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.
Menzies begins by claiming that a number of ideas that never had the support of modern medicine are somehow similar to buprenorphine treatment. Replacing beer with benzodiazepines? Replacing morphine with alcohol? Replacing opioids with cocaine? Where, exactly, did these programs exist, that Menzies claims were precursors for methadone maintenance?
Buprenorphine has unique properties as a partial agonist that allows for effects far beyond ‘replacement’. The ceiling effect of the drug effectively eliminates the desire to use opioids. Seeing buprenorphine only as ‘replacement therapy’ misses the point, and ignores the unique pharmacology of the medication.
Highly-regulated clinics dispense methadone for addiction treatment., and other physicians prescribe methadone for chronic pain. Menzies claims ‘it is an axiom of medicine that drugs with an addiction potential are inappropriate for the treatment of chronic conditions.’ For that reason, he claims, methadone treatment is ‘out of the ambit of mainstream medicine.’ The 250,000-plus US patients who benefit from methadone treatment would be amused by his reasoning. I suspect that the thousands of patients who experience a lifetime of chronic pain—including veterans with crushed spines and traumatic amputations—would likely NOT be amused by his suggestion that ‘opioids… were never intended to be prescribed forever.’ Those of us who treat chronic pain take our patients as they come—often with addictions and other psychiatric baggage. Pain doesn’t stop from the presence of addiction, neither does the right for some measure of relief from that pain.
Menzies cites the old stories about Vietnam veterans who returned to the US and gave up heroin, as evidence that prolonged treatment for opioid dependence is unnecessary for current addicts. But there is no similarity between the two samples in his comparison! US Servicemen forced into a jungle to engage in lethal combat use heroin for different reasons than do teenagers attending high school. Beyond the different reasons for using, after returning home, soldiers associated heroin with danger and death! Of course they were able to stop using! And that has to do with current addicts… how?
Teens in the US have no mainland to take them back. Their addiction began in their parents’ basement, and without valid treatment, too often ends in the same place.
Menzies refers to buprenorphine treatment as ‘a conundrum’ that has not had any effect on deaths from opioid dependence—a claim impossible to support without an alternative universe and a time machine. He claims that buprenorphine treatment is unsafe and plagued by diversion. In reality, most ‘diversion’ consists of self-treatment by addicts who are unable to find a physician able to take new patients under the Federal cap. In the worst cases, some addicts keep a tablet of buprenorphine in their pockets to prevent the worst of the withdrawal symptoms if heroin is not available. But even in these cases, buprenorphine inadvertently treats addicts who take the medication, preventing euphoria from heroin for up to several days and more importantly, preventing death from overdose.
Just look at the numbers. In the past ten years, about 35,000 people have died from overdose each year in the US with no buprenorphine in their bloodstream. How many people died WITH buprenorphine in their bloodstream? About 40. Even in those cases, buprenorphine was almost never the cause of death. In fact, in many of those 40 cases, the person’s life would have been saved if MORE buprenorphine had been in the bloodstream because buprenorphine blocks the respiratory depression caused by opioid agonists.
Naltrexone is a pure opioid blocker that some favor for addiction treatment because it has no abuse potential. Naltrexone compliance is very low when the medication is not injected, and naltrexone injections cost well over $1000 per month. Naltrexone may have some utility in the case of drug courts, where monthly injections are a required condition of probation. But even in those circumstances, the success of naltrexone likely benefits the most from another fact about the drug, i.e. that the deaths from naltrexone treatment are hidden on the back end. Fans of naltrexone focus, optimistically, on its ability to block heroin up to a certain dose, up to a certain length of time after taking the medication. But Australian studies of naltrexone show death rates ten times higher than with methadone when the drug is discontinued, when patients have been discharged from treatment, and short-term treatment professionals have shifted their attention to the next group of desperate but misguided patients.
The physicians who treat addiction with buprenorphine, on the other hand, follow their patients long term because they see, first-hand, the long-term nature of addiction. Menzies’ claim that ‘the longer you take it, the harder it is to stop’ has no basis in the science of buprenorphine, or in clinical practice. Patients often get to a point—after several years—when they are ready to discontinue buprenorphine. And while buprenorphine has discontinuation symptoms, the severity of those symptoms is less than stopping agonists—and unrelated to the duration of taking buprenorphine. Until that point in time, buprenorphine effectively interrupts the natural progression of the addiction to misery and death.
The physicians who prescribe buprenorphine and the practitioners at methadone clinics are the only addiction professionals who witness the true, long-term nature of opioid dependence. In contrast, too many addiction practitioners see only the front end of addiction, discharging patients after weeks or months, considering them ‘cured’… and somehow missing the familiar names in the obituary columns months or years later.
Category: relapse
Suboxone Detox is a Sucker’s Bet
First Posted 10/6/2013
I attended the US Psychiatric and Mental Health Congress meeting last week and actually attended the meetings (the event was held in Las Vegas), but I was disappointed by the absence of lectures about addiction. There are other mental health groups geared more toward addiction, but one would think that psychiatry would maintain a strong presence in the field. This was my first time at the annual meeting for this group, and so I can’t say that I’m witnessing a trend away from addiction by psychiatry—which would be a real shame.
At any rate, I had a very busy Friday and Saturday catching up with the office work I put off for a few days. So today I had to cram in a lot of non-work activities, to make sure that my life remains well-balanced. That meant watching the entire Packer game, going to the movie ‘Gravity’ complete with 3-D glasses, and then catching the latest episode of Homeland, where psychiatrists continue to gain a bad name. Thorazine injection, anyone?
So I’m beat… but I’ve been intending to write something for the past couple weeks, and I think I can knock it off fairly quickly. Readers know that I get many emails from across the country describing atrocious behavior by physicians. The latest scam? It appears that everyone with a medical clinic has a secret recipe for tapering off Suboxone.
I received an email from a person who wanted to stop Suboxone/buprenorphine for months, if not years. For people who don’t know my attitude, I tend to believe my own eyes, and also what the research shows—that over 9 out of 10 of the people who stop buprenorphine are using opioids again within one year. When people moan that ‘it is hard to stop buprenorphine’, I remind them that the reason they are TAKING buprenorphine is because they were unable to stop opioids. Why would they expect that to change? Oh- I know— counseling! That’s the line from all of the addiction insiders—that patients take buprenorphine and do ‘counseling’, and the addiction goes away.
There are two scientific findings that keep trickling out these days that are driving some people crazy— and I admit to a bit of amusement with each headline. The first set of findings concern the troubling lack of global warming over the past 8 years—including the recent headlines that polar icecaps, predicted by Gore et al. to be completely gone by now, have grown by almost a third in the past year. The other interesting findings are the several studies that failed to demonstrate an increase in sobriety in buprenorphine patients engaged in ‘counseling.’ There is real danger for people who borrow science just in order to hide behind It for an argument or two; they risk getting caught naked when the science moves in an unexpected direction!
Anyway, the person wrote to tell me that after multiple failed efforts to taper off buprenorphine on her own, she had gone to a rapid-detox clinic that promised to ‘heal’ her receptors over a few days. The $7 grand was spent, and I had no desire to ruin whatever placebo effect she would gain from the silly cocktail of nutritional supplements she purchased. So I told her that I hoped she felt better soon, not adding that she will feel better at about the same time she would have felt better without the rapid detox and nutritional supplements.
She wrote again a week later, struggling from withdrawal, and then again a few days after that to say that she went back on buprenorphine. But the good news was that she found a different doctor who SPECIALIZES in getting people off buprenorphine.
A few days later she wrote to tell me about the hundreds of dollars the visit cost— and asked if his taper schedule appeared reasonable. ‘He’s your doctor’, I explained, trying to sound neutral. I shared my belief, though, that it was a conflict of interest for doctors to sell nutrient products that they themselves prescribed, and that opioid receptors are able to return to health without the addition of trace nutrients.
A week later she wrote about yet another specialist, who this time took $800 to tell her to take 3 mg for a few days, then 2 mg for a few days, then 1 mg for a few days. She said she had to go back for another appointment for him to tell her what to do after that.
I know it sounds like I’m joking, but sadly, I’m not. More sadly, I’ve read similar messages a number of times over the past few years. I’ve stated that I would try to point out things I write that are based on science, vs. things based on personal experience, vs. what I’ve witnessed as a clinician. What I’m about to say is based on all three.
I had my own nightmare withdrawal from potent opioids when I was in treatment 13 years ago. I lost 30 pounds from my already-skinny frame at that time, having no appetite and without taking nutrient supplements. But my withdrawal ended and my receptors healed in about 6-8 week, just as in every opioid addict who I’ve assisted through detoxification. And when I’ve seen people go away for rapid detox, they complain about feeling lousy— the same amount of complaining over the same lousiness—for the same 6-8 weeks. One would think that all of this would be enough to outrage the FDA, who usually get irritated at stories about high-cost, low-yield medical procedures. But once again, the truth is even worse. For those who do manage to white-knuckle through 6-8 weeks of withdrawal, guess how many are still clean a year later? Wanna bet?
As for the warming of the planet, I’ll continue to read the science with an open mind. Maybe Gore will be right in the long run, which would be bad for the planet but good for those who give out Nobel Prizes. But we know one thing for certain now; that asserting the ice caps would be gone by 2014 was a sucker’s bet. And the same is true about promises for a rapid or gentle path through opioid withdrawal.
Chipping Suboxone
First Published 8/31/2013
One reply to my last post said I go ‘on and on’ about things that could be said with fewer words. I asked the person to send me his/her version, and I hope he does—not to prove anything, but because I appreciate the chance to learn. He wrote that his problem is the opposite– that he can’t write 90-minute screenplays because he gets to the point too quickly. Maybe we should be partners!
I suspect that my writing style comes from my days submitting research findings to basic science journals, where each individual comment must be supported by data or by citation. I’ll try to get to the point more quickly.
In the last post I made two points: 1. Discounts demanded from insurers for front-line services (office visits) create challenges for independent primary care practices that don’t have other sources of revenue, particularly revenue from procedures, and 2. Physicians employed by health systems are less likely to prescribe buprenorphine for treatment of opioid dependence than are small, independent practices.
The result is a shortage of doctors prescribing buprenorphine. This shortage leads to a number of other problems, the most visible (to those who care to notice) being a large number of heroin-related deaths. But other consequences are apparent for those who connect the dots. Wisconsin and other Midwest states contain large, predominately-rural areas where buprenorphine and Suboxone are only available as illicit substances. People addicted to opioids choose ‘self-treatment’ with Suboxone, purchased from the same person who deals heroin. The high cost of buprenorphine and Suboxone encourages people to take very small pieces Suboxone tablets or film; just enough to prevent withdrawal. But the unique pharmacodynamics of buprenorphine that block opioid cravings (the basis for buprenorphine’s efficacy) rely on taking a dosage high enough to maintain blood levels of buprenorphine above the medication’s ‘ceiling effect.’
In other words, small fragments of Suboxone or buprenorphine, taken sublingually, yield the same subjective experience as opioid agonists taken orally.
But this is the tip of a very large iceberg. In areas where buprenorphine/Suboxone is only available illicitly, the scarcity and cost of the medication leads heroin users to take other steps to reduce the costs of ‘self-treatment’. Remember that with sublingual dosing only a third of the buprenorphine enters the systemic bloodstream. Even less reaches the circulation if the drug is swallowed. But 100% reaches the circulation when heroin addicts use the Suboxone or buprenorphine the way they use heroin—by needle. The opioid blocker naloxone is added to create Suboxone, but my new patients have reported injecting Suboxone and buprenorphine, and finding no significant difference between the two.
The people who studied in HS Biology realize that the portal vein does not drain the end of the intestinal tract—meaning that drugs or substances entering ‘backwards’ are not subject to ‘first pass effect’ that destroys oral buprenorphine. This leads to another way to reduce the cost of ‘self-treatment’, referred to as ‘plugging.’ And there’s really nothing more that I want to say about that. Gross.
No matter how clean the marketing, a medication that is injected, ‘plugged’, or sold by heroin dealers will eventually get a black eye. I’ve written about guilt by association, and how patients doing everything right to end an addiction started by their pain doctor feel denigrated for taking Suboxone or buprenorphine exactly as prescribed. We’ve heard about part of Eastern Europe where the black eye to buprenorphine treatment led to political blindness, resulting in the replacement of ‘dreaded buprenorphine’ by a yellow chemical nicknamed ‘Krokodil’. Right now, the primary problem in my region is the potential blurring of lines between treatment and ‘self-treatment’, which is just another form of opioid dependence. I recently began treating a young woman who had been taking illicit Suboxone/buprenorphine, each day, for over 4 years, without any use of opioid agonists. She probably would not be driving a couple hours to see me for each appointment, had the withdrawal symptoms of her newborn not prompted the investigation by social services.
To the person who reviewed my last post— my lack of terseness is showing. I intended to conclude this post today, but when we look more closely, the unintended consequences go on and on. To summarize so far: That the shortage of buprenorphine-certified providers makes buprenorphine/Suboxone a scarce commodity. Buprenorphine has unique effects when taken properly, and the elimination of the obsession to use opioids is a Godsend for many people that cannot be obtained from ANY other substance. While some politicians and regulators see a world where too many doctors put Suboxone and buprenorphine on the streets, the unintended consequence of having too FEW providers has been to fuel the misuse and diversion of a potentially life-saving medication.
In part one, I promised a bit of drama over the Affordable Care Act. I’m getting there. But given that this is a holiday weekend, you will have to wait a few days for part 3!
Addendum: I’m adding comments from a member of the LinkedIn discussion board, from Shaun Shelly, Addictions Specialist at Hope House in Cape Town, South Africa. He points out how the blurring lines between abuse and treatment erode confidence in buprenorphine as a treatment strategy:
Great piece, and I look forward to you going “on and on” a bit more! I see the same in the South African setting where we have only one recently started (last week!) trial state funded OMT program. But all our patients know where they can buy scripts from doctors at R50(US$5) a pop. There is no requirement for special buprenorphine training in order to prescribe. Honestly, these doctors are little more than dealers with titles – these are the same guys who are giving long-term repeat scripts for benzos. And the dealers I know also supply bupe.
The real problem is, as you state, that the self-administration is at best sporadic and sub-optimal. This has the effect of many patients saying Bupe doesn’t work, and when we refer them for medically assisted detox they aren’t interested (Bupe is only funded by the state and many medical aids for 7 day detox). Hopefully sanity will prevail and we will get some decent OMT programs in place.
I have the same experience with some injectors – they report a lemon taste in the mouth but little else negative.
Addicted to Suboxone
First Published 7/23/2013
I hear from the anti-buprenorphine people now and then, less than I used to. I also hear from fans of this blog’s early days, when I routinely lost my temper in response to those people. Their general line was that things on heroin weren’t all that bad, but now, on buprenorphine, things are miserable. Starting buprenorphine somehow removed an opportunity to be clean that they used to have, that they would have used if not for buprenorphine.
They somehow miss the obvious—that they could ALWAYS go back to the heroin addiction that worked so well for them. They’ll say they could stop heroin any time they wanted (you know the joke—‘It is so easy to quit that I quit a hundred times!’), but act as if someone is forcing them to take buprenorphine.
If it is so easy to stop heroin, why not go back to heroin and stop?
For the record, I don’t advise people on buprenorphine to change to heroin. It is difficult to wean off any opioid, including buprenorphine. But I do have patients who have tapered off buprenorphine; something I’ve never witnessed with agonists like oxycodone or heroin (i.e. tapering outside of a controlled environment). Most people who read my blog know that I don’t recommend tapering off buprenorphine for most people, an opinion I’ve come to after seeing many people relapse, and some people die, after stopping buprenorphine.
I received a typical anti-bupe message yesterday; the message and my response are below. There are a few typos that I can’t decipher….
Errors of logic, anyone?
Subutex was the worst mistake I ever made. I was an off and on heroin user for 5 years. I was clean for over a year and relapsed that when I survived Subutex first I was getting it off the streets then my wife ego had the insurance got a script. She was pregnant so the doctor prescribed Subutex. She told her that her brain would never be the same from her opiate use and would need Subutex most likely for the rest of her life. We both were quickly using it IV IT killed our sex life. It made me feel like a woman or something I have no libido at all. I quit using it IV for 9 months then started again which caused me to have a full blown relapse I’m in 12 step recovery. I lost our home shortly after our new born son was born forcing her to move in with her parents and I moved into an sober living house. We are now both trying to taper off this drug that it’s overly prescribed. The doctor put her on 26mg a day mind you we shared but the doctor doesn’t know that. I do believe in short term low dose setting this drug has a therapeutic value. But I believe it’s been designed to get money lost to drug dealers into the pockets of our government. I kicked Heroin and Oxycontin more then once. Getting off Subutex has been the toughest one yet the physical and mental withdraws are horrible. The best bet for addiction treatment is 12 step meetings. All Subutex or Suboxone does is give you a crutch and prolongs actual recovery from the disease of addiction. They don’t tell you about all the terrible side effects behind this medication its marketed as a miracle drug. A wise man once said if it sounds too good to be true then it’s probably not. Rant done hopefully this helps someone. The answer to recovery is the 12 and staying sober 1 day at a time, most important a relationship with a higher power.
My Response:
An interesting comment… You’ve taken heroin for over five years as an ‘off and on user’. You then illegally obtained buprenorphine, and injected it (!)… illegally shared what a physician prescribed for your wife… but it’s all buprenorphine’s fault that you are experiencing problems? Part of the 12 steps that you favor includes taking responsibility for what happens in one’s life, yet I don’t hear a lot of that in your narrative.
I don’t know about ‘miracle drug’, although it probably has saved the lives of both you and your wife, since IV heroin addicts don’t tend to do well beyond 5 years. There is nothing in your history to suggest that your ‘on and off use of heroin’ would have somehow come to an end, had you not changed your drug of choice to buprenorphine. But one aspect of buprenorphine is the ‘ceiling effect’, which makes overdose much less likely.
Likewise, I don’t see a government conspiracy, and I disagree with your comment about ‘low dose use’. Buprenorphine HAS been used in low dosage for treating pain for the past 30 years, but everything about buprenorphine that makes it a good addiction treatment relies on the person taking a dose that assures a high blood level, i.e. above the ceiling level for the drug’s effects. In low doses, buprenorphine acts like any other agonist– i.e. causes the same up/down mood, cravings, and obsessive use pattern.
Your problem is that you became addicted to opioids, and your opioid addiction has cost you a great deal. You misused buprenorphine by injecting it, but luckily for you the drug has certain safety features that helped keep you from overdosing– something heroin doesn’t have. But now you blame buprenorphine for all your problems.
I certainly do not suggest that you do this, but for the sake of making a point—- you could easily go right back to where you were, before you met buprenorphine, if you returned to your addiction to IV heroin. If you started heroin tomorrow, the buprenorphine would be out of your system in a week or so, and… voila….. you would be ‘cured’ from this horrible affliction that you claim to have, i.e. an addiction to buprenorphine. Or are you going to suggest that taking sublingual buprenorphine was somehow WORSE for you than doing what you were doing before finding a doctor, when you were injecting foul solutions of heroin into your veins?! You were FINE with the heroin, but BUPRENORPHINE has ruined your life?
Sorry– I don’t buy it. Most people who stop ANY opioid– buprenorphine, oxycodone, or heroin— end up using again. Buprenorphine, as a partial agonist, relieves cravings in a way that opioid agonists can’t. And taking buprenorphine certainly doesn’t make anything ‘worse’; a person addicted to heroin, who doesn’t like taking buprenorphine, can always go back to heroin! I don’t recommend it, as the overdose risk is very high with heroin, and people on heroin suffer from constant obsessions to take more and more– a life far worse than the person properly taking buprenorphine.
This is where I come in… THESE are the patients I see on a regular basis. The doctors who used to call them ‘good patients’ now call the same people ‘drug addicts.’ And the pain doctors—the ones who create so many addicts—give lectures on ‘how to prescribe opioids.’ I can spare you the need to attend the lecture— the main message is that after you make the patient an addict, you must do everything that you can to separate yourself from the patient before the consequences of that addiction become apparent—so that your hands appear sparkly-clean!
An Addict's Story
I received the following email last week. I considered trimming it down, but the story is well-written and describes a history that is similar to that of many of my patients. As usual, I will write a follow-up post in a week or so.
Dear Dr. J,
I have read many of your posts over the past few years. Like many, I started out disagreeing with your comments and insight, while blaming my inability to manage my addiction on the Suboxone treatment. My active addiction to opiate pain medications was brief, about 4 months of hydrocodone/oxycodone use in the end of 2007. In early, 2008), I reached out to my primary care physician who directed me to an inpatient stabilization followed by Suboxone maintenance/addiction therapy. When I entered treatment I maintained the belief that I was not an addict, and my doctor initially supported this attitude. He described my situation as physical dependence stemming from treatment of pain. I was a recent college graduate, I had a wonderful upbringing, a bright future…I believed that “people like me don’t become drug addicts.” So of course I wanted to minimize the seriousness of my illness. I convinced myself that this physical dependence “happened to me,” and I was doing what needed to be done to resolve the issue. So I saw my doctor monthly and went to weekly addiction therapy sessions. I did not use “street drugs,” or any other RX meds, so my UAs were always clear, and eventually I was seeing the doctor for a refill every few months.
At the same time, I was dealing with the onset of some anxiety and panic issues, which I also used to rationalize my initial abuse of the opiates. As college came to an end I began to get very anxious about the future and panic in certain situations. When I was prescribed the Vicodin and Percocet for a knee injury, it was like finding the key that turned off all these negative feelings/physical sensations. My beliefs regarding success and failure fueled my anxiety, and allowed me to rationalize abusing the opiates as self-medication. When I began taking the pain medications I had no understanding of addiction or opioid dependence, and I honestly thought “this is an RX medication, I am prescribed it for pain, it also helps with this anxiety issue, so taking a few extra is fine.” So, as I said, it was very easy to go along with this idea that I was somehow different than all the other addicts.(“terminal uniqueness,” one of my NA friends taught me that term, I have always loved it.)
My starting dose of Suboxone was 16mgs/daily. Between January and August 2008, I tapered down to about 1 mg/daily. However, in July I experienced a major panic attack and was prescribed clonazepam for my anxiety/panic. In August, I discontinued my Suboxone and was prescribed Bentyl, Tigan, and Clonidine for acute WD symptoms. The withdrawal was really not bad. It lasted about a week; the worst of it was my anxiety, stomach, and exhaustion, which continued beyond the week. I tried to push on through it, however, it was as though I had traveled back in time to the day I had gone into treatment.
The reality was that I had done nothing during those 8 months to understand or manage my addiction or anxiety (beyond medication). At the time, of course, I didn’t understand this– and was immediately looking to place blame with the Suboxone. “Why the hell did I take the drug if I was going to end out feeling the way I did right when I started…I wasted 8 months delaying this inevitable hell”…the usual retorts from an addict in denial. I tried a number of different SSRIs/SNRIs, as well as amphetamines, to help with my exhaustion and focus. Nothing helped; I lost 35 lbs. by late November 2008.
From the very first follow up after stopping the Suboxone, my doctor suggested starting again. I had never relapsed during my treatment with Suboxone, and I had not used since stopping, so starting Suboxone did not make sense to me at the time. However, I knew that it would make my discomfort go away, and decided to start the Suboxone again in early December 2008. We determined that my decrease from 8 mg to 1 mg over two weeks prior to discontinuing was too fast. I still wasn’t willing to deal with the reality of my anxiety and addiction, and continued to minimize.
I went back on the Suboxone. Over the next year, I stayed on the Suboxone consistently, and just focused on living life. I did not do any NA/AA, addiction therapy, etc. In early 2010, I began relapsing. I would run out of my prescription early and substitute with other pain medication. Still rationalizing that the Suboxone was a pain, and I was just doing what was needed to make it work. It was during this period that my addiction became fully active, and the use became less about self-medicating and more about the feeling/escape.
In late 2010, I checked into a treatment center to detox from all opioid medications. Again, the immediate WD symptoms were very mild and the isolation of the center helped with my anxiety. I was able to isolate and almost hide from the anxiety by being in the center and cut off from the world. I left the center 4 days later, prescribed Gabapentin and clonazepam for anxiety. The day I left, I relapsed on the ride home from the center.
It is amazing, but it still had not clicked for me. The anxiety was in the forefront, and I still thought that the addiction was a symptom or result of those issues. Needless to say, I ended up sleeping all day, exhausted, depressed, with the same stomach issues. I was finishing up business school, and trudging through. I would rationalize taking the pain medications again on days when I had school. And I walked down the same road again. The entire time I cursed Suboxone as the cause of all my issues. “If only I would have gone cold turkey from the pain killers back in 2008….I wasn’t an addict until I was prescribed Suboxone”…again the usual BS.
As you can probably guess I hit the wall again, and ended out back in treatment. However, this time something clicked in me, and I was fortunate to have a team of caretakers who could see through my BS. I realized that I had crossed so many lines that I thought I never would, and could not control myself. Instead of just doing a short-term stabilization, I spent 3 weeks in intensive out-patient treatment following my inpatient stay. I was stabilized back on Suboxone, and then for 3 weeks, 8 hours a day, I was focused on my addiction, and the team at the center was not letting me [email protected]@ anything. I started that program in mid June 2011. I learned about my addiction, and got honest with myself, my family, and my friends (I had hidden my addiction and treatment from everyone in my life except for my mother and father up until last summer).
I was humbled in a major way, and finally got real with myself. I had always thought that saying “I have an addiction” was a cop out. Coming to terms with my lack of control was and continues to be very hard. I feel a great deal of guilt and disappointment towards myself. And there is part of me that still wants to believe that I can control all of this and with enough will-power fix all my issues. Ironically, in a way, I am striving to maintain control and fix these issues every day, as I stay clean and focused on my sobriety. I was always afraid of being defined by my addiction. However, when I got honest, I realized that the more I tried to ignore reality, the more my addiction consumed my life.
Ultimately, I wanted to write this email as a thank you to you and share my story with those who visit your site. It took me 5 years, 3 times off and back on Suboxone, and 2 stays in treatment to realize that I am an addict. In hindsight, I think much of my downfall was classic addict behavior; placing blame, terminal uniqueness, etc. I expected Suboxone to resolve all my issues, without doing any actual work.
Looking back on all of my experiences, I thought this is where I would end out. However, working through my addiction has helped my anxiety immensely. And I am beginning to feel it is time to appropriately taper and discontinue my Suboxone. With all the support I have now, and the skills I have gained I feel very optimistic (cautiously).
Dr. Junig – I would be interested in your advice regarding tapering or insight on my story in general.
Thank you to the writer; I’ll be adding my thoughts soon!