Success (and Failure) Stories with Suboxone

I am putting a book together about Suboxone;  I realized that with all of the talk about side effects, controversy over ‘real recovery’, and letters from angry pharmacists, I don’t have a section for ‘Success Stories’!  Don’t get me wrong–  I have received many messages from people telling their stories, grateful for having Suboxone as a treatment option.  I just don’t keep those messages;  the controversy is the interesting stuff!
I don’t know if I will ever finish the book and get it into print, but if you have an interesting success story please share it with me.  I don’t want any identifying information, mainly because I don’t want to worry that someone will lose a job over a story and then sue me!  I might also shorten a story a bit.  But if you are willing to write about your experiences with treatments including Suboxone, please send them my way.  When writing, think about what YOU would find interesting about someone else’s story, and share that.
Y’know… the point of writing this book is to help people decide if Suboxone is the right way to go, and also to share information about the use of Suboxone.  I suppose I should have an ‘Unsuccess Stories’ section as well!  By now, people should know where I am coming from.  I am not impressed by the ‘drug for a drug’ comments;  those are stale arguments that miss the point of what buprenorphine does, i.e. eliminate the obsession to use, which is the essence of addiction.  Those comments go straight to the recycle bin these days.  I am also not impressed by the desire to be ‘off everything’.  I consider opiate dependence a condition that requires treatment for life, whether the treatment be the creation of an artificial environment at the opiate receptor using a medication, or the creation of an artificial personality state by going to meetings.  I will clarify what I mean about meetings and artificial personality states:  when people are involved in the twelve steps and the program is working for them, they are being held in a state of personality that is probably closer to their ‘core’ selves;  the BS is stripped away, sarcasm is frowned on, they are encouraged to express their feelings more, etc.  But while they may be closer to their ‘true’ core selves, they are being held there by going to meetings– and if they stop the meetings they revert back to the ‘old’ personality state.  So going to meetings, in my opinion, is just as ‘artificial’ as taking a medication!  I don’t consider it a fair ‘unsuccess story’ if a person complains about being chained to a doctor (it is a fatal illness– get over it!), if a person thinks they have a bad doctor (we don’t judge cancer chemo treatments by the bedside manner of the doc who orders them!), or because Suboxone can be abused (we don’t rule out treatment of surgical pain with narcotics, simply because the opiate agonists are abused!).  Finally, I am not moved when a person is not successful when they take Suboxone from the ‘street’, without being treated by a physician who understands addiction.
So what would I consider a valid ‘unsuccess story’?  If you truly wanted to get clean, and you did as you were told–  and Suboxone failed to keep you clean.  If you share that story with me please do your best to describe where the treatment failed.  I understand that any relapse will have the moment where the addict ‘does what he has been told not to do’– and I won’t rule out an ‘unsuccess’ on that basis– unless you tell me that from day one you made no effort at all to avoid using!  The most helpful story would explain why the failure occurred– cravings were not blocked, for example.  Another valid story would be a criticism of the nature of Suboxone treatment, in that it doesn’t place great emphasis on the psychosocial side of things.  If you are able to explain why, in your case, a more psychosocial focus would have been helpful, that would be useful information.
Who said I’m not Fair and Balanced?
If you are willing to send me a story, please e-mail it to info@subox.info.  I have no idea if I will receive one or a hundred stories, so I can’t say the odds of your story getting into my book project– assuming I finish the darn thing!
Thanks!!
SD