Author: autononymous
Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2011 2:25 pm
I would just like to ask–have you TRIED taking it sublingually? It is true that it will not effect you as quickly, but….seems to me it is worth the wait. Now, unless I missed something, you didn’t say much about your "drug of choice" or how high your tolerance is. But I am not sure it’s true that you can take less suboxone to treat your addiction (that is, stay out of withdrawals and hopefully address cravings too) by injecting it rather than taking it sublingually. I don’t want to encourage you or anyone else to continue obtaining sub illegally, but I do believe that there are a lot of people out there who do it–either by buying it on the street or by "sharing" the prescription of a friend or partner. Either way, it’s technically diversion and illegal. Again, I don’t want to encourage illegal behavior, but I have a feeling that a lot of these people are simply doing the best they can to take the sub properly to treat their addiction. Personally I think that is better than staying in full active addiction and certainly better than IV use. I too urge you to try to find options that would allow you to obtain your sub in the legal manner–get a doctor and try to be very honest with him about your situation. In the mean time, I really hope you will stop injecting the sub. I don’t want to give you any medical advice as I’m not any kind of medical professional…but I will tell you that I find it does not take much sub (taken sublingually) to keep me out of withdrawal–and even at a low dose (2 mgs or even less) it usually lasts more than 24 hours. Addressing cravings is another issue…and also, at such a low dose the sub does not do a good job of blocking other opiates for me. Taken sublingually the sub should work within an hour. If I were in your situation I hope I would stop injecting it, wait at least a day, wait until I was feeling moderate withdrawals (by the COWS scale, which can easily be found online) and then try taking a small amount of sub, like 2 mgs. Then I’d wait at least an hour before taking any more. That way, I’d try to stablize on a low dose. But really, it would be much better to have a legal prescription and a doctor to help advise you and monitor your condition. I hope I don’t sound judgmental about this–really, I’m not, I’m just concerned that injecting sub sounds potentially very dangerous and also does not seem like a good way for anyone to treat their addiction. There is a lot of good info on this site as well as a lot of supportive people, so I hope you will stick around and post about your progress. And remember, you don’t have to be in remission from addiction or 100% clean to be part of this community. Many people here, myself included, are still struggling to get our addiction into remission. And sub has been a life-saver for many of us. I do understand how financial constraints are an issue of course, but, sometimes we just have to find a way to meet our health needs. As for the methadone route–if you haven’t tried it yet, I agree that you should at least consider it. However, I know that methadone treatment is not necessarily free or even more affordable than sub treatment, at least in the long run. Whatever you do, I wish you luck, and like I said, I hope you will find some helpful support and information here, and that you will post again.
