• Select Your Topic Then Scroll Down
    Alcohol Bupe Benzos
    Cocaine Heroin Opioids
    RCs Stimulants Misc
    Harm Reduction All Topics Gabapentinoids
    Tired of your habit? Struggling to cope?
    Want to regain control or get sober?
    Visit our Recovery Support Forums

Bupe Subs get me so high?

I remember my first 2mg strip knocked my socks off. When I ended up on subs years later for maintenance I had to pull over and have a little nap in the back of my car coz I was nodding so hard when they bumped me up to 12mg, then when I told them that at the clinic they didn't believe me and said 'no one gets high off this stuff!' Seems like some people respond to it a bit differently, some get quite a buzz and others just get maintained. Personally I love the buzz, I still have some 8mg strips hanging around even though I'm clean now and far too afraid of going through that all again to touch them lol
 
Tolerance to opioids 40-60 mg daily.

Uhhh... 40-60 mg of *what*? Morphine? Street heroin? Codeine? Fentanyl? Carfentanyl?

But yes, buprenorphine is a partial agonist with an extremely high binding affinity for Mu opioid receptors. That means that for people with little tolerance, it can produce an intense high simply because of the sheer number of opioid receptors it can occupy, even though its "partial agonist" nature keeps it from activating those receptors as effectively as a full agonist like morphine. At low doses, bupe can therefore be up to 40 times as potent as morphine.

The thing about partial agonists, however, is that you'll soon hit a "ceiling" where an increase in dosage confers less and less of an increase in effects. After all, you only have so many opioid receptors, so once they're all occupied, the effect can't get any stronger. Thus, the difference between 1 and 2 mg's of bupe is greater than that between 8 and 16 mg.

This is also why people who are already heavily addicted to opioids initially experience withdrawal symptoms when switching to buprenorphine, because the level of opioid receptor activation they require to avoid getting sick is far higher than the maximum level of receptor activation that buprenorphine can provide, so when the bupe suddenly displaces the full-agonist drugs already in their system, it is almost like they're getting narcan'd.
 
Hodor,you still out there?

Or anyone,please:

A brief history here of my drug use/chronic pain first,OK?
240 mg. M.S. Contin and 40mg. Hydro 12+ years. Reduced now over time to 30+Mg M.S. Contin with Kratom several times a day for last few months.
Been feeling like crap pain-wise over two years. Kratom or morphine stops any withdrawals easily of course. Some days I took no morphine at all-just Kratom.

Anyway,today I started the Buprenorphine 10mcg. 7day patch. Just about 45 minutes ago,actually. I'm still hoping for something positive. Less pain,a buzz,any damn thing. I understand this will probably take the above routine out of the picture,right? Not sure at all about this,but I am hoping against hope.
 
Up date...No good-!-the stuff gives me a headache and made my back pain worse. Back to the doc' tomorrow early. What a waste of time.
 
Man,it looks like 15 and 20mcg.'s are the limit now-?-with the new 100mg. morphine equivalency regulations the party is over for anyone who isn't in/near hospice.
 
I remember my first 2mg strip knocked my socks off. When I ended up on subs years later for maintenance I had to pull over and have a little nap in the back of my car coz I was nodding so hard when they bumped me up to 12mg, then when I told them that at the clinic they didn't believe me and said 'no one gets high off this stuff!' Seems like some people respond to it a bit differently, some get quite a buzz and others just get maintained. Personally I love the buzz, I still have some 8mg strips hanging around even though I'm clean now and far too afraid of going through that all again to touch them lol
does Sub/bupe work for pain at all folks? i have been curious about this if anyone can answer this question for me, thanks.
 
Man,it looks like 15 and 20mcg.'s are the limit now-?-with the new 100mg. morphine equivalency regulations the party is over for anyone who isn't in/near hospice.
are you in canada? (as of 2016 it had been brought down to 90mg eq. of morphine, and they stick to the guideline so damn much where i'd be screwed if i didn't have such a good doctor that infact knew what he was prescribing and had faith to trust me with higher doses, god bless the few physicians willing to put faith into their patients, not once was i ever even remotely dishonest with my doctor, and i knew that being honest would never end up resulting in a negative fashion, but i'm certain it likely would with a new doctor that doesn't know me so well, if anyone goes to church, pray for me so that i don't implode in march of 2020.
 
Did you type that correctly? 10 micrograms? Not surprised that didn't do much... has to be a typo.

It's ten micrograms *per hour*.

Keep in mind that bupe's oral/sublingual bioavailability is shit, and transdermal application may greatly increase the effective dose you're absorbing.

From my cursory Google search, 10 mcg/h is apparently the recommended initial strength when switching patients who are taking less than 80 mg of oral morphine per day.
 
Hodor thanks for clarifying that.
USA here,and things have gotten really bad. They are making invalids out of guys like me-it just doesn't make sense. For the sake of a couple pills I could lead a near normal life-run my business,play with the grandkids,hump my wife.
 
Hodor thanks for clarifying that.
USA here,and things have gotten really bad. They are making invalids out of guys like me-it just doesn't make sense. For the sake of a couple pills I could lead a near normal life-run my business,play with the grandkids,hump my wife.

I just wanted to say I'm sorry to hear you're being forced into being an invalid. As someone in the exact same boat I understand. It's gotten horrific in the states.

At some point I'm going to have to make a thread on the topic of suboxone for pain control. As at this point that is the only option available. Well the Dr. also suggested I could move somewhere there is a methadone clinic & try to use it as a pain management option but I digress.

I have the same question as @Zonxx. I don't believe I've seen to much on the topic on here? If others are interested in the topic & a thread doesn't already exist, please let me know & I will create one. As I'm guessing I'm not the only person who is forced to use suboxone as a make do pain reliever.

I thought I was familiar with suboxone. I used it here & there many years ago when the orange tablets where prevalent. Now having been forced to used the strips I am so confused. As I haven't used suboxone in any form in quite a few years but when I used the tablets I would take tiny amounts. IIRC with the tablets the most I'd ever taken in a day was maybe a couple mg.

Where as with the strips I ended up taking the full 24mg ceiling dose when I self inducted. As such I'm really confused as to if something changed as I don't think I'm going insane. :?

After looking at the SE it seems this is becoming a more common topic. I'll have to see if I can't find a central thread or create one specifically on the topic if someone doesn't get to it before I'm up to it.

Edit: There appears to be quite a large number of threads related to this topic of Suboxone & pain control currently open & being discussed. I know I'm not up to it at the moment but in the future if someone doesn't do it first; I believe a thread consolidatiing the information in those threads may be of use. A suboxone & chronic pain mega thread of sorts perhaps? I've been away from BL for a long time but I'm assuming we still do the mega thread thing? ;) It seems like it could be a very useful resource. Especially for those in the states.
 
Last edited:
Well,I called in and complained of Bupren's side effects. Got three 30mg. IR Morphine a day from the PA. It is supposed to be ER but what the hell,I use 'em IR anyway. It's half of what I need to be at all comfortable. Talking to the PA was great,he missed his calling-he should have been a parole officer. Nice way to treat a patient-like a felon on the lam.
Maybe you are right-the methadone clinic is the last resort...you have to stay a good week to join though,and that'd be one long freaking week,
 
It's ten micrograms *per hour*.

Keep in mind that bupe's oral/sublingual bioavailability is shit, and transdermal application may greatly increase the effective dose you're absorbing.

From my cursory Google search, 10 mcg/h is apparently the recommended initial strength when switching patients who are taking less than 80 mg of oral morphine per day.

Ahhh per hour makes much more sense especially if it has a higher BA, thanks for adding that info.
 
Suboxone works great for my arthritic spinal issues. I take a couple mg a few times a day. If I have a disc start pinching a nerve it is not enough. Luckily that happens rarely! Gabapentin I also take. THC/CBD prob helps potentiate the bupe too.
 
I found bupe to be totally rubbish for pain. Especially factoring in the side effects and how damn high and dysfunctional it got me, any pain relief was negligible and not proportionate at all. I found it worked better for actual pain relief in muuuuch smaller doses, like .5mg two or three times a day, split dosing. The big doses added no extra pain relief, just more side effects and more high. Exception being Norspan, which didn't get me high and provided excellent pain relief, in doses as low as 5 or 10mg per week, as a 5/10mcg and hour transdermal patch. That was level, functional. Kinda taking the split dosing model to the extreme, minuscule doses over the whole day. I know there are trials for a buprenorphine implant, subcutaneous pellets intended to be super slow release over 3-6 months, that could be extremely promising as harm minimized pain relief for chronic pain sufferers, but I don't know a whole lot of info about that yet.
 
I take 8 to 10mg/day in 1 or 2mg doses. I figure that at ~40% bioavailability (using listerene alcohol mouthwash before dosing) I am actually taking the IV equivalent of 3 to 4 mg/day. I think this gets overlooked a lot when people say bupe works best in small doses. Admittedly, I noticed excellent pain relief even when I was taking 4mg sublingually. BTW, nowadays I have switched to buccal administration, as it is much easier to do when I'm at work, and I think you actually get more bupe. My saliva always seemed to fuck up sublingual doses.
Also, Ticket, your avatar is ill :)
 
Sublingual dosing always made me extremely drooly, something about those strips sent saliva production into overdrive, I'd hold it all in my mouth for 20mins and by the end I'd be like a chipmunk with my mouth full of horrendous tasting spit. Which I couldn't just swallow because it would make me puke. Sometimes I'd spit it out then use it again the next day and get just as high as the first day (gross I know, what can I say, I was a drug addict). You sure don't absorb very much sublingually, that's for sure. Sometimes it was more effective to just dissolve a half dose in water and plug it. I actually reached 6 weeks clean last week then relapsed, took 1mg of bupe sublingually... Spent the next 12 hours shaking and throwing up, drifting in and out of consciousness, such an unpleasant and uncomfortable sensation I can't even describe it, but it was fucking horrible, all the next day I felt exhausted and still had waves of weakness and nausea and even eye tremors. Didn't trigger any withdrawals or anything, so I'm happy about that but man, why did I even risk it for such a horrible experience, so mad at myself. It's been a week now and I haven't even thought about using again since it was so awful, whereas before it was still always in the back of my mind like 'maybe I can get away with it every now and then and not get back into an addiction...' lol. 6 fucking weeks of abstinence WDs and PAWS and I still wanted it, finally take it and one night of chucking my guts up crawling on my bedroom floor and the thought turns my stomach. Life is funny like that sometimes.

Haha, my avatar is a great visual representation of last Sunday night lmao.
 
Top