relatively soon. Stopping methadone abruptly after 11 mos.. and 90 mg a day introduced me to a level of hell i never knew existed. I made it about 3 days and thought it wasnt so bad. THEN i began to pay the price for my poor decisions. After about a week of vomitiing, diarrhea, pain and fever i managed to get myself to the hospital and told them i was sick, i got anti-nausea meds that didnt really help and i let them give me some tramadol which as an aside i had discovered in the past somehow increases the effects of oxocodoone and possibly others but did nothing i could tell by itself. I did get a couple bags of fluids in me and they may well have saved my life. I looked like a skeleton by then and could barely talk having no saliva, totally dehydrated. The next 5 days or so I took elavil and tried to stay unconscious with mixed results. Ihad long half-awake hallucinations like running documentary tv shows. These are still as vivid to me as anything i have ever seen. When I did sleep Im told i talked as if in conversation constantly. OK this is day 18 and my mind is as clear as glass, my body seems to have caught on and each day i feel a tiny bit better. I believe those of us who go this route have a great chance to keep our sobriety. We pay a big price for it and I have to consider all of you my shipmates on this strange trip. My reason for writing is that at almost 3 weeks of hell i can see myself again and know that i can live and be strong again no matter how long it takes. I've paid my dues in 24 hour installments and i realize that along with numbing all the bad feelings in my life my methadone also killed the one thing in life man cannot live without; JOY. I am feelling some joy right now just from this small task. Dont give up, dont lose your investment, it will have to be paid. For those of you with the means there are doctors and detox centers that use IV fluids with nutrients and amino acids that bypass the compromised gut functions of the methadone addict. You could feel better faster.
I recomment easy yoga as your first exercise, do it in the am for 40 minutes or so it's relatively easy and works well for those of us physically impaired. Work up to walking in the evening and add distance it aint easy but every little bit speeds up the process. Well we are a bunch of tough mothers aint we? You are tough or you never woulda survived this addiction this long just do it on moretime!

Listen I am 29 years old and was on methadone matience for 8 and a half years at 240 mgs! Now my clinic made a decision to terminate me after refusing to do groups. That was all fine!! Prior to that I was a herion addict for 7 years. I got pregnant and decided to go on methadone. That was THE WORST decision of my life. Anyway being detoxed was HARD as sh*t I aint gonna lie to you but if I can do it anyone in the world can. But be there for him cause I know he is really hurting. My last dose was June 1 2008 at 19 mgs and it is now 2 months later and I am still hurting a little bit. But I can deal with that. But it is really hard due to me being sick it made me lose my house my husband and my mind. Get back in touch let me know how he is doing but from the heart if I did it anyone CAN!!!!!!!!!!!!! Jessica

I'm on day 6 of my detox from methadone, I have tapered down to a very low dose, I have all the typical symptoms (God, I wanna sleep) but last night was so bad I ended up using 2 mls a methadone (it didn't even help) is this gonna put me back to the beginning?!

ive been in methadone clinic for 2 years, and am etoxing from 100mgs now, 10mg every other day and its horrid. im at 40mg now and already cant sleep and ready to use or try suboxone or something. im trying

I have noticed that most of these horror stories are from people who were taking anywhere from 100 - 160 mgs of methadone and then just 'stopped.' Well, yeah you're going to go thru some unbearable withdrawals. I'm sure no clinic or doctor would recommend that. I am on a methadone clinic and have been taking methadone for 5 years. I am a recovering heroin addict. I was on 110 mgs. I started coming down 2mgs a week a little over a year ago. I am currently on 12mgs and decided to stop taking it on my own. I have been advised against doing this but thought that I could handle it. I took my last dose Friday morning & it is now Monday morning. Saturday was tough but Sunday & today are unbearable. While I am not suffering from the more horrible symptons (throwing up or diarrhea) I am extremely uncomfortable. My pupils are enormous, I am clammy & my skin is extremely oily feeling, my heart is beating fast, anxiety & just all over uncomfortable. While this wouldn't be so bad if I was home in bed, I am currently at work. I cannot take any time off so I was forced to take a Vicodin (or two) but cannot do this for much longer as I do not want to get addicted to those. My best advice, if you go on Methadone is to come down exactly as they tell you to and the withdrawals should be mild. Contrary to the common thread of all of these posts, I feel it was the best thing I ever did. I had tried getting off of heroin on my own for years but could not do it. Since I started taking methadone, I have not used once. Done correctly, I think it could work for any narcotic addiction. Over time, your friends & your habits change but it takes a while.

MY HUSBAND USED HEROINE FOR FEW MONTHS AND GOT ADDICTED TO IT!!! HE WANTED OUT SO WE TOOK HIM TO THE METHADONE CLINIC! HE DID 30MILIGRAMS OF METHADONE FOR 10 DAYS AND THEN DECIDED TO QUIT COLD TURKEY BECAUSE WE COULDNT AFFORD IT!!! IT IS HIS THIRD DAY NOT TAKING THE METHADONE AND HE HAS NOT HAD HARDLY ANY WITHDRAWALS , BUT SOME BODY ACHES AND SLEEPING A LOT!! IS THIS NORMAL? IS IT CAUSE HE HAD JUST USED HEROINE FOR FEW MONTHS AND ONLY METHADONE FOR 10 DAYS? I THOUGHT THAT HE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO SLEEP (INSOMNIA) BUT INSTEAD HE HAS BEEN SLEEPIN FOR 2 DAYS!! IS THIS POSSIBLE????

Getting sicker than a dog is part of the price of freedom from methadone. I am on my second try and have 7 days clean now. I have felt sicker than a dog but I am somewhat improved now. I learned a few things in my two attempts. The first time I dropped from 20mg a day to 0. I lasted 12 days and went back on. Over the next 2 months I dropped my dose slowly to 5mg and stayed there for 2 weeks then dropped to 0. The first 3 days were really bad. I got a script for clonipan and took a single low dose at night. That helped some. Then I started bicycling like 10 miles a day and up to 20 miles yesterday. Exercise helps a lot. It releases your bodies own endorphins. I would say I am 50% better right now but I imagine I have a week or two to go to some sort of normal. I used for 6 months. There are many paths to getting clean I imagine. God be with you.

Hey folks! I posted a couple times here about my own experience with methadone and methadone withdrawls. Well, I just wanted to follow up and be completely honest with everyone....and it isn't an honesty I'm proud of. The fact is, I couldn't do it. I didn't make it. I didn't have the strength or the courage or fortitude needed to make it all the way through withdrawls, so I went crawling back to the clinic. I'm not proud of it, and especially disapointed that- as another poster so perfectly characterized it- I lost the pain I had invested. In other words, the hell on earth I went through for about 14 days was all for nothing since I'm now right back where I started. But for me, it got to a point where I litereally was loosing my mind from both lack of sleep and extreme muscular pain, along with depression and nausea and so on. I don't mean to make excuses...I know many of those on here went through just as much and they made it, so I'm not proud that I didn't. I still believe it was a learning experience in many ways, and one of the main things it taught me was that life on methadone is not as good or as normal as I'd thought. WHat I mean is- and this is part of why I'm posting again- when you are taking a regular maintenance dose, you sort of get so used to being drugged up that you loose sight of what its like to not be "doped up". Granted, you (and I) might not have felt a buzz anymore (except maybe a little soon after dosing), but when you start comming down you clearly see how "stoned" you have been. FOr a moment I want to seperate that realization from the mysery that comes with withdraws. Because even with the withdrawls there were some facinating realizations. Also, most of what I'm about to describe actually happened to me when I got down on really low does but before I was cold turkey....because durring that phase I was just miserable in every way. But just before the mysery hit I had a lot of strange new experiences. For one, emotions started to return...and return in a major way. I'd find myself crying at sad movies, laughing more at funny ones, and just generally feeling more emotions of every kind. Then there is sex, and the realization that sex on methadone was not only less frequent, but also muted...just wasn't nearly as powerful and good as without methdone. Perhaps the biggest thing was music and how much more enjoyable it was and how good it sounded and felt. Perhaps this is related to the increased emotions, I don't know, but I found myself cranking up good tunes for the first time in years! I would also add that food tasted better. Also, old hobbies that I used to love suddenly were fun again. I hadn't been fishing but a few times since going on methadone, but when I was getting clean I suddenly loved it again.
I tell you all these things so that perhaps those people considering detox will not be scared off by the horror stories and will know that there absolutely are some very, very powerful positive things about getting clean. As for me, I have a new plan.....I'm going to maintain for a while longer and then take a week's vacation and go to a rapid detox program in Florida. Very few people can afford this option, so I know I'm very lucky to be able to. For those who don't know, you go into a hospital, they put you to sleep, and while you are under they use naloxone/naltrexon to flush all the opiates out of your system, off your mu receptors, etc and start you on non-narctic medications to keep them blocked once you wake up in 12 hours. They say it feels like you've been hit by a truck when you wake up, but that its over then, that you've slept through the weeks/months of hell described here. And within 2-3 days you're pretty much recovered, and even durring those 2-3 days you are just mostly tired and grogy....not regular opiate withdrawls. Perhaps you've seen it on CNN or Dr. Phil or somewhere. I've done extensive research and talked several times with one of the clinics/hospitals that do this process (there aren't many in the U.S.). Here is a link if you are interested.

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Again, its unbelievably expensive, but for me its worth it because its the only way I'm gona get of methadone, and I really do want to. 8 years is just way too long! For those doing it the hard, painful way....I admire you and wish you the best. For those considering it...just go as slow as possible and trust me that there are lots of good reasons to do it.

So here I am at day 12 and I am really not doing bad. I can relate to relapse. That is what happened to me last time which was a couple of months ago. I did not really have any idea of what I would be up against. I think the last time I tried and failed it was on day 12 that I went out and obtained the necessary relief. Sooo. If I make it through this day, with out sucking down some methadone, I will have surpassed my all time record.

This time has been different because of what I learned the first time around. I have made a few mistakes this time as well but none fatal to my goal so far. So what have I learned? Ok, here is what you do not do. Do not drink strong coffee. Even strong tea is enough to send my nervous system into spasms. Needless to say, do not do amphetimines. I am sure you all recognize that problem but...well...I did not. No relief there I assure you. Ohh and don't do any methadone or other opioid type narcotic. Ok. That is the do not do list so far.

What I have done right. I have not taken any methadone. I did, on day 6, tell my wife about my little problem. I had a vey rough 36 hours after fessing up but since then she has been very helpful and attentive. She is not a drug person or a drinker so it took a little while for things to calm down. Exercise helps a lot. I did not feel like it. Really, I am sure you all know what I mean. After I broke out the bike and rode a few miles I felt a lot of releief. Why? The smart guys say that moderately intense exercise for 30 to 45 minutes will release you own endorphins, which are even better than methadone but harder to get. You can overdo the exercise deal I did find. I did a couple of 25 mile rides and it was just too much. I was sore and exhausted. Not exactly the effect I was after. I feel better with a 10 mile ride at moderately intense effort. Small amounts of clonipan help sleep. I slept about 7 hours last night in a single stretch. Yeahhh. I hate that sleep deprivation thing.

I hope this helps someone. Putting it down here has helped me sort my thoughts on the matter. I will be back in few days and let you know how it is going. If any of you pros have any suggestions I would love to read them.

Unfortunately, I did not make it either. I made it to day 5 and could stand it no longer. I went back to the clinic and stayed on 12 mgs (where I was originally before I so foolishly decided to stop taking it.) I have been on 12 mgs for the past 2 weeks and when I go back, I am going to stay on 12 mgs for another week. I am feeling better & better. I am going to come down 1mg every 2 weeks so my body will adjust accordingly. I think the key is to come down slowly when you reach 20 to 30 mgs (or wherever it is that you start to feel uncomfortable.) They told me to hold as soon as I felt even the slightest withdrawals, which I didn't. I felt them at 20 mgs but kept coming down 2mgs a week and then it hit me. Had I done it correctly, they would not have been so bad. I think I was just to impatient and wanted off. For those of you who feel you are so drugged up on methadone that you can't enjoy life and are always sleepy.....maybe your dose is too high???? I think mine was too high but I didn't realize it until I started coming down and felt better, more awake, my blood pressure went down to normal, I could actually get out of bed in the morning, I had more energy, etc. There are so many things about this drug that I didn't know but didn't ask either. I would suggest talking to the nurses & councelors at the clinic and get informed. I did not do this and now wish I had. While it is going to take me another 6 months to get off 12 mgs, it is better than the alternative. Good luck to everyone going through this extremely tough point in their recovery. My advice is to do it correctly and you probably won't end up back on mehtadone.