Opioids single use of heroin after suboxone and precipitated withdrawal

Hi there.

I've been on 8mg suboxone happily for 10 days after a recent relapse. I just found a single dose of dope in my room. Because I'm dependent on suboxone now and not heroin, can I use the one-time dose of heroin and take my normal dose of suboxone in the morning without having to worry about precipitate withdrawal?

I did try to google to find the answer, but no one seems to have asked this exact question.

I guess what I'm asking is...do you need to be dependent on full agonists to go into PWs or will it not happen after a single use of a full agonist when you are normally dependent on a partial agonist?

I understand the dangers of combining these substances in the first place. Thanks.

If you dose your subs 12+ hours after you do the dope you will almost certainly avoid precipitated w/d. You probably won't get very high if at all from the dope unless it's really really REALLY dank. I have to wait a min of a day from my 8mg/day subs to even begin to feel REALLY good dope.

Precipitated wd can happen even in individuals not dependant on full agonist opioids, even just after one use of the full agonist. However, you probably won't need to wait as long to avoid the precipitated w/d than someone who was dependant and/or didn't have a tolerance to suboxone.

I used to use the 12 hour rule, but the last time I induced suboxone from a full agonist habit, I waited my usual 12 hours. Even though I wasn't feeling too sick, I took 8mg of suboxone and was launched into PWs for the first time in my 3.5 years with suboxone. Now I'm paranoid about it happening again.

Well, like I said, since you've been on bupe your body isn't going to get much out of the dope. I take it last time you tried this you were dependant on a full agonist then waited 12hrs to get one subs, then fell into precipitated w/d at that point? Well, in this case you're not dependant on a full agonist, and you already have bupe in your system at the time you're taking you single shot, soooo....

Of course everyone is different and has different reactions to different drugs... But, I'd bet my left nut you'll be fine in the immediate case (again, this is assuming you have been on subs for 10 days, only do one hit/shot or dope and don't readminister suboxone until 12hrs after you've administered the shot).

If you want to be extra safe, you can always wait a little longer... What's 16hrs on 12hrs... even 24hrs on 12hrs isn't too much longer.

tha919 said:

I used to use the 12 hour rule, but the last time I induced suboxone from a full agonist habit, I waited my usual 12 hours. Even though I wasn't feeling too sick, I took 8mg of suboxone and was launched into PWs for the first time in my 3.5 years with suboxone. Now I'm paranoid about it happening again.

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I use the 24 hour rule when dosing bupe after another opiate, although I have waited only 18 hours but the suboxone didn't work as well that time. I doubt you will get high from the heroin since you have been taking the 8mg of suboxone for 10 days now. Whenever I have used that dose for at least 3 consecutive days, I have had to wait 48 hours to dose the opiate I'm trying to get high on so that I can get a decent high, or 72 hours if I want to get a proper high. Welcome to the world of suboxone maintenance, where easily getting a nice heroin high is a thing of the past.

Tommyboy said:

..Welcome to the world of suboxone maintenance, where easily getting a nice heroin high is a thing of the past...

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Call me old fashioned but isn't that the point? I thought people took Suboxone to quit heroin, morphine, Opana, etc. I mean that's what I did, and if you use it correctly, it does work.

You don't need to "welcome" me to the "world of suxobone maintenance". As I said above, I had been taking suboxone for 3.5 years before a brief 2-3 week relapse. I worked my dose from 10mg to 0.75mg in that time. I am not new to suboxone. I'm just trying to avoid precipitated withdrawal since 13-15 hours wasn't safe against PWs even though 8-12 hours used to be enough for me in the past.

I am not planning to continue using dope, much as I was able to avoid for the better part of the last 3 years. I just happened to find some and decided I'd rather do it since it's a one-time dose. If it were a large amount I would have just flushed it because I know that I would lose control again.

So ... the consensus is that it doesn't matter whether you are dependent up on a partial or full agonist -- if you have a habit of any kind and then take a full agonist, you are open to the possibility of PWs.

Missykins said:

Call me old fashioned but isn't that the point? I thought people took Suboxone to quit heroin, morphine, Opana, etc. I mean that's what I did, and if you use it correctly, it does work.

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I agree, and it has worked for me for the better part of 3.5 years. I am not trying to start a conversation on whether using heroin with suboxone is a good idea. I use suboxone to control my opioid dependence and have done a lot of really awesome stuff with my life since I first started taking it in late 2008.

FYI: I took full agonist indicated earlier in the thread. It had an effect although minimal, and I'm totally fine with that. The dose I found is gone now, and that's a good thing. I just hope I can take my suboxone in the morning and keep going with what has for the most part been a really successful solution for my opioid dependence problem... along with changing almost every other aspect of my life, where I live, my friends, etc.

Missykins said:

Call me old fashioned but isn't that the point? I thought people took Suboxone to quit heroin, morphine, Opana, etc. I mean that's what I did, and if you use it correctly, it does work.

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Yes, I was on it for over 18 months and I can count on 1 hand the amount of times I got high. The post was more to discourage trying to get high while on suboxone maintenance since it is a waste of time, money, effort, suboxone, and the other drug you try to get high on.

tha919 said:

I agree, and it has worked for me for the better part of 3.5 years. I am not trying to start a conversation on whether using heroin with suboxone is a good idea. I use suboxone to control my opioid dependence and have done a lot of really awesome stuff with my life since I first started taking it in late 2008.

FYI: I took full agonist indicated earlier in the thread. It had an effect although minimal, and I'm totally fine with that. The dose I found is gone now, and that's a good thing. I just hope I can take my suboxone in the morning and keep going with what has for the most part been a really successful solution for my opioid dependence problem... along with changing almost every other aspect of my life, where I live, my friends, etc.

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Just don't force yourself to take the suboxone until you feel that you need it. That's the best was to avoid precipitated wd's IME. I never had a problem waiting 2 days to dose my suboxone when I was taking 8mgs a day, so that helped with avoiding precipitated withdrawals.

tha919 said:

I agree, and it has worked for me for the better part of 3.5 years. I am not trying to start a conversation on whether using heroin with suboxone is a good idea. I use suboxone to control my opioid dependence and have done a lot of really awesome stuff with my life since I first started taking it in late 2008.

FYI: I took full agonist indicated earlier in the thread. It had an effect although minimal, and I'm totally fine with that. The dose I found is gone now, and that's a good thing. I just hope I can take my suboxone in the morning and keep going with what has for the most part been a really successful solution for my opioid dependence problem... along with changing almost every other aspect of my life, where I live, my friends, etc.

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Well, it happens. It's not a crime against humanity.

Eight mg is not a huge amount but it's not necessarily dose-dependent. My advice to you is to wait until you feel mild to moderate symptoms of withdrawal and then start off with half your Suboxone dose and work your way up until you no longer feel withdrawal and then return to your regual dosing schedule. This of course assumes that you'll feel withdrawal if you go without an opiate--my guess is that you will--and if you wait until you do it means that the heroin you shot up is no longer exerting an effect.

Also, given that you didn't feel much of the shot you did, it means that the previous dose of Suboxone that you took was still on board, which makes it even less likely that you will experience precipitated withdrawal because the heroin really didn't exert much of an effect as it could not bind to the opiate receptor due to Suboxone's blockade effect. Suboxone has a half-life of 24-36 hours, so to feel a shot of heroin after an eight mg dose of Suboxone will actually take a couple of days if you crunch the numbers. Hence, you were effectively blocked.

And, if you really want to be academic, you can calculate how long it will take to metabolize heroin based upon the half-life of the drug, which I'm not sure of, but it's probably buried somewhere in this forum (3 hrs? or is it 6 hrs?). I know it's much shorter than Suboxone. But I think waiting until you feel mild to moderate signs of withdrawal is the best way to go, which is usually how induction is achieved (it is the way in which I started Suboxone).

Hang in there.

I personally don't think you have to worry about precipitated withdrawals. I've used heroin in place of my evening suboxone dose many times, taken my morning suboxone dose at the same dosage and same time without a problem. I've only run into problems when Ive replaced my suboxone routine for about two days or more with around the clock heroin/opana use-however, this doesn't mean that everyone's the same way, so wait at least 12 hours just to be safe.

Also, if you didn't feel the dope, that means that the buprenorphine succeeded in blocking the heroin, so the it's likely not even attached to your receptors. If this is the case, than precipitated withdrawal will not occur.

Znegative said:

Also, if you didn't feel the dope, that means that the buprenorphine succeeded in blocking the heroin, so the it's likely not even attached to your receptors. If this is the case, than precipitated withdrawal will not occur.

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This is what I'm say'n...

But as was also mentioned, the safest thing is to wait until you really feel you need the sub. That's a sure fire solution, although it may take 24hrs +

if ur taking 8mg of suboxone everyday, and hapen to relapse and do ur normal amount of dope, you wont get nearly as high as u normally would, u would probably get like 30% of the high u used to get, suboxone plugs all them receptors causing blockagee preventing other opiates from getting in there causing u to get high..8mgs a day u can still feel somewhat a buzz from an opiate, antyhing more then 8mg, forget it........if u take suboxone shortly after u had taken heroin or other opiates thats a whole other ball pack FOR SURE, you will go into precip WD, a chemical WD 5x more intense then regular WD, which can lasts anywhere from 1-10 hours

opiatekrzy said:

if ur taking 8mg of suboxone everyday, and hapen to relapse and do ur normal amount of dope, you wont get nearly as high as u normally would, u would probably get like 30% of the high u used to get, suboxone plugs all them receptors causing blockagee preventing other opiates from getting in there causing u to get high..8mgs a day u can still feel somewhat a buzz from an opiate, antyhing more then 8mg, forget it........if u take suboxone shortly after u had taken heroin or other opiates thats a whole other ball pack FOR SURE, you will go into precip WD, a chemical WD 5x more intense then regular WD, which can lasts anywhere from 1-10 hours

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As mentioned in another post please don't bump old threads. This incident is long gone.

yea whatever, sorry im not an elite bluelighter, i been a member and only come on here and there to help out. i read the original post, and reply, i dont got time to sift through everyones responses and off topic drifts that tend to happen alot, so i stick to the original poster to get to the point, buddy. if the incident is long gone, CLOSE THE DARN THREAD!