Suboxone, for Detox and for Long Term Therapy

The Two Ways Suboxone Is Used

Recovering opiate addicts may use suboxone in two ways. They may choose to use it in a manner similar to methadone, and take the pills as a long term replacement solution, or they may use it as a way to ease the pains of cold turkey detox, and only take the suboxone for a week or more.

Long Term Replacement

Basically, it's just a better methadone. You can function as normal, you feel yourself again, and you feel neither high nor feel the pains and agony of detox and withdrawal. You can be prescribed enough pills for a month or more, and you do not need to expend such energy and time getting to a central methadone clinic for your daily dose.

The side effects are minor, and a small price to pay for a better life free from addiction, and although the eventual detox can be tough, it's far easier than for methadone and nowhere close to the agony of an abrupt cessation of narcotic pain pills or heroin.

You can’t abuse it, and if you follow the directions of use, it is very safe.

Easing the Pains of Withdrawal

You may also wish to consider suboxone as a way to ease the transition off of drugs such as heroin or narcotic pain pills. A legitimate fear of the pains of detox can be a significant motivator to continuing use, and far too many people remain addicts just to avoid a week of detox agony. Suboxone can help, and a suboxone detox is far more humane; and because it's not as painful a lot more people can endure the detox period and break free from addiction.

It should be done under medical supervision, and ideally under constant observation as in a residential rehab or sequestered detox clinic.  Medical staff will wait until you are feeling the initial and intense pains of withdrawal before administering a dosage of suboxone. The suboxone will immediately arrest all painful withdrawal symptoms, and allow the patient to stabilize in recovery and transition off of the drug of abuse. After a day or so the suboxone dosage will be gradually tapered down, until it is stopped completely about a day before the end of detox.

The detox is not pain free, as since suboxone is an opiate it does carry a syndrome of withdrawal, but the symptoms of withdrawal off of suboxone are far less intense and severe than with comparable opiates, and can be more readily handled by patients in detoxification.

At the end of a period of detox, patients are advised to enter into intense residential or outpatient therapies of relapse avoidance, to ensure that whatever caused the drug seeking behaviors in the first place does not provoke a need for another painful period of addiction and necessary detox.