Many people end up on Suboxone or methadone maintenance forever, sadly. Many doctors are perfectly happy with this - it's more money for them and more money for the pharmaceutical companies if you never get off it. A lot of doctors think being on opioid maintenance forever is the treatment for addiction. But of course it also would suck to have a doctor that forces you to taper when you don't want to. Anyway, the health care system is so fucked up, that's a whole separate issue.
The longer you take it, the harder it is to get off, so bear that in mind.
The good thing about maintenance is that it can provide stability in your life so that you can work on your mental addiction to opioids and all the reasons you use in the first place. But you have to put in the effort. If you haven't already, I strongly recommend you take this time to do so. If you don't do that, it is very hard to taper or quit successfully. Think about the fact that you don't really feel anything from the Suboxone other than it relieving your withdrawals - so what's the point of it? A mental crutch? Are you just taking it out of fear of withdrawals? Fear that without it you will go back to heroin? There are things you can do to work on those fears. If you think what's the hurry, I'll get off the Subs later, remember that the longer you wait, the worse the withdrawals you will experience will be. Waiting is not going to make it any easier from that perspective.
Now, withdrawals are a legit concern, because if you are unprepared, any hint of withdrawals can drive your addicted brain to rationalize running out to get some heroin or whatever your opioid of choice was. But don't give the thought of withdrawals too much power - if you work on the reasons behind your drug use, and learn how to cope mentally with withdrawals and cravings, without feeling like you "have" to do something to immediately stop them, then you can succeed.
But you do really have to be ready and want to taper/quit yourself, pressure from others is not a good enough reason to quit Suboxone. However, if you are on 8mg, then the early part of your taper should be relatively painless, so why not start tapering down slowly now so you are at least taking a lower dose? You don't really have anything to lose, you could always try reducing your dose a little bit and if it's too hard you can just raise your dose back to where it was. Plus you really have no idea how hard tapering or quitting will be until you try it. Some people find they are able to taper off relatively painlessly, there's no point in not even trying just because you are terrified you will be one of the people for whom it is really bad. There are also lots of things you can do and take to make any withdrawals more bearable. But I think the most important thing to work on is the psychological stuff. Mental addiction, mental health issues and psychological withdrawals/PAWS are why so many people who were able to quit, get through the acute WDs, still go back to using opioids again.
Personally, if I knew then what I knew now I would definitely not have stayed on methadone maintenance for so long. I stayed on it for 10 years thinking I would quit "later", not realizing how much harder that would be and how worse it would be for my mental and physical health.
