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

[IndustrialStrength]

^^ Thanks for the good luck wishes.
It really does help connecting with others in the same situation.
Sadly enough pretty much all my friends use opiates & most IV.
Often times I'm the one ending up helping them acquire them & the like so often times my place becomes the shooting gallery.
Hell even when I don't help em out, they often come by to do shit as it's a safe comfortable place to do so, but it sucks for me.
It's so much harder to abstain when your helping friends prep & do the drugs that you desperately want to do.
Sadly enough that's just how it goes I guess.
I could ditch all my friends but I've done that to many times, I'd hate to do it again.
I may have to though just because of the stress it puts on me.
Sadly enough I'm a sucker for having a lot of compassion for others & end up doing what I can to help sick friends.
Ends up ruining my day but at least I help them.

I've found with opiates there's just an over abundance of catch 22's to deal with.
Haven't quite found a way to get around them & I doubt there is really an easy way to do so.

 

[SkagKush]

sustained at 1mg everyday at work again......weird how my body adjusted......took awhile, but thats life....

(month)

and catch 22's are a bitch mang........i feel you there

 

[Been&Done]

Man......^^^^ I feel you 7

"Decided to do a shot of vodka (yuck) not sure why" is SO me these past 3 months of sobriety (Subutexed) It's that i find myself so sober, compared to 10 years of Smack! And to top it all, i hate the taste of alcohol and i also haven't been feeling these shots! Wine is ok with dinner, but that's it for me. Weed seems to keep me balanced because it has always been in my life.
Gf wants to take some E's together tomorrow. I can do that as it's been 2 years, but i think as always, i will need to come down later I believe that since i decided what would my drug of choice be, it became obvious that doing any other drug requires having it around first!
Anyways, will see what will happen. Happy New Year everyone

 

[funkee]

I wanted to share with you guys the importance of "tapering up".

It's very important to do because of the recently discovered and locally synthesized antagonists called beta-arrestins.

A sudden increase of buprenorphine causes this antagonist to silence your receptors, thereby increasing your tolerance. Whether these effects are permanent, semi-permanent, long or short acting has yet to be seen.

The reason this is important is because bupe has a ceiling dose. Unlike other drugs, of which you can take more if you develop tolerance, bupe is limited in the 30-40mg range.

And for those of you who use bupe for the euphoria, be warned: you are developing tolerance to perhaps the only cure for opiate dependence. Pushing that tolerance too high may render it a lot less helpful, once it loses its magic and you find yourself using full agonists.

Some more info on arrestins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrestin

 

[catcalls]

Well, I totally agree with 'funkee'. I've always noticed a tolerance build up of opiates. Any drug for that matter. It's common sense. Take a foreign substance into your body for a prolonged period of time, and the body will build an immunity to it.

Also, as for the Euphoric effects, ever heard of 'receptor burn out'?

That is where, I learned in psychology, that the pleasure receptor of the brain gets totally destroyed by drugs such as weed and heroin. This leads to a 'crash' when the user is no longer able to get 'happy'. Depression soon follows. That is why people say there are 'highs' and 'lows' associated with drug use and/or abuse.

 

[aaaaa8]

So I started subutex 3 days ago. Now I know im not ready to quit opiates but im sick of that lifestyle and wanted to not have to wonder how and where I was gonna get my next fix.

So I snorted 4mg the first day and felt gooooood, snorted 4mg yesterday and fd but not as good as 1st day obviously. But I just snorted 4mg again and im feeelin nice.

I heard that with bupe u can't really take more to get high even at low doses? I obviously wanna keep my doses low. Like it looks like 4mg is gonna stabalize me and give me that buzz I was lookin for, if I stopped getting buzzed could I occasionally bump it up an mg or 2 and still get a nice high/buzz? I don't wanna keep chasing a high with sub cause I know that's a dangerous path but ig would be nice to be able to get that extra bump when my cravings are going crazy.

 

[catcalls]

So I started subutex 3 days ago. Now I know im not ready to quit opiates but im sick of that lifestyle and wanted to not have to wonder how and where I was gonna get my next fix.

So I snorted 4mg the first day and felt gooooood, snorted 4mg yesterday and fd but not as good as 1st day obviously. But I just snorted 4mg again and im feeelin nice.

I heard that with bupe u can't really take more to get high even at low doses? I obviously wanna keep my doses low. Like it looks like 4mg is gonna stabalize me and give me that buzz I was lookin for, if I stopped getting buzzed could I occasionally bump it up an mg or 2 and still get a nice high/buzz? I don't wanna keep chasing a high with sub cause I know that's a dangerous path but ig would be nice to be able to get that extra bump when my cravings are going crazy.

I'm def. not one to judge a person, but you have to ask yourself, are you taking Subutex to quit heroin and 'that lifestyle' or are you just replacing one addiction with another?

 

[aaaaa8]

^ yah that's what I was talking about...

I know im not ready to quit so instead of my addiction costing me hundres of dollars a day it cost me 10 bucks a month....yeah my insurance kicks ass.


And now I don't have to worry about the legal aspect of it. But I do want tgo quit eventually and im hoping the sub will help the transition.

 

[Been&Done]

Everyone is sleeping or what!

Took 2 mg yesterday morning and by midnight i took another 0.5, and BAM!!! A fucking annoying headache, Suboxone causes me occasional headaches as i have mentioned before, and i switched after 3 months of Subutex, because of my douche bag doc wrote Suboxone by mistake!! Slept ok but woke with a sweaty T-shirt (Didn't happen with Subutex)
I really cant wait till i'm back to the Subutex, and not sure if it 4 months are enough to cure all these years. Will figure it out soon of course.

 

[bben]

is it possible to OD on just
suboxone?

I have been off awhile and am about to take 2mg's of it.

 

[SubDude]

is it possible to OD on just
suboxone?

I have been off awhile and am about to take 2mg's of it.

Never heard of anyone OD on subs by itself.

 

[bben]

Never heard of anyone OD on subs by itself.

ok, anyone know for sure? what about high doses?

 

[jnicolas1980]

Does anyone ever feel sluggish? I'm trying to get situated on a low dose and hopefully taper off before too long, but I sometimes get this weird drugged-out feeling like when I use to take a high dose of antidepressants. Dosage: I took 1 mg 3x on Sunday and Monday, 1 mg 2x on Tuesday, 1 mg 3x Wednesday, 1 mg Thursday morning and .5 mg Thursday evening, and .5 mg this morning. Last week I was on oxies, starting the week at around seven or eight 30mg pills a day and ending with two 30mg pills on Thursday and two more on Friday before switching to subs.

This isn't the first time I switched to subs, but the last time I never had this weird sluggish feeling. I had a lot of energy before, and I'm guessing it's because I was coming off a milder oxy habit (150 mg a day max, with almost two days in between my last oxy and first sub).

I hope this makes sense 'cause I'm not sure exactly what I should be doing with my dosing. (Doc thinks I'm on some unnecessarily high amount). I almost missed work last week, and I really can't afford that to happen.

 

[IndustrialStrength]

ok, anyone know for sure? what about high doses?

I can't give you a "for sure" answer.
But I believe it is relatively hard to OD on bupeprenorphine alone.

For example a friend of mine with 0 opiate tolerance as in never had taken opiates was given a 8mg tablet.
Luckily he didn't know any better & swallowed it orally.
So the BA was low.
Regardless he got sick as hell for 3 days, throwing up, bed ridden, etc.
He at no point exhibited overly large amounts of respiratory depression.
The lack of severe respiratory depression gives me an impression of a good safety margin.

However, if you are mixing other substances as well then that all goes out the window so be careful.
Though that is just anecdotal info I figured I'd give you some sort of feedback.

Now I'll post how I'm doing below but seeing as my post's are quite verbacious as I've stated previously I'll just go ahead & NSFW it.
I know I asked if it was necessary & no one has said they minded my posts but just in case I'll NSFW it for now in case others don't want to see my walls of text.
I wouldn't want to bother anyone or clutter the thread.
So my maintenance & mental support posting follows.

NSFW:

As for myself I did .6mg of Suboxone for my morning dose.
Well for me morning is usually 2-3pm but meh.
Still haven't decided if I want to do any full agonists but it's looking less likely as time passes.
The later it gets the less likely I am to acquire enough to make it worthwhile.
With the supplies I have it just doesn't seem worth fucking my taper to do what I have access to.

On the other hand hopefully getting some M-Amp for the night.
I have a lil I can do but would like more.
I've noticed since getting on Sub I've developed a much greater love for M-Amp.
Prior to then I wasn't really a big amp fan.
Well I was years ago but hadn't really enjoyed them in years.

If all goes well I can keep the night to a mix of sub, m-amp & benzos.
I'm hoping that's enough to keep me satisfied.
As I usually would prefer to mix opiates + benzo's with my amp's to keep the edge off.
Hopefully the benzo's + sub will do the ticket.
As amp's + benzo's can sometimes be a little lacking for me without opiate's as well.

I did a little test last night to see if it would work & it seemed to be ok if I did say .125 - .25mg of sub every couple hours.
That is I smoked a lil M-Amp + some valium & temazepam + bumps of sub as stated above.
I felt pretty good overall & was able to crash later in the night with a night ending dose of temazepam.
I'm hoping I can have as much success tonight as I did last night just with higher doses.

Maybe I will break down & do some full agonists (preferably IV a half bun or something) but I'm hoping I can avoid the temptation.
Though it's New Years so I've somewhat rationalized that it would be ok to do for one day.
I just can't get over the risks of IV without a micron filter though so hopefully that convinces me otherwise.
It just doesn't seem worth breaking the taper though unless I IV though as otherwise it's just to expensive to get high.
Ugh with the catch 22's again.

Regardless I'm hoping that the night works out well & I enjoy it.
I don't really consider any drugs besides opiates as anything I need to worry about so there all open to consideration.
Sadly enough though it's opiates that I really want to do.
Mixing up a nice speedball would be great!
I've yet to try an IV speedball.
I've combined coke/meth with heroin or other strong opiates before but never IV.
Though again I don't think I could convince myself to IV meth as it's relatively caustic & just seems dirty.
Though considering the amount of cut left behind after cotton filtering the dope around here I doubt it's any more dirty...
But regardless of if I decide to get high I probably will just smoke the amp's rather than IV as it just seems more risky than IV dope.
Perhaps I'm just biased or un-informed though as dope is cut to hell & likely just as dangerous.
In this case I'm probably just being ignorant & biased but for some reason I've always thought of meth as caustic & dirty.
But as I stated I'm sure dope is just as dirty with all the cuts.
Hell I've watched friends IV cocoa powder, cinnamon, dirt, etc. when they were sold bunk shit so dope can definitely be pretty bad.

Ok now back to a sub question.
I've read through most of these threads but not sure I found a good answer to this.
If you have bupe built up in your system from using it everyday & you use a full agonist are you less likely to get PWD when switching back to bupe?
From personal experience & from the experiences of friends it seems like you can switch back to bupe in a shorter time period than if you didn't have it built up.
Can anyone confirm or deny this?
After my PWD experience I'm a lot more leery of switching back to soon if I do end up doing a full agonist.
I thought the COWS scale would be enough to tell but clearly after my last experience that I posted about it wasn't.
Though all sign's point to that experience being an un-explainable paradox I'd like to avoid it happening again.

Anyways I'll stop rambling & egress for now.

Happy New Years to all!
I hope everyone has a great holiday & enjoys themselves thoroughly.
Be sure to party safe to those out there who are partying / consuming substances this evening.

So to sum it all up Happy New Years & most importantly be SAFE.

 

[funkee]

@IndustrialStrength: Timing it can be risky. I wouldn't dare play around with precipitated withdrawals. If you've ever experienced it, you would be overly cautious.

Everyone's bodies are different. The rate at which the bupe is metabolized depends on a lot of factors. I guess your theory is if you still have bupe in your system, you can avoid the worst pwd. But you'll still be forcing the agonist off your receptors. Whether there is some bupe on some of the receptor sites, or bupe in your blood-proteins is a gamble.

Buprenorphine becomes 96% plasma bound after a few hours. And only the unbound portion crosses the BBB. What is created in your blood is a matrix of buprenorphine and proteins, from where bupe is slowly released. I believe that is the current theory regarding it's long duration and drawn out w/ds. If you take 8mg+ daily, and have been doing so for some time, it's a good bet that you will have bupe being released 4, 5, or more days after your last dose. As time goes on, less and less is released and remains bound. But I can't say exactly for how long.

The best rule of thumb is to wait until you are w/ding to take bupe. If you've ever experienced precipitated wd, you will be scared shitless (a pun!) to take it too early.

What's interesting is that although bupe's affinity is so high, there are cases of trauma in sub patients, where a carefully titrated fentanyl dose can break through. Similar to breaking through methadone, but much more risky.

 

[funkee]

ok, anyone know for sure? what about high doses?

Non-lethal overdoses happen all the time. There are other antagonists beside nalaxone, some of which have a stronger affinity than buprenorphine. They are rarely used, however and are seldom on hand for a buprenorphine overdose.

Nalorphine
Levallorphan
Cyprodime
Naltrindole
and others

The big danger is CNS depression, and the risk increases when one depressant is mixed with another.

Opiate naive individuals definitely face an overdose risk. Despite bupe's diminishing returns with increasing dosage, a seemingly inane dose (especially if IV'ed) can kill.

Deaths:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TDD-47F6B4B-2&_user=10&_coverDate=10%2F31%2F2002&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1593376752&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f7e5186a9c0f908af4df3cc321d4c4e5&searchtype=a
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/285/1/45.full
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S00099122002003041

About respiratory depression:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/adis/txr/2006/00000025/00000002/art00002

Bupe tolerant individuals are much less likely to die. However, tolerance to bupe is caused by a locally synthesized antagonist called beta-arrestin; and it does not equate to tolerance of other opiates.

So I started subutex 3 days ago. Now I know im not ready to quit opiates but im sick of that lifestyle and wanted to not have to wonder how and where I was gonna get my next fix.

So I snorted 4mg the first day and felt gooooood, snorted 4mg yesterday and fd but not as good as 1st day obviously. But I just snorted 4mg again and im feeelin nice.

I heard that with bupe u can't really take more to get high even at low doses? I obviously wanna keep my doses low. Like it looks like 4mg is gonna stabalize me and give me that buzz I was lookin for, if I stopped getting buzzed could I occasionally bump it up an mg or 2 and still get a nice high/buzz? I don't wanna keep chasing a high with sub cause I know that's a dangerous path but ig would be nice to be able to get that extra bump when my cravings are going crazy.

Bupe is going to lose it's magic very, very quickly. You can only keep increasing your dose for so long. Bupe has diminishing returns as you increase the dose. That means the difference in effect between 22 and 24mg is much, much less than the difference between 2 and 4mg. You will quickly hit the ceiling dose (around 32mg) if you keep chasing the high this way. Developing a high tolerance to bupe is going to make it much harder to taper and quit, and make it nearly impossible to resume treatment if you were to relapse.

Take it from me, I take 32mg a day and it doesn't do squat. Most of the time I have chills and feel like shit. I felt good when I increased my dose, and I sought more of it. I used it as a crutch and switched back and forth. But when I finally got clean, I was at the ceiling. If I were to take more than 32mg, nothing would happen. This medicine isn't cheap. If you want to get high, use dope. If you want to get clean, make a plan and don't dick around.

If the dose you're at doesn't stop your cravings, you may need to go up to a higher dose. That's fine, try 8mg... that's where many of us start at. But once you find that place that holds you, you need to continue taking it at that level. The euphoria you get now is going to go away. You are going to have find other ways of getting pleasure.

PS. The main reason we all quit was because living a life worrying about money and your next fix was not a life worth living.

 

[need some help]

Well, I totally agree with 'funkee'. I've always noticed a tolerance build up of opiates. Any drug for that matter. It's common sense. Take a foreign substance into your body for a prolonged period of time, and the body will build an immunity to it.

Also, as for the Euphoric effects, ever heard of 'receptor burn out'?

That is where, I learned in psychology, that the pleasure receptor of the brain gets totally destroyed by drugs such as weed and heroin. This leads to a 'crash' when the user is no longer able to get 'happy'. Depression soon follows. That is why people say there are 'highs' and 'lows' associated with drug use and/or abuse.

Thats about where i'm at right now. i've been off ops for 1 month, but i'm having a really hard time enjoying anything. Don't get me wrong, i'm thankful that i'm not sick anymore, and that i can function, it's just tough getting pleasure anywhere else. i hope it's passing, i understand that i put myself in the situation and there may be a quick fix as far as w/d go, but i'm going to have to pay a price elsewhere. i guess there's no way of knowing when the "old self" returns, or if i'd even recognize her if she did... When i don't have to tell my little girl i can't do something today because i'm not feeling well, again, it's the little bit of progress i need to see in order to push through. i just CANT fuck up again.

 

[catcalls]

Thats about where i'm at right now. i've been off ops for 1 month, but i'm having a really hard time enjoying anything. Don't get me wrong, i'm thankful that i'm not sick anymore, and that i can function, it's just tough getting pleasure anywhere else. i hope it's passing, i understand that i put myself in the situation and there may be a quick fix as far as w/d go, but i'm going to have to pay a price elsewhere. i guess there's no way of knowing when the "old self" returns, or if i'd even recognize her if she did... When i don't have to tell my little girl i can't do something today because i'm not feeling well, again, it's the little bit of progress i need to see in order to push through. i just CANT fuck up again.

Hey, the brain repairs itself. Soon enough, you'll catch a buzz off a cigarette, or a cup of nice tea or coffee. Even cola.

Some days, now that I've been heroin free for 4 years, and on Subutex the same amount of time, I get 'high' from a well cooked meal!

It just a different kind of buzz. It's not vomiting my guts up fucked out my brains kind of high, but more contentment in life.

Hang in there, buddy, and you'll get back to normal within one year of abstinence. Just give it time.

If after a year, you remain depressed, you might have discovered the real reason you used drugs. That you were suffering from clinical depression all along! So, either way, things will work out just fine for you if you stay off the opiods.

 

[jamesBrown]

Hey, the brain repairs itself. Soon enough, you'll catch a buzz off a cigarette, or a cup of nice tea or coffee. Even cola.

Some days, now that I've been heroin free for 4 years, and on Subutex the same amount of time, I get 'high' from a well cooked meal!

It just a different kind of buzz. It's not vomiting my guts up fucked out my brains kind of high, but more contentment in life.

Hang in there, buddy, and you'll get back to normal within one year of abstinence. Just give it time.

If after a year, you remain depressed, you might have discovered the real reason you used drugs. That you were suffering from clinical depression all along! So, either way, things will work out just fine for you if you stay off the opiods.

good post

i know exactly what you mean about getting high off of all different sorts of stimuli. suprisingly ALOT of people have a hard time understanding/believing that.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

Smoking cigarettes is not a good thing to catch "a buzz" off of, guys.