Coming off subutex

[bizzy909]

I am a heroin user. I don't know if you would class me as an addict. As i use about once a week. I started to feel sick after the last time I used like withdrawal symptoms so I got 12mg of suboxone. I took 4 one day, 3 the next, 2 the next, and one today. Will I now have suboxone withdrawal tomorrow.? Also, does suboxone show up on a urine test?

[J T Junig, MD PhD]

See my post from a few minutes ago about tolerance and 32 mg of Suboxone...  The main reason people have so much trouble tapering off Suboxone is because they don't realize that one tab, 8 mg, is still a very high dose of buprenorphine.  Buprenorphine has some characteristics that make it a good tapering drug-- e.g. a very long half-life-- but it is hard to dose in small enough amounts to do a gradual, consistent taper.  Ideally it could be given for a week at 1000 micrograms, a week at 1800 mg, etc, reducing by 10% every week or two... but that requires very tiny pieces of tablets,

As far as your question, you have been on heroin and buprenorphine for a long enough period of time to take your tolerance to a level equal to the tolerance from being on 30 mg of methadone.  You will likely have considerable withdrawal, using the method that you used.  But then, intermittent, casual abuse of opiates almost always leads to heavier use.  That's the 'seduction' of addiction.

[sam7400]

hey bizy,
U might awswell call u self an addict now cos u addicted to subutex and heroin once per week...did u forget a user leads to an addict 9 times out of 10 and if u were only using heroin once per week thats still enuf to make u sick enuf to try and ween u self off it with subutex and that is one very slippery slope my friend..it would be better if u just used heroin..cos all the other prescribed drugs like sub meth oxy contin etc take months to physically get through the withdrawals however if u had just used heroin u would be fine in 3-4 days max guaranteed.

So good luck dood let me know how far you slide down that sllippery slope you think you are not on yet !!


sam7400.