Author: JoshuAble
Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2011 2:15 am
I also experienced this side effect for some time (Male).
I’ve been on Sub for 5 years now (yea… long time), and at the beginning it was all OK for the most part. Then after abouta year of being on it my sex drive really took a shot for the worse (and stayed like that for about 3 years+), and while I could still achieve an erection, it was a bit smaller than usual and achieving a full orgasm was near impossible; took so much concentration and when I finally did climax it wasn’t as great of a feeling.
I was taking 16mg daily, 8mg morning and night throughout that time, and was also on Lexapro (10mg a day). About 10 months ago I finally started tapering off suboxone. I also tapered off the Lexapro after 3 years of being on it (while it’s known to be the SSRI that doesn’t have sexual side effects I know it still had an effect on my body). While I was off Lexapro without much of a problem within a month, the suboxone taper was much slower. But GOOD NEWS!
Once I got down to the 4mg mark it got a lot better, and then down to 2mg (currently stuck around 2mg daily… pain in my ass) there are days, though it’s a bit random, where I feel like a "born again virgin" and literally it would take a minute and I’d be done. My last relationship actually ended because of this ordeal (me not wanting to have sex because it took so much effort and I often failed to reach a climax which felt humiliating; but other elements added to it’s destruction).
While I’m around 2mg now (I got down to 1mg and started having issues with depression and anxiety so I went back up) and it’s 10x better than when I was on 16 mg, and also when it was in combination with an SSRI, even Lexapro.
I don’t think I’ll feel totally "normal down there" until I am completely off of suboxone, which is only another reason to get off this stuff. But all in all, if you’re on a dose higher than 4mg-6mg daily try a slow taper (after 4+years of 16mg daily I didn’t have much trouble tapering down to the 5-6mg mark rather quickly, though it does get a bit tougher once you get down to the 2-4mg mark….
SUMMARY:
-Taper to a lower dose, in my experience 4mg or less a day, take it once a day in the morning and you should be "good to go" at night for sure. I think this is definitely one of the most common side effect of suboxone (and opiates in general).
