Opioids Are tolerances mutually exclusive? And using after stopping subs... a few questions

[thatsoundsnice]

Hi everyone... new here and I've scoured the internet for an answer to this but it's a complicated question so I never get anything of use with any number of search terms...

It seems that if you do small doses of suboxone for some time, and hardly touch heroin or oxycodone at all, although you are maintaining some sort of opiate tolerance from the suboxone, you can then do a much smaller amount of the real drugs and they have an effect as if your tolerance has dissipated. So what I'm asking is: Although when you're SICK you can fend off sickness with whatever opiate you can get your hands on (subs/H/OC/whatever), getting high doesn't seem to have the same relation.

So what this ties into is if someone is clean off daily suboxone use of about .5mg for some time (say 10 - 15 days with a strong metabolism so only remnant symptoms are trouble sleeping regularly) and has made much progress and was hardly using heroin (maybe once every week to two weeks and at most a gram at a time over the course of an entire day, usually .5g) would doing some heroin fuck up the physical progress the body has made on dependency to suboxone? Would you wake up the next day sick again and have to start from scratch or would it not really affect anything and you'd pretty much pick up where you were at the day previous?

I know this sounds kind of confusing but it's hard to articulate. Anyone with experience on this I'd hypothetically like to know.

 

[Tommyboy]

If you are taking suboxone daily then it's built up in your system enough to where one slip-up won't really set you back. It's when you go on a run and stop taking the subs but instead take high doses of heroin that will set you back and make it harder for you to get back on sub at that same dose.

As far as tolerance goes, it depends on what your habit was before you got on suboxone, and what dose of suboxone you were on. For people that were on lower doses of weak opiates like codeine, hydrocodone, etc, they will be increasing their tolerances by getting on suboxone. But somebody with a hefty heroin habit will have different results depending on whether or not their dose of suboxone was higher or lower than the equivalent in heroin that they were taking.

 

[Mr.Scagnattie]

Your basic question if I'm not mistaken is: What happens if you use an opiate again in that kind of in between period where you are not fully detoxed yet, but are not completely physically dependent still, correct? Basically, you've been off subs for a while, maybe a couple months, so the major withdrawals are gone, yet you are still not totally detoxed.. so what happens if you use heroin or something now? Do you go back to square one in your withdrawals?

The short answer is no. After that long of being off opiates, using only once or twice here and there will not throw you back to day one and force you to repeat all the acute-withdrawal. It can however, throw you back a little bit, and how much depends on how much dope you did and how many days in a row you did it for.

Basically, the severity of withdrawal symptoms are caused by tolerance.. The reason why withdrawal is so brutal in the first week or two, is because you are going into it at your peak of your tolerance, therefore your body has a lot more to make up for and will feel sicker. As your tolerance drops each day you refrain from using opiates, so to does your withdrawal get easier, because the symptom severity correlates directly to however high/low your tolerance is at the time. This is why after weeks/months of not using, you still feel kind of sick because you're still dependent, but on a much lower tolerance to opiates. Understand?

So, that's how it works with your body getting further away from opiates and thus your tolerance going down. However, it can also work the opposite way. Until you are fully detoxed from opiates, meaning no longer dependent at all, then any opiates you do will raise your tolerance.. it just depends on how much. As your tolerance again grows, so to will your withdrawal symptoms, as like I said, you have yet to be fully detoxed (different rules apply in that case).

So, the reason why only one day of using doesn't throw you back to the beginning of your withdrawals, is that it was not enough to jack up your tolerance to the level it was it pre-detox. But, it can very quickly, rise again to that level and even beyond. If you start using again more often, at higher and higher doses of opiates, you will be walking yourself backwards on that line of tolerance/withdrawal severity, up until the point where you have to repeat the entire process. Usually it only takes a few days of using everyday for this to happen.. which is why you need to be very careful about using any opiate at any dosage, before you are fully detoxed.

Make sense? I know it's a bit of a complicated topic but I tried to explain it as basically as I could.