Author: tearj3rker
Posted: Thu May 03, 2012 11:27 pm
I’ve been told PAWS lasts significantly longer for long-half life opioids (ie methadone and Suboxone). My old prescribing doctor told me it can take 18 months for the brain to re-adjust to a level of functioning that could be said to be in the normal range (something about protein kinase C levels?)… It can take around half that time for shorter half life drugs like heroin.
Buprenorphine and moreso methadone are very high lipid soluble, and trace amounts remain in body fat and take months to be excreted, which slows the process of the brain and body normalising. Hence a longer period of acute withdrawal, and a longer period of PAWS.
Maybe this is one of the reasons exercise speeds up PAWS, as exercise aids in the excretion of drugs from our tissue, and speeds up the turnover (life-cycle) of our body’s cells?
Because of our addiction, after a period of abstinence our addictive circuit becomes much more reactive any time we re-introduce opioids to our body. If our tissues excrete these trace amounts of opioids into our blood months after we’ve stopped using, even such small amounts could trick our opioid receptors into thinking there’s drugs still in our body, thus slowing our brain’s recovery. Just theorising.
