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Azzurri5347

Greenlighter
Joined
Nov 14, 2017
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Hello everyone! I am happy to finally be a part of this forum. Got a quick question. I recently stopped taking methadone. Made the switch to suboxone. Had my last dose of meth(25mg) on Thursday and my first dose of Suboxone on Monday(6mg now stabalized at 8mg). Reason for the switch was I am being admitted into rehab next month and they don't deal with Methadone. Ive been happily opiod free for around two months. As of this mornings dose of sub, that makes 5 days on the new stuff. I don't feel sick, but I am barely sleeping and feel like something is missing. I am prescribed 100-150mg of Seroquel for sleep time and that doesnt seem to be working. I asked my Doc is the Sub could be interferring with it but he said no. I'm now wondering if i need a bump in the Sub because it might not be enough. I dont really know what to do. Is it just that it takes time for everything to click? I dont want to increase if i dont need to. Im not feeling any w/d's. Just a sleep issue. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. On a side note, what happens if you do take opiods while on suboxone? I know that it works as a blocker, but can you be ill? Dont plan on taking anything as of right now, just figured this would be the best place to ask. Thanks again and take care! Just realized this is an absolute block of text. Not such a quick question i guess. Thanks again everyone.
 
Hey Azzurri, welcome to Bluelight from all of us here :)

Sorry to hear you're having sleeping troubles. I'm not sure it's a good idea to bump up your suboxone dose tbh, especially as you're not feeling any w/ds.

However I'm going to move this over to Sober Living to see if the guys and gals there have some more useful advice for you.

Take care,
CFC
 
First off, if you use opioids while on suboxone, you simply won't get much if any effect. But you have to be careful going the other direction...if you mess up and get back on recreational opioids, you'll need to wait until you're fully into WD before re-starting your subs.

I'm not expert on the process of moving from methadone to buprenorphine, so I'll mostly leave that issue to other folks. But from what I do know, I'm not at all surprised that you're having trouble with sleep. You've replaced a very strong full-agonist opioid (methadone) with a partial agonist (bupe), and your body is struggling to adapt to this difference. Again, others will have more informed opinions, but my sense is that a higher dose of suboxone wouldn't help a lot...suboxone has a pretty drastic ceiling effect such that more is often not better.

Insomnia is often one of the most persistent symptoms of opioid WD and it really, really sucks. But it *will* get better.
 
Yeah would agree with what others have said. I think simco explained it pretty well. Suboxone is made up of two drugs, buprenorphine and naloxone. Bupe is a partial opioid agonist, simply put it means that it will cause less stimulation on opioid receptors than a full opioid agonist like methadone. The way naloxone has been explained to me is that it binds to opioid receptors and only allows mild stimulation, sort of a gate that regulates how much can pass.

I would say give it some time. Sounds like you are experiencing very mild withdrawal symptoms as your body adjust to the new medication. If you aren't shitting yourself or climbing up walls, I would say you are making some progress. You will probably feel leveled out in a week or two.

Good luck in your recovery, congratulations on making the change. Hang in there.
 
^the naloxone doesn't have a significant effect in any way when someone uses Suboxone, even if they inject or snort or plug it. It might play a small role if injected, but for our purposes it's all the buprenorphine. In other words, folks get exactly the same benefits from Subutex (only buprenorphine) as from Suboxone (buprenorphine+naloxone). Kinda an aside though, just wanted to clarify that point. If you're interested in learning about this issue with naloxone OD has a lot of good material to explore :)
 
simco said:
First off, if you use opioids while on suboxone, you simply won't get much if any effect. But you have to be careful going the other direction...if you mess up and get back on recreational opioids, you'll need to wait until you're fully into WD before re-starting your subs.

I'm not expert on the process of moving from methadone to buprenorphine, so I'll mostly leave that issue to other folks. But from what I do know, I'm not at all surprised that you're having trouble with sleep. You've replaced a very strong full-agonist opioid (methadone) with a partial agonist (bupe), and your body is struggling to adapt to this difference. Again, others will have more informed opinions, but my sense is that a higher dose of suboxone wouldn't help a lot...suboxone has a pretty drastic ceiling effect such that more is often not better.

Insomnia is often one of the most persistent symptoms of opioid WD and it really, really sucks. But it *will* get better.
Click to expand...

This. Going up on your dose may help but it may not. Bupe is a strange drug when it comes to the dose response curve
 
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