To add a very serious footnote to this thread...Since folks have been conditioned by the rehab industry to believe that "withdrawl" is what they see in the movies- Often people mistake serious illness for "continued withdrawl".

The two most common problems in heroin addicts which may be passed off as "withdrawl symptoms" are Hep C and heart damage

[link to www.mayoclinic.com]

Hepatitis C infection usually produces no signs or symptoms during its earliest stages. When signs and symptoms do occur, they're generally mild and flu-like and may include:
Fatigue
Fever
Nausea or poor appetite
Muscle and joint pains
Tenderness in the area of your liver

It is only common sense, if one has been "masking" the early symptoms of Hep C with repeated injections of heroin,or speed, going off heroin (or speed) will make the disease much more noticable.

If you have these symptoms, and they persist after discontinuing an injectable drug of abuse, get tested.

Heart damage from illict heroin use, like hep C, kidney damage etc. has nothing to do with heroin itself, but is the result of lack of sterility when injecting. Shortness of breath and ankle swelling may be noticable.

Anyone who is on opiates long term may develop the following, very painful condition, which may not resolve with withdrawl:


[link to www.integration.samhsa.gov]


[link to www.medscape.org]

Opioid-induced pain sensitivity is a phenomenon that we are only beginning to understand, according to Jianren Mao, MD, PhD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Translational Pain Research.[3] Many studies have reported that opioid administration causes an unanticipated hyperalgesia (enhanced pain response to noxious stimuli) and allodynia (pain elicited by innocuous stimuli) in both animals and humans.[1]

Preclinical research suggests that abnormal pain sensitivity such as hyperalgesia or allodynia occurs in the absence of overt opioid withdrawal in animals that have been administered opioid drugs. Opioid-induced hyperalgesia can occur with both acute and chronic opioid administration.[3] A paradoxic opioid-induced pain sensitivity may contribute to apparent opioid tolerance in humans because the individual must increase the analgesic dose to maintain the same effect or the duration of action of the opioid will decrease.[4] Both continuous infusion and bolus injections of opioids shift the analgesic dose-response curve to the right so that progressively higher opioid doses are required for the same analgesic effect


Opioid-induced pain sensitivity should not be confused with withdrawl, and may take years to clear up, if ever.