Brief Answer:
You get what you want or find the barrier to it.

Detailed Answer:
Okay, let us begin, first be in a program getting the drugs through legitimate channels. Second be in a 12 step program. Third ...you've got the third (having someone close who can advice in a caring manner).

Then you taper and see what happens.

With tapering, stuff happens and you see what you can do for that.
There is fighting involved in it. There are programs to do that. They have names like "immediate drug treatment". In them, you get sedated and get put on Naloxone over a long weekend.

There is avoiding it. Well, this is a help but not the full thing. Not having sources of illegal drugs would be very helpful.

Substitution. There is of course suboxone, etc. or methadone which is a step back. BUT there are also substitutes of non-addictive substances that lower the symptoms like Clonidine or Zofran.

Then there is transformation. This takes practice. With REPEATEDLY tapering and failing, you get used to the withdrawal and you can put the withdrawal into a good context (feeling good about being off drugs).

Then, there is a withdrawal you are not getting over and HAVE to get used to it: the drugs have actual effects that can be pleasant and/or helpful. Five percent of the population and 60% of my suboxone patients get an atypical reaction to have a LOT of energy with Suboxone/narcotics.

They can do more work and be more functional while high (in the short run). This doesn't go away being off everything 20 years. Likewise about 5% of my patients would be on narcotics if they weren't in treatment due to lumbar disk, etc. They are still going to have pain 20 years later too. It's a problem and there isn't an easy answer on those situations.

Regards

---

Brief Answer:
very good!

Detailed Answer:
The naltrexone method is in a bit of a grey area. Certainly doctors are allowed to use medications in approximately the exact ways in which they were approved by the FDA.

http://thecolemaninstitute.com/ultra-rapid-detoxification
This says it quite concisely. What they don't say is 1) the people who died from it had other health problems generally diabetes that went totally out of control because they weren't eating and taking diabetic medication when under and detox stresses the system. duh. 2) the risk of dying from narcotics is at least 10 fold higher per year 3) it literally doesn't do anything for addiction which is a complex set of BEHAVIORS. Yeah, I could be on either side on a court case on it.

Here's the thing on addiction.
You are continually presented with choices. Whatever you choose puts you into a different space in which other options are available than if you took the other alternative. (it looks like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_triangle). In addiction, there is a tendancy to go the wrong way. Addiction treatment is presenting choices in a therapeutic millieu and encouraging taking the right choice, mitigating the wrong choice, and seeing the consequence of the wrong choice. A full third of the suboxone patients I have have problems because they haven't made a wrong choice in years so they haven't learned. Bunavail taper is a perfect context to be able to learn because all the unpleasantness comes up in a totally safe context.

We typically set up stages of induction (getting someone off the street), stabilization (having things get boring; typically, people take the pill instead of the street drug and get to the point that they don't want to think about drugs at all and don't want to consider tapering), then tapering.

I have no idea where you are in the process, and cannot comment.

but you can with your doctor.

"since addiction is about my making correct choices and not just obtaining drugs--which I can do faster and cheaper on my own, then shouldn't I be making my choices about tapering? Even if they are wrong choices, there isn't an addiction treatment if I'm not making any choices."

You shouldn't get thrown out of a program for asking questions, but sometimes apparently that has happened.

---

Brief Answer:
don't think we can do that

Detailed Answer:
obviously you have my name and a computer. I don't think we are allowed to refer to ourselves OUTSIDE of this fine service. BUT we certainly are available for questions directed at us. There are help functions that will show you how to do that.

Ok, first part of working on addiction (and actually all the intervening parts) are identifying false assumptions, cogntive structures, emotional proclivities, etc that keep you stuck. You've started the tapering process and found one already.

"I may be starting a new job, so this may not be the right time to consider doing a taper."

This keeps you stuck. Getting the effects/emotions/feelings/etc that you get from a taper (starting with the one listed above) is how you learn to deal with addiction. Finding coping skills for each of the things that come up that keep you addicted moves you out of addiction. They can also be more broadly applied. I just found the secret to creativity, so, coping mechanisms aren't a big deal.

---

Brief Answer:
There are a lot of individual reactions to narcotics.

Detailed Answer:
Off-hand I'd say it is the main action of narcotics (named derived from the Greek for Sleep...narcosis, narcolepsy, etc.).

And, about 5% of the general population but OVER 50% OF MY SUBOXONE PATIENTS have an atypical reaction where they feel very energized and focused and would have the opposite reaction to what you are describing.

Every patient is somewhat different. Every formulation of 'suboxone' is certainly different.

There's an odd quirk on suboxone like drugs. They do not need to be at all similar to get thru the FDA．Normally it is harder for a drug to get thru the FDA as a new drug than as a copy. You'd have to prove you are safe. This is, however, somewhat relative to the disease you are treating. For stuffy noses you have to be very very very safe. For cancer, not safe at all. Narcotic addiction has about the same lethality as HIV and many cancers. So, suboxone doesn't have to be safe. The bar for effectiveness is lowering dirty urines by > 50%. Basically it takes asking about 100 addicts if they want free drugs for 6 months and you can get approval. It takes longer to make it than to get it thru the FDA. Bun avail not equal to suboxone not equal to zubsolv.

Nothing would XXXXXXX me. Everyone like zubsolv for it's taste and ease of use. Nobody wants to be on it compared to suboxone (it stays active most of 12 hrs). Nobody covers bun avail. I've heard of it. Never prescribed it.

And none of this matters. Any of them can be adjusted if given in enough drug and given often enough that it WILL cover cravings. It WILL block other use of narcotics. And, it doesn't get someone over them. It provides a context for finding what is keeping someone addicted (physical feelings/cravings/enjoyment)
(excuses: " I may be offered a really good job which I will accept if they offer it to me. In that case, I will be putting of a taper until a later date." literally everyone I treat has this. Heck, I have this on my weight loss) (programming: when I hear a word with an 'R' in it, I get a compulsion to eat. well, no, but the classic 'person, place, situation' describes associated triggers and there's the opposite of a fear response to being OFF drugs; main point is that this is actually the easiest part to treat and the excuses are actually the hardest).

---