Regarding obtaining "euphoric effects" from low dose suboxone, are you referring to strips, tablets, suboxone or buprenorphine without naloxone in it? I may have been able to know had I read back far enough into the thread, but I haven't. Sorry. All I can say is that I'm taking about 16mg subs daily and don't feel a thing. I actually am starting to feel dysphoric and nauseated. I take the suboxone strips cause my dumb doctor thinks it's better to presribe that than bupe alone even though he well knows I'm not an IV user. Anyhow, the batch I've got this time around seems to have that "speckled" dotted appearance to it that was discussed here a while back on a closed thread. The date is well within the expiration limits and there doesn't seem to be any damage to the packaging but ALL the strips so far have had the speckled appearance to them which I'll probably post pics of. The only time I ever had a good feeling from taking subs was when experiencing w/d from oxy and then another time from hydros. I am feeling soooooooooo shitty nowadays but feel even worse when I don't take them and hope I can find a solution. Thanks. BTW I use these SLinlgually.
Hey there,
I unfortunately don't have the time to read Tommyboys response to your question so I apologize in advance if I come across as redundant.
First off, in my post I was referring to
Suboxone-
(Buprenorphine + Naloxone, tablets AND strips), though I have used
Subutex-
(Buprenorphine) as well in the past. FYI, there is really no difference at all between the two, except for the fact that Suboxone is orange and doesn't come in generic form, the whole addition of Naloxone is a scare tactic as well as a ploy used to keep a monopoly on the drug, since buprenorphine attaches harder and faster than Naloxone does, meaning you
CAN inject, sniff, plug, etc..with Suboxone without going into precipitated withdrawal.
Moving forwards, at 16mg/day you are almost certainly not going to get any appreciable effects from your dosage as it is. Buprenorphine is a
Partial Agonist and has a ceiling effect. This means that while Suboxone
is a potent opiate, it's narcotic effects will only increase with additional dosing to a certain point, and then the effects plateau. If you continue to take more buprenorphine (suboxone or Subutex), you won't feel anything and all you're achieving is an accumulation of buprenorphine in your blood stream, which will keep withdrawals at bay for longer.
If you want to start feeling any stimulation and mood lift from Suboxone/buprenorphine, you really need to taper. Luckily, its pretty easy to jump down from 16mg to 4mg in a small amount of time.
As I mentioned before, buprenorphine has a ceiling effect at a certain dosage, which is somewhere between 4-8mg IME. Once you stabilize at a dose above the ceiling dosage, you will likely not feel much from your suboxone, aside from the negative side effects some report. In order to begin to feel buprenorphines Opiate effects, you must lower your tolerance and stabilize at a dose either at or below the ceiling.
I said before that dropping from 16mg to 4mg is almost always a walk in the park, and here's why. Assuming the ceiling dose (the dose at which maximum Mu receptor agonism is reached) is 4mg, every dose
above 4mg is more or less the same, the only difference being that it will stick around in your system longer. In order for someone to begin to experience opiate withdrawal from suboxone/buprenorphine, the amount of Bupe in their system has to dip below the ceiling point, because its only at that point that there are receptors which are not being (partially) occupied. Perhaps this graph I made can illustrate things better:
This shitty photo shows a graph illustrating dosages above and below the ceiling, assuming the ceiling dose is 4mg (though the actual ceiling dose varies from person to person it seems). It should be noted that this graph shows only an acute dose of 32 mg, a person on a chronic dose of 32mg would actually have around 88mg or so accumulated in their body from the buildup of half lives (Based on the numbers shown in this graph), which would obviously allow the person to stay above the ceiling dose for multiple days. This is why people on high doses of suboxone can often painlessly skip at least 2 days without feeling sick.
