Aa
I took Sub for 3 years and am 168 days off it....this may anger some
I am posting this in response to the "To Sub or Not To Sub" Thread...there were a few posts in there from people wanting to know if anyone has actually done long term treatment and gotten off. There are very few, because there really so much misinformation about the drug. (could go on for pages about that, but wont)
This is the part that might **** some people off, but im gonna say it...
Those who are using Suboxone currently should not be giving people advice about whether or not they should use the drug. You may be getting your life together, which is amazing, but you are still physically and psychologically dependent on opiates. There is too much praise for the drug because those who are posting are on it. Suboxone makes you high, period.
In the beginning I thought it was a miracle too...why, because, I got to pretend that I was getting clean while I was still getting high on Sub. Yeah you can stabilize your life, and that is awesome. BUT, don't fool urself. You are no less physically dependent on opioids during Suboxone treatment than you were when you were on ur DOC.
Alright Im not gonna start ranting anymore...if I pissed you off, im not sorry. I wish to God somebody would have been straight with me when i started. I don't think I am better than anyone who is on it. I just hope that my insight helps somebody avoid the path I took.
This is the part that might **** some people off, but im gonna say it...
Those who are using Suboxone currently should not be giving people advice about whether or not they should use the drug. You may be getting your life together, which is amazing, but you are still physically and psychologically dependent on opiates. There is too much praise for the drug because those who are posting are on it. Suboxone makes you high, period.
In the beginning I thought it was a miracle too...why, because, I got to pretend that I was getting clean while I was still getting high on Sub. Yeah you can stabilize your life, and that is awesome. BUT, don't fool urself. You are no less physically dependent on opioids during Suboxone treatment than you were when you were on ur DOC.
Alright Im not gonna start ranting anymore...if I pissed you off, im not sorry. I wish to God somebody would have been straight with me when i started. I don't think I am better than anyone who is on it. I just hope that my insight helps somebody avoid the path I took.
I have been off of Sub for 11 days now. The pain keeps coming but I can feel the light at the end of the tunnel. Below is a message from Dr. Scanlan that may help people choose.
One addiction is potentially being traded for another as the FDA-approved detoxification drug Suboxone is becoming one of the most prescribed medications in the country. Known as the “miracle drug,” Suboxone is estimated to be 25 times more potent than morphine.
Steve headshot.jpgI am board-certified in Psychiatry by the American Academy of Psychiatry and Neurology and board-certified in Addiction Medicine by the American Board of Addiction Medicine. I am the co-founder of Palm Beach Outpatient Detox (P.B.O.D.) in Boca Raton, Florida. I was once addicted to opiates during my medical residency in anesthesiology and was detoxed with the help of Suboxone. Now I successfully detox my patients from opiates (eg. morphine, Oxycontin) using regulated amounts of Suboxone and also detox my patients from Suboxone addiction when that drug has been misused.
I have found that the optimal time to have someone on Suboxone is between 20 and 25 days, tapering down on the medication every few days. This makes the physical symptoms of detox very manageable, without causing the patient to become cross-addicted to Suboxone. I have found that Suboxone use for a longer period than this begins to cause a strong dependence on Suboxone.
Once a patient is stabilized with Suboxone and no longer getting high, they have to be convinced that recovery is possible. A detailed program is then created at the P.B.O.D. office that focuses on abstinence and better coping techniques. P.B.O.D. prepares patients for the restlessness, irritability, and discontent they will experience when they are off all narcotics, including Suboxone. The Suboxone detox makes the physical aspect of the disease manageable, but does not help with the emotional and spiritual consequences of addiction. Often patients are concerned about coming off the Suboxone, but I educate them about how Suboxone is a tool to get them clean, but it is not a suitable maintenance drug if a patient wants to get into recovery.
Suboxone is a powerful opiate—an anesthetic to emotional pain. It immediately alleviates anxiety and depression, and makes a person feel more emotionally stable. A lesser dose of Suboxone (2mg a day) will block an estimated 80 percent of a person’s feelings, while higher doses can make a patient practically numb. How effective can individual or group therapy be when a patient’s feelings are still being attenuated by Suboxone? Patients often say they feel great on Suboxone and since they are not getting high they want to continue on it. I tell them, “You are not dealing with your feelings because you are still not feeling—you are still numb. You need to start experiencing emotions to understand what you were trying to self-medicate in the first place. It’s time to live life on life’s terms.”
When used in the short term, Suboxone is the best detox drug I have ever seen—it can immediately stabilize a patient’s life, and this can be done in an outpatient setting. When used long term, though, it is the hardest medication I have ever dealt with to detox a patient from. Suboxone does not work like natural opiates; it’s created in a lab and interacts with the receptors in the brain unlike any other opiate. I believe when given long term it causes abnormal adaptations to the opiate receptors and other receptors in the brain. In my experience, long-term use causes emotional dysregulation, loss of libido, hair loss, and an abnormality in how the body regulates its response to stress.
Suboxone is a mixture of buprenorphine and narcan. Buprenorphine is a powerful opiate, and narcan is an opiate blocker used to resuscitate people in the E.R. from an opiate overdose. With no other opiates in their system in the last few days, an addict can either snort or intravenously shoot up Suboxone and become extremely high since it easily dissolves in water, making it easier to shoot up than heroin. The combination of there not being enough narcan in Suboxone and the fact that Suboxone binds to the opiate receptor so strongly, there is no built-in deterrent to keep a patient from abusing Suboxone.
The misuse of Suboxone and the lack of attention to the problem is causing physicians untrained in addiction medicine to feed into the over-prescribing craze. To become an eligible prescriber for this medication only an 8-hour online course has to be completed. Many do not understand the long-term ramifications of Suboxone addiction, and it is also a very lucrative business for the prescribing physician. Most doctors charge $200 - $300 monthly, per patient, for a five-minute check-up to renew a Suboxone prescription. Most places prescribing Suboxone maintenance do not offer any addiction treatment because the doctor is not trained in addiction medicine and because it is not time or cost effective to do so. Furthermore, the lucrative nature of Suboxone on a maintenance basis is a disincentive to tapering the drug and its income-generating potential.
As a point of comparison I charge $2,000 for a detox from oxycontin, taking about three weeks. A detox from Suboxone dependence costs $5,000 because it takes four to five months, incorporating nine to ten different medications to successfully detox the patient from suboxone. The success rate for detox from Suboxone is much lower than with detox from other opiates because patients tend to give up hope as the withdrawal process is so long and drawn out.
Most Suboxone studies follow post-detox patients for only a month and are often funded by the drug company that manufactures Suboxone. There are no long-term studies of Suboxone maintenance. I learned myself about the dangers of Suboxone from meeting people in my practice who have been on it for years. I am ashamed that the medical profession has allowed this to happen. I wish I knew how to fix this problem. I only know how to prevent it from happening to my patients in the first place or how to correct previous Suboxone treatment.
Only time will tell what role Suboxone will play in the multi-billion dollar field of addiction medicine. Will it one day only be used in the short term as solely a detox tool, or will it also continue to be prescribed as a maintenance treatment? Supporters of maintenance treatment will state that the manageability of an addict’s life improves tremendously with Suboxone maintenance, and there is an abundance of research to back this up. Nonetheless, I believe that an individual on maintenance treatment is not experiencing the full range of emotions, the good and the bad. It is imperative, at that the least, that all physicians prescribing this medication become more educated about Suboxone and the pros and cons of short-term and chronic use.
One addiction is potentially being traded for another as the FDA-approved detoxification drug Suboxone is becoming one of the most prescribed medications in the country. Known as the “miracle drug,” Suboxone is estimated to be 25 times more potent than morphine.
Steve headshot.jpgI am board-certified in Psychiatry by the American Academy of Psychiatry and Neurology and board-certified in Addiction Medicine by the American Board of Addiction Medicine. I am the co-founder of Palm Beach Outpatient Detox (P.B.O.D.) in Boca Raton, Florida. I was once addicted to opiates during my medical residency in anesthesiology and was detoxed with the help of Suboxone. Now I successfully detox my patients from opiates (eg. morphine, Oxycontin) using regulated amounts of Suboxone and also detox my patients from Suboxone addiction when that drug has been misused.
I have found that the optimal time to have someone on Suboxone is between 20 and 25 days, tapering down on the medication every few days. This makes the physical symptoms of detox very manageable, without causing the patient to become cross-addicted to Suboxone. I have found that Suboxone use for a longer period than this begins to cause a strong dependence on Suboxone.
Once a patient is stabilized with Suboxone and no longer getting high, they have to be convinced that recovery is possible. A detailed program is then created at the P.B.O.D. office that focuses on abstinence and better coping techniques. P.B.O.D. prepares patients for the restlessness, irritability, and discontent they will experience when they are off all narcotics, including Suboxone. The Suboxone detox makes the physical aspect of the disease manageable, but does not help with the emotional and spiritual consequences of addiction. Often patients are concerned about coming off the Suboxone, but I educate them about how Suboxone is a tool to get them clean, but it is not a suitable maintenance drug if a patient wants to get into recovery.
Suboxone is a powerful opiate—an anesthetic to emotional pain. It immediately alleviates anxiety and depression, and makes a person feel more emotionally stable. A lesser dose of Suboxone (2mg a day) will block an estimated 80 percent of a person’s feelings, while higher doses can make a patient practically numb. How effective can individual or group therapy be when a patient’s feelings are still being attenuated by Suboxone? Patients often say they feel great on Suboxone and since they are not getting high they want to continue on it. I tell them, “You are not dealing with your feelings because you are still not feeling—you are still numb. You need to start experiencing emotions to understand what you were trying to self-medicate in the first place. It’s time to live life on life’s terms.”
When used in the short term, Suboxone is the best detox drug I have ever seen—it can immediately stabilize a patient’s life, and this can be done in an outpatient setting. When used long term, though, it is the hardest medication I have ever dealt with to detox a patient from. Suboxone does not work like natural opiates; it’s created in a lab and interacts with the receptors in the brain unlike any other opiate. I believe when given long term it causes abnormal adaptations to the opiate receptors and other receptors in the brain. In my experience, long-term use causes emotional dysregulation, loss of libido, hair loss, and an abnormality in how the body regulates its response to stress.
Suboxone is a mixture of buprenorphine and narcan. Buprenorphine is a powerful opiate, and narcan is an opiate blocker used to resuscitate people in the E.R. from an opiate overdose. With no other opiates in their system in the last few days, an addict can either snort or intravenously shoot up Suboxone and become extremely high since it easily dissolves in water, making it easier to shoot up than heroin. The combination of there not being enough narcan in Suboxone and the fact that Suboxone binds to the opiate receptor so strongly, there is no built-in deterrent to keep a patient from abusing Suboxone.
The misuse of Suboxone and the lack of attention to the problem is causing physicians untrained in addiction medicine to feed into the over-prescribing craze. To become an eligible prescriber for this medication only an 8-hour online course has to be completed. Many do not understand the long-term ramifications of Suboxone addiction, and it is also a very lucrative business for the prescribing physician. Most doctors charge $200 - $300 monthly, per patient, for a five-minute check-up to renew a Suboxone prescription. Most places prescribing Suboxone maintenance do not offer any addiction treatment because the doctor is not trained in addiction medicine and because it is not time or cost effective to do so. Furthermore, the lucrative nature of Suboxone on a maintenance basis is a disincentive to tapering the drug and its income-generating potential.
As a point of comparison I charge $2,000 for a detox from oxycontin, taking about three weeks. A detox from Suboxone dependence costs $5,000 because it takes four to five months, incorporating nine to ten different medications to successfully detox the patient from suboxone. The success rate for detox from Suboxone is much lower than with detox from other opiates because patients tend to give up hope as the withdrawal process is so long and drawn out.
Most Suboxone studies follow post-detox patients for only a month and are often funded by the drug company that manufactures Suboxone. There are no long-term studies of Suboxone maintenance. I learned myself about the dangers of Suboxone from meeting people in my practice who have been on it for years. I am ashamed that the medical profession has allowed this to happen. I wish I knew how to fix this problem. I only know how to prevent it from happening to my patients in the first place or how to correct previous Suboxone treatment.
Only time will tell what role Suboxone will play in the multi-billion dollar field of addiction medicine. Will it one day only be used in the short term as solely a detox tool, or will it also continue to be prescribed as a maintenance treatment? Supporters of maintenance treatment will state that the manageability of an addict’s life improves tremendously with Suboxone maintenance, and there is an abundance of research to back this up. Nonetheless, I believe that an individual on maintenance treatment is not experiencing the full range of emotions, the good and the bad. It is imperative, at that the least, that all physicians prescribing this medication become more educated about Suboxone and the pros and cons of short-term and chronic use.
Hi and welcome ! I don't know about pissing anyone off when you're just trying to be of help ! They will draw their own conclusions I'm sure . I will say we just had a big post about Tramadol and I was blind to it myself. My doctor wrote me a script knowing I had problems with Vicodin and telling me this is not like a narcotic and this is made for someone like you . Well I came on to MedHelp and low and behold there was a big discussion on Tramadol and if I would not have read and got involved I very well might have filled that script . I was told to no end should I even consider taking that and I am thankful to my friends here for that . take care . Jimmy
if anyone is looking for advice or stuck on a certain part of the sub treatment process...i am happy to help. it took me 3 times to get it right....any there was no other opiate abuse during my time off sub. i literally just had to go back on because of the physical and mental problems coming off caused.
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