Resurfacing to a new world.

No matter how many times you do it the process never becomes easy. You learn tricks to soften the journey but there is no bypass. Going from 10mg to 6mg in one fell swoop may seem lunacy but it's such a long miserable journey if I didn't make a substantial inroad early on I doubt I'd bother.
My first days were smothered with ethylphenidate, a chemical legal over the Internet. Much like cocaine yet highly corrosive. Excessive dopamine leads to paranoia. Once this trick had me three days in the trawl proper begins.
Body feels ill. Wake to coldness and deep depression. Trying to work but my co ordination is to cock. I must finish my desk or I go under. Yet I must not damage it with opiate withdrawal cack handed ness. I'd rather see it through alone, in one fell swoop but I need to work. Need to walk the dog. So it's a process of balancing how I'll I can operate under. Relief is instant, should I require.
After fifteen years of subutex, a tablet in the morning, you forget you are a drug addict. There's no ritual foil tubes, no cooking up, no finding veins, blood no pins. A simple pill. Much like most people in Britain take each morning. But stop it and the same symptoms as a heroin withdrawal descend. Tapering is easiest in some ways. Never totally bed ridden, never well either. But it's long, drawn out, maintaining commitment for longer stretches of utter and instantly avoidable misery. After a while ones natural endorphins begin to rebalance to the reduced artificial dosage. Still severe depression but a modicum of stability, before the next reduction and the process begins again. Finally, when the last artificial opiate leaves, the body will take several months to restabalise.
During these fifteen years of subutex, bupronorphine, partial agonist that doesn't get you high but prevents withdrawal and prevents heroin from having any effect, I have had twelve or fifteen lapses. Usually due to work, unable to arrange a chemist with the drug services, I have been left the choice of  abandon the job or take on a temporary heroin habit. But, overall, for fifteen years I have stayed straight, clear of gear at least.
Returning to a world without the shield of opiates is completely terrifying. The archeology of buried griefs, tangled emotional wreckage, never dealt with, becomes unearthed. As the layers of buried shock of years ago remergaes you find yourself grieving over deaths a decade ago, relationship breakdowns one ought to have cone to terms with have been submerged under the soil of opiation, all reexposed, all to be dealt with. This is what opiates do. They don't kill pain, they kill the emotional response to pain. Resurfacing you meet all the demons you hid from. All the natural suffering a human endures, all returns.
Another element is akin to the lifers experience. Enter jail and after ten years the world has changed. You still wear flares, still carry opinions, a decade lost in human developement to some how catch up.