Bupe Suboxone/Buprenorphine FAQ & Megathread v3; 2010 - 2022

[caseface99]

Yeah, i find that doctors are more concerned with relapse than getting you down in a timely manner. I currently have total control over my taper because my doctor gave me a plan that was far to fast, and i told him so. So now he gives me enough at my current dose for the month and lets me taper at my leisure, rather than giving me enough for what he wants me to get down to.



Also, does anyone else experience withdrawal for a good few hours of the day even after taking the same dose for a month? I took 1mg daily for a month and still wasn't feeling normal all day, and i have been at .5mgs for almost a month and its the same thing. Still experience withdrawal for like 4-5 hours a day at least. And i also feel like my dose doesn't kick in until i've either slept or i've done some kind of physical activity. Like, today i took it right before i went rock climbing. When i got home i felt normal. Other days, i will take it, and wont really feel normal until i wake up the next morning.

 

[OEandricearoni]

Yeah, i find that doctors are more concerned with relapse than getting you down in a timely manner. I currently have total control over my taper because my doctor gave me a plan that was far to fast, and i told him so. So now he gives me enough at my current dose for the month and lets me taper at my leisure, rather than giving me enough for what he wants me to get down to.



Also, does anyone else experience withdrawal for a good few hours of the day even after taking the same dose for a month? I took 1mg daily for a month and still wasn't feeling normal all day, and i have been at .5mgs for almost a month and its the same thing. Still experience withdrawal for like 4-5 hours a day at least. And i also feel like my dose doesn't kick in until i've either slept or i've done some kind of physical activity. Like, today i took it right before i went rock climbing. When i got home i felt normal. Other days, i will take it, and wont really feel normal until i wake up the next morning.

For some reason, i have always gone into sub WD's like 12 hours after my last dose. This didn't start until i had been on it for a long time. I remember when i used to do H when i took sub it would generally hold me for 2 days but for some reason that isn't the case anymore

 

[Been&Done]

Everyone who is not facing his doctor and honest with him, please do so as it's for your own benefit. They are paid to make us feel better and find our sweet spot. Not meaning a reckless one who will get you hooked on something of course, but more of responsible decision you both agree on. My old doc, the Subutex and I form a team, and i think that him knowing from me that i don't intend to live on the stuff all my life, made him trust my judgment and basically does what what he is around for....Get paid to make me feel better and healthier, as simple as that!
Why not the doc allowing the weed?! That's strange my friend, not into that school of thinking! One joint or 1 drink will make you shoot heroine again! NO IT WON'T! Well, at least not me To each his own. Goof luck with the doc, be honest but not too honest and no details!

 

[caseface99]

Same, i used to have to wait 2-3 days before i could get high off of dope and i wouldn't withdraw during that time, but i was on between 8-12 mgs.

I have been on sub for 19 months now, but id still expect a month to be plenty of time at a specific dose to stabilize. It just isn't. I feel like i could take .5 for 6 months and wouldn't stabilize. after a week it stops getting better and i just level out at a certain amount of daily withdrawal.

 

[*=Regulator=*]

This is a somewhat unrelated question but I didn't want to start a new thread for a quick question. Since I've detoxed from Sub completely about 4 weeks ago, I've been taking ~20-25mg of Lope daily. I'm pretty backed up and figure I'm well overdue to stop taking it.

My question is - can I just stop taking it altogether or should I do some sort of taper? If I stop altogether tomorrow, will there be any discomfort?

 

[JamtasticX]

Everyone who is not facing his doctor and honest with him, please do so as it's for your own benefit. They are paid to make us feel better and find our sweet spot. Not meaning a reckless one who will get you hooked on something of course, but more of responsible decision you both agree on. My old doc, the Subutex and I form a team, and i think that him knowing from me that i don't intend to live on the stuff all my life, made him trust my judgment and basically does what what he is around for....Get paid to make me feel better and healthier, as simple as that!
Why not the doc allowing the weed?! That's strange my friend, not into that school of thinking! One joint or 1 drink will make you shoot heroine again! NO IT WON'T! Well, at least not me To each his own. Goof luck with the doc, be honest but not too honest and no details!

Thats a nice world you're living in, too bad it doesn't exist.

Unfortunately not all sub Dr's are "legit".

When you're studying to be a Dr you specialise in an area of medicine, but lets say your not making enough money, you know who makes good money....drug dealers. Drug dealers have to worry about the cops, you have a script pad. So you get approved to script suboxone and you "steal" the customers from the heroin dealers, get them hooked to your drug, and charge them for as long and as much as possible.

If you have customers who don't like the deal, too bad, there's other people who will want to "product".

My Dr. prefers me to sit, shut up, and be on my way. He also is constantly subliminally saying stuff to trip me up, he would like me to relapse!

He told me today that when people get hurt, he will write to another Dr, or prescibe pain meds himself, and stop your suboxone. He said there's no need to be in pain, just take opiates, and its unfortunate but "well just have to start from the beginning again".

Then there's the corruption that goes on at my particular Dr, however, I talk to much as it is, need to keep a good thing steady.


<snip> -please keep it on topic. this isn't sports and gaming :D -C2tL

 

[Cane2theLeft]

^wait, your doctor will be willing to treat the pain of patients in pain? THE UNCONSCIONABLE MOTHERFUCKER!

Try talking to people on suboxone in actual pain or who undergo painful procedures and are denied adequate relief; I'm sure they'll CERTAINLY agree that your doctor's willingness to treat pain is evidence of corruption!

Your pontification about sub doctors lacking scruples and stealing customers from heroin dealers is simply ludicrous. A sub doctor can only treat about 30 patients with suboxone and doesn't even get paid for the drugs himself... so its like a heroin dealer with SEVERELY limited clientele who only gets paid a finders fee and doesn't actually sell the drugs himself. I'm sure that heroin dealer is rolling in fat stacks struggling to find a way to launder all that cash!

Doctors who want to just make money don't go into suboxone prescribing, they go into plastic surgery (which drastically lacks oversight and regulation, you don't even need additional training or specialization to perform most cosmetic procedures) or they go straight shady and run pill mills in Broward County and the like.

 

[catcalls]

Y'know, I met my Subutex Doctor ONCE in four years (in 2011) of treatment. All the other times I see a 'drug worker' who is the intermediary between Subutex Doctor and myself.

I'd def. shit one if I had to see an actual Doctor for my script? Why? Because they are sooo full of pomp here in the UK! They are the high and mighty DOCTOR'S and we are the lowly patients! It's sooo true that is the way here in the UK. :/

 

[Cane2theLeft]

^oh, I'd never deny that! I'd be shocked to meet a single doctor who ever was willing to admit that their fecal matter didn't emit a rose-like scent that's naturally pleasant to all fortunate enough to sample it.

 

[HdoubleODeezy]

^ lol.

 

[speedballs_over]

bupe patient limit

^wait, your doctor will be willing to treat the pain of patients in pain? THE UNCONSCIONABLE MOTHERFUCKER!

Try talking to people on suboxone in actual pain or who undergo painful procedures and are denied adequate relief; I'm sure they'll CERTAINLY agree that your doctor's willingness to treat pain is evidence of corruption!

Your pontification about sub doctors lacking scruples and stealing customers from heroin dealers is simply ludicrous. A sub doctor can only treat about 30 patients with suboxone and doesn't even get paid for the drugs himself... so its like a heroin dealer with SEVERELY limited clientele who only gets paid a finders fee and doesn't actually sell the drugs himself. I'm sure that heroin dealer is rolling in fat stacks struggling to find a way to launder all that cash!

Doctors who want to just make money don't go into suboxone prescribing, they go into plastic surgery (which drastically lacks oversight and regulation, you don't even need additional training or specialization to perform most cosmetic procedures) or they go straight shady and run pill mills in Broward County and the like.

Actually the patient limit for suboxone/subutex practitioners was raised in the US from 30 to 100 in late 2006. http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/42/1/4.1.full

 

[Cane2theLeft]

^well that certainly affects a lot of what I said!

Thank you you for correcting me, I appreciate it. I wonder if the number of prescribing physicians has gone up substantially since this law was changed.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

I'm in my 4th day of sub wds and I'm ready to give up. I have work and school and I'm not motivated to do anything because i feel like shit. I want to just go back to my old doctor and get a new prescription and just stay on it until i have some time off. The problem is technically i was supposed to quit like a month ago. I felt pretty forced into it....i told my doctor i didn't want to stop taking it yet, but she insisted that I would have little, if any withdrawal symptoms. Well, this wasn't the case, and i gave up after about 4 or 5 days of the wd's and started getting 8mg sub pills from my friend to get by with. He can't give me anymore at this point, and I have a feeling if I go back to my doctor she is going to pretty much say "screw you, tough it out" I have no idea what to do. I would try a new doctor but it would be really expensive and i really cant afford it right now. This sucks, I'm thinking of trying to call my doctor tommarow but i don't know what to say to her, and regardless she will be pissed off. She is actually the 2nd doctor i went to, i dropped my first one because he made me take a drug test every appointment and charged 60$ for them and the doctor i switched to never even charged me for them (and when she did, they were only 10 dollars) I could go back to him, but I don't know what he would say because i kind of just stopped going to him and switched doctors. I have no idea what to do and I have finals coming up for school, and I doubt I'm going to do very good if I'm in suboxone W/D's for the next week or two...
Sorry for the huge post lol

Just get a new doctor, since you should know when to quit better than anyone else. Doctors get really presumptuous and think they know everything about everyone, but that just simply isn't the case.

Good luck!

This is a somewhat unrelated question but I didn't want to start a new thread for a quick question. Since I've detoxed from Sub completely about 4 weeks ago, I've been taking ~20-25mg of Lope daily. I'm pretty backed up and figure I'm well overdue to stop taking it.

My question is - can I just stop taking it altogether or should I do some sort of taper? If I stop altogether tomorrow, will there be any discomfort?

You can taper, or not, I have no experience with it.

Just find something else to help relieve constipation. There are many options out there.

 

[OEandricearoni]

A new doc is definitely my plan b if all else fails. Hopefully i can come up with a decent story on the phone today so my current doc will help me out. At least i pray that's the case because it will be WAY cheaper. She's a psychiatrist who is certified to prescribe suboxone....honestly i don't think she has a whole lot of experience treating addicts, or at least it doesn't seem like it. She got certified to treat addicts, but I'm pretty damn sure that's not what she primarily does. She's stiff as a board, you cant even converse with the woman. I'm actually frightened to call her right now because last time i called her for an emergency appointment she gave me a good tongue lashing lol.

 

[SubDude]

When I call for my doc with an immediate med problem... the nurse tells me to go to the ER. Thats how the VA works and will probably be the SOP for all govt health care when it kicks in completely.

 

[Cane2theLeft]

^not to needlessly derail this too far... but isn't the ER designed to be where medical problems requiring immediate attention are addressed?

I have usually had a rather shitty HMO and it takes forever to get into my PCP so I just always thought that problems that can wait are taken to her (or him) and problems requiring immediate attention should be taken to either the ER or urgent care clinic (which, if the medical problem is sever enough, will just direct you to the ER).

 

[ErikTheRed]

Sorry if this has been asked before but does anyone know the rough conversion of 1mg suboxone into mg's of oxycodone or morphine?

 

[Jabberwocky]

Well, for some reason or another, I am on day three of moving from 1mg/2x daily (2mg total), to 0.5mg/2x with little fanfare.

I though I felt a little withdrawal yesterday, such as increased yawning, multiple BM, wider pupils, but today it feels like even that is gone. I expect the third day to be the worst based on the fact of that day usually being worst on a higher dose cold turkey approach.

I plan to continue to cut my doses in half until it feels nasty for too long, or I just want to go back up. You see, I'm not really planning on withdrawing right now, I just want to play around with that idea and test the waters.

Since I started opioid abuse 3.5 years ago, I never went through a withdrawal period, save for maybe one night that sticks out where I was getting the kicks with not taking usual oxycodone (~60mg/day). Plus, 3.5 years ago in my area saw an abundance of illicit Suboxone pills on the street, which I always had access too.

After I got off the oxy/heroin and went to Suboxone, I was only 6 months into heavier abuse (I say heavier only in that I used codeine pills with 12.5mg codeine and 200mg ibuprofen for 6 months prior to when the oxy habit picked up). I've been leveled off at a buprenorphine dose of about 1.5mg/2x daily for 3 years (3mg total daily), the vast majority of my time with buprenorphine in BMT.

When I got switched back to Suboxone from Subutex (the majority of my time), this time on the newly-developed 'film strips' of course, I cut back to 1mg/2x daily (2mg a day) strictly due to ease of cutting "halves" of the strips with scissors vs more complicated shapes. --- For instance, if you cut the new 8mg strips 4 times, you get 8 close-to-perfect squares of 1mg each pieces ---

Then I decided, why not try 0.5mg/2x daily. And now it's day three. Basically, as I'm only playing with the physical/mental concept, etc, I will not hesitate to raise dose back up.

Leveled on 1mg/2x daily (2mg total):

Day 1-7: 0.5mg/2x daily
Next Day 1-7: 0.25mg/2x daily
Next Day 1-7: 0.125mg/2x daily
Next Day 1-7: 0.063mg/2x daily
Done.

This dose I'm at now (0.5mg/2x daily) - day three - will be the last dose I plug. I figure that while theoretically the BA of rectal buprenorphine is slightly higher than sublingual, sublingual dosing yields a more consistent outcome.

Not to be cocky, but I thought I'd definitely be feeling worse withdrawal from going from 1mg/2x daily, to 0.5mg/2x daily here in day three. Maybe my next drop will be more eventful -- to 0.25mg/2x daily... Dunno...

 

[SubDude]

I dosed once a day SL during my taper and didn't really feel significant WD's until I went from .50mg to .25mg. It took about 4-5 days for me to really feel it.

 

[Jabberwocky]

The reason I'm doing twice daily is because I figure when the doses get smaller and smaller yet, 2x daily will yield more consistent blood levels of the drug throughout the 24hours. Also, I have always dosed 2x daily, so it feels more behaviorally unchanged.

But yea, I know there has got to be a withdrawal, I'm curious at what dose I start to really feel it like that, like you're saying.