I've been on bupe since 10 months now. No, regular opiates are not suspected of causing any brain damage. Bupe is a weird one though, there is nothing else like it for the public to consume. A partial agonist that sticks to opi receptors stronger than ANYTHING, well, almost, I was told by the doctors at the clinic a couple times that if I hurt myself real bad I would have to be given fentanyl pops because patches are not strong enough to kick the bupe out of the mu receptors (no idea about other receptors, i think bupe has an antagonist effect on Kappa receptors?, correct me if wrong). But I can feel it being a worse beast than methadone. I'm actually going back on methadone next time I meet a doctor at the ORT clinic, hopefully one of those I saw more often than those I did not (it's annoying to have random doctors). The only male one is the best one at the clinic and he told me that yes, he didn't want me to be on bupe for more than 2 years, I had to switch due to methadone side effects (testosterone deficiency), but now that I take testosterone shots by myself every 2 weeks and take anti-estrogens, I'll go back on methadone. At least the thing has been researched since decades. I was just unfortunate. I feel that taking bupe for maintenance is an error and should not be done for more than 3 months (the actual recommendations of the manufacturer), there is literature out there about bupe maybe causing irreversible damage to the natural endorphins/enkephalin systems/receptors. How bad is it? No one knows yet, but something that sticks so hard like crazy glue to your opi receptors, it is basically an experiment on us poor ex junkies, but I imagine that after so long of being unable to have any natural endorphins stick to them, something not so good might be going on long term. Full agonists like methadone are understood to cause this, but they don't totally block out other opiates ( highest dose of methadone I got to is 60mg, maybe ridiculous doses of 100mg+ I have seen people discuss being on here do block em all, but when I attempted to get high with IV Dilaudid 36 hours later at about 44-46mg of methadone a day, I could pull it off, it wasn't as intense but I did get dat rush.
3 days after no suboxone I tried up to 20mg of hydromorph IV, I scored a shitload of 4mg brand name dillies and just couldn't say no, because of the price being so low, I practically wasted them all and could hear junkies all over the world cry about it (lol), all it would do is give me absolutely no rush, which is what dillies are all about, then I would sorta get high, but no euphoria, it would dissipate quickly. The time I slammed 20mg I mostly experienced respiratory depression which was scary as shit, used my inhaler like mad, and I rarely ever need it these days. And that's 3 days of waiting! I want to get off it as soon as possible, I don't want to not be able to experience the real opiate high anymore, may it be recreationally or medicinally, imagine getting in a severe car accident and all they can do is put you in a controlled fentanyl coma because no amount of morphine / dilaudid / x opiate shots would do anything....