If you are on Suboxone maintenance and want to get off of it, or are doing a slow detox from fentadope using Suboxone, your going to need a Suboxone/buprenorphine taper plan.
Here we will discuss a few different types of Suboxone tapers.
Before we start:
All tapers should be done under the supervision of an experienced doctor. These are just recommendations and guidelines to discuss with your doctor.
The first kind of Suboxone taper is the slow taper. This is designed to cause minimal discomfort and be done slowly over a long period to give your body and brain time to adapt, recover and heal.
The slow Suboxone taper can take anywhere from a few months to over a year to complete. However because there is minimal discomfort and more time to adjust the success rate is higher and the chance of relapse lower.
The idea behind the slow taper is to slowly over time make gradual cuts to your dosage giving your body enough time to completely adjust to each cut before moving on to the next one.
The Slow Taper:
Now everyone does this slightly differently so I'm going to tell you how I did it and how many other people did it, but you can and should customize the taper plan to fit your needs.
The taper plan I was recommended was 25% cuts. Now some people recommend 25% cuts every 5 days and some people say every 10 days. Honestly it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that you wait long enough till your body adjusted to the previous cut before you move on. This way you don’t push yourself to hard and suffer needlessly or even worse, end up giving up.
Now ill show you an example of the taper plan and how to calculate it.
Example:
Lets say you started on 8mg of Suboxone. Because we are doing 25% cuts that means that each cut we will be taking 75% of the previous dose.
To calculate each cut we can multiply the current Suboxone dose by .75.
So this is the formula. (Current Suboxone dose) x .75 = next lower dose
So for the first cut we will do 8mg x .75 = 6mg
So you will cut from 8mg to 6mg and wait 5-10 days till you feel completely fine
Then your ready for the next cut.
6mg x .75 = 4.5mg
This will be your second cut and so on.
This is what the full taper would look like if you waited 10 days in between each cut.
Day 1-10: 6mg Suboxone
Day 11-20: 4.5mg Suboxone
Day 21-30: 3.375mg Suboxone
Day 31-40: 2.5mg Suboxone
Day 41-50: 1.9mg Suboxone
Day 51-60: 1.4mg Suboxone
Day 61-70: 1mg Suboxone
Day 71-80: .75mg Suboxone
Day 81-90: .5mg Suboxone
Day 91-100: .4mg Suboxone
Day 101-110: .3mg Suboxone
Day 111-120: .2mg Suboxone
Day 121-130: .15mg Suboxone
Day 131-140: .112mg Suboxone
Day 141-150: .084mg Suboxone
At this point you can either jump off, start alternating days between dosing, or taper even lower.
To make it easier for you to measure the doses you can round to the nearest .5mg till you get down to 1mg. So 1.9mg can be rounded to 2mg, and 1.4mg can be rounded to 1.5mg.
Once you get dow to 1mg the pieces of medication are tiny, so if you want to keep it simple you can keep making .25mg cuts till the end.
That would mean taking a 8mg strip and cutting it into 8 pieces so that you have 1mg pieces. And then cutting those 1mg pieces into 4 so that each piece is .25mg. then each time you cut you take .25 less till your only taking one .25mg piece a day. At that point you can cut it in half so you are at .125mg. And then from there you can jump off completely or do one more cut and the jump.
Now remember, this does not need to be exact. Suboxone has a long half life and will level out in your body over time. So it doesn’t matter if the pieces are slightly off by a drop.
Also for some people 25% cuts may be too much and sometimes you may need more than 10 days.
Thats ok. The important thing is that over time you are consistently lowering your dose.
Its not a race and it doesn’t matter how slowly you do this. As long as you consistently lower your dose eventually you will reach 0 and complete the taper. So take your time and do what works for you and what you can handle. Nobody knows your body better than you.
Alternating days:
If your having trouble jumping off at the end of your taper this is a technique you can use. Basically once you get to the end instead of just jumping off you start alternating days to dose. So instead of taking your dose everyday you take it every other day. Then after adjusting to that you do every 3rd day. At that point you should be able to jump off with minimal withdrawal. This works because the half life of Suboxone is so long that the residual dose from the day before can still have an effect on you.
Plan your taper:
I recommend everyone looks at the link for this website.
It has valuable information about tapering and also has a feature where it plans your taper for you based on your current dose.
Now its not exactly 25% cuts but for those of you who want more information about tapering or don’t want to calculate the math its a great resource.
Tips:
Customize the taper to your needs. Nobody knows your body and mind better than you, so follow what works for you..
Use the Suboxone strips. They are easier to measure and cut into small pieces accurately. If you must use the tablets either use a scale or use volumetric dosing
When you get to lower doses try and get the 2mg strips. Then will be easier to cut and measure accurately in small doses.
Take your time, go slowly and make sure your body recovers before moving to the next cut
Stay busy, occupy your mind to distract you. I found working out to be a huge help
If necessary use comfort medicine and supplements to lessen the withdrawals. There will be another blog post just focusing on this topic
The Fast/Emergency Taper:
This taper is for those who want or need to get clean as quick as possible. Now the quickest way to stop Suboxone is cold turkey however that can be very difficult and even a quick taper can minimize a large part of the withdrawals.
The quick taper is done by waiting as long as possible in between doses and then taking the smallest possible amount to make your withdrawals bearable. Depending on how aggressively you do this the quick taper can last from a week to over a month.
The emergency taper requires extreme determination and willpower. You will be uncomfortable.
However there are ways to minimize the discomfort by taking comfort medications and supplements.
Remember, as long as you constantly lower your dose you will eventually make it.
Please share your taper experiences, questions and tips below in the comments, or in our forum.
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