STUCK BUT NOT STUCK

I have struggled with addiction my entire life although I only learned this a few years ago, a story for another day.  Without mentioning specifics, it started with uppers and I struggled with those through my early 20’s.  My late 20’s and early to mid 30’s and I guess current would be opiates and downers.  The opiates started with pills, took them orally, skipped the snorting phase and graduated to the needle.  I have been off of the street drugs and hard drugs for a few years and have been doing very well, the best I have ever done but I am still on methadone.  I am going to a clinic and I have not relapsed once since going, I haven’t failed a single drug test nor have I touched any narcotics that were not necessary and prescribed by a medical professional.  I am unfortunately very sensitive to it and when I went from 100mg to 98mg it was 4 days of misery.  My entire body hurt like I had the flu without any throwing up, lots of sweating, irritability, mood swings, etc.  I remember the hopelessness because I just went from 100mg to 98mg, a 2mg drop, if I drop 2mg every time that’s 50 more drops and every drop is going to be worse than the one before, that’s just overwhelming.  I also remember waking up on day 5 and feeling completely back to normal.  I dropped again a few months later and this time went from 98mg to 94mg and there were mood swings but not nearly as bad because I had a script for gabepentin which made a world of difference.  The plan is to get down to 60 or 70mg and get a prescription from a Dr. in order to drop without having to jump through hoops.  I was taking suboxone and weened myself off of it and than relapsed, point being I know that I can get myself off subs so with a Dr.’s supervision I am going to switch from methadone to suboxone which will require stopping methadone completely for a few days but that’s a ways down the road still.  The more pressing matter is how much should I drop next time and what will help ease the symptoms?  I know the lower my dose gets the more noticeable each drop gets so in order to leave myself some wiggle room down the road I would rather drop as much as I can handle.  I don’t want to ask the clinic because they profit from me being in these liquid handcuffs so I do not trust anything they say.  I was thinking about at least 4mg or 5mg so I would still be able to go to work and not be too miserable to the people who are stuck having to deal with me.  Any advice is appreciated.  No one close to me has gone through addiction so no one understands what I am going through and how difficult this is.  Thank you.