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why do i feel so strange while on suboxone?

chrisinabox

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Aug 27, 2005
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about 3 weeks ago, i quit doing i.v. heroin which i was doing for the most part of 2 years. I got a script for suboxone to help with the withdrawals and cravings. so now, i've been on the sub for about 3 weeks. i usually take 4mg. now that i'm off the heroin, i do feel alot better but i always feel like i'm in this halfway-sober state of mind. i really dont think this is me feeling the bupe cause i know what the high from that feels like and my heroin tolerance was too high for me to be able to feel this bupe. this feeling feels like a weird head feeling like im a zombie and kinda out of it and i have no emotions ever and i just dont feel right. i know my endorphins are kinda messed up from the heroin abuse but im not sure if that is why or if it is the suboxone. if anyone has any ideas about this please feel free to respond.
 
^ I dislike buperenorphine - both the physical & mental effects - in short it felt weird/shit to me - so I just tapered instead. So long as you take it you'll probably feel this way (tho you may get used to it :\ ) depends on whether you reckon you can manage without it. One thing tho, if you've been on opiates any length of time you're going to feel weird full stop when you quit & that weirdness persists for some time. :)


Good luck :)
 
try dropping the dosage. of course there will be some degree of discomfort, it will be worth finding out if you're taking a bit too much.. when i take more then usual it doesnt feel so good, i get very drowsy and the only thing that really wakes me up is a good meal but yeah, try to drop ur dosage to 2mg, wait a week, and see if u feel any better..
 
also, i have been having this ringing sound in my ears the past 3 days. its starting to get very annoying. i have been listening to music w/ my headphones alot, kinda loud but idk if that has anything to do with it. i hope its nothing serious. do u think it could be anything bad?
 
Whilst on suboxone I still get super cravings for heroin, and I cave. Lately I've been using suboxone on the weekdays, and IV junk Fri-Sun. It's a shitty way to live, but such is life for me right now!

I take around 1mg daily of the suboxone when I'm taking it, and it stabilizes me alright. Bupe is definitely powerful stuff though, I must admit.
 
It took me nearly a month to feel "normal", or to completely adjust to suboxone after a 2 year heroin habit. I felt very close to the same as you. I had zero emotion. That's even something I brought up in my suboxone group, and a few other people felt the same way.
 
2MGS? 4 MGS? Hell if you want to feel OK on Sub you should be at 16 MGS AT THE VERY LEAST. Many people are on 32 mgs.
 
2MGS? 4 MGS? Hell if you want to feel OK on Sub you should be at 16 MGS AT THE VERY LEAST. Many people are on 32 mgs.

That's just blatantly incorrect.

Bupe is very powerful and there's a lot more negative side effects the higher up you go. I feel a lot better when I'm adjusted to a lower dose of sub than when I'm taking a higher dose.

It's really not that hard to taper down on suboxone either. You might have a few periods of discomfort, but it feels better at a lower dose.


I'd recommend checking out the mega thread in the Other Drugs forum if you have any questions about suboxone.
 
I felt like I was on cough medicine when I was on Sub. Everything felt a bit "unreal". I also had super intense sugar cravings and I'm not a sweet tooth...I would eat gummy bears by the handful
 
Whilst on suboxone I still get super cravings for heroin, and I cave. Lately I've been using suboxone on the weekdays, and IV junk Fri-Sun. It's a shitty way to live, but such is life for me right now!

I take around 1mg daily of the suboxone when I'm taking it, and it stabilizes me alright. Bupe is definitely powerful stuff though, I must admit.

God, I used to do that all the time. Unfortunately, my weekends just kept stretching longer and longer and eventually I just quit the Subs. At that point I was on 24mg a day, which if I had any junk in my system, would throw me into precipitated withdrawals if I took the Suboxone too early. One instance of that happening and I quit Suboxone altogether for a long time. Going on and off Subs was harder on my body than shooting dope. I constantly felt weak and sick. I was doing an ungodly amount of dope at the time, which probably made it all the worse because waiting 12 hours to take Suboxone was agony for me. Now I'm back on Suboxone at 16mg day and I feel a lot better. I still chip but not like I was; now it's exclusively a weekend thing. The only thing that sucks is that I gotta wait like 24 hours after taking my dose in order to even get partially high from the dope. Suboxone can feel like a chemical prison when you want to get high.
 
about 3 weeks ago, i quit doing i.v. heroin which i was doing for the most part of 2 years. I got a script for suboxone to help with the withdrawals and cravings. so now, i've been on the sub for about 3 weeks. i usually take 4mg. now that i'm off the heroin, i do feel alot better but i always feel like i'm in this halfway-sober state of mind. i really dont think this is me feeling the bupe cause i know what the high from that feels like and my heroin tolerance was too high for me to be able to feel this bupe. this feeling feels like a weird head feeling like im a zombie and kinda out of it and i have no emotions ever and i just dont feel right. i know my endorphins are kinda messed up from the heroin abuse but im not sure if that is why or if it is the suboxone. if anyone has any ideas about this please feel free to respond.

You probably won't feel much emotion at all for about a year post-heroin abuse. The reason is that heroin burns out your dopamine receptors in your brain, which allow you to feel pleasure. So while a normal person will eat a good meal and secrete a small amount of dopamine, a heroin addict will not because heroin causes your brain to dispense a ton of dopamine all at once (causing the rush) and over time this burns out those receptors entirely. I've heard from neuropsych docs that it can take between 6mo-2 years before your brain fully recooperates after this and you can feel pleasure again in anything. That's why heroin has a 95% relapse rate, aside from the physical addiction, when most people stop they are so miserable and apathetic feeling that they just go back so that they can find pleasure in something, even if it's dope.

There's a great documentary about this on HBO called "Addiction" or something like that. Suboxone is actually supposed to help with this. In my own experience it seems that on Suboxone I'm not miserable like I am sober, but I also don't feel much of anything either. I guess I would rather be like that than miserable. I'm not a scientist or anything so the proceeding information is my best re-cap of that documentary I watched so I apologize if the scientific terms aren't specific or spot-on.
 
^^^^^^^^^^^^

Heroin and other opiate correlate to endorphins not dopamine, dopamine correlates with stimulant drugs like cocaine and amphetamines.

But seriously, I did hypnotherapy for the first time today and it actually works!! I was very surprised by this, I'm gonna make a thread for it. Also I've never done this but if you miss emotions and just want it back even if temporarily ecstasy might do the trick, not so sure how you might fare during the comedown though.
 
Thanks for pointing that out. Sorry, let me try to clarify. Cocaine increases the body's natural dopamine and heroin basically provides synthetic endorphins that activate the dopamine receptor sites and over time burn them out.

Here is a bit of a better description than I'm able to articulate:
http://www.addictionscience.net/ASNbiological.htm
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_03/i_03_m/i_03_m_par/i_03_m_par_heroine.html



^^^^^^^^^^^^

Heroin and other opiate correlate to endorphins not dopamine, dopamine correlates with stimulant drugs like cocaine and amphetamines.

But seriously, I did hypnotherapy for the first time today and it actually works!! I was very surprised by this, I'm gonna make a thread for it. Also I've never done this but if you miss emotions and just want it back even if temporarily ecstasy might do the trick, not so sure how you might fare during the comedown though.
 
i also noticed this same feeling when i started suboxone for percocet addiction. i was taking around 250mg of percocet a day. it's a wonder that my liver isn't completely destroyed, just lucky I guess. anyway, when i first took suboxone, i got the same feeling you described. it was somewhat similar to low doses of dxm in a way. almost like i felt schizophrenic. plus, it made me feel really crappy after about 5 hours. i had to dose throughout the day. i took 2mg every 5-6 hours. they say you don't have to do that, but i'd feel like shit if i didn't. i also don't know why they say the withdraw off suboxone is milder, because, to me, it was worse than percocet withdraw. the only thing i like about suboxone is i can take one little pill, and feel the effects for a long time, instead of swallowing a handful of pills and only feeling them for a hour. i will say that its a lot better than methadone, though. i don't crave suboxone that much, but i just got addicted to methadone and started abusing that instead of percocet. it's also a lie that niether of those get you high. sure, it's a weak high, but i still got high. methadone had a pretty decent high. suboxone got me high the first two times i took it, but then the high quickly disappeared. i think that doctors and pharm companies lie and manipulate data to justify giving opiates for opiate addiction.

i read online that dxm can help opiate addiction. i tried it once when i was going through withdraw. i took a level 3 plateau dose, got high as shit and tripped out for 8 hours. the next day, i woke up and felt great. not a single withdraw effect left. it seemed to work, but i don't know about the long term because i went and got high again the day after that. i know libogaine is supposed to be a miracle, but i don't know where to get any.
 
I got clean 6 weeks ago, been on bupe since 4 days in, i decided i wouldn't be able to stop myself from relapse without it for atleast a few weeks. I probably didn't REALLY need it, i had a 9ish bag a day to not withdraw habit. Last day i did 15 in a row and felt little to nothing, 2 more that night and haven't sniffed it since. I know telling my dad and getting a bupe scrip is the only reason im still clean. I was originally on 16 mgs for the first 2-1/2 to 3 weeks. I tapered myself down to 12, which is when i got a new doctor 4ish weeks in, the original one was a tool and wouldnt listen to me or give me what i needed for anxiety and sleep and whatnot. I found a new one, Got 12mgs of bupe a day since thats what i tapered to (My old one heard me say that and gave me 6/day.. >.<....?????). she also gave me .5mg xanax during the day if needed and 1mg every night for sleep, to help my anxiety and to help me get into a normal sleeping schedule. My anxiety is fine, im not even taking as much as im prescribed, same with the suboxone. I have 12/mg/day for a month but im down to 8ish, tapering on my own. Mostly because i gave a bunch to a friend of mine who was also getting clean but couldn't get a scrip so i gave her enough for the first 5 days, at a tapering rate.

I don't know why i just typed all that. Just my experience with subox i suppose. I'll have myself tapered off it in about a month at the most probably. Then ill be picking up extra and selling/giving them away to friends and firends of friends of mine. My town is really fucked with the dope. So many kids from sophomores to seniors to graduates. Even a few freshman and i swear to god even middle schoolers have tried it. There are countless people addicted its crazy, ive already gotten 3 clean. Im trying to spread the message. I can only hope the message is head before someone dies.
 
thats actually pretty noble of you. im glad to see that some people still care about their fellow man :)
 
I'm kinda surprised by all the people feeling weird on sub. I've been on it for like 10 months and I don't really feel that I'm on anything. It's just kinda there in the background preventing me from feeling pain and depression and I really like being on it. It's so subtle that I don't feel it. I take 1mg per day and I only notice that it works when I miss a day. And I'm usually very sensitive to meds.

Yeah, I also give my friend sub so she doesn't use dope. She can't put away enough money to buy her script and her insurance doesn't cover it. I have been paying for my subs and sub doc out of pocket, but luckily my husband just got insurance which will cover everything. I'll probably ask for more so I can give her enough for a month. So there are some of us that do care about our fellow man and women.
 
I'm kinda surprised by all the people feeling weird on sub. I've been on it for like 10 months and I don't really feel that I'm on anything. It's just kinda there in the background preventing me from feeling pain and depression and I really like being on it. It's so subtle that I don't feel it. I take 1mg per day and I only notice that it works when I miss a day. And I'm usually very sensitive to meds.

Lucky you! I felt terrible on suboxone each time I tried to go on it (the first few times didn't really take), for at least the first month or two. I was cold, uneasy, shaky, and just generally didn't feel right. It was a huge relief to no longer be dependent on a needle and an expensive habit, but I worried that if this was the way I was going to feel forever, there was no way I could resist the temptation to use.

Until I went to counseling, I didn't realize that these feelings were normal... addiction fucks up your chemical balance and it can take years for your brain to recover and find its natural "normal" setting again. What I was going through for the first 6 months, even with the aid of suboxone, is called PAWS or post acute withdrawal syndrome, and it's the hardest part of recovery-- staying clean through this prolonged sense of chemical depression and anhedonia is even harder than going through the acute phase of withdrawal. It took me months to learn to enjoy eating again, to sit through an entire movie, to read a book... my brain was so hardwired to take pleasure only in heroin/cocaine. When I went on suboxone, I no longer technically "needed" dope, but my brain had cravings, almost like seizures they were so intense, every few minutes.

Luckily, counseling gave me the tools I needed to learn to deal with these feelings effectively. The counselors helped me see past my diseased thinking, so I could figure out new ways of doing things (since the old ways weren't working). Instead of letting the dope cravings rule my life, and dictate my behavior, I learned to "feel through" them, and breathe deeply while they passed, instead of picking up the phone and dialing for drugs and gratification. Over time, I saw that cravings would gradually subside, and lessen in frequency and intensity, and I learned to enjoy life like a "normal" person again.

Anyway, just wanted to encourage anyone out there who's having a hard time. If you stick it out--if you really want to get better--you can do it. You just need to be willing to seek out and accept help. I can't say I haven't slipped here and there, or that you won't in your own recovery, but I know now that what's important is learning from your mistakes instead of letting them ruin your life.
 
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naddyfive-good advice, are you still on subuxone??if so, do you think your brain will be able to rewire itself if you didnt have the opiods still being flooded in your system??reason i ask is because i suffer from anhedonia and im clean from methadone for years but anhedonia still there...thats been the absolute hardest paws effect...
 
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