I've been on Suboxone for almost 3 years now, will be in November, and I started taking it 2 months or so after quitting methadone. The difference between taking methadone and buprenorphine is huge, compared to buprenorphine ethadone is just another full agonist with nasty side effects unrelated to opioid action, I'm sure you can be stable on any full agonist like you can be stable on methadone as long as you have a steady supply of your drug of choice, either free or at least not consuming most of your money. That's what makes methadone different from heroin, you don't have to chase it to have it. With that being said, I'm sure being on buprenorphine is definitely not like being sober either, it may feel so when you quit using heroin/morphine/etc. and start buprenorphine maintenance. I felt sober for sure because Suboxone finally killed the withdrawal and let me live a more or less normal life, if it wasn't for Suboxone, I'm sure I would never have quit benzodiazepines a year later, certainly not if I had stayed on methadone. If it wasn't for Suboxone, I wouldn't have started studying again. Bupe made me motivated to do stuff like I wasn't for years, so it was a big change, it was like the best antidepressant out there for the first couple of months, I was optimistic for the first time in like 10 years, imagine that, and imagine people who can feel this way after decades. It is a big change indeed no matter how you look at it. I collect my pills every two weeks and I will tell you one thing, there are very few people on Suboxone on my program (around 15 compared to 250-300 on methadone), so I rarely see another person on it, but once there is someone, I can spot them in no time, they are lively like non-addicts, and all the others on methadone have this characteristic emotionless expression on their faces and their movements are slow, it looks very sad to me because I remember myself looking exactly the same.
Of course with time buprenorphine loses its magic and taking it becomes much like a reflex for a cigarette, however, you're certainly much more bound to it. Life on buprenorphine is certainly much cleaner than on methadone or heroin/morphine. I'm sure it's much better as a transition drug than methadone too. During all these years on various opioids I never considered I might one day be so sick and tired of them that I would want to quit. And here I am fed up with Suboxone, I guess I'm much more physically dependent on it than I am psychologically addicted right now. It doesn't work so well as it used to, more and more often I can feel various pains, and when I catch cold, I always need much more buprenorphine than usually because I feel pain everywhere in my body. I don't know if it's plain tolerance or hyperalgesia, but I've been trying to taper down for months now and it's one hell of a drug to taper off. The pain-killing effect of a dose lasts like a few hours at most and then it's gone, and I need another dose even though I can feel it's still working because I can feel the side effects. Much of the pain is actually in my mind, it's always much much easier to quit any addiction when you can see some positive things in your life, if they're not people like friends or a partner, then perhaps satisfaction with your accomplishments. Well, it's hard to have either if you spent much of your life dulling yourself with drugs, right? I meet people at the university, other than that I don't really go out, but even when I get to know someone better, I just can't get rid of my past and I feel as if I was unworthy of any good person, I know I can't tell anyone about my past and at the same time I feel as if I needed to find someone whom I could tell without fearing they'd reject me. I guess it's because I can't accept my faults, I blame myself so much that deep inside I think someone accepting me as an ex-addict would make me accept myself too. Anyway, I'm sure I want to quit Suboxone, I wish I were off it right now if it was possible. I can feel how much stress I'm putting on myself when I can't decrease my dose or need to increase it again, but honestly speaking these 3 years on bupe showed me how I ruined my life with opioids among other stuff and I just want to be off it, I will be sooner or later, but somehow I know it's not the most important thing anyway.