Up until this point, many of my blog posts discussed various psychological aspects of quitting opiates and getting through withdrawal. However, starting with my recent post on “The Art of Opiate Tapering”, I’ve decided to discuss more pragmatic aspects of taking your first step off of opiates....

How To Detox From Suboxone…At Home

It CAN be done.

To be perfectly honest, I’m shocked at the amount of people who are looking for some solution...

Of course I get a lot of emails. I get emails from a multitude of folks from every state, every profession and demographic.

In fact I get some emails that range from the simple “Does it work?” to the sublime “THE ROOFTOP IS LATE ON THE SALAD!”

However, without question the one subject that is far and away the most popular is the “How Should I taper?”...

If you have experienced opiate withdrawal before, you’d agree that it is a profoundly unpleasant experience. It can go on for weeks. To make matters worse, there’s no guarantee that the symptoms of withdrawal will dissipate completely after the initial detox is complete. Ongoing withdrawal symptoms can be caused by a phenomenon known as Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome, or...

Methadone can be one of the most difficult drugs to detox from. Why? It’s mostly due to the fact that Methadone has a longer half life than most other opiates. Ergo, it takes your body longer to completely be free from methadone because it occupies your brain’s opiate receptors for a longer period of time. There’s a far more technical explanation for this but that would bore you…...

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In the rush to halt the steadily increasing death-toll from opiate prescription drug deaths in the U.S., there seems to be one factor overlooked that might offer some perspective as to why this is very much a moving target.

The majority of people that are dependent on painkillers began taking them for severe, acute or chronic pain. Think back to an incident in your life that caused you memorable,...

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) performed several rigorous trials on “Rapid Detox” or anesthesia assisted detox and found no significant difference in symptoms. It’s not a big surprise to me that it does not work as well as advertised; it’s really the extent to which is does NOT work is really a surprise to me. The three studies found absolutely no significant...

Ugh…this is getting kind of scary. It’s not the breadth of the problem that I’m surprised about…it’s the short time it took to get to this level!

Pills...

Although many other states have similar legislation or pending legislation, one thing is clear: “Doctor Shopping” is on its last legs. I know that many of the folks that visit this site are forced (or seemingly so) to seek out multiple prescriptions in order to feed their physical dependencies. Until recently, this type of oversight simply could not gain any traction due to the politics...

Many of you aren’t addicts. You are physically dependent on prescription pain killers but you don’t take them for the “high”. You take them to “feel normal” and to help treat pain that was once there but now has been replaced by a mirage that feels like pain. And now you’re stuck. You may have read some of my blog posts and not been able to relate simply...

Another article in TIME Magazine starts to crack to door on what we’ve been talking about for years here….opiate dependency is a completely unique pathology that needs to be treated differently than other addictions. Many people truly are simply physically dependent but its the Withdrawal that’s stopping them from getting their lives back. Antiquated rehab...

Do You Have Chronic Pain But Think You Might Be Taking Too Much Pain Medication?

This is another one of those blog entries that is way overdue. It goes without saying that many of the people that are physically dependent on opiates are also sufferers of chronic pain. The term “chronic pain” is used so frequently that one might think that it’s a condition unto itself. For...

I applaud this psychiatrist for calling out his colleagues. It will do little good until real legislation is passed to re-schedule certain painkillers. However, it’s well written and accurate. the other thing that is truly important for visitors to this site to understand that MOST of these deaths are accidental. These are not suicides for the most part; they are people making mistakes with...

Although rudimentary to some; many people are surprised, shocked and even embarrassed when they first experience opiate withdrawal. The first time I suffered from opiate withdrawal, I had NO CLUE what was going on. I had just completed a lengthy course of Percocet after a neck surgery and when the prescription was done, I naturally stopped taking them. Unfortunately, this also happened right in...

I’m glad the governor finally started to address the pill mills but that only treating a symptom of what is a much larger issue. How are we going got diminish “demand”?! If there’s demand, there will always be a way to get these pills. I’ve attached a link to the full story behind the new legislation to crack down on FLA pill mills

Pretty shocking but telling statistics from a short New York Times Article published a couple of days ago.

Some Highlights:

1. People looking for treatment for pain killer addiction has increased 400% in the last 10 years

2. Over 1.2 million people sought emergency medical attention for narcotic abuse last year

3. In many...

This is an interesting article in the Times about new legislation to try and curb opiate abuse. From what I gather, doctors will be required to take some sort of short course (perhaps similar to Suboxone) in order to be able to write scripts for drugs such as Dilaudid, Oxycontin and other highly potent painkillers.

I equate the Better Business Bureau seal to the Good Housekeeping seal…it exudes trust. On the internet these days, it hard to know who to really trust because there are companies that have now profited (profiteered might I say?) from selling their “Everythings’s OK with this Site!” logo for outrageous prices that many e-commerce sites display proudly.  As you -the consumer-...

Before quitting pain killers, I can’t tell you how many times I would say to my self “You know, something’s gotta give.” I suppose that’s just another way of praying for “bottom” to arrive so that it would forcibly pluck me from the ongoing cycle of my obsession with these pills. Many “academics” of addiction will say that a person has to hit...

I want to talk a little bit more about the Top 10 Reasons To Quit Pain Killers because they really are the main tenets of the site. I don’t go into much detail about each one on the main page because it’s a list…lists are supposed to be short. So here’s the first in a series if you will…

Reason #1: The Highs Are Getting Lower and The Lows Are Getting Longer

Back...

As I’m sorting through all the “Free Viagra!” spam comments that I get on my blog, I’m always looking for some inspiration for my next blog from visitors or customers. I get a lot of good feedback from people like yourself. I’m thankful for that because in a vacuum, I’d get boring really quickly.

I came across a comment the other day that hit a nerve with...

Reason #5: Your Friends Miss You!

This is a bit of a double-entendre. i.e. I’m saying several different things with the same sentence. Since your life has revolved around the pills, everything takes a backseat…waaay in the back. Back behind the pain doctor, the pharmacists, the prescriptions, the refill dates, the counting of the pills, the re-counting of the pills…counting...

When you think about quitting pain killers a lot of scary things cross one’s mind.

One of the scariest things about the prospect of quitting painkillers is what to do with all of that time. You know, all the time spent: being high, getting prescriptions filled, going to doctors appointments to get the prescriptions, waiting at the pharmacy to pick up the pills, counting the pills...

Darvocet is Off The Market – What Does This Mean For You?

Here’s a link to an article on the Darvocet decision. So what does this mean for people taking Darvocet? Not much really; there will be plenty of other opiates to fill its place if you’re suffering from chronic pain....

So I’m here at NCAD…reporting LIVE! How exciting is this???? Uh-huh.

I’ve got the  booth up and we’re definitely one of the hottest stops for all of the attendees which are comprised of Doctors of Addiction Medicine, Counselors, Nurses, Facility Administrators and pretty much every other type of person who treats addicts.

What’s so surprising to me is...

Wow that “Sold Out” business was a bit stressful. I guess you could say in a good way but it’s hard to really describe it as such. Our sales have seen such a huge spike as of late and I can only guess that our customers have gotten a bit more active on the message boards etc.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, “If you have a great product, people will find it”...

I’ve been really surprised at the significant amount of husbands, wives, parents, sisters and friends of people who have gotten stuck in the opiate addiction cycle that have come to Withdrawal-Ease for help. They all want the same thing; they want their loved ones back. And they’ll do almost anything to get him or her back. The vast majority of you out there who have contacted me or...

If you have been reading my blogs or have read some of the earlier ones, it’s easy to surmise that although my credo is “anything that works” as far as quitting pain killers. However, I’m human and just like anybody else, I have my biases. I try not to let them seep through in my writing because that would be inconsistent with my advice to you all. I guess you could say that...

The whole New Year’s resolution thing is getting to be a bit of a “Hallmark Holiday” for me. I suppose it’s a good time to make a fresh start at the beginning of the calendar year but who says that its the only time to fix things in your life? And now it’s sort of a joke when people make their resolutions and then shrug their shoulders 3 weeks later after they’ve...

Any time someone goes through something like opiate addiction the issue of faith seems to bubble to the surface. At least for me it did. I would not call myself “religious” by any stretch of the imagination. Oh sure I go to church occasionally and on holidays but I’ve never been a person with a tremendous amount of faith. I’m not agnostic or against organized religion but...

Reason #4: “Your Children Know and They’re Concerned”

This reason is titled incorrectly because it could easily be a family member or a friend who “knows” and is “concerned.” On the “Top Ten Reasons To Quit Pain Killers” page here...

Reason #2: Your Work Is Suffering: