Experiences - Fentanyl vs Methadone

[Roanoke]

1st post so be patient. Swim has been on methadone since '86, no time off, day after day. Swim has kept stable, job so on so forth. Dose over the years has gone up and done. As high as 75mg daily and now at 30mg daily. The methadone is for pain management with a 2 month script of 10mg pills. This session swim ran short early, 9 days. Not the first time, but swim never ran short more than a day or 2 max early before. A friend of swims was kind enough to give swim 5 fentanyl 50mcg patches, mylan. The first 6 days were ok, one patch lasted 4 days even. But after 6 days on the patch the methadone jones set in on swim very bad at night. Swim told me that the old leg dance in bed was never ending. Not good for ones marriage, dancing alone in bed. Swim read alot in this forum and tried a couple of under the tounge pieces of a 2 day old patch. Helped swim a little but swims legs kept kicking. Today swim said hell with this and swim put on a second patch. Now swim has
2-50mcg patches on, one 2 days old, one fresh 10 hrs ago. Still, swim tried to catch a nap today was to no avail. Dancing the Flamingo.
All Swim has heard since '86 is that methadone is something that gets into your Soul, into your Bones and becomes part of you existance. Swim misses his methadone badly as even if the patch is supposed to be the king of perscription opiods 100mcg is not going over a small 30mg a day Methadone habit. Maybe it is because swim has been on methadone so long.

[I_8_my yellow crayon]

Swim was on methadone, but only for a short period of time(1 year 6months). But he was on the maintainance thing, not tablets. His dose was 145mg per day. After 3 months of abstinance from narcotics, his doctor let him get the take-aways, then after 6 months his doctor let him get 7 take-aways at a time, well, being the fool swim can sometimes be, he almost doubled his dose and ran out in 4 days, leaving him 3 days. He also ran into a friend like swiy and obtained 2 100mcg patches. The newer ones that don't have the gel. Transdermal? Anyways, swim encountered the same problem as swiy, so he took one of those patches and made fentanyl tea. He consumed about 1/4 of it, made him feel a bit better, so he consumed 1/4 volume more, even better. So he pretty much got by using this methood. The problem with the patches are, yes, they are much stronger than methadone, but you are comparing apples to oranges, opiates are opiates of course, But these drugs swiy is using are totally different. The fentanyl releases very small doses of the drug, because swiy has to remember, they are three day patches. And swiy would have a large amount of methadone built up in your system. Swim has heard that also oxy's or hydromorphs are great for methadone w/d. But the perk with fentanyl, is that it showed up the same as methadone in the drug test, so swims doctor had no clue. But if swiy is on it for pain relief, and not monitered, ie: tested, then swiy should get a couple low dose oxy's or hydromorph's, remember LOW DOSE. These drugs are very addicting and swim does not condone this behavior, but he feels for swiy as swim all to well knows methadone w/d. If there is anything someone who isn't you needs to know, just post. Swim will answer. Methadone w/d is worse than heroine.

Reputation Comments on this post:

good harm reduction post, and supportive of the OP, well done.

[Grabnar]

swiy shoulda waited a few days b4 u put the patches into play let the done seep out of the liver first it likes to hang out there for a while then swim say eat the patches at 145mg methadone swiy tolerance is ok to eat patches , swim ate a 1mg patch with about 80mg oxy/day tolerance and was severely wasted but no where near the danger zone