“Is Suboxone Right for Me?”

First of all, as I’ve made clear throughout this site, I’m not a doctor. Ultimately, only you and your doctor can make the decision whether or not Suboxone is right for you. My job at Withdrawal-Ease is to present the facts. My mission is also to sprinkle in my personal opinion.

When it comes to prescribing Suboxone, I beg to differ a bit with the manufacturer and some of the people that financially benefit from the dispensing of Suboxone. And just to be clear at the onset, by proxy, I financially benefit from the prescription of Suboxone since 25% of my customers are people trying to get off Sub so I have no economic motive to discourage its use.

What many people do NOT know about Suboxone is that, as it is currently being prescribed, Suboxone is truly a “Replacement Therapy” therefore; you are giving up your opiate of choice to essentially be addicted to Suboxone. Make no mistake, when you are on Suboxone, you become dependent on it. If you stop taking Suboxone, you go into withdrawals that are similar -although not as acute- as Vicodin withdrawals but due to Suboxone’s longer half-life, the withdrawals can take much longer to subside. It is very, very hard to totally get off Suboxone…extremely hard.

If you read most of the clinical literature on Suboxone you’ll notice that the study participants are usually heroin addicts or people who have tried and tried to get off drugs and could not stop because they are extremely addicted to opiates. From a macro-social perspective, Suboxone is a worthwhile trade-off because (like methadone) it can reduce crime, homelessness and other deviant or illicit behavior that’s associated with hard-core drug use. As a social experiment, Suboxone works!
However, as a person who has taken Suboxone and a person who has a lot of experience with opiate addiction, I do not believe people who are dependent on opiates have been given the full story on Suboxone and I think it’s over-prescribed.

In my past life I worked in healthcare marketing for many years. I know that the marketing goal of most healthcare manufacturers or pharmaceutical manufacturers is to widen the scope of its product’s indications thereby increasing their “universe” or “potential patient base.” I see no difference in the case of Suboxone.

A good example would be anti-depressants…you cannot turn on a TV nowadays and avoid a TV ad for anti-depressants. And what do they say? “Are you sometimes sad, unhappy or irritable?” I’m human! Of course I am! And now they even have the nerve to have ANOTHER pill for people who are already on anti-depressants because they are sometimes still sad! Jeez. If there was no “Sad” there would be no “Happy” right?

Anncr: “George, do you sometimes feel the urge to urinate?”

Me: “Well actually, now that I think about it, yeah I do sometimes feel a slight pressure on the inner walls of my bladder…maybe I should ask my doctor about Urisafe!”

I’m getting off on a tangent and my goal here is to educate you, not turn you off to anything. But I feel like I have to at least give you a perspective on the forces at work when someone says, “Suboxone May Be Right For You.”

In order to prescribe Suboxone, a clinician must go through a short educational and licensing program that enables them to prescribe Suboxone to their patients. But…here’s the kicker. All physicians who prescribe Suboxone have a maximum number of patients that they can prescribe it to. From a cynical and economic standpoint, does it not make sense therefore that they would want to keep that patient on sub for as long as possible? The doctors want the visits and the pharmaceutical manufacturer needs the volume. No conspiracy…just the facts folks. You can jump to your own conclusions.

But the problem is that most of the people who are physically dependent on opiates are not hard-core addicts or criminals or homeless: They are afraid of the stupid withdrawals!

In my opinion, Suboxone is not appropriate for people who want to quit opiates but are scared of the withdrawals. If you are a long-term opiate abuser, a heroin addict and you have a highly addictive personality then “Suboxone May Be Right For You.” If you break the law on a consistent basis to get your drugs or have failed repeatedly at in-patient rehabs then “Suboxone May Be Right For You.”

Just remember that I’m a fan of Suboxone as long as it’s prescribed judiciously. There are treatment centers (The Right Step is one of them) that only prescribe Suboxone for detox and that’s it…by the time you leave, you are off Suboxone. But most clinicians prescribing Suboxone do not demonstrate the restraint that The Right Step does. If you begin Suboxone therapy remember that there’s a good chance that you will be on it for life. If you decide to taper off Suboxone or quit altogether, you WILL go through withdrawals.

Most of my customers buy Withdrawal-Ease because they desperately want to get off pills but don’t know how to get through the withdrawals. If they were given the chance to flush their pills down the toilet without any withdrawals I would say that 75% of my customers would do so in a heartbeat. Some of my customers ARE addicted but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they need Suboxone. They could try detox, ongoing psychiatric help, group therapy etc. etc.

To me, long-term Suboxone therapy should be one of the final answers, not the first one.

-George