Can anyone tell me a way I can achieve a "high" again from suboxone? I am currently prescribed to 16 mgs a day, but I never take that much. Obviously I have a tolerance, but there has to be a way? I would try rectally but I dont have an oral syringe. Please help guys.
I can.
But, Here's the deal, buprenorphine is a partial agonist, it has a ceiling effect, meaning that it stimulates opiate receptors just like heroin or oxy, but at a certain dosage it plateaus, and increased dosing will not result in increased opiate effect. Buprenorphine also has a long ass half life, 36-37 hours (though this is also dependent on your metabolism, and certain medications and foods can speed up metabolism or slow it down, such as phenobarbital or benadryl). Now let's assume that the point where the buprenorphine plateaus is at 24mg (which btw, it most likely is not, it seems most people find that past 4-6mg the only thing taking more suboxone does is keep the drug in your system longer). You're taking 16mg so taking 8 more milligrams should result in increased opiate effects, right? Well, it won't, because once you have your daily dose stabilized in your body, it stacks up.
For example, say you took your sixteen milligrams today, then waited 36-37 hours to dose again, you'd still have 8mg of the previous dose in your system, so the total amount of buprenorphine accumulated in your system is probably closer to 20-24mg.
You can get a little bit of that glow back, actually, you can get the glow back completely (I don't know about full blown euphoria like some people got when they first started subs cause their tolerance was low), but you're not going to get it back by raising your dose or plugging your dose (which is essentially the same thing as it has an increased absorption rate relative to sublingual). What you want to do is taper yourself down to 4mg or less. It's been my experience (which I have a lot of, as I've done nothing with my life but try to figure out ways I can get myself as high as possible with what resources I have), that at 4mg, once adjusted, your dose is low enough that enough bupe leaves your system every 12 hours or better yet, 24 hours (but I"ve always had trouble dosing once a day, so i split my dose in half, 4mg would be 2mg am, and 2mg evening), that you'll start to get that mood lift, and mild stimulation effect.
The lower you taper yourself, it seems, the more pronounced this effect is, because theirs a huge drop in drug concentration blood levels when you're at a dose that's under that ceiling point. It's kind of like with heroin, you will feel a shot way more when you're really kicking hard because your body is in a deficit. With buprenorphine, this is unfortunately only possible at low dosages because the half life is so long that at 16mg, you could probably go close to 48 hours without experiencing much withdrawal if any.
Some people also have a theory, that the reason why people feel low dosages of buprenorphine more is because their is now open receptor space for buprenorphines metabolite (norbuprenorphine-which is a full agonist) to attach. I don't really think that's the cause of 'less is more' personally, but I'm no scientist. It just seems more likely that it has to do with the dose response curve.
Also, some people get confused when they see people writing 'less is more'! and throwing it out there without further explanation. This does not mean that at your current dose, taking 2mg is going to give you a buzz. You have to taper down and adjust to a low dose. What I would do in your situation is the following:
-If you're a person that handles withdrawals well and can tough through them, don't take your dose for 2 or 3 days. After not dosing for 2-3 days your tolerance will lower to the point where 4mg will hold you. You'll probably even feel buzzed from it, and if you do, remember, do not take more, because that's just going to ruin it for the future.
-If you can't handle withdrawals well, or the psychological craving to take 'SOMETHING' even if its buprenorphine, don't skip your dose, just drop from 16mg to 8mg, and stay on that for 3 days, then lower it to 6mg for another three days, and then 4mg, at which point, if you want to taper down further, you will probably want to wait about 2 weeks to completely rid yourself of your higher dosages half lives and make sure you are stabilized at 4mg. After that point, you can go down to 3 mg, wait a week, then go down to 2mg.
From 2mg down i've come to realize that personally I need to wait at least two weeks before tapering any further. At this point your below the ceiling limit, probably even when taking the built up half lives into account (either way your close at 2mg). It get's increasingly harder to taper below this dose, so you gotta go slow, expect some fuckups and forgive yourself for them. Usually It takes me 3 days to start feeling my decreased dose again, after which point it gets increasingly more apparent every day. The nice thing about being at a dose like 1mg or less, is that when you're having a bad day you can double up on your dose, get a nice little boost, without completely ruining your tolerance and everything you've worked for. I usually plug my dose when I do this because it has a smoother effect (sometimes sublingual seems kind of dirty and TOO stimulating). If you switch your ROA up, always consider what the equivalent dose would be taken SL.
Also, the 'high' from suboxone is not like that of heroin or morphine or methadone. Someone on this thread recently compared it to oxycodone meets adderall, which I think is pretty accurate, though it's like the 'light' version of adderall combined with oxycodone. I rarely ever nod from bupe, it's much more the stimulant in terms of psychoactive effects (much like other synthetic thebaine derivatives, oxy, hydrocodone). Their is a 'lift' but I've never achieved on maintenance full blown euphoria. I think that being a partial agonist, buprenorphines effects just feel a little hollow to me, like I got the body buzz of an opiate without the CNS activity. It's just a shallow kind of effect, don't know how else to describe it, except to say it feels (IMO) comparable to low dose methadone maintenance (30-40mg range or under). At higher dosages methadone mimics heroin and morphine much more though.
And the shit started getting out of hand, and this time I realized before it was too late and I was back in orange, and behind bars, or even worse Dead ... 
