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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

does suboxone lose it's effectiveness?

mrs_mia_wallace

mrs_mia_wallace

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 9, 2009
Messages
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Location
London
Hi everyone...
I've been on suboxone for a year and a half. The first six months I was on it I did great-- I was totally sober. However for the past year I have gone through phases of using for a day to three days and then going back on for a day to three days... it's such a pointless cycle. I am sort of weird when it comes to suboxone; when I first went on it I waited 36 hours but I never wait 36 hours anymore. I have taken suboxone as little as 6 hours after using and not had any negative side effects.

However, recently I've been having problems with the suboxone. I went out for a week but before that it was elliviating all the symptoms except for my body aches. I started back up with the suboxone on Tuesday morning (I waited about 18 hours after using) and I have had the WORST chills the last couple days, accompanied by constant goose bumps. I am constantly cold (and it's not that cold outside) or I'm super fucking hot if I excercise even a little bit. I yawn sometimes (but I'm also really fucking tired) but besides that no symptoms. I used to get chills/gossebumps a lot when I was sick. I'm just wondering if suboxone loses it's effectiveness over time? Or why its elleviating all my symptoms (no stomach aches, no body aches, no runny nose/sneezing, normally when I'm sick my bloody pressure goes down to I get chest pains when I take my sleeping meds and none of that, no tearing, no restlessness...) except for one?
 
If the suboxone is in your system already, then you wont get precipitated withdrawal. For instance, if you take 4mg per day, then shoot dope all day one day, you can take the sub directly after that with no withdrawal.

You probably simply raised your tolerance by going out for a week without realizing it, and now your suboxone dosage isn't quite enough.

The best way to think of suboxone is that it is the legal opiate. If you want to keep your habit going legally, you use soboxone. It doesn't really help you quit or normalize in my opinion. Using opiates is using, and quitting is quitting. Suboxone does also lose effectiveness over time just like any other opiate, the point is supposed to be to wean off it not increase the dose, so going back and forth from doc to sub is pointless.
 
That makes so much sense! Ugh. Now I get it. I thought I was just some kind of freak that I could take it six hours afterwards and not get sick like everyone says you will.

Thanks, I'll start taking more... hopefully that helps. I honestly feel like using suboxone HELPS me continue to use if anything, because there's no consequences-- before I would think twice about using because I knew I was going to go into withdrawls and all that fucking bullshit, whereas now I can use and then not use and not deal with withdrawls... if I actually wanted to get sober I think I would wean off the suboxone, but I'm just not there yet. :(
 
I went back and forth for years. It's not that the suboxone loses effectiveness, it will eventually work, it just becomes more difficult to play around with, as you're now learning. Ive tried to warn people about the very thing you're talking about, and they didn't believe me until it happened to them.
 
Yeah, i mean look at it like this.

You get high on heroin, and go from baseline to euphoric.

When you go on suboxone, your mind is tricked into feeling the suboxone as your new baseline, so when you go out and get high between using you will create an undesirable psychological equation. That is when you feel like suboxone is being sober and heroin is still feeling high.

it's not really great to mess with. you should either stay on sub or stay on full agonists.
 
Yeah, most drugs can lose effectiveness over time, and using heroin can raise your tolerance so that your bupe dose is not longer enough or the effects don't last as long. If you stop using heroin your body should theoretically adjust to your Suboxone dose again within about a week, at least when it comes to the Sub being enough to alleviate withdrawals. Personally I find chills (and alternately hot flushes) to be one of the most persistant withdrawal symptoms, like I will notice chills even if if most of my other WDs are alleviated.

Also if you go too many days in a row using heroin in between your bupe it can cause precipitated withdrawals, (even if they may be slight depending on your situation), so that's something to consider.
 
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I've been using it off and on for about 2 years now. When I first went on it I was clean for the longest time in my life. Which was 5 months. Second time, 2 months, third time 2 weeks...now I can't even make it a week. It definitely lost its effectiveness with me, but every person is different. So who knows. Nobody is the same.
 
yes, i would say that it does. i used to be able to switch from using h to taking a sub at the beginning of my w/d and be fine through out the rest most of the time sometimes taking another 8 mg at the end if some lingering w/d symptoms set back in but never more. back in June i experienced precipitated w/d from switching to subs after a heroin binge and then used h again the next day to alleviate my symptoms, then tried to switch back to subs,more precipitated w/d.

finally when i used again and switched back to the sub i felt some of the w/d symptoms disappear and some stay. i decided to do sub maintenance this time,and the first week was like this and then slowly things got better for me. but i never felt completely normal with the subs,i experienced a lot of nausea , lethargy,and other flu like symptoms from the subs months after and wanted nothing more but to be off of both. and plus the sub w/d terrified me!

i personally believe with the experience i had when starting my maintenance with all my w/d symptoms had not gone away when in the past they had deceased or decreased enough to the point i was functional again. my first week on subs was not function-able yet bearable. couldn't of done it without the subs i know that much.

and i do advise getting off them as soon as you can but not until you are ready. my fiance was on them and they worked great for him he had none of the negative effects from them like i did but just wanted to get f***ed up from time to time,which turned into another binge that took his life. so take as much time as you think you need regardless of what any one tells you.and once you are ready,then start the tapering process

you could even start now , i hear long tapers are the best and hardly noticeable. my sub doctor wanted me to decrease a mg or 2 every month. do whatever plan you think suites you and your needs! once you have an idea what that might be ask your friends here on this site. they will be able to give you feedback from their own experiences sub tapering, so you can make any adjustments to it that could benefit you in the end, or just some input on what to expect!

but remember to take your time, and wait till your in that place, there's no right or wrong pace. people can make mistakes but mistakes are only mistakes if you don't turn them into life long lessons.
goodlluck,and godbless. i hope you can untangle your self out of this icky mess like am trying to do! your not alone!

sincerely newsunn<3
 
^Most of the people who posted in this thread are saying the same thing: It becomes difficult to transition back and forth between a full agonist opioid and buprenorphine without experiencing increasingly more severe withdrawal symptoms over time.

Drugs can lose their effectiveness over time, but I don't believe this is whats happening. Bupe's powerful stuff, and if it began to lose effectiveness, you could just bump up the dose slightly and it would become effective again. Most of us don't need that much to begin with, so there's plenty of room to titrate upward.

I think something happens to you physiologically when you keep going back and forth between buprenorphine and full agonist opioids that makes every induction onto buprenorphine more diificult each time. It takes longer and the withdrawal symptoms are worse.

The other thing with bupe. It doesn't give you the same glow as full agonist opioids, and because of this, I believe it's ability to diminish cravings isn't as complete as something like methadone.

Yeah, for me, the first few days back on bupe weren't great but were a huge improvement over cold turkey...It will eventually work and you'll feel completely normal, it just takes a little longer, the price you pay for fucking around with it, IME....
I was first prescribed buprenorphine in 2005 and played with it for years. it still always worked once it was fully in my system, but it became harder to get on it and I never really had much interest in it other than using it as a last resort.
 
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I think I've gone off and on from Suboxone like six times since I posted this? Clearly not working for me... I have noticed though that the last couple times I've taken subs they almost feel like an amphetamine-- I get super talkative, can't eat anything, and I just feel buzzed in an upper-like-way. Has anyone else noticed this?

I think I have to wait longer before taking the dose, because I started waiting 20 hours (that's the longest I can go, I can't do this 36 hours thing) and there were less withdrawl symptoms... but still these fucking chills, and just feeling REALLY cold-- I mean to the point that I have a coat and scarf on while everyone else is in t-shirts, did not go away. I've thought about going on methadone but I just don't want to wake up every morning feelings sick and having to drive all the way to a methadone clinic. Plus, I don't even want to know how embarassed my father would be if he found out his daughter was on methadone... that's worse than heroin according to him...

I went back on subs today and I feel better, they just do nothing for my cravings, and I'm sure I'll be back on opiates tomorrow or Friday at the latest. I was doing so well this past year-- not sober, but managing by using twice a week maybe-- and now I'm really sliding downhill. I keep trying to get back to that 2x a week but I can't. Sometimes I just want to be sober so much, but I just CRAVE/WANT heroin so much that I can't stop. And I just can't go back to rehab (I've been many times) even though that would probably get me sober for a year or so (I know I know I'd go back on anyway, I always do).

I just wish someone would make a drug that makes you not want heroin anymore... I would take that..
 
How long does methadone last? I mean, if I take a dose at a clinic at 10am, when I go the next day at 10am am I going to feel sick on my over there and are I am not going to start feeling sick until later that day? And there's no way I can get it from a doctor instead of a clinic?
 
mrs_mia_wallace said:
How long does methadone last? I mean, if I take a dose at a clinic at 10am, when I go the next day at 10am am I going to feel sick on my over there and are I am not going to start feeling sick until later that day? And there's no way I can get it from a doctor instead of a clinic?
Click to expand...

The duration of the effects of methadone and how long it keeps you out of withdrawals for varies hugely depending on your unique metabolism, what dose you take, and whether you take it chronically and are stabilized at a certain dose or just started taking it (it takes about a week to stabilize). For most people a normal dose for opioid dependence is supposed to last for at least 24 hrs before you start getting noticeable withdrawal symptoms. It can take a few days to a week to get used to it and get on the right dose etc, and some people like myself are "fast metabolizers" who find they get sick before the 24 hrs is up.

I absolutely do not agree that methadone totally alleviates cravings or makes you "not want heroin anymore", especially when you take it long-term. For the vast majority of people, if you stabilize at a set dose long-term you quickly get to a point where you no longer feel anything from the methadone. I absolutely still had cravings for heroin and I and many many other people I have known still used heroin on top of the methadone. I also think methadone should be a last resort after all other options have been given a real try. There is no drug that is going to solve your mental addiction and you really need to do things like learn how to not act on cravings and work on the reasons you use heroin in the first place if you want to succeed, even with opioid replacement maintenance.
 
^I've been on methadone twice, once for 2 1/2 years, once for a few months....It did a better job at taking away heroin cravings than suboxone did for me, but neither drug is perfect or will completely take away your cravings....When I was on 95mgs of methadone for a long period of time, I didn't get high, but I still felt "something"....suboxone I didn't really feel after awhile, and I was on and off that for 6 years....

both can be good drugs to aid you in quitting opiates, but you have to be commited to stopping to have them fully work for you, I feel....
 
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