Hey!
Just a sort of hypothetical question that came up in conversation speaking to a friend who while likely chemically dependent due to taking the prescibed co-codamol for several years, has no history or issues of addiction. She has a lot of pain at the moment due to an injury, and we were mentioning how I take subutex (16mg/day as 8mg tabs, though I have a few 2mg sitting around in a stash) and that the mu-agonist properties of this medication are potent to those who are opiate naive or on very low doses, and while we're not stupid enough to just offer her a small crumb of a 2mg tab, we were wondering about the precipitated withdrawal effect.
So she takes 30/500 Co-codamol 4 times a day (and has done for some time), and Tramadol 50mg 2/3 times a day for her chronic pain. I've seen her go without her medications a few times for a day or so, and didn't notice any particular withdrawal other than a flaring of the pain which she experiences and takes the medications to help .
If she were to hypothetically take a very small amount of a spare buprenorphine I had (2mg, split into 1/4s or 1/8ths), so 0.5mg, or 0.125mg titrating to what was tolerable for her tolerance, would it in that case provide helpful analgesia, or precipitated withdrawal?
Disclaimer that I'm quite clued up about the medication in most regards (enough to not give an opiate naive person some, or someone with tolerance and large quantities of a full agonist in their system, for the risks of OD/Unpleasant effets or Precipitated withdrawal respectively)
Do you think someone on such a small amount of opiate dependency, would experience the effects of precipitated withdrawal, considering the potency of buprenorphine's analgesic effects at those doses compared to codeine in someone with a relatively low opioid tolerance?
Edit, N,B,: I just had a "duuh" moment realising that codeine is a prodrug for morphine, and even at that doses, the shunting off the receptors could very potentially cause P.W. I guess to keep the theme given realisation of my moment of idiocy. Has anyone got experience of someone doing this sort of thing? Thing is, I have a friend who regularly abuses opiates, though perhaps isn't entirely dependent (and has of late been taking regular codeine) and when he takes a small amount of sub, he gets pretty fucked up and there's no PW. So I guess, anyone got any stories on this>
Just a sort of hypothetical question that came up in conversation speaking to a friend who while likely chemically dependent due to taking the prescibed co-codamol for several years, has no history or issues of addiction. She has a lot of pain at the moment due to an injury, and we were mentioning how I take subutex (16mg/day as 8mg tabs, though I have a few 2mg sitting around in a stash) and that the mu-agonist properties of this medication are potent to those who are opiate naive or on very low doses, and while we're not stupid enough to just offer her a small crumb of a 2mg tab, we were wondering about the precipitated withdrawal effect.
So she takes 30/500 Co-codamol 4 times a day (and has done for some time), and Tramadol 50mg 2/3 times a day for her chronic pain. I've seen her go without her medications a few times for a day or so, and didn't notice any particular withdrawal other than a flaring of the pain which she experiences and takes the medications to help .
If she were to hypothetically take a very small amount of a spare buprenorphine I had (2mg, split into 1/4s or 1/8ths), so 0.5mg, or 0.125mg titrating to what was tolerable for her tolerance, would it in that case provide helpful analgesia, or precipitated withdrawal?
Disclaimer that I'm quite clued up about the medication in most regards (enough to not give an opiate naive person some, or someone with tolerance and large quantities of a full agonist in their system, for the risks of OD/Unpleasant effets or Precipitated withdrawal respectively)
Do you think someone on such a small amount of opiate dependency, would experience the effects of precipitated withdrawal, considering the potency of buprenorphine's analgesic effects at those doses compared to codeine in someone with a relatively low opioid tolerance?
Edit, N,B,: I just had a "duuh" moment realising that codeine is a prodrug for morphine, and even at that doses, the shunting off the receptors could very potentially cause P.W. I guess to keep the theme given realisation of my moment of idiocy. Has anyone got experience of someone doing this sort of thing? Thing is, I have a friend who regularly abuses opiates, though perhaps isn't entirely dependent (and has of late been taking regular codeine) and when he takes a small amount of sub, he gets pretty fucked up and there's no PW. So I guess, anyone got any stories on this>
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