SUBOXONE....a catch 22? Need input...

[Rusty6113]

So yes, I got hit badly the massive wave of Oxycontin is the early 2000's. Wow and i mean wow want a drug. I hate that I love that feeling. Of course this lead to eating fent patches, snorting morphine, diluaded, usually with some benzos. Now, ive never found heroin to be that impressive (thank God), but yes it was nasty. Plus ive had 3 surgeries on my right shoulder and the pills were everywhere.

Then i discovered opiate withdrawal. I thought i had the flu bc i had no idea what was going on! why did I feel so horrible. Well using more fixes it. This naturally lead to ups and downs and all those medications i mentioned are EXTREMELY strong.

My friend told me about suboxone. I took a $300 cash advance and the doc took my history and gave me 2, 4mg tabs to put under my tongue (this was my 2nd day of a very nasty withdrawal. No food, so sleep, constant panic. Well, 20 mins later I feel like a mi8llion bucks! The withdrawal was gone.

Too good to be true right? Well suboxone does block opiates. It also helps me with cravings, sleep, anxiety, etc., BUT now I'm addicted to suboxone. The withdrawal is pretty bad and there aren't any rehabs that get people OFF suboxone....most give you suboxone to detox.

But, do you think I was try to stop the suboxone? It keeps me away from the opiate scene and has blocked highs when I've relapsed. That is amazing. But its hard to take normally. Should i be on this stuff forever so i avoid drugs? I'm terrified to think about going back to the street or a pain management clinic and start that roller coaster again,

Is anyone dealing with ANY issues with this medication? I pray for help indeed!

 

[Dan1988]

So yes, I got hit badly the massive wave of Oxycontin is the early 2000's. Wow and i mean wow want a drug. I hate that I love that feeling. Of course this lead to eating fent patches, snorting morphine, diluaded, usually with some benzos. Now, ive never found heroin to be that impressive (thank God), but yes it was nasty. Plus ive had 3 surgeries on my right shoulder and the pills were everywhere.

Then i discovered opiate withdrawal. I thought i had the flu bc i had no idea what was going on! why did I feel so horrible. Well using more fixes it. This naturally lead to ups and downs and all those medications i mentioned are EXTREMELY strong.

My friend told me about suboxone. I took a $300 cash advance and the doc took my history and gave me 2, 4mg tabs to put under my tongue (this was my 2nd day of a very nasty withdrawal. No food, so sleep, constant panic. Well, 20 mins later I feel like a mi8llion bucks! The withdrawal was gone.

Too good to be true right? Well suboxone does block opiates. It also helps me with cravings, sleep, anxiety, etc., BUT now I'm addicted to suboxone. The withdrawal is pretty bad and there aren't any rehabs that get people OFF suboxone....most give you suboxone to detox.

But, do you think I was try to stop the suboxone? It keeps me away from the opiate scene and has blocked highs when I've relapsed. That is amazing. But its hard to take normally. Should i be on this stuff forever so i avoid drugs? I'm terrified to think about going back to the street or a pain management clinic and start that roller coaster again,

Is anyone dealing with ANY issues with this medication? I pray for help indeed!

I used heroin and opioids for 7 years and now It's been around 3 years since I quit.
Every addict who wants to overcome addiction, needs to understand their condition so they can deal with it.

The main obstacle to overcoming any enemy, is not knowing the enemy and it's no different with opioid addiction.

I tried cold turkey before I sought professional help, I expected get better as the days passed but it just got worse and by the 10th day I was super sick so I went to the best professor in Australia. I told him that I wanted to get back to normal as quickly as possible, he said that it would take around 12 months on a reduction program.

He suggested the Suboxone or Methadone programs, I started out with Methadone then switched to Suboxone after a few weeks. I went back to using opioids after few weeks of Suboxone, my reasoning told me that I could replace the Suboxone with Opioids and keep reducing the amount over 12 months and I would quit altogether at the end of the 12 months.

My plan failed and I found myself using more than ever before, so it was back to the drawing board and back to the professor. The professor told me that I have no chance of beating a condition I don't understand, he said if you are to overcome this addiction, you must first understand what your dealing with. I was finnaly ready to listen and the good professor told me all about my condition and the truth was cold and hard to accept.

He basically explained that the opioids have rewired my brain, in a way where my brain no longer released dopamine's naturally because it realized that I was forcing it to release them artificially by abusing opioids. He went on to explain that if we start off at 16mg of Suboxone daily and gradually reduce it down over 12 months to 1mg and then use patches with lower strength for 6 weeks that the brain would start releasing it's own dopemien.

I had to put my foolish ideas aside and take the professors advice, because if he didn't know how this works then nobody does. After completing the program as prescribed, the professor told me that it would take my brain another year to rewire itself before it starts to function as it did before the drug abuse.

Time goes by very quickly, so don't be discouraged by the length of time it takes to achieve the goal of being healthy, happy and drug free. We can achieve amazing things if we believe the goal is worth the effort. I was in deep despair at the height of my addiction, because I couldn't laugh or cry or feel anything. I was detached from the world and myself, so I was lost and life was a huge struggle because it all revolved around making sure I had enough drugs to keep me from the hell of being dope sick.

I need to mention that prayer is indispensable in this situation, we can't do this without God's help. So don't be afraid to come before the Lord in prayer, the enemy will try to make you feel unworthy by accusing you of being beyond help but Christ said He would never turn anyone away.

 

[chilehed]

But, do you think I was try to stop the suboxone? It keeps me away from the opiate scene and has blocked highs when I've relapsed. That is amazing. But its hard to take normally. Should i be on this stuff forever so i avoid drugs? I'm terrified to think about going back to the street or a pain management clinic and start that roller coaster again,

It's a very difficult situation, isn't it? Before the use of blockers the only choice was to either keep using, or white-knuckle it for however long it took for one's neurochemistry to settle back down. But then there's the question of why did I start in the first place? Early in my recovery I heard someone say that when he stopped doing dope he turned back into the guy he was right before he started, and that dude tried to kill himself for fifteen years. I instantly got that, and I knew it was true for me as well: if I didn't work on something deeper than just the using, I probably wasn't going to stay clean very long and if I did I'd still be as unhappy as I had been since long before I first picked up.

What I've learned since then is that addiction is a relational disease, that it's about my inability to live as a human being either with or without drugs, and that the drugs were just a medicine I was putting on it to alleviate the emotional pain that I remember having since I was a little kid. The medicine can be anything: drugs, money, sex, power, food, gambling, whatever. But ultimately it's like Randy Newman said in his amazing song Guilty: "it takes a whole lot of medicine for me to pretend that I'm somebody else".

It seems to me that blockers, while they're very effective at managing acute symptoms, don't really address the real problem. So I'd like to invite you to try the Narcotic Anonymous program of recovery; it's worked for many tens of thousands (millions, I'm sure) of addicts. It's not easy, but you'll have lots of support from people like you (yes, there are many people like you!) and I've made wonderful friends in NA in the 33 years I've been clean - the best friends I've ever had. Quite a few of them weren't born the last time I really wanted to get high.

To be fair, the use of blockers is, understandably, somewhat controversial among members of NA. You seem to realize that it'd probably be good to not have to rely on them forever, and I don't see how anyone could argue with the idea that one goal of any well-managed medical plan would be to end pharmaceutical interventions at some defined time. Some people in NA might be pretty emphatic about how important that is, and even that that time needs to be right now; after all, we tend to have a pattern of substituting one drug for another in search of the non-existant combination that works (not that I think that DRT is the same kind of substitution). And I can see some logic in the idea that making it through cold turkey could provide a vivid and memorable example of the truth that with emotional support we can get through things that seem impossible while we're in the middle of them, but then most people wouldn't tell someone who's gotten a knee replacement that they have to stick with plain Tylenol as soon as they wake up. Ultimately my response would be to remember that, however they come across, they're speaking out of genuine concern and to say "I appreciate your concern, but this is something I'm working out between my doctor, my sponsor and my Higher Power."

NA has a message: an addict... ANY addict... can stop using, lose the desire to use, and find a new way to live. The longer I'm clean the more firmly I believe it.

You can find your local NA fellowship here.
You can find virtual meetings here; times are based on your local device time.

Feel free to IM me.

 

[Eftsoon]

So yes, I got hit badly the massive wave of Oxycontin is the early 2000's. Wow and i mean wow want a drug. I hate that I love that feeling. Of course this lead to eating fent patches, snorting morphine, diluaded, usually with some benzos. Now, ive never found heroin to be that impressive (thank God), but yes it was nasty. Plus ive had 3 surgeries on my right shoulder and the pills were everywhere.

Then i discovered opiate withdrawal. I thought i had the flu bc i had no idea what was going on! why did I feel so horrible. Well using more fixes it. This naturally lead to ups and downs and all those medications i mentioned are EXTREMELY strong.

My friend told me about suboxone. I took a $300 cash advance and the doc took my history and gave me 2, 4mg tabs to put under my tongue (this was my 2nd day of a very nasty withdrawal. No food, so sleep, constant panic. Well, 20 mins later I feel like a mi8llion bucks! The withdrawal was gone.

Too good to be true right? Well suboxone does block opiates. It also helps me with cravings, sleep, anxiety, etc., BUT now I'm addicted to suboxone. The withdrawal is pretty bad and there aren't any rehabs that get people OFF suboxone....most give you suboxone to detox.

But, do you think I was try to stop the suboxone? It keeps me away from the opiate scene and has blocked highs when I've relapsed. That is amazing. But its hard to take normally. Should i be on this stuff forever so i avoid drugs? I'm terrified to think about going back to the street or a pain management clinic and start that roller coaster again,

Is anyone dealing with ANY issues with this medication? I pray for help indeed!

Subuxone can only ever be a temporary fix. The trick is to slowly taper off while wholeheartedly pursuing therapy; attending NA meetings; and above all seeking God in prayer.

Addiction really is relational. The substance is a surrogate for God. The only way out of the cycle is to let God in so that he can fill the void inside. I am praying that God will make you His paradise where He takes His delight - and that you too will delight in Him. There is such a core of rich sweetness waiting to be tasted.