A Sad and Crazy Argument Against Suboxone

It has been awhile since I posted a give and take with a misguided reader. I’ve taken that interval as good news that education is winning over misinformation. But then I read this: a sad and crazy argument against Suboxone.

I didn’t fix her typos, as I think they provide insight into her opinion:

My daughter was on Suboxone, because she was a heroin addict, when she could not afford this med, the withdrawal lasted for mnths, and was far worse than I have ever seen her go through Heroin withdrawal. These are a Psyhiatrist facts, I absolutely hate Suboxone, YES peple do get high on Suboxone, Yes they absolutely can and do inject this garbage. This medication may have helped people who were not addicts for pain, or addicts who truly took this drug to remain clean, and that’s o.k BUT NO THE DRUG COMPANIES are not going to put the facts out about this dug, and about the deaths caused from overdosing on this drug using it in combination with other drugs. They will not report the abuse of this drug, and the effects of this drug on the bodies organs or how it causes Bone Marrow depression. THE TRUTH WILL COME OUT NO MATTER HOW THE DRUG COMPANIES AND GOOD OLD DOCS, TRY COVER IT UP. Half these Suboxone Dr’s are addicts themselves, I took my daughter to one who’s pupils were so pinned, he was slurring and could hardly stay awake, HMMM Could it be he was abusing the same drug he was supplying. They had a great plan for getting people on it but none what so ever for getting people off of it. The Truth about Suboxone will come out. It should be used only for detox only taken no more than for 10 days. I am a Drug and ETOH detox Nurse, so I have seen not just with my own child, but with clients who, by the way do abuse the drug sell it on the street, so they can buy heroin. IT’S A MONEY MAKER FOR BIG PHARMA, AND THE MAKER OF THIS DRUG PAID DOCTORS THOUSANDS TO BECOME CERTIFIED TO PUSH THIS POISON. I will get the true facts of this drug, but Do NOT JUST PUSH THE PRETTY SIDE TELL THE TRUTH ABUT THE UGLY AND YES SOMETIMES DEADLY SIDE. DR. My daughter committed suicide January 4th 2015 overdose of heroin, among other substances. She went to heroin again because she started going through post SUBOXONE withdrawal. The withdrawal last weeks to months with post withdrawal. So please do make this sound like a miracle drug that saves lives, it also kills and that truth will come out. I am sick of these companies, hiding the facts! Facts to me because I have lived it and have seen personally the effect of this drug.

I responded as follows:

I wish you were at least partially correct, given that you work in the field, and have the potential to spread such inaccurate information.

Deaths…  in the past ten years there were about 35,000 overdose deaths in the US.  None of those people had buprenorphine in their system when they died.  What number of people had measurable amounts of buprenorphine in their bloodstream when they died from overdose?  40 per year.  Most of those 40 people would be alive if there had been more buprenorphine in their bloodstream– the only exception being the few cases each year where a young child ingested the drug.

Note that 400 people die from Tylenol each year in the US– compared to 40 deaths of people who had buprenorphine in the bloodstream.  It is very hard to die from buprenorphine;  those who die must have little or no opioid tolerance, and must also take a second respiratory depressant that they have little tolerance to.

Bone marrow depression?  Really?  Buprenorphine has been in use for almost 40 years.  It has a better safety profile than most meds out there.

‘Plans for getting people off’?  The whole point of buprenorphine is to provide chronic treatment for a chronic illness.   You apparently want something that instantly changes the brain and erases addiction, but that product is not invented yet– and I wouldn’t hold my breath for it.  Your daughter developed a condition that will last the rest of her life.  She will treat it for the rest of her life.  She can take a medication each day, or she can attend meetings several times per week. The latter approach works, mind you, only in the relatively few people who are moved by the 12-step message.  Both approaches must last for years and years, if not a lifetime.  Many people do well on buprenorphine, but some survive without it.  But if she isn’t attending meetings or doing something with similar intensiy, her prognosis off buprenorphine is not good.

The withdrawal from the partial agonist buprenorphine is less severe than from agonists.  ALL opioid withdrawal lasts for 2-3 months, and is followed by post-acute withdrawal.  On buprenorphine, a person’s tolerance is equal to 40 mg methadone per day.  Realize that heroin addicts typically have tolerance that is several times higher.  Your daughter developed a high tolerance to agonists, and then continued to have a high tolerance on buprenorphine.  Any addict, including your daughter, is facing months of detox.  Buprenorphine delayed the detox, giving her the chance to get her act together first.  Many people are successful with that approach, but some blow the chance and keep up the negative behavior.  Buprenorphine relieves cravings;  it doesn’t fix personalities all by itself.

I suspect that the reason you never saw such bad withdrawal in your daughter coming off heroin is because she could never stop heroin long enough to demonstrate 2 months of withdrawal.  Nobody just stops heroin; they stop for a couple weeks and then use again.  On the other hand, many people taper off buprenorphine, and have the chance to experience the full course of opioid withdrawal.

The cost…  The drug companies make much more money from chemotherapy, anti-hypertensives, pain pills, and other meds.  Reckitt Benckiser, the biggest maker of Suboxone products, recently spun off the drug because of the anticipated losses.  Even if buprenorphine was a blockbuster, though, I have nothing against drug companies being rewarded for the risks they take to develop new meds.  There is no doubt that the efforts to market buprenorphine have saved thousands of lives.

If your daughter sold her buprenorphine to buy heroin, that’s her bad.  Most people do not do that, but some probably do.  Understand that heroin is very addictive, and drives all sorts of bad behaviors– theft, prostitution, robberies, etc.  I guarantee you that selling her prescription of buprenorphine alone did not make enough money to pay for a heroin habit.

There are so many things you have wrong…. ‘the drug companies paid doctors to push this drug’… I’m sorry, but you are clearly a zealot, and I can’t even take you seriously with that argument.  If you know of a single doctor paid to prescribe a drug, call the Feds, as that would be a crime.  There are some doctors paid to WORK for pharma— to give lectures about new drugs, for example.  I have done that in the past for drugs I believed in.  Some people seem to hate it when doctors take any money from pharma, but when they do, it is for work–  for travelling to some cheap motel in the middle of nowhere and giving a talk to a group of doctors.  The work is highly regulated, and just like TV commercials, docs are required to stick to a very narrow script that educates, rather than promotes.

‘Detox’ has been marginalized (thankfully) because of recognition that it does nothing to treat addiction.  Likewise, non-medication treatment has very low success rates, especially if you count everyone who enters the door, instead of blaming those who fail for ‘not wanting it bad enough’.

I’m sorry about your daughter.  But one thing many parents eventually realize is that even when a kid is acting irresponsibly, buprenorphine at least keeps them alive.  Buprenorphine allows people to stay alive, even if their recovery is imperfect.  And relieved of most of the cravings to use, many of those patients eventually get it right.

Back to the present…  I’d like to think that I cleared up some misconceptions.  But two days after my comments, I received a very similar set of comments from the same person—except that most of the words were capitalized.  That is the reason I’ve tired of these types of posts….