Bupe Does the ROA of suboxone affect the half life?

[cbus2lbc]

My friend has been clean from heroin for about 2.5 months. He used suboxone sublingually to get through the WDs. After he got through the withdrawals he began IVing his suboxone (about 2mgs) every morning (as a safety blanket so he wouldnt/couldnt get high). After those 2.5 months he started weaning off the subs and took his last dose on Friday morning (about .5-1mg). He noticed about 6-7 hours after a dose he starts to feel sick. Based on that observation he thinks the half life is much shorter than taking them sublingually. It is now sunday afternoon and he has to go to work tomorrow. His girlfriend has been giving him tramadols and somas for WD symptoms, which have been helping.. . From what hes read people dont start WDing from subs until about 2-3 days because of the long half life. Since he is worried about WDs hitting him at work he wanted to know if the ROA of subs changes the length of the half-life or not?

BTW Im new to this site so I apologize if this was posted in the wrong place. Thanks.

 

[recyclethepandas]

first of all you really shouldn't IV suboxone, if you couldn't tell by the rapper and by what your doctor told you, it has 2mg of naloxone in it so that you don't IV it. of course buprenorphine has a much higher affinity than naloxone, but the naloxone will certainly bind to some of your receptors, causing antagonism WHILE the buprenorphine agonizes other receptors. it's a pretty muddy high for that reason. anyway, regardless of the route of administration, suboxone is extremely lipophilic and is not easily displaced from receptors. for those reasons, no matter what way you do it, it has a half life of at least 12 hours. however the time it takes for suboxone to move from your tongue to your brain is highly variable. if you press it down against your veins it will hit you more quickly. if you coat the bottom of your tongue in oil first (and theoretically alcohol would work too) it will also hit you more quickly. i have used oil many times, not sure about alcohol. this is obviously because lipids cross membranes rapidly and suboxone is soluble in lipids. so the oil carries it directly into your veins and directly through your blood brain barrier. injecting suboxone will still hit you much faster than this method and since it hits you just about all at once, the half life will be slightly shorter. but your friend is wrong about the 6-7 hour thing... suboxone, regardless of how you take it, will mostly stay bound to your receptors for MUCH longer than 6 hours. we're talking like 36 hours.... the idea that it could unbind in quantities substantial enough to produce withdrawal in 6 hours is completely wrong. clinically, and in my experience, suboxone takes at least 48 hours before withdrawal symptoms even begin to occur. most users can go a full day without suboxone without experiencing any dope sickness. 2 days for me. the 3rd day is when you start to feel sick, and the 5th to the 7th days are the worst. ive shot up subutex many times and it affected me considerably for at least 12 hours every time. the only difference would be the naloxone in suboxone, but i think if that were the reason your friend got sick, he would have gotten sick immediately. naloxone's half life is like an hour, so it should be totally metabolized within a couple hours. your friend is probably imagining it. it is possible that your friend is noticing a decrease in the plasma levels, since shooting up buprenorphine produces an immediate rush, and it kinda plateaus for a bit and then slowly drops over the course of a day. you'll usually wake up the next day feeling normal (not high, but not sick), but in fact there is still plenty of buprenorphine bound to your receptors and you just don't notice it.

edit: im pretty confident in my answer too, being a former user of opiates and suboxone myself, and being a biochemistry/molecular biology major with pharmacology minor. im on my way to being a "drug scientist" so i'm pretty confident with what i typed.

 

[thugpassion]

In my experiance with subutex it does deffinetily seem/feel like the half life of buprenorphine is less when IV'd. I dont know if its just the craving to use a needle but I really feel that when Iv'd the durration is shorter than when taken sub lingual. This has been asked here before and there where a few other people that I cant remember their names who had noticed the same thing.

 

[albatross]

I for one have not IV'd suboxone. But many people on this board do choose to IV their Suboxone daily and those people seem to dose 2-3x a day because of shortened duration of effects due to Iv administration. Normally withdrawals for me kick in about 3 days after last dose.

 

[thesameoldfears]

recyclethepandas....I've never heard that about oil helping with sublingual absorption. I have heard that alcohol helps, and ime it does quite a bit. I'll have to try the oil thing, that might be more convenient.

 

[Megalum]

Do you have a link that mentions durations or half life staying the same regardless of ROA? I notice my subs wear off at least slightly faster via IV, and I can be withdrawing in a little over 24 hours. I've been curious on this, as it seems contradictory. (Im also a biochem major :D)

 

[cbus2lbc]

Thanks for the replies everyone. The 6-7 hour thing was referring to every day at work while he was weaning from 2mg to 1 - .5mg that he would start to feel sick. So he came to the conclusion that the half life was shorter from IVing them.. He just wanted to know if anyone had any facts/links to back it up.

 

[xxxyyy]

i've IVd suboxone plenty of times and while the naloxone does diminish the rush a bit compared to subutex, you still get high off of it. should one mainline suboxone? the answer, as with pretty much every other pill, is no unless micron filtered. however i've read somewhere (sorry can't remember the source) that sublingual tablets are especially harmful to inject, because all the harmful fillers dissolve more readily and are harder to filter out.

 

[Slum Survivor]

there shouldnt be ANY difference between shooting subutex and suboxone. ive done both and they didnt effect me differently. maybe just me. idk

yes the bupe will wear off much faster IV. that hold u over effect that usually lasts a couple days with the subL route only lasts about 18 hours tops with IV use.

i presonally believe there is no point in IV subs unless you are desperate to make it stretch further by using less at a time. only problem is u gotta re-dose more often, so it still may not be an advantage.

 

[ThaDudeAbides]

Oral ROA of 8mg keeps me floaty for 2-3 days.

 

[cjh1221]

The shortened half-life referred to in the medical studies and medication handouts (mean 2.2 hours) refers to doses under 2 mg., mostly doses in the mcg. range. This is different because there is not enough bupe in that small of a dose to fully saturate the receptors like there is in doses above the mcg. range. In doses greater than 1-2 mg., the half life remains the same whether it's 2 mg. or 16 mgs. There is enough bupe in doses that high to fully saturate the receptor sites and block opiates from being able to bind. Plus, when discussing Suboxone as opposed to Subutex, there is also the factor of Naloxone to consider on top of the Bupe.
So, to sum it up, in doses above 2 mgs., regardless of ROA, the half-life remains the same....approx. 37 hours. That means if one dosed 2 mg, no matter ROA, the amount of bupe/Naloxone still active in the body 37 hours later would be 1mg. Bupe/.5 mgs. of Naloxone. Remember, that is REGARDLESS of ROA.
I'm sorry to come off sounding condescending but I have seen this question so many times and have YET to see anyone answer it correctly. I'm also sorry for reviving an old thread but in the interest of harm reduction, I felt it was necessary for anyone else who came across this thread to have the correct information instead of just shooting bag after bag and having the H not work, a waste of money, but also possibly overdose from the respiratory depressant qualities of the drugs while trying to achieve the high they are looking for. Save your dope man, it's a waste of money to even bother until at least the 24 hour mark. 36 is better but I have seen someone catch a good rush after only 18 hours. Even then it took a higher dose than normal.
Your mileage may vary slightly, but only VERY slightly. Please be safe and play smart.