Thanks, all of you who wrote comments to my last post. I remind everyone once again to consider taking your comments here and after writing them, also taking them to SuboxForum.com. I am going to put up a new category to discuss topics that were initiated here; it would be great to get a spirited, respectful ‘give and take’ on some of these topics. As I have mentioned before, the only thing that I will block on that site would be debating whether people on Suboxone are ‘in Recovery’– just because there are plenty of other sites for that, and I want the forum to be for people who have made their decision– and don’t want to be harassed over it. I will be upgrading that site shortly and changing the hosting account; hopefully I will pull it off without erasing everything!
OK, tonight’s topic: I am taking my post from a different forum and posting it here also to save wear and tear on my keyboard… I responded to a person who is taking 32 mg of Suboxone daily and who is concerned that the relatively high dose will raise her tolerance higher than she would like. She has surgery coming up, and is concerned that the high tolerance will get in the way during or after the surgery. My reply addresses the level of opiate tolerance in relation to dose of buprenorphine. Incidentally though I will quickly say that buprenorphine poses little problem during an anesthetic; it does not interfere to a large degree with general, epidural, or spinal anesthesia. But buprenorphine DOES interfere with the treatment of post-operative pain. I will also comment that I consider 32 mg of daily Suboxone to be a waste of money; my experiences treating people with Suboxone have only reinforced my opinion that there is no benefit, and often considerable harm, in taking more than 16 mg of Suboxone per day, and in dosing more than once per day. But that discussion will have to wait.
My Response:
I will talk about buprenorphine, the active medication in Suboxone, just to simplify things a bit– although Suboxone will have the same effects. First, when talking about the dose, it is important that the method one takes it is identified– as that is what determines how much active drug ends up in the bloodstream. I will assume that the person is taking steps to get maximal absorption of Suboxone; for example keeping it exposed to mucous membranes for a long-enough time, and not rinsing the mouth with liquid for at least 15 minutes after dosing, to avoid rinsing away drug that is attached to the lining of the mouth but not yet absorbed. As an aside, there is a post somewhere on this blog entitled ‘maximizing absorption of Suboxone’ for those who want more info.
When a person takes Suboxone, he is taking a ‘supra-maximal’ dose of buprenorphine. Buprenorphine is used to treat pain in microgram doses; the BuTrans patch is used in the UK to treat pain, and it releases buprenorphine at a rate of 5-20 MICROGRAMS per hour! One tablet of Suboxone containes 8000 micrograms! So whether a person is taking one, two, three, or more tabs of Suboxone per day, he is taking a very large dose of buprenorphine— a dose large enough to ascertain that he is up on the ‘ceiling’ of the dose/response curve. It is important to be on the ceiling, as this is the flat part of the curve (I know– a silly statement) so that as the level of buprenorphine in the bloodstream drops, the opiate potency remains constant, avoiding the sensation of a decreasing effect which would cause cravings.
I have read and heard differing opinions on the dose that gets one to the ‘ceiling’ but from everything I have seen the maximal opiate effect occurs at about 2-4 mg (or 2000-4000 micrograms), assuming good absorption of buprenorphine. I base this on watching many people initiate Suboxone; if a person with a low tolerance to opiates takes 2 mg of buprenorphine, he will have a very severe opiate effect; if he takes that dose for a few days and gets used to it, and then takes a larger dose, there is no significant increase in opiate intoxication– showing that once he is used to 2 mg, he is used to 16 mg— and is ‘on the ceiling’ by definition. I see the same thing in reverse; there is very little withdrawal as a person decreases the dose from 32-24-16-12-8 mg, but once the person gets below 4 mg per day, the real withdrawal starts. This again shows that the response is ‘flat’ at those high doses, and only comes down below about 4 mg of buprenorphine.
The flip side of all of this is that tolerance reaches a maximum at about 4 mg of buprenorphine, and further increase in dose of buprenorphine does not cause substantial increase in tolerance. Tolerance and withdrawal are two sides of the same coin; the lack of withdrawal going from 32 to 8 mg of buprenorphine is consistent with no significant change in tolerance across that range.
So in my opinion, being on 32 vs 4 mg of Suboxone doesn’t raise your tolerance. But in regard to upcoming surgery, there is an additional concern. One issue with surgery on buprenorphine is the high tolerance, but the second issue is blockade of opiate agonists by buprenorphine– and this effect is directly related to the dose of buprenorphine. A person on 32 mg of Suboxone will need much, much higher doses of agonist to get pain relief than will a person on 4 mg of Suboxone– not because of tolerance but because of the blocking effect, which is competitive in nature at the receptor. When people are approaching surgery I recommend that they lower their dose of Suboxone as much as possible– to 4-8 mg if possible. Because of the very long half-life (72 hours), this should be done at least a week before the surgery. Then I have them stop the Suboxone three days before the surgery; it usually takes 2-3 days for significant withdrawal to develop. I say all of this to give a general sense of the issues involved; people should discuss the issue with their physician rather than act on what I am describing here.
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