THECATINTHEHAT
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2005
- Messages
- 8,180
I'm just about to start on this medication after spending the last nine months relapsing and trying and failing to get clean. I've noticed that there's very little information out there about this medication, certainly there's very anecdotal evidence or information on Bluelight so I'm going to chronicle my experience with it and try and lay out some of the important information people might want to know if they are considering this medication.
Buvidal is a sustained release sub-cutaneous injection of buprenorphine aimed primarily at opioid maintenance patients. It is available in either weekly or monthly preparations, with the weekly coming in 8mg, 16mg, 24mg and 32mg strengths and the monthly coming in 32mg, 64mg, 96mg and 128mg strengths. This denotes the TOTAL amount of buprenorphine in the injection, NOT the daily dose. It may appear as if these doses are low as it's not uncommon for someone to be on 24mg of sublingual tablets, but this disparity is because the bioavailability of injected buprenorphine is going to be 100% whereas sublingual comes in around 30%. So for instance if we look at the person on 24mg a day we can reasonably assume that they are actually consuming 30% of that 24mg, which is 7.2mg. If they were to move on to the 32mg weekly injection they would be getting 6.3mg a day. There's much discussion about the ceiling dosage (the point at which taking more drug has no more incremental effect) of sublingual buprenorphine, some people being dosed as high as 32mg a day but generally it's thought there is little further effect after 24mg.
So looking at those numbers it seems like if you are on a very high dose of sublingual buprenorphine then it's questionable whether the highest dosing of Buvidal will cover your habit entirely. That's pure conjecture though, it may be research showed a 32mg weekly injection was reaching that ceiling dose. We'll have to wait for people's experiences to see how that goes, certainly doing the basic maths it seems to be delivering the same ballpark of substance at max dosage as sublingual does at max dosage.
So a little about me and my personal situation......I've been struggling with opioid addiction for about 13 years, I had five years clean but relapsed about a year ago and have been dependant again for about six months. I've used a wide variety of opiates in this last run including dihydrocodeine, tramadol, morphine (oral and IV), buprenorphine (oral, sublingual and iv), methadone and heroin (iv). My habit has yo-yoed from being pretty tiny, getting by on 1mg of sublingual buprenorphine, up to where it was recently using about half a gram of iv heroin a day. I've been switched on to sublingual buprenorphine the last couple of days before having the Buvidal injection, and the switch was fucking rough for some reason. I've jumped between bupe and full agonists quite a lot without much problem, but even though I left about 14 hours from last using this time, the 10mg suboxone i was scripted on day 1 just put me in to precipitated withdrawal. I tried to mute it by IVing a bag of heroin which helped a tiny bit but of course was mainly blocked by the bupe. This was a pretty dumb thing to do and on day two I had 16mg suboxone and it was bearable (I was scripted for 12mg, I added half of the 8mg I was given to take on the morning before the injection). Today is day three and I've had 12mg suboxone, I don't feel too bad but definitely not 'OK', I'm probably going to eat the other half of the 8mg I was given for tomorrow morning before the injection and just ride it out tomorrow morning until I get the jab.
So tomorrow will be day four back on buprenorphine and I believe I'm going to be given the 16mg weekly injection as a kick off before moving to the monthly at a later date. I wasn't even aware of this treatment before visiting this clinic though so I didn't press them on details at the time. I think they jab me with the weekly and see how I go for a few hours and then jab again if it's not enough, but I'm not really sure. I'll document exactly how the process goes here and how I find it personally, if other people have had experience with this medication please post it up in this thread and hopefully we can get a resource going that will help people know what to expect with this medication, and whether it's right for them.
So I'm just going to take my last 4mg of suboxone now and when I go in to get the jab tomorrow I'll explain that the 12mg I was scripted for yesterday and today definitely wasn't enough. I've never experienced this problem moving to bupe before even when leaving way less time before the switch so it's a little unusual for me, the only thing I can think is that the dose just wasn't high enough.
So here it is, the big Buvidal thread, get posting kiddies!
Buvidal is a sustained release sub-cutaneous injection of buprenorphine aimed primarily at opioid maintenance patients. It is available in either weekly or monthly preparations, with the weekly coming in 8mg, 16mg, 24mg and 32mg strengths and the monthly coming in 32mg, 64mg, 96mg and 128mg strengths. This denotes the TOTAL amount of buprenorphine in the injection, NOT the daily dose. It may appear as if these doses are low as it's not uncommon for someone to be on 24mg of sublingual tablets, but this disparity is because the bioavailability of injected buprenorphine is going to be 100% whereas sublingual comes in around 30%. So for instance if we look at the person on 24mg a day we can reasonably assume that they are actually consuming 30% of that 24mg, which is 7.2mg. If they were to move on to the 32mg weekly injection they would be getting 6.3mg a day. There's much discussion about the ceiling dosage (the point at which taking more drug has no more incremental effect) of sublingual buprenorphine, some people being dosed as high as 32mg a day but generally it's thought there is little further effect after 24mg.
So looking at those numbers it seems like if you are on a very high dose of sublingual buprenorphine then it's questionable whether the highest dosing of Buvidal will cover your habit entirely. That's pure conjecture though, it may be research showed a 32mg weekly injection was reaching that ceiling dose. We'll have to wait for people's experiences to see how that goes, certainly doing the basic maths it seems to be delivering the same ballpark of substance at max dosage as sublingual does at max dosage.
So a little about me and my personal situation......I've been struggling with opioid addiction for about 13 years, I had five years clean but relapsed about a year ago and have been dependant again for about six months. I've used a wide variety of opiates in this last run including dihydrocodeine, tramadol, morphine (oral and IV), buprenorphine (oral, sublingual and iv), methadone and heroin (iv). My habit has yo-yoed from being pretty tiny, getting by on 1mg of sublingual buprenorphine, up to where it was recently using about half a gram of iv heroin a day. I've been switched on to sublingual buprenorphine the last couple of days before having the Buvidal injection, and the switch was fucking rough for some reason. I've jumped between bupe and full agonists quite a lot without much problem, but even though I left about 14 hours from last using this time, the 10mg suboxone i was scripted on day 1 just put me in to precipitated withdrawal. I tried to mute it by IVing a bag of heroin which helped a tiny bit but of course was mainly blocked by the bupe. This was a pretty dumb thing to do and on day two I had 16mg suboxone and it was bearable (I was scripted for 12mg, I added half of the 8mg I was given to take on the morning before the injection). Today is day three and I've had 12mg suboxone, I don't feel too bad but definitely not 'OK', I'm probably going to eat the other half of the 8mg I was given for tomorrow morning before the injection and just ride it out tomorrow morning until I get the jab.
So tomorrow will be day four back on buprenorphine and I believe I'm going to be given the 16mg weekly injection as a kick off before moving to the monthly at a later date. I wasn't even aware of this treatment before visiting this clinic though so I didn't press them on details at the time. I think they jab me with the weekly and see how I go for a few hours and then jab again if it's not enough, but I'm not really sure. I'll document exactly how the process goes here and how I find it personally, if other people have had experience with this medication please post it up in this thread and hopefully we can get a resource going that will help people know what to expect with this medication, and whether it's right for them.
So I'm just going to take my last 4mg of suboxone now and when I go in to get the jab tomorrow I'll explain that the 12mg I was scripted for yesterday and today definitely wasn't enough. I've never experienced this problem moving to bupe before even when leaving way less time before the switch so it's a little unusual for me, the only thing I can think is that the dose just wasn't high enough.
So here it is, the big Buvidal thread, get posting kiddies!