Journal - Some advice please on codeine quitting

[dawnies07]

Ok here goes.... I have been avidly reading this forum (in particular Rokman Nash, Patient X and Dickons story.....absolutely indredible guys!!) and have decided to get my friend to follow in their footsteps and try and get help to beat her 3 year addiction to codeine and sleepers!

The mere thought of this is terrifying her as she has had to do without codeine for maybe a day and it was just horrendous but she knows she sounds so stupid when there are other guys out there who have managed to come off much more potent stuff!

Currently my friend is taking 120mg of codeine 4 times a day....and then 2 sleepers (zopiclone) at night....
She was prescribed the codeine following the birth of her daughter which resulted in some sort of pelvic and back pain...this pain is still with her now but she would rather just deal with the pain and be off the codeine..

It has got to the stage now that she needs to up her dose of codeine in order to get high and she generally feels like shit all day with very little high....she starves herself all day long in order to get ultimum effect of codeine on an empty stomach so has lost stacks of weight....
When she finally does eat late at night the effects of the codeine wear off quite rapidly and she quickly downs 2 sleepers in order to get another high and then go to bed and get up and start all over again...

Basically she cant imagine a life without feeling the high the codeine gives her! Her daughter is her whole life and she wants to be healthy and clean for her.....her daughter was also born with a very rare genetic syndrome and my friend thinks she takes the tablets to blot out dealing with the realities of this...she worries so much for her daughters future.....they are a one parent family..

What she would like to know at the moment is....does she wean herself off or just stop altogether?? Does she stop both the sleepers and codeine together or one at a time?? Should she try kratom to ease with the withdrawal?? Will she be able to function and be a "mummy" while going through the initial stages of withdrawal??
Sorry for all the questions