Say, for instance, a person was Not physically addicted to opiates at all, how long of taking methadone daily until they would experience the FULL awful/long withdrawal?

(Pretty please answer the above question separately from the rest of this post, if you choose to answer, I know it’s inexact but that’s the question I need answered even though it’s not exactly my current situation) <3

Okay, so, in addition to that, I would love feedback on my Actual situation: I started MAT at a clinic yesterday after resisting that option and spending hundreds of dollars a week on methadone because it was always the last week. Couldn’t admit I was failing and had slid back into being an active addict after years of only using kratom. But for the past year I’ve been using oxys (paying tooons for them) and ‘done regularly after being clean from kratom for 3 months and just hating life (kratom PAWS can really really suck at a high long-term dose; didn’t realize when I started using it to cold turkey off years of Suboxone.

So now my situation is; I went two weeks clean entirely a few months ago and since then I have been “clean” 4 days a week and getting methadone and/or pills for two days a week. Which means I have been in CONSTANT low-grade WD for the past 3 months or so. Kinda mental torture. But I also (and this is the kicker) successfully got to a point where when I’m in WD it’s NOT the full-out worse case scenario experience. It sucks BUT it’s mild. I’ve worked so hard to get here.

But it’s clearly not working because I still can’t stop completely and ALL I EVER think about is drugs, all day every day. I Need so badly to be able to just have a life and focus on Anything else, even just for a while. That’s why I’ve started at the methadone clinic, for the consistency, and honestly last night I had the most incredible mental breakthroughs simply because I wasn’t obsessing over what the next day would be like. I had hours of mental freedom for the first time since I started using 11 years ago. It was transcendent.

So for the experienced people out there- I know the trade off here is I’m going to end up having a MUCH harder taper/wd when the time comes if I stick with the methadone for (3 weeks is what the doctor said for full dependence? Curious what some of you would guess) since I’m currently not fully addicted and don’t let it build up in my body since I don’t use it most days. But in return I might get a chance to experience Life, which is something I have Never had in my adult life. It’s a massive gamble since WD would (comparatively) be a breeze if I had the capacity to quit Right Now. But I’ve proven over and over that I’m not capable of succeeding on my own, as hard as it is to actually say/type that out loud for the first time.

Any thoughts? How bad will it be? Could I possibly be okay/not too bad if I spent only 2 or 3 weeks at the clinic and then just quit, or even tapered? It would be rad to not waste all the slow torture I’ve put myself through these past months to get away from experiencing FULL acute WD when I quit, so this decision is tearing me apart a little bit.

Thanks in advance to anyone who read this much, this is the only community I’ve ever had for addiction, every since my boyfriend killed himself I haven’t even known a single person in real life who knows what I’m going through. This sub is so valuable.