There is every reason for you to want to snort buprenorphine versus taking it sublingually given the higher intranasal BA others have pointed out (e.g. in my experience 1mg snorted equals 4-6mg sublingually). Also sublingual dosaging is more variable (depending on what part of your mouth you place the tab, whether you brushed your teeth recently, use of listerine, etc).
So yes, as has been pointed out, especially considering you're a CPP you're best off snorting your Suboxone AT LOWER DOSAGES than you'd take them as prescribed sublingually (buprenorphine acts more like an agonist than antagonist at lower dosages, providing more pain relief at 1mg than 12mg).
NOW, on to your question as to if this is safe, and if so if it's safe in the long run. IME I'd say yes. Bupe and naloxone don't seem to cause any problems in terms irritating your mucus membrane, sinuses, lungs, etc. What you should be concerned about is the inactive ingredients. Some pills have talk, which upon building up can cause major problems.
Knowing what all the ingredients in pills are when using them in any way other than directed (or even then) is important because, in most cases, pills are mostly made up of inactive ingredients. Suboxone pills are the perfect example of this,
as an 8mg Suboxone brand pill weighs 400mg, but the active component, bupe (sans naloxone), is only 2% of the entire pill's mass! Its been a long time since I've seen a 2mg Suboxone brand pill, but I'd imagine the inactive-to-active ingredients ratio is similar.
Moral of the story is, knowing what and how the inactive ingredients in pills will affect you is important because, in almost all cases, you're mostly snorting/injecting/plugging those inactives! Anyways, moving on...
Here is a list of excipients (inactive ingredients) in suboxone brand 2mg/0.5mg tablets:
Lactose monohydrate (42mg of lactose)
Mannitol
Maize/Corn starch
Povidone K 30
Citric acid anhydrous
Sodium citrate
Magnesium stearate
Acesulfame potassium
Natural lemon and lime flavour
This is taken from
http://www.drugs.com/uk/suboxone-tablets-2mg-0-5mg-spc-16544.html (it's near the bottom of the page and work your way up to find this table). On a side note, it would seem the 8mg/2mg Suboxone brand tablets have the same inactives as the 2mg/0.5mg brand tablets.
I don't see anything dangerous there, so sniff away. Make sure you take good care of your nose and sinuses otherwise though. Rinse with saline once in a while. Petrolium jelly, creams, ointments, whatever works to keep your nose and mucus membrane as healthy as possible. If you do this for the rest of your life, sniffing pills I mean, of whatever kind, you'll probably end up with a deviated septum.
THE GOOD NEWS about this is that with these pills, as a CPP, you will be snorting a very small amount of material (the 2mg/0.5mg pills are small to begin with and you'll only be snorting a quarter or them - tiny bumps we're talking here). So you're a lot better off than folks snorting the old school OC's one after the other after the other, or whatever.
Best of luck OP! I have found bupe at low dosages (3-4mg sublingual, given low BA, 1-2mg intranasal and 0.5-1.5mg IM to work really well for my nerve pain issues, although I'm hardly a worst case CPP).
EDIT: Intranasal BA is high enough already, don't go snorting it mixed with ethanol or something stupid that'll destroy your sinuses. IF you prefer to take it sublingually, you can increase the BA by using some sort of ethanol preperations, of which there are lots of recipies for around here. However, in my kind long (almost four years know that I think about it) love affair with bupe (fav opioid) I've found that in terms of increasing sublingual BA, the easiest thing to do is:
- Brush your mouth thoroughly
- Rinse with some antiseptic mouth wash with ethanol (like Listerine, which I use every time I take bupe sublingually)
- While swishing the Listerine in your mouth take a couple minutes to crush the pill up as finally as possible (if the burn is too much crush pill up before brushing teeth)
- Place the bupe directly under your tongue in the proper place DIRECTLY after spitting out the ethanol solution/mouthwash (the idea being there is still some ethanol in your mouth)
- Do no eat/drink/talk/spit and keep tongue/mouth as still as possible for I'd say 5-15 minutes (although you probably can get away with less) to ensure all bupe gets absorbed
- And finally, swallow
Honestly, either methods (using Listerine or snorting) will work as well as the other. In terms of LONG TERM use the Listerine/ethanol prep for sublingual use is safer and healthier, but you shouldn't worry about snorting a quarter of a 2mg brand name suboxone pill unless you're planning on doing it every days or more than once every day for years and years and years.
Once the generic pills come out I'm going to go back to snorting the pills to get the most out of the BA without having to prep for IM which is even more a PITA than the whole ethanol prep for sublingual use thing. I will however be using IM bupe if I ended up doing the long ass final taper I originally planned, but that will be to accurately control dosages (i.e. it's easier to titrate dosages when a drug's BA is 100% than 30-60% ).
Im my experience, especially if you have problems with opioid related constipation, bupe's intranasal BA isn't much worse at all to make a significant diff for most people than its rectal BA. Hell, the rectal BA isn't hugely better than ethanol prepped sublingual BA if you are constipated at all from regularly opioid use.
That said, rectal bupe can work very well. You just have to make sure you're all cleared out down there. Which can be really difficult for people who use opioids nearly every day or daily. In other words, the only times I've EVER had success using ANY opioid rectally (and yes my method was proper) was after I had a professional enema done or whatever they call that colon cleanse where they flush your bowels out OR was in withdrawal and had major diahrea that had already cleared everything out.
If you don't like sublingual use, even with the higher BA ethanol provides (which I can understand cause the pills taste like shit, even compared to strips, or so is the opinion of most people I know), stick with snorting for now. If you develop problems with stuff like irritation or the skin on the outside of your nose getting really dry and flaking off, maybe try rectal admin. But like I said, since the general state of my bowels these days is to be plugged up and constipated, rectal admin isn't practical for me and hasn't worked unless I take extreme enema measures.
No harm in trying, that is for sure (and it's so easy to do after all, and absolutely painless unless you're a raging homophobe - in the sense it doesn't hurt putting the proper kind of needle-less syringe up your anus - there is no reason not to try). If rectal admin works and is practical for you, stick with that, because you'll avoid any possible, unforeseeable issues that come with intranasal use of Suboxone (although I've never run into any in my two years of snorting those damn orange pills.
GOD I CANNOT WAIT UNTIL the GENERIC COMES OUT! I just hope it too is no less safe to snort in terms of inactives as the brand name bupe tablets were.
And, um, we are talking about bupe tablets right? Not the strips?
EDIT Round 2:
Use of Potentiators to Increase Analgesia and Agonist Effects of Low-Dose, High-BA ROA Bupprenorphine is Not to be Underestimated!
And if you want to get the most agonist/classical opioid effects (i.e. analgesia, euphoria, sedation, etc) Tagamet/Cimetidine and Bendryl/Diphenhydramine can really make bupe a whole other drug (i.e. I get legit high when I take 600mg Cimetidine three hours before I dose my bupe and 75mg Diphenhydramine directly before dosing my subs.
Long term use of Cimetidine, especially considering this is heavy use, can lead to some problems though. If you have a heart condition forget this (although after a year of using it way too much I have developed no problems as a result).
Also, long term, high dose use of Cimetidine has been known result in Gynecomastia (i.e. create man boobs). But if you keep your diet healthy and exercise and are otherwise not significantly overweight the gynecomastia issue probably won't be a problem - it seems to most often be a problem for those who gain a lot of weight while on suboxone, don't exercise, have poor diet, etc. Given my healthy diet and some exercise it hasn't been a problem for me at all.