I feel that I have a good understanding of suboxone…. With the exception of the pain issue. The reason for my lack of confidence in that area is because first, I have seen less-consistent results in pain patients, and second, some of the claims made by patients just don’t make sense!
Suboxone has several characteristics that make it different from opiate agonists (like oxycodone); the ‘ceiling effect’ combined with the long half-life results in a very stable subjective experience—there is no up and down, but rather there is a constant level of opiate effect over time. Tolerance occurs very rapidly—that is a good thing for addiction treatment, as the person taking suboxone feels ‘normal’ within a few days. But just as the person becomes tolerant to the sedation, respiratory depression, and other side effects of buprenorphine, I would expect tolerance also to the analgesic effects. So theoretically it should not be a good pain drug because the rapid tolerance would eliminate the analgesic effect after a few days.
In reality, though, patients will claim relief from suboxone for an indefinite period of time in many cases. I have no explanation for such an effect; perhaps it is all a placebo response, or perhaps (more likely probably) the pain control system is much more complex than we imagine. The other odd thing is that pain patients will often claim that the analgesic effect of buprenorphine increases linearly with dose, without reaching a ceiling and leveling off. That makes no sense to me either—the analgesic effect of opiates occurs at the mu receptor, which is the site where buprenorphine binds as a partial agonist, and so the ceiling effect should apply to the analgesic actions of buprenorphine. I suspect that in this case the placebo response is the reason for the patients’ perceptions.
Suboxone certainly has advantages over other opiates, if it is found to be effective. The tolerance with buprenorphine is limited, whereas the tolerance to a pure agonist has not limit—so there is a lower amount of withdrawal if/when the drug is eventually discontinued. The stable blood level prevents the temporary ‘highs’, the miserable lows, and the cravings that can accompany the use of agonists. The patient feels much more clear headed on suboxone compared to opiate agonists. And suboxone can be dosed once per day, which has a couple effects—first, it just is less trouble to take, but more importantly the absence of ‘as needed’ dosing all day long will help prevent the patient from focusing as much on the pain.
As far as the personality effects… many people have told me that suboxone seems to work as a ‘mood stabilizer’—they feel less labile, more regular, and generally a bit happier on the drug. There are case reports of opiates treating depression or precipitating mania, but buprenorphine doesn’t seem to push people to euphoria, but instead seems to ‘level’ their mood. Maybe that is what you have seen in your friends. I think that part of the effect relates to cravings; cravings can manifest as mood symptoms, and as suboxone eliminates cravings, it also eliminates some of the mood symptoms. This raises the issue of whether buprenorphine should be used to treat mood disorders… and for that I will leave the readers to do their own research. A couple years ago there was an article in Elle magazine by a woman describing her treatment of depression using suboxone. I do not know of any large clinical studies that support such use at this point.
Chronic pain is a very difficult issue, and I wish you the best. I encourage you to avoid opiates as much as possible—there is generally little future in opiate treatment of pain, since tolerance always chips away at the effects of the opiate over time. I am sure that at some point we will have ways to prevent tolerance, which would be quite a thing for people with chronic pain. On the other hand I can imagine many dangers associated with such a discovery. Thank you very much for your question; I am going to go ahead and post on my blog, http://suboxonetalkzone.com , and on the forum at https://suboxforum.com (without your real name).
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