Opioid Dependency - www.hangover.org

How to Deal with Suboxone Withdrawal

What is Suboxone?

Suboxone is a prescription medication that contains both buprenorphine
and naloxone. Both of these drugs are often given to addicts recovering from opiate addiction. Suboxone helps addicts overcome any drug cravings, thereby assisting them in the recovery process. Doctors should slowly taper the dosage of suboxone until you no longer need it to cope with the consequences of drug addiction.

The buprenorphine found in Suboxone is similar to what is found in other opiates, like morphine and heroin. As an opiate, buprenorphine can cause your body to become physically dependent on the drug, so when you suddenly discontinue suboxone, it will cause your body to undergo withdrawal. Withdrawal is your body’s way of attempting to recover from excessive drug use. Suboxone withdrawal can range from mild symptoms to serious, possible life-threatening effects.

Signs and symptoms of withdrawal:

Uncharacteristic irritability or agitation
Anxiety
Difficulty sleeping
Profuse sweating
Excessive tears
Runny nose
Frequent yawning

However, these symptoms are usually overlooked and may be passed off as symptoms of the flu or other mild diseases.

How to deal with Suboxone Withdrawal

I don’t know. Coffee, ibuprofen, lots of water, natural sleeps aids such as melatonin, hot baths, massage?

As a recovering opiate addict, I tried both a methadone maintenance and suboxone (at different times in my addiction). And quite honestly, the withdrawal sucks. That is totally an understatement.

Some years ago, I kicked methadone. Cold turkey. Not recommended. I stayed away from opiates for a little while but, soon enough, I was back at it. I thought the pain and discomfort of kicking for over a month would be enough to keep me from going down that road again. So, when things got bad again, I decided to get on suboxone. I don’t deny that this can be helpful when detoxing from other opiates (yes other because, after all, suboxone does contain an opiate called buprenorphine). But it is meant to be used short term, as in a week at the most, and with a rapid taper. There will be some discomfort at the end, but nowhere near what it’s like to go cold turkey.

While I was researching suboxone for the purpose of writing this blog and time and time again, I kept finding “information” which stated that, if tapered off of suboxone, you won’t experience any withdrawal symptoms and that if you do, you only think you do; it’s all mental. That’s plain old bullshit. I was on a very low dose of suboxone when I decided to go to treatment. I was taking maybe 4mg a day for the last several months of my active addiction. I tried to taper myself completely but the withdrawals came, and with a vengeance. I could not face suboxone withdrawal again. My solution was going into a medical detox and inpatient program.

If you are facing suboxone withdrawal, you may want to consider doing what I did. There are programs that specialize in suboxone detox that can assist you in the process with very little discomfort.

If you need help with your addiction give us a call now at 1-800-984-4003.

Methadone

Drugs that Treat Opioid Dependency

Opiates are a class of drug that includes street drugs like heroin, as well as prescription painkillers such as oxycodone, oxycontin, fentanyl, vicodin, and lortab. Opiates are a highly addictive class of drugs. These drugs mimic natural painkilling neurotransmitters in the brain, which is what creates the high from opiates. However, in response to long term use of opiates, the brain produces less of these substances, which causes opioid dependency.

When someone is physically dependent on opiates, they experience withdrawal when they run out of drugs. Sometimes, a person who is using opiates heavily can start to withdrawal within a few hours of use. Signs of opiate withdrawal are similar to flu symptoms and include: sweating, goose bumps, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and cramping.

Buprenorphine

There are several drugs used to treat opioid dependency. Chief among them is buprenorphine (Suboxone/Subutex). Buprenorphine was not originally developed to treat opioid dependency. It was initially indicated for the short-term treatment of opioid withdrawal. However, much like methadone, it wasn’t long before buprenorphine began to be used as a daily, long-term treatment for opioid dependency. The use of buprenorphine to treat morphine dependency resulted in part from a paradigm shift in the medical community. In 2000, Congress passed a law allowing physicians to prescribe narcotics to treat opioid which allowed access to opiate treatment in a medical setting rather than limiting it to federally approved Opioid Treatment Programs.

Buprenorphine is a long-acting partial agonist that acts on the same receptors as heroin and morphine, relieving drug cravings without producing the same intense “high” or dangerous side effects. However, critics believe that this is merely a form of “drug substitution”- replacing one addictive drug with another.

Methadone

Although buprenorphine has mainly replaced methadone in private practice, federal opioid dependency programs still used methadone. It works similarly to buprenorphine in that it binds to the opioid receptors in the brain. These drugs have the added benefit of preventing the user from attaining the “high” from heroin and other prescription opioids, because they bind more strongly and for a longer period of time, effectively blocking the receptors from binding to any other drug. However, methadone is a full agonist at the opioid receptors, whereas buprenorphine is a partial agonist. To understand the difference, picture a dark room. Heroin and other short term full agonists turn the light completely on, for a short period of time. When the light begins to fade, the user experiences withdrawal and craving. Methadone turns the light completely on, but keeps it on for a longer period of time. Buprenorphine turns the light on halfway. It binds to the receptors and prevents other drugs (like heroin) from binding, but it doesn’t produce the same “high” as methadone or heroin. This feature is responsible for buprenorphine becoming the preferred method to treat opioid dependency.

Naltrexone

Naltrexone is a completely different kind of drug used to treat opioid dependency. It is an opioid receptor blocker. It has proved to be highly effective in reversing the effects of opiate overdose, but its use in the treatment of opioid dependency is limited. This is because naltrexone does nothing to treat withdrawal and craving, it just blocks the effect of heroin and other opiates, so it shows poor patient compliance. And if the patient doesn’t take the drug, it doesn’t work.