he does NOT want to swap one addiction for another
I don't know man, I'd sooner be taking Suboxone from a pharmacy than ride the rollercoaster of death that is fentanyl. Some people just don't have success with complete abstinence (i.e. don't make it past the one year mark without relapse), and a portion of those people do really well on suboxone for a while. I was one of them. I took subs for over a year, and basically started tapering as soon as I found a stable dosage (16mg in my case). Decreased really gradual over more than a year to 0.5 mg a day, then alternate days, and I was able to stop with only minor withdrawal symptoms. I couldn't have gotten off the fent any other way (i tried, trust me).
If the choice is between keep taking fentanyl or get on suboxone, then I think there's only one reasonable choice. If you can make it without any opiates, then that's even better. I personally don't know many addicts that maintain long-term sobriety without going through either methadone or suboxone for a while. Sure, there are some, but I find them to be the exception. I see it in treatment centres all the time. Person gets offered suboxone, declines it, thinking "I don't want to trade one addiction for another". Does well in treatment, gets released, and either relapses or dies in the next month. Meanwhile the people that go on suboxone have a safety net in place to learn to live "sober" in the real world again, and get to learn healthy coping mechanisms. By the time they have done so, the minor withdrawals from a prolonged and gradual taper are entirely manageable.
There's also a cynical side of me that believes that people that refuse suboxone treatment have reservations about getting truly clean (i.e they're planning on getting high again some time in the future). I only think that because I was that person at one point in time. And that's just what I did. After my last relapse with fentanyl, I was so desperate to get clean, knowing full and well that no amount of willpower would help me, that I sat through 3 hellish days of PWDs to get on the suboxone successfully, because I knew there was no way in hell I'd ever manage it any other way. I led a normal life on suboxone, I can't say the same about fentanyl.