Author: travispnorton
Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2011 3:52 pm
I think one of the original questions was never answered and it was if Methadone is preferable to Suboxone for one who also has anxiety issues that need to be treated. My answer to that would be no, If anything if a patient would ‘need’ to be on benzodiazepines it would, in fact, be safer to use them with Suboxone than with Methadone as far as overdose potential. Don’t get me wrong, I DO NOT advocate for the use of benzodiazepines for anxiety, sleep or even panic in any kind of regular way, personally I feel that it ultimately makes those conditions much worse if benzodiazepines are taken with any kind of regularity. Also, at one point I believe you stated that the guy you are ‘in like’ with is a few pills shy of a monthly script? For me it was not possible to get 100% into this recovery thing until I stopped using other drugs including Valium, Klonopin, Xanax, sleeping pills, ALL full-agonist opioids including methadone, anything else mood altering including Soma’s and Tramadol. I also had to stop bouncing between methadone maintenance programs—->Suboxone Dr’s—–>’I’ve got this licked, I want to live completely off all drugs including Suboxone.’ I had to realize that everything I had just described was almost as chaotic as when I was on the streets shooting heroin, I was certainly as active in my addiction and every bit as disfunctional. I had to really realize that the entire drug aspect of addiction is a small, small piece that only seems like a big part of the disfunction obviously when I am actively using, for a few months after I quit active addiction, then periodically but rarely probably forever in the form of occasional cravings. It’s not something I ever wanted to hear or ever thought I’d be admitting let alone saying years later, but addicts such as myself really do need to make that stereotypical "everything change." People I associate with being successful in recovery do the opposite of what they did when they were in their active addiction. If they were homeless/street junkies, they tend to work if AT ALL possible in recovery. They don’t associate much with people in active addiction and tend to have friends that are also positive/trying to be positive people. For me, if I just stopped taking drugs but still was disliked by everyone around me, I still refused to work, I still hung out with junkies, I still was on disability or unemployment a good majority of the time (I personally don’t need to be, but certainly have scammed it in the past) and/or stole to support myself and just in general lived like a junkie who wasn’t using junk I’d ask: WHY? Why not just use junk too? This is getting long and drawn out and ranty, but the bottom line is that recovery involves a lot more than stopping using ALL drugs, in fact it may not involve stopping using all drugs. For me, the plan is to remain on SOMETHING, whatever that may be, it’s currently been Subutex only, extremely successfully, for almost two years.
-Travis
