Methadone vs Morphine

[mac15]

Hi All,

Good to be back on line,i had been in hospital there for a while and this is why i pose this Question!!!

Can Morphine be used as a Detox from Methadone??

The reason i ask is that when i was in hospital and when i came out i was on 20mg tablet form of Morphine and had absolutely no desire or felt the need to take my Methadone,then when i came off the Morphine i had no withdrawls what so ever!!!

Would any doctor,this is maybe a question for the alliance consultants,be willing to detox me from Methadone using Morphine???

Good to be back on the forum,ive missed the true friends that i know i have on here

Speak to you all soon.

Take Care Stevie

[alli]

Hi Mac 15, did that happen when you were in hosp just very recently then?  And if it was and you were on Morphine and had no desire to go back on Methadone - does that mean that you are not on methadone anymore? and if you are - why did you go back on it? alli

[wastedyouth]

When you say you had no withdrawls what so ever do you mean from the morphine?  Do you really think you could have went the full day without your methadone?  In a rehab in Glasgow (Redtowers) They reduce you down on your methadone(to 30mls) then replace that with MSTs(morphine sub tablet), this was a while ago and it has now been changed to MXLs(long lasting morphine tablets)do that for 3 weeks till the methadone is out of you system then start reducing them although this is in a controlled enviourment i dont know if they would do this out in the community.
But it's worth asking the doctor, i know mines wouldn't but everyones is different
Good Luck
Glad to see you back on the forum  WY

[mac15]

Hi Ali,i had to go back on the Methadone as they tapered me off the Morphine,im gonnae speak to my Doctor annd find out if there is any way i could Detox off Meth with the Morphine,i also found Morphine no problem to come off of in a relataviely short time,if this is the case with me why not place all addicts on maintainence programms on Morphine and detox them off that as i can assure you the withdrawls are nothing compared to coming off Methadone!!

Thanks for your reply Ali,take care Stevie

[Flip]

Hi Mac
Good to see you man. I have PM'ed you re: the original question.

 As far as giving ms rather than methadone goes I think its a good idea, however the regulations about giving drugs of addiction other than methadone to opiate addicts probably make it difficult for any doctor to script for addiction whether its for withdrawal or not .

The second factor which I'm reluctant to admit is that morphine was always my drug of choice so honestly I don't know how successful I would have been with such an option. Morphine is a fairly desirable drug for a lot of addicts  in fact almost all opiates are pretty desirable to most people except methadone... which is no doubt the reason the powers that be allow methadone programs but not much else!

Cheers
Flip

[mac15]

Cheers Flip,good to hear from you again mate

I see where your coming from with regards the prescribing policy for addicts in this country,i am still in a bit of pain from being in hospital and still have some MS in the house and put in for a repeat prescription today,whether i get it or not is another matter!!!

If i do get them how could i  work out a detox? Just not take my Meth at all and start with 4 x wo20mg per day for a week then 3 and so on,any advice mate would be appreciated as per usual!!

Does anyone else out there have any experience on this??

Yours in Friendship  Stevie

[Flip]

Hi Mac 
Glad you are feeling better! I have PM'ed you some info .

To be honest mate I am  bit stumped how 80mg of ms a day was holding a 100mg a day methadone habit unless it was for a short enough time that the methadone withdrawal didn't really get a chance to kick in. They didn't give you anything else, no oramorph or fentanyl patches or anything like that?

I don't have any medical training so I don't want to make guesses and steer you wrong, maybe one of the more medically inclined people here might have a better idea?

  I suppose the best thing to do would be talk to your GP or one of the hospital docs to see what is really going on here.

  Even if you found that 80mg of ms was enough to hold you or at least make the withdrawal bearable I don't think you would want to completely cut off your access to methadone before you were 100% sure it was going to work . You may also find your clinic is going to be difficult if urine tests start showing up ms for more than a couple of weeks out of hospital. I doubt whether a GP would be allowed to write for ms for opiate withdrawal  so it would probably have to be for pain and again that may cause problems with your clinic. Ideally you would want to do this with as much medical support as possible rather than having to play one off against the other or going it alone  and GP's tend to be very leery of writing ms scripts for long even for pain unless they have some kind of  specialist backing .

So as I see it you have two main problems... one is getting enough ms to do the detox safely and the second is finding a way to do it without incurring the wrath of the system.  One of the other posters here "TPValley" (I think) is in the process of possibly getting an ms detox approved, maybe he knows something that may be relevant?

Sorry Mac but I'm a bit in the dark with this one hopefully someone else will have some better ideas

Cheers!
Flip