Recovery VS Suboxone
I understand that some people in recovery are against suboxone.
Recovery VS Suboxone: Suboxone is a relatively new treatment for opioid dependence. It has only been available since 2002. I know how people joke about how if recovery was available in a pill they wouldn’t take it. They say that a recovering person on a “drug replacement” program such as Suboxone is not really clean.
Methadone has been around since the 40s.
Methadone treatment for heroin addiction started in NYC in the 60s. I have noticed many recovering heroin addicts in South Florida are from NYC. Methadone is well known to be a dangerous and highly addicting drug. It is easy to overdose on methadone. That’s why they make people come every day to methadone clinics.
Suboxone is not Methadone.
It has a ceiling effect. Taken by itself, by an adult who is already tolerant to opioids, a fatal overdose on Suboxone is rare. Combined with benzodiazepines, alcohol, or other sedatives it can still slow or stop breathing, and it is dangerous to children and to people who have never taken opioids. That is one reason it can be prescribed from an ordinary medical office and taken at home rather than dispensed daily at a clinic. For years, a doctor first had to take a short federal training course and obtain a waiver to prescribe it. That requirement ended in early 2023, and any prescriber with a standard DEA registration may now treat opioid dependence with buprenorphine. There are experts that believe it should be available over the counter to save more lives. Suboxone saves lives. In the short time that Suboxone has been available, it has been demonstrated that maintenance saves more lives than tapering. Most treatment centers, if they use Suboxone at all, insist on tapering.
In my personal experience, the only people I know of who have died of drug overdoses died from an opioid overdose.
I have heard the stories of people in the hood with guns to their head while buying crack. I have heard the stories of people smoking the biggest rock ever, hoping that their heart would explode. I’m sure that people die from overdosing on other drugs and definitely from alcohol and tobacco, but the drugs that put addicts in the most immediate danger are the opioids.
Everyone who takes opioids, prescribed or not, should have naloxone nasal spray in the house, and it is now sold over the counter. Suboxone should be a consideration because there is a high probability of not coming back ever from an opioid relapse.
Suboxone maintenance does not have to be permanent. When a person has a strong program of recovery, they can start weaning. It’s not easy to have a strong program of recovery when the people in the program do not believe that you can recover while on Suboxone.
This article is educational. It is not medical advice, and reading it does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Decisions about starting, continuing, or tapering any medication should be made with your own physician.
