Have you asked your doctor or have you received any instructions about your appointment? Doctors prescribing buprenorphine will give you a COWS test. You have to be in full or almost full withdrawal, and score high enough on that test before the doctor will begin suboxone induction. The reason for this is that buprenorphine will knock off almost all opioids that are still attached to your receptors. If there is still a significant amount of opioids still attached to your receptors, you will go into precipitated withdrawals (PW) if you are not in significant withdrawal and have a high COWS score. You do not want PW, speaking from experience, you will feel the worst in your life for about 9+ hours until the buprenorphine sufficiently fills your opiate receptors. Imagine regular opiate withdrawal times a 1000. Puking, shitting, shaking with a fever, jumping out of your skin that makes you feel like you will definitely die.
You don’t want this. The easiest way out of this is to talk to your doctor and ask what to do to prepare for suboxone induction. If you are afraid you will run out of opioids, like 5 or more days, before your appointment, please let the office know. Work with the office to come up with a plan so that you are at the correct COWS score for induction. Ask if they can see you sooner if you don’t believe you will have enough opioids, and are forced to endure a week or so of needless misery.
FYI, Suboxone patients have a 40+ percent success rate of staying clean while on buprenorphine maintenance. That is a hopeful statistic.
I was on suboxone years ago and have been clean from all opioids for about 8 years now. That’s something that hopefully, could be you. You can PM me if you want to know my experience with buprenorphine and how I got clean and stay clean from opioids. Just remember that buprenorphine is a very powerful and extremely long lasting opioid (74+hour half-life.)
Please keep updating this thread. Wishing you the best!
WOC
