suboxone

hi, your kinda in the wrong place to talk about addiction to opiates, you should look up "addiction survivors" by NAABT they have a great forum for people on suboxone and its nothing but for people on it. good luck. And BTW I take suboxone too and I'm finding it great for pain....

-hellokitty

It works way diffrent then mathadone!!!! Bupernorphine (suboxone, subutex) is way better. It has a ceiling effect and you cant overdose on it and you dont build a tolerance to it, and taken at low doses its very wonderful for pain. It's the only narcotic where taking LESS is MORE!!! They're coming out with patches of bupernorphine for pain patients thats in the clinical stages right now in the states. It doesnt really make you drowsy, and it cant be abused PEROID. I wish they would approve it for pain for people who have pain but have a history of opiate abuse. But right now it's just approved for opiate dependance but is prescribed off lable for pain too. You CAN NOT mix it with other naroctics cause it blocks them and you have to be in withdrawals to start it or it will put you in perticipated withdrawals. The ONE thing that makes me mad is that people think it's like Methadone but it couldn't be more diffrent. With methadone you keep having to go up and up on doses to get the same effect and people are dying left and right from overdoses on it. THey're as diffrent as night and day. People just think they're alike cause they're both used for naroctic dependance, and THATS ALL they have in common. It's been a life saver for me!! Even though I have severe chronic pain I was so tierd of naroctics cause they masked up the pain so much I didnt know what was the real pain and what pain my body was making up for me to get more narcotics. Since starting suboxone my pain is gone down incredibly which shocked me and I'm able to feel emotionally again cause Methadone made me feel numb (I was getting methadone from a pain doctor not a methadone clinic). Even my migraines have slowed down ALOT too. I had no idea that narcotics could cause more pain, it scares me to know that alot of doctors dont know that. But I still have pain in my lower back down my legs and my left knee and right wrist but they are more tolerable, I use to never move cause of the pain and was house bound, and at 25 years old really made me severely depressed, but since starting Suboxone I have been more happier overall. I hope I explained some about Suboxone for you, if you have anymore questions please ask and I will be happy to answer!!!

-hellokitty

PALady,

I actually experienced the same prob as "hellokitty". It's called hyperalgesia & it is a very real side effect from being on narcotic pain meds long term. Even absent abuse, narcotics reduce the body's production of natural pain killers. Because of that, chronic narcotics users (even if properly prescribed, at a low dose, managed by a PM clinic for responsible CP patients) can develop a lower threshold for pain. That's not to say that such persons shouldn't be on narc pain meds, just that we do need to consider all the possible side effects & hyperalgesia is one possiblity.

I don't know much about addiction or misuse of pain meds or any of that other stuff. I know you're really the "resident expert" on that area, but hyperalgesia is not merely found in addicts. Hyperalgesia is presumed to be associated with tolerance of a medication, but there are on-going trials seeking to definitively determine whether there is a relationship between the two & if so, whether it is causative or correlative.

peace,
frances

Frances,
I'm really not the resident anything, just another one of all of you. Everyone here brings some knowledge, from personal experience and sometimes from formal sources of learning, but I don't want to be perceived as the expert.

I do realize that narcotic use can lead to hyperalgesia, but the operative word is "can". I just felt the post as written was somewhat misleading. There's always a trade off with medications, for sure, but undertreated pain also has huge side effects as we all know.

I'm tired of late and haven't had the energy to explain myself much in my posts here, so perhaps it's me that's unclear. Very possible.

PaLady