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Bupe Reasons for injecting subutex

H

Hydroluv

Greenlighter
Joined
Oct 31, 2016
Messages
9
I?m prescribed subutex, not suboxone. I?m not sure if that difference will make an impact on potential answers. Why do users inject subutex (buprenorphine). I?m guessing there may be a slight difference in BA because that?s true for most drugs. But, I?ve read some posts where users (not on this site) have actually craved those injections and I?m totally confused. I?ve tried this a few times after microfiltering and it just burned! It also had no effect on me at all. No boost, nothing. At first, I assumed the dosing was too low, so I kept raising it over time to a max of 8 mg in one dose. When I got to 8 I just stopped. I would love to know what the attraction of this practice is. I?m obviously missing something.
 
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Suboxone has Naloxone in in it which means you can't use opiate/opioids on top and decreases the chance of overdose if you do. Subutex does not have Naloxone in it and is the raw form of the drug.
 
Hydroluv said:
I?m guessing there may be a slight difference in BA because that?s true for most drugs. But, I?ve read some posts where users (not on this site) have actually craved those injections and I?m totally confused
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The difference in BA is actually pretty significant. However, due to buprenorphine's "partial agonist" nature, the dose-response curve tends to flatten as you increase the dose.

So while the difference in effects between a 1 mg dose and a 2 mg dose (both taken sublingually) might be very much noticeable, people often don't get much more of an effect from 16mg than they do from 8mg.
I would wager that the people who IV buprenorphine often have a relatively low opioid tolerance compared to someone who is actually scripted this stuff and takes it on a daily basis.

Of course, for some people, the mere ritual of injecting makes all the difference. After all, being an IV heroin user is a great way of conditioning your brain to associate injecting stuff with pleasure.
 
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Yeah, the difference in BA is relatively massive.

I don?t think there is a consensus as to why, but the effects wear off much quicker when iv?d. Of course, it will hit you much quicker than SL or up the nose.

If you do not use other opies, the presence of naloxone is irrelevant. If you use other opiates, a few people say the naloxone will make a difference. It does not in my experience.

Bupe strongly displaces naloxone.
 
HoldBack said:
Yeah, the difference in BA is relatively massive.

I don?t think there is a consensus as to why, but the effects wear off much quicker when iv?d. Of course, it will hit you much quicker than SL or up the nose.

.
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Thank you so much for your response! You have just touched on what I’m so confused about. What do you mean by hit? To me that conjures a significant difference in feeling. I just feel nothing. At 8 mg in an injection shouldn’t there be a noticeable boost? If not, this is the essence of my question, why inject it at all? Are they doing it strictly because of the strong BA difference?
 
Hydroluv said:
Thank you so much for your response! You have just touched on what I’m so confused about. What do you mean by hit? To me that conjures a significant difference in feeling. I just feel nothing. At 8 mg in an injection shouldn’t there be a noticeable boost? If not, this is the essence of my question, why inject it at all? Are they doing it strictly because of the strong BA difference?
Click to expand...

"Hit"? Basically, how fast the effects come on.

What is your daily dose of bupe?

As I said, buprenorphine is a partial agonist, and as such has a "ceiling", where even major increases in dosage barely increase the intensity of the felt effects.
Buprenorphine has an oral bioavailability of ~30%, so IV'ing it more than triples what you can get into your system. But if 8mg of buprenorphine is your normal (sublingual) dose, you're already pretty close to the effects ceiling. So even if, by IV'ing, you're essentially turning those 8 mg into the equivalent of ~25 mg, it's not going to matter much, because 25 mg of buprenorphine doesn't feel much stronger than 8.

Also, buprenorphine has a very long half-life. If you take 8 mg of buprenorphine on a daily basis, you'll have so much bupe left over in your system that even the massive amount of buprenorphine you're getting into the bloodstream all at once isn't going to make much of a difference because the buprenorphine that's still left over from your last dose is enough to keep your opioid receptors activated as strongly as it gets with bupe.

On the other hand, the situation is different for someone who's getting a low dose of subutex, where there's still plenty of unoccupied receptors for the bupe to bind to. Here, the dose-response curve is still somewhat linear, so iv'ing 2 mg's of buprenorphine to effectively triple the bioavailability is going to make a significant difference in felt effect.
 
there's no good reason imo. people inject to get the most out of their drug (bioavailability) or to get the rush. no real rush from suboxone and the drug already works well sublingual and because of that i think the risk of physical damage outweighs the pros of iving it
 
HoldBack said:
Yeah, the difference in BA is relatively massive.

I don?t think there is a consensus as to why, but the effects wear off much quicker when iv?d. Of course, it will hit you much quicker than SL or up the nose.

If you do not use other opies, the presence of naloxone is irrelevant. If you use other opiates, a few people say the naloxone will make a difference. It does not in my experience.

Bupe strongly displaces naloxone.
Click to expand...
("BA?") Sorry, I don't recognize that one.....?
 
In my experience people inject bupe (in any form, the naloxone in suboxone doesn't affect the shot at all) for two main reasons

1 ) It's because they have either no opiate or low opiate tolerance and they get a significant rush/high from the shot

2 ) Simply as an addiction to needles thing; just the compulsion to inject and they don't actually get anything special out of it.


For most people with a tolerance and/or that are on a bupe-program, they won't actually catch a buzz regardless of ROA. There are exceptions, just like some people still get a "nice glow" from methadone after years on the program.
 
I injected Buperenorphine for high BA, rush (not a H rush but still there) and the high. People say that they don't get a rush or high but I got them both. Never shot Suboxone though so I can't make a comparison.
 
I injected suboxone one time - I guess I still had H on my receptors because right after the shot the hair stood up on the back of my neck and all I could think was "Oh crap I really messed up." Then I got the worst withdrawal symptoms I have ever had in my life. It lasted all day until I got some dope. Stupidly I was at work when I did it, had to fake a stomach virus and go home. That was the stupidest thing I ever injected in my life. I was doing it for high BA and because I was a junkie and thought I would get more out of it.
 
g0to said:
I would inject bupe because I was buying it off the street as a self prescribed opiate maintenence after getting off of heroin. Where I am, without insurance it costs more money to get it through a dr than it does on the street. So I was broke and would buy strips from the street, and the best way to make a strip last longer was to IV. In hindsight it was dumb because I jacked up my tolerance and increased and extended my withdrawals overall as many times I would consume alcohol and other sedatives alongside it to increase the small effect I would get from injecting the strips and I would compulsively inject doses of around ~1mg throughout the day. Eventually kicked a meth habit, 3200mg gabapentin a day and 2-4mg bupe IV by going cold turkey and then started drinking every day because of the relentless anxiety and agoraphobia and paranoia. Glad to be sober now but I am fiending very strongly every day unless I occupy my time with something productive. Took about 6 months to start feeling normal again (the paws symptoms would come back in waves and it was very frustrating) and a year to be able to start rebuilding again.
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Good for you mate! I'm so glad to hear people dealing with it and succeeding, I've heard so many bad stories it's nice to hear some that don't end badly (I've even lived that "bad" situation myself. The success stories here are a credit to the quality information, that is shared! There is no telling how many lives have been saved by that! (This place has helped me a LOT too!) Knowledge is power, power to "prevent" (it's almost as good as magic, like it never happened)
 
Man if you read the sticky thread,

Harm Reduction - ⫸CASE STUDIES - It could happen to YOU!⫷

I'm going to start posting these "case studies" so everyone can see that what BL preaches is not urban myth. So if it drives the message home even thru heurism availability then it's still serving it's purpose. I'll start with this one, then will consolidate everything into a sticky sometime...
www.bluelight.org www.bluelight.org

you'll see every reason not to shoot bupe.

Sorry for the long link, the linking feature doesn't work on the phone idk why.
 
Hydroluv said:
Thank you so much for your response! You have just touched on what I’m so confused about. What do you mean by hit? To me that conjures a significant difference in feeling. I just feel nothing. At 8 mg in an injection shouldn’t there be a noticeable boost? If not, this is the essence of my question, why inject it at all? Are they doing it strictly because of the strong BA difference?
Click to expand...

By hit I meant a rush or perceptible rapid change in how you are feeling.

Maintenance drugs (bupe/methadone) are used as maintenance drugs because they lack the ability to produce a rush, regardless of roa, if taken as prescribed (ie daily).

If you are not dependent on an opi and Iv’d bupe, you’d get strong effects rapidly that you may or may not consider a rush.

Typically people iv bupe because 1) they are addicted to the needle in addition to drugs, 2) the dose needed is significantly smaller, and 3) the onset is quicker.

Bupe has an unusual dose-response curve. Increasing the dose does not do much to increase the effects once you are past 2-8 mg (depending on your body, roa, and tolerance).
 
I IVd bupe for years. Was originally put on suboxone but out of nowhere was switched to subutex due to an error from the pharmacy (but I wasnt complaining, until they found out about the error and put me back on suboxone though. No significant difference between them IMO). The BA of Subutex subligually is ~30%, whereas IV is 100%. It is a substantial difference. This is why I IVd it. I could save my bupe for bad days and continue to do H.
With IV, the effects also come on much quicker but do not produce any real rush. Instead of waiting 15-30min to feel relief from WD I get well in about 4-5min. There is no real difference from 2mg Iv- 8mg+IV. Effects seem to completely top out at around the 4mg mark.
Stupid decision to IV it though. I would mix my bupe with diphenhydramine on order to obtain some semblance of a rush. The nasty orange taste in the back of your thoat is almost as bad as holding it in your mouth. The solution gets gooey if not injected right away as well. Bupe injections and DPH injections OBLITERATED my veins. Not worth it to IV it unless you have a micron filter. Better to save your veins than to save your drugs.
 
Mr.Deeds said:
I IVd bupe for years. Was originally put on suboxone but out of nowhere was switched to subutex due to an error from the pharmacy (but I wasnt complaining, until they found out about the error and put me back on suboxone though. No significant difference between them IMO). The BA of Subutex subligually is ~30%, whereas IV is 100%. It is a substantial difference. This is why I IVd it. I could save my bupe for bad days and continue to do H.
With IV, the effects also come on much quicker but do not produce any real rush. Instead of waiting 15-30min to feel relief from WD I get well in about 4-5min. There is no real difference from 2mg Iv- 8mg+IV. Effects seem to completely top out at around the 4mg mark.
Stupid decision to IV it though. I would mix my bupe with diphenhydramine on order to obtain some semblance of a rush. The nasty orange taste in the back of your thoat is almost as bad as holding it in your mouth. The solution gets gooey if not injected right away as well. Bupe injections and DPH injections OBLITERATED my veins. Not worth it to IV it unless you have a micron filter. Better to save your veins than to save your drugs.
Click to expand...
I order my microns on amazon for 10 bucks and it turned the solution completely clear I've been doing them iv for 4 months but my veins are still good. I would say the high is still pretty strong I do about 3mg 2x a day
 
I shot my Suboxone once. ...once.
About 15 years ago, I was on 8mg sublingual a day. Junkies gonna be junkies and I thought maybe I'd get high if I IV'd it. I got cold chills and then I got sick and just generally felt unwell the rest of the day. It also wore off much quicker so I had to ill until my next dose. 0/10. Do not recommend. (I don't have any experience with buprenorphine besides in the Suboxone form, so idk if it makes a difference, not having the naloxone in it.)
 
To you guys talking about the ceiling effect:

I know it's there, but its mostly for bupe's good effects like euphoria and so on. When I was a daily user for years, I still got a real buzz from injecting my 3 x 8 mg buprenorphine rather than taking it in my mouth. The effect gets stronger, even if it's a partial agonist. Abilify is a patial agonist on D2, but that doesn't mean the effect doesn't increase when you increase from 5 to 30 mg, even though most of your D2-receptors are already occupied on 5 mg.
 
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