This... -> "I can do a half gram of h, then take 4mg [bupe] an hour later and still have no discomfort."
...is very odd, do you not have a bad habit? If you didn't take anything for a full day would you definitely feel w/ds or would you just be unhappy? It's difficult for us to know what "enough withdrawal" is, it's relative to one's previous experiences and that we don't know.
"My theory is that all mu receptors are simply not being filled therefore the buprenorphine is occupying the free ones as opposed to ripping things from the occupied ones and causing PWD."
IME, not very likely. Bupe at 4-mg taken sublingual is enough to saturate most people's brains with bupe and displace enough of any pre-existing exogenous agonist to cause precip w/ds. I wouldn't try it that's for certain. But you could be a unique case. I don't think that it's possible to have a full agonist like heroin co-exist with bupe in the brain when the bupe is administered
after the full agonist but
before that full agonist is metabolized, but I'd like to hear from others with your same or similar experience and how much bupe they could take after using heroin without precipitating w/ds. The caveat being these people need to be physically dependent upon heroin for the lack of pw/ds to be considered an exceptional event.
"I really just want to be stable on the bupe and not have to continue doing this(best case scenario 80% of my WD is eliminated and a little something gets me the rest of the way. Any suggestions and/or theories as to why I never get precipitated withdrawals would be much appreciated."
I doubt anyone can guess why you don't get precip w/ds. If you have a physical dependency upon a full agonist you should be precipitating w/ds in the instances where you take bupe shortly after taking a full agonist. I am a bit stumped. Also, bupe should resolve your w/ds 100% not just 80%. Bupe works very, very well at eliminating physical w/d symptoms, cravings maybe not as much, but the physical stuff - yeah, 100% should be attainable.
I suppose it could be a lack of absorption of the bupe, regardless take it as prescribed (sublingually) b/c complications from injecting sublingual bupe formulations can be terribly nasty - search the board here if you're curious what hell can come of injecting bupe.
Really the question (and HR content) to answer for you is to give you an idea how to get stable on bupe without having to use other opioids, to which I would suggest:
Stop taking all opioids. Wait until you are miserable and are genuinely in withdrawal, use the "COWS" scale as an objective measure of your state of w/ds (
http://www.csam-asam.org/sites/default/files/pdf/misc/COWS_induction_flow_sheet.doc) and have an intelligent second party that is objective to your situation determine your score - if possible - otherwise err on the side of a lower score. Don't take any bupe until your score is >25 (yes, it'll feel like hell at 25 and it should.) Then start with a dose of 1-mg for a starting point (if possible use the strips and cut them accurately). Dose 1-mg every hour - not sooner - until the w/ds are fading. Stop taking more bupe when they've faded decently, enough so you can eat and sleep but maybe not feel completely well. Wait it out 24 hours, you may feel the w/ds increasing a bit overnight, just deal with it but not by taking more bupe until you're 24 hours since you took that last 1-mg incremental dose that got you able to eat and sleep a little. After 24 hours has passed you likely won't feel super, but you won't be back to where you were before you took any - this is progress, slow indeed but slow in this case is good, this isn't like methadone induction we want to keep the dose as low as possible, trust me and the others who say "less is more" with bupe. It is very true.
At this point, 24 hours elapsed since the final 1-mg you took day 1 it is time to go ahead and take the total amount you took the previous day all at once. Only take more than the total you took the day b/f after an hour has passed and only if you still have a COWs score that is significant, maybe around 12. If you must take more do it just like day 1, 1-mg increments each hour until your COWs scale lowers to a tolerable level, for you that may be close to zero, which is ok, just approach that score slowly and with as little bupe as possible to get there.
This may well be more painful than simply taking a big bupe dose all at once to kill the w/ds - which is how many physicians in the US do it, and I feel that's a disservice to the patient, but the patient doesn't know that, at that point they're just glad as fuck to be out of w/ds. Doing it this way will help ensure you get on the lowest dose that you require. The lower the dose with bupe the better, not so much with methadone - it's kind of the opposite. If you start too high with bupe you may well jack your tolerance and you may get stuck with a higher dose than was needed, this is exactly what I'm trying to help you avoid, and is exactly what happened to me and tens of thousands of others.
I'm sure others will agree, some may disagree. I hope we're able to help you sort this out. Search the other big bupe threads too... there's a ton of bupe debate, experiences and objective info right here!
