Why was I coming down.
I had admitted to myself that I was taking the tablets just as much through addiction as through pain control. That was the truth sitting underneath everything else. Not clean. Not comfortable. Just there.
I had just asked my doctor to move me from 3 × 400 microgram tablets to 4 × 200 microgram tablets. It sounded structured in the room. Controlled. Sensible.
Walking out, it wasn’t any of that.
It felt like I had just stepped into something I didn’t understand.
A 400 microgram drop. Just like that.
I left the clinic in a daze thinking what have I done.
Thirty-five years of gradual addiction doesn’t unwind neatly. It doesn’t listen to plans.
There was anxiety straight away. Not background. Not manageable.
Screaming anxiety.
The kind that sits in your chest and doesn’t move. That keeps asking questions without answers.
How is this going to work.
What happens if this gets worse.
What have I just started.
And underneath it:
Help.
How am I going to do this.
Week one was hard.
Pain didn’t wait. It spread. Lower back, legs, that familiar pull through L5–S1 — but sharper, less contained. The buprenorphine was still there, but it wasn’t holding things together the same way.
The coverage had thinned.
That was enough.
There was no clean line between pain and withdrawal. It blurred into one thing — discomfort building, tension rising, the body pushing back.
By mid-day, everything tightened. Sitting hurt. Standing hurt. Lying down helped, but not properly. Heat pads became constant. Positioning became trial and error. Relief didn’t last.
The body felt restless and heavy at the same time. A bad combination. You want to move, but movement doesn’t help.
Fatigue hit hard. Not tired — drained. Slowed down. Even small things felt like effort. Thinking became harder. Simple decisions took too long.
And then the mistakes started.
Getting meds mixed up. Timing off. Second guessing what had been taken and when. That loss of clarity matters. It feeds the anxiety. It breaks trust in your own routine.
Everything becomes uncertain.
Mood dropped with it.
Not gently. Not gradually. It moved.
Depression sat heavy. No interest in anything. No space for anything other than managing what was happening in the body. The day shrank down to pain, medication, and trying to hold it together.
There were swings. Moments where things felt just about manageable, then slipping again without warning. No clear pattern. No control over when it shifted.
Anxiety stayed high.
Constant checking. Constant awareness of the body. Watching for changes. Waiting for it to get worse. That kind of focus is exhausting. It builds pressure on top of pressure.
The instinct to correct everything was there all the time.
Take more.
Stabilise.
Stop this getting worse.
That loop ran constantly in the background.
Medication decisions became reactive at times. Not careless — but faster, driven by discomfort. Pain increase → response. Anxiety spike → response. The speed of that loop is hard to slow once it starts.
Sleep didn’t reset anything. Broken. Shallow. Waking already in it. No separation between night and day. Just continuation.
There were points where it felt like it could tip. Not fully out of control, but close enough to feel it.
That edge was there.
Despite all of it, the reduction continued.
Not cleanly. Not comfortably. But it held.
Pain up.
Mood down.
Anxiety high.
Function reduced.
Week one stripped away any idea that this would be straightforward.
It showed how sensitive everything is once the balance shifts. How quickly things can move when the support underneath changes.
Nothing collapsed completely.
But nothing stayed the same either.
The body had started to react.
And once that starts, there is no pretending it isn’t happening.
This is what the beginning looks like.
