I found this old post from ten years ago that I never got around to publishing it. A person doesn’t like taking Suboxone and blames the drug for the lack of change in his life. It plays into the discussion about methadone because it shows the attitudes that can develop Read more…
Readers will sometimes ask for my thoughts about buprenorphine. I’m always happy to respond, time permitting. I’ve described how my patients taper off buprenorphine in prior posts, but the interest out there warrants revisiting the topic. Most people who become dependent on opioids become very fearful of withdrawal. That fear Read more…
I’ve been writing longer and longer posts on SuboxForum so maybe I need to write more here. This blog archives twelve years of frustration over the ignorance toward buprenorphine, at least until I ran out of steam a year ago. I grew used doctors refusing to treat people addicted to heroin Read more…
Today on SuboxForum members discussed how long they have been treated with buprenorphine medications. Most agreed that buprenorphine turned their lives around, and most are afraid they will eventually be pushed off the medication. Most buprenorphine patients described a reprieve from a horrible illness when they discovered buprenorphine. But most Read more…
A blurb in the buprenorphine newsfeed (see the bupe news link in the header of this page), has the headline ‘Suboxone challenged by Clearbrook President’. I followed the link, and after reading the ‘article’ I wanted to comment to that president but the person’s name wasn’t included, let alone an Read more…
In Opioid Addiction Treatment Should Not Last a Lifetime, Percy Menzies resurrects old theories to tarnish buprenorphine-based addiction treatment. Methadone maintenance withstood similar attacks over the decades, and remains the gold standard for the most important aspect of treating opioid dependence: preventing death. All over again, Menzies gets it wrong on Suboxone. Menzies begins Read more…
First Posted 2.8.2014After Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death, I anticipated a flood of articles describing the ineffectiveness of non-medication treatments for opioid dependence. I assumed the media would finally report on the need for long-term treatment of a long-term illness. Instead we read more articles describing Suboxone (i.e. buprenorphine) as a ‘bad drug’, since Hoffman Read more…
First Posted 12/15/2013 People know my bias—that buprenorphine is best-considered a chronic, perhaps life-long treatment for a chronic, life-long disease. That said, I am aware of how many people out there are convinced that they need to be ‘off everything,’ no matter the misery opioids have caused in their lives. Read more…
Originally Posted 5/11/2013 The forces of nature appear intent on reversing mankind’s progress toward better health. An example is the ever-increasing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. A timeline of the existence of humans and bacteria shows that bacteria have been around for a very long time— much longer than mammals, and much, much longer than Read more…
Originally Posted 3/23/2013 I generally write positive articles about the use of buprenorphine for treating opioid dependence, and my articles have been reflective of my attitude toward the medication. The field of psychiatry encompasses more conditions than it does effective treatments for those conditions, and my initial experiences treating people Read more…
I’d like to share a recent email exchange with a reader. The post is long, but there are several interesting aspects to the discussion. I’ve removed the conversational parts, as well as the identifying information. The initial message: I was an intravenous heroin user for three years. After treatment I Read more…