Bupe Rotating heroin and suboxone, what's the best way to minimize withdrawal?

[ImAShark]

Hi all, so basically I started using heroin about three years ago, and have been fully addicted for the past two years. Only snorting, never injected it before. For almost a year, I would use heroin until I ran out of money, then go on Suboxone that I had saved up until I finally got paid again, and then back to heroin. A few months ago my sub connect stopped getting subs, so I was forced to deal with cold turkey heroin withdrawal about every other week or so. Obviously this was not very pleasant.

Recently I acquired some subs again, but as of now I am running extremely low on them. I had bought dope from three separate dealers, all of whom usually get average to above average shit, and all three batches turned out to be total crap. So I'm out of money now, and I have about 3mg-4mg of one 8mg Suboxone strip left. I don't get paid again until a week from Friday, so buying more dope or subs is out of the question. I've been using a small amount of the sub strip to take away withdrawal symptoms, but I've never been in a position where I've gone from using subs to being clean. It's always either been dope to subs, dope to clean, or subs to dope.

My questions is, what kind of withdrawal can I expect when I finish off the Suboxone strip? Keep in mind that I only use maybe 1mg of subs a day, and have only been using subs straight for a few days now, however I was on dope directly prior to that, and then subs before that, and so on. Thus I'm not sure what to expect when I go from subs to clean. I've heard sub withdrawal can be worse than heroin withdrawal and last a while, however since I'm on a low dose of subs and haven't been using subs straight for too long, I'm hoping for the best. Is there any possible way I can completely, or almost completely, avoid withdrawal from this? I also plan on taking smaller and smaller amounts of Suboxone each time I dose, as well as leaving more time in between doses (I usually dose about every 24-30 hours). Thanks in advance for any and all help!

 

[keeping]

i wouldn't worry about sub withdrawal as you're not dependent on subs, just the heroin. all going from subs to clean will do will make the heroin wd's less intense because it spread them out over an extra day or two. but yeah, once you become dependent on subs it can be a really protracted and uncomfortable wd

and you can taper your sub dose down over a few days and this should make the wds much more tolerable, but you can't just skip the wds, they're inevitable. google 'rapid subutex taper' to get an idea of what you can do with the amount of subs you currently have

 

[ImAShark]

Thanks, but if anything I would say that I'm more addicted to subs than I am to heroin. I get paid every other Friday, and then proceed to blow most of my money on heroin and go through about 6 buns over the course of the next 3-4 days. Then after that, for the next week and a half, I'm on subs (when I have them). So I've been using subs much more often than dope, which leads me to believe that I may have to face some kind of withdrawal from this. I only rotate on-and-off because a lot of the time I don't have money to buy heroin. However, I know that obviously a week of using subs shouldn't result in much of a withdrawal, it's just that coupled with the heroin usage, I've been on either one of the two for a few months now. I figured it would be like rotating between heroin and oxy for months on end, you'd still get withdrawals coming off of them. I'm mostly just wondering what the intensity of withdrawal symptoms from going from heroin to subs and then a very quick taper to sobriety will be like. Also, what would you suggest would be an ideal time to wait in between re-doses of the suboxone?

 

[Jabberwocky]

There really is no ideal for this. Switching from heroin to buprenorphine and back again will, probably later than sooner, result in the kind of tolerance to buprenorphine where it is not nearly as helpful as it once was. If you're only using buprenorphine to stay well between heroin binges, it should work indefinitely. But as time goes on it will get harder on your body going back and forth as buprenorphine loses effectiveness. This is also a great way to jack up ones tolerance.

Basically to get the most out of buprenorphine you want to try and always use the lowest dose that will hold you. Other than that use it as infrequently as possible. I always found that if I didn't use heroin more than once a week it wouldn't have much effect on my buprenorphine dose/effectiveness, but I would have to take far more heroin than normal thanks to buprenorphine's antagonism/tolerance.

Anyways, sorry I'm a little confused I guess. What do you want to do with this? Switch to buprenorphine only and then taper off? How long have you been using and what doses of buprenorphine have you been using?