Some of you guys don't realize this....but when you keep switching back and forth between large amounts of dope/oxy and Suboxone, the Suboxone eventually just takes a long time to start working, no matter how long you wait. It's a strange thing that just happens to you if you play around with it one too many times.
It's not the same thing as precipitated WDs. It took me a good almost two years of going back and forth before this started happening, and at first I thought the suboxone was never going to work again for me...It does, but it takes a good 2 1/2 days before I start to feel normal on it. Before that, I could take the Suboxone before I was really even in WD and not get sick from it.
The time frame on Suboxone is different for everyone, but as a general rule, the stronger and higher amount of opiates you're taking, the harder the transition to Suboxone will be. Methadone is the worst, but a drug like hydrocodone or codeine or even low-dose oxy, you can take bupe right on top of it and most likely not have a problem. I've seen people with 30-40mg a day hydrocodone habits get higher from the Suboxone than they ever did on the pills, more addicted too!
Any maintenance opiate is hard as hell to kick...unless you're in a grave situation where you absolutely can't afford to go through the WD and you need to stop the bleeding immediately, you shouldn't be messing with maintenance opioids, IMO.
I've been to enough different 3-4 sub doctors over the years and gone to enough "groups" that I've met dozens of other patients and talked to them about what they were using. The doctors have no problem giving someone who's only been doing pills for a year or so with a minor habit 16mgs of Suboxone a day. Somebody walks in there on heroin for 10 years, 16mgs a day...or even more if they're particularly ignorant...You will go through more pain for longer on suboxone than you ever would from coming of a pill chip-habit.
And being on maintenance actually sucks! You don't get high, you're not quite yourself...it dulls your senses and makes you apathetic...I was on a continuous opioid habit for 7 years, I thought I was normal on Suboxone until I finally got off everything...You just forget what it feels like to experience life in it's pure form. You can actually take pleasure in little things, you actually feel sad and feel genuine empathy for other people. On opiates, it's all pushed to the back burner.
So yeah, I'm stuck on Suboxone right now and I hate it, but I don't feel like going through a month of feeling horrible at the moment so....on and on and on