Below is an e-mail that I changed just enough to hide the person’s identity.  Every week, I receive messages that describe similar situations.

My husband has struggled GREATLY with substance abuse since in his 20′s; he is now in his mid-40′s. He is the kindest sweetest man and he is the BEST husband and father. When he is using he becomes someone he is not. We have run the gamut from jail to overdose.  Six years ago a friend introduced him to Suboxone and it LITERALLY gave him his life back. He bought it off the friend for years, where it was very expensive. Finally I brought him to a doctor a bit over a year ago. She is pretty adamant about weaning him off of Suboxone.

From experience, I know that 2-3 months after he stops Suboxone he will relapse. I strongly believe it IS a MIRACLE drug! I agree in the sense that if a diabetic needs insulin to save his life, you give it for a lifetime. My husband over the last 6 years has been the man of my dreams, the man I always knew he was. I have extreme anxiety because I know this doctor is just doing her job and trying to follow guidelines however my husband’s LIFE is at stake!  It’s not like if he stops this med he could ‘just’ have depression;  he could end up in jail, or worse. He has his life back. He is enjoying his family life as he should.

If this is what it takes for him to live a normal life then why not?  When we ask his doctor about staying on Suboxone, she says her concern is that we don’t know the long-term effects. She doesn’t want to keep anyone on any med without knowing what it could do. She says it hasn’t been on the market long enough. 

My husband had a SEVERE opioid addiction. He was taking 10-15 Oxycontin 80mgs a day and then ended up switching to 400mgs of methadone before he switched to Suboxone. He has found that he is comfortable with 4 of the 8mg pills per day. I believe it is because he was used to taking such high doses of opioids. He has tried really hard to decrease Suboxone for his doctor but I see the anxiety build in him. She says no one in her practice is on that dose. To be honest he was taking more when he was buying them from a friend but brought himself to a stable 4 pills per day when he started with the doctor. He and I both REALLY like her and would like to continue treatment with her. I wish I had a DVD of little clips of our life from before and after Suboxone. I am positive she would be floored. I am positive she would understand my concern. In my eyes my husband is back. He is such a beautiful soul and I hate to see that taken away from him yet again.

Doctor I read up at the top of this blog that you agree with a lifetime use. He currently has no noted side effects. Do you have any suggestions that I may present to his doctor? I dream of the day that she says it is alright for him to continue on this until maybe he chooses to wean if he so chooses to do so. That would alleviate SO MUCH stress on both of us. Please let me know what you think.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I agree with most of the opinions expressed in the email.  I know how horrible things are for active opioid addicts—and for the families of active opioid addicts.
More and more physicians pay lip service to ‘addiction as a disease,’ but most do not yet treat addiction as a disease.  The comments about diabetes are ‘right on.’ One could substitute a number of diseases to demonstrate the same point.  We physicians have few illnesses that we cure; rather we manage illness over a person’s lifetime— and opioid dependence is clearly a life-long illness.

To address a couple points in the message:  the active ingredient in Suboxone, buprenorphine, has been in clinical use for over three decades, and has established a clean safety profile.  Buprenorphine has not been used at the high doses employed for treating opioid dependence for quite as long, but even that track record is significant, i.e. 8 years in this country, and longer in Europe.  Most physicians would not consider an 8-yr-old medication to be a ‘new drug!’

The situation described in the message is, in my opinion, the result of several factors.   First and foremost, the reluctance to prescribe buprenorphine is a consequence of stigma.  Doctors prescribe new antidepressants, pain relievers, blood pressure treatments, and cholesterol-lowering agents with much less concern over ‘safety.’     I wonder, frankly, if safety is the concern—or whether there is an unconscious sense that patients addicted to opioids, or to other substances, don’t deserve an ‘easy way out’ of their problem; that sitting through a miserable detox is  a more fitting ‘treatment’ than a pill that makes things better.

I come to this cynical conclusion only because the alternative—that buprenorphine is ‘dangerous’—doesn’t make sense.  The risk of any medication must be compared against the risk of not using that medication.  As the message states, we know the risk of ‘not treating’ the woman’s husband!  Similar comparisons are used to justify the use of chemotherapeutic agents that have severe toxic effects, including the risk of killing the patient.  As I’ve written in prior posts, the fatality rate from untreated opioid dependence is as high as for many cancers.  So does it make any sense to withhold buprenorphine out of safety concerns?!

There are other reasons for doctors’ reluctance to prescribe buprenorphine. Many fear they will do something wrong, and run afoul of the DEA during an audit—a process that all buprenorphine-certified prescribers are subject to.   Some doctors feel pressure from friends and family members of patients, who often blame the doctor for keeping the patient ‘stuck on Suboxone.’  Some doctors want to maintain high patient turnover in order to keep money  coming in, since practices are ‘capped’ at 100 patients per certified physician.

Finally, I think many doctors see ongoing treatment as less satisfying than a ‘cure.’  They consider residential treatment the gold standard, and buprenorphine as a less-intensive alternative.  They buy into the idea that the addict can be returned to ‘normal’—whatever that is—if he/she works at recovery hard enough.  I understand the thought, as that is the type of treatment experience that I went through.  But on the other hand, the relapse rate for opioid dependence, after residential treatment, is very high. I myself relapsed after seven years of recovery, losing my career, and almost my life.  During my years as medical director of a large residential treatment center, patients discharged as ‘successfully treated’ often became repeat customers, at least until they lost their job and health insurance.  Some of them– too many of them–died.

I won’t get into the specifics of treatment;  I’ll leave that to her husband’s doctor to work out.  But I do hope that the doctor will give some thought to whether stopping this life-saving treatment is truly in the patient’s best interest.

To the patient’s wife– I encourage you to continue as an advocate, and I hope your doctor will understand your perspective.

A recent experience with a patient helped me realize some of the dramatic differences in the treatment of opioid dependence, in an era of buprenorphine.

I drug-test patients who are treated with buprenorphine or Suboxone.  The point of testing is not to catch someone messing up, but rather to determine when a person is in trouble.  It would be great if we could simply rely on the word of our patients, but once a person is using opioids, his/her own ability to know what is true falls apart. All of us who treat addiction have heard patients rationalize relapse as something they ‘had to do’ for one reason or another, for example.  The effects of active using on insight are why I like the use of ‘DENIAL’ as a mnemonic for ‘Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying.’

The effects of relapse on telling the truth are part of the profound impact of using on a person’s insight.  Insight disappears very quickly during active using, as the mind abandons the broad view and becomes focused on one goal. Before buprenorphine, drug testing was in some ways more, and other ways less important.  It was more important because after relapse, the person was immediately thrown back into the world of desperate scrambling, where risks for consequences are high.  On the other hand, testing was less important—or maybe necessary– because experienced addictionologists (and spouses) could see the effects of using, including the loss of insight, in the active addict’s eyes.

I was one of those people who experienced that rapid loss of insight after my relapse, back in 2000. For years I had attended AA and NA; hundreds if not thousands of meetings over seven years.  I remember comforting myself that ‘if I ever get off track, at least I now know where the door is to get back.’  I didn’t realize that at the instant one relapses, that door becomes nowhere to be found.

In retrospect, I don’t know if the door actually disappeared. I suspect that with the right attitude, that same door would have opened for me.  But the honesty and humility that I needed, in order to ask for help in finding and passing through the door, were suddenly replaced by the need for secrets—secrets about everything.  As soon as I relapsed, nobody could be trusted. Nobody would understand me.  I was on my own.

Contrast that with the experiences of patients on buprenorphine who relapse with opioid agonists. As I compare their experiences to mine, I realize that I am using the experiences of a couple people to make broad generalizations.  But I have seen a number of examples that support these generalizations, that have consistently followed the paths that I’m about to describe.

One patient—call him ‘Paul’—told me about his relapse before I even mentioned that I would be asking for a urine test.  In fact, he was eager to tell me about his experience, as if he looked forward to getting it off his conscience.  “I have to tell you that I really screwed up last week,” he said. When I asked him what happened, he said that a friend who he hadn’t seen for several months came through town and stopped by his house.  With little warning, his friend pulled out a bag of heroin and a couple clean needles, tossed them on the table, and said ‘let’s fire up.’

After shooting the heroin, Paul immediately felt disappointed in himself.  Unlike in the old days, he felt nothing from the heroin.  While his old friend nodded off next to him, Paul wondered what the heck happened—and immediately wanted to talk to me about the situation.

His desire to talk is an amazing thing—and worth noting.  Without buprenorphine, a person who relapses is not generally eager to speak to his/her sponsor, let alone counselor or physician.  In those cases, the mind reels from an avalanche of shame, and the need to keep secrets—even from one’s own awareness—becomes paramount.

There are many buprenorphine programs that would discharge a person for one relapse—and in such cases, I would not expect the same type of honesty from patients.  I don’t get the logic of those programs, and I become angry when I think about them.  As I’ve said before, if a person relapses, that person NEEDS help—not abandonment!  I believe that the proper approach to treating addiction can be found in almost all cases simply by considering opioid dependence to be another chronic illness.  And if someone with heart disease overexerts himself and comes in with chest pain, we don’t boot him from treatment!

Paul made an appointment to talk about his experience.  He explained how he felt when his old buddy contacted him, and we discussed ways to avoid meeting up with ‘old friends’ in the future.  He discussed the urge to escape when he saw the paraphernalia—to escape from life’s responsibilities—and we talked about how difficult it can be to simply tolerate life sometimes, and the powerful effects of triggers and cues.  Most interesting to me, as a psychodynamic psychiatrist, he talked about a complicated set of thoughts and feelings that came up when he saw the drugs—questions about who he was, about shame, about the heavy load that comes with doing the right thing, and about the pressure of not letting people down.  Those are all big issues, I said as I agreed with him.  How much easier, at least for a few moments, to just be ‘nothing’—to have no expectations about one’s self!

We talked about the challenge of being ‘someone’– of being proud of one’s self.  It feels good to do the right thing– but it may also feel bad.  Am I letting my old friends down, if I do better? I suggested that he might watch the old movie, Ordinary People, where a younger brother struggles after surviving an accident that claimed the life of his brother.

Before buprenorphine, people struggled with opioid dependence largely on their own.  Yes, we had twelve step groups—and still do—but twelve step groups place the responsibility to get one’s act together squarely on the back of the using addict.  Many people in AA or NA will say that “AA is a selfish program.”  It has to be.  When one relapses, one is left with his own distorted insight, accumulating consequences until, hopefully, he finds his way back to the pathway established by the simple program of the steps.

On buprenorphine, relapse doesn’t necessarily cause instant loss of insight.  I don’t mean to minimize relapse, as bad things can always happen.  For example, I have had patients stuck in a pattern of chronic relapse that was difficult to straighten out, even though there was little or no psychic effect from the drug being abused.  But from an optimistic standpoint, relapse on buprenorphine stimulates a deeper investigation into what is missing from the person’s life, and a renewed effort to gain what is missing.

This assumes, of course, that the person is not simply tossed from treatment for the relapse.  In that case, other people are left trying to figure out what happened—when the obituary appears a few months later.

A Reader Writes:

Message:

The State of XXXXXX prescription price list noted Target Pharmacy as the cheapest for Suboxone at $6.99/Suboxone pill, 8mg-2mg, qty. 30. So I started getting my prescriptions filled at Target.

Well, needless to say they raised their prices twice since then and I am now paying $8.158333/Suboxone pill, 8mg-2mg, qty. 30, Nov. 12, 2011.

My question: How can they be alowed to jack their prices up so fast and so high in a short period of time? What can I do? It’s like they pulled a bait and switch on me.

Please write back Dr. Junig

My Reply:

I sympathize with you.  The best thing you can do is have an educated and educatable doctor– someone who has enough humility to recognize when he/she is wrong, and adjust accordingly.  Somebody who recognizes that as physicians, we are constantly sorting through new data, responding clinically to phenomena according to science.  Most importantly, someone who recognizes that in medicine, as in all fields, people make assumptions about things with partial data, and sometimes later learn that their assumptions were wrong.

I realize that is difficult in the current era when people with addictions are considered ‘manipulative’ for simply raising appropriate questions.  The truth is also competing with the marketing and persuasion tactics by Reckitt-Benckiser– a company that has found a way to influence policy-makers in government and addiction societies.  I am generally a fan of corporate greed, as I believe that the marketplace is the best stage for ideas to rise or fall (mixing several metaphors, I know!)  But I am appalled by the extent of involvement of Reckitt-Benckiser, the British corporation that makes Suboxone, with physician societies– the groups that are supposed to be advocating for policies that save lives that are being lost to addiction.

The generic tablet of orally-dissolving  buprenorphine, 8 mg, is FDA-indicated for treating opioid dependence.  In Wisconsin, some pharmacies have it for as
low as $2.35 per tab;  the more expensive places sell it for $3.00.  It is CLINICALLY IDENTICAL to Suboxone;  the naloxone in Suboxone is not absorbed sublingually (actually, 3%-5% is absorbed, but does nothing clinically), and after being swallowed the naloxone is completely destroyed at the liver by first pass metabolism.

Suboxone is supposedly safer then generic buprenorphine because naloxone supposedly causes withdrawal if injected.  This is the only justification (initially put forth by the folks at Reckitt-Benckiser) for the need for Suboxone.  The justification is flimsy, since many people who would benefit from the lower price of buprenorphine have very little risk of injecting the medication.  But worse, the flimsy justification is a lie. People who have injected Suboxone intravenously (I have met and heard from many of them) report NO withdrawal from naloxone-containing Suboxone.  What’s more, people who wrote to me who have injected both buprenorphine and Suboxone, at different times based based on availability, have all reported the same thing– that the subjective experience from injecting either substance is identical.

I must point out here that there are MANY reasons to avoid injecting any substance– but particularly a substance made to be taken orally.  These compounds contain fillers that destroy the capillary beds of the lungs, where oxygen is absorbed– potentially leading to severe lung damage.  And infection is always a huge risk, when placing poorly-sterilized material directly into the bloodstream.  Please– don’t do it.

Back to taking buprenorphine properly… the high cost of Suboxone is an unfair burden for patients without insurance coverage, when a much cheaper, idential alternative is available.

I am going to remove your name and location, and put up your question on my blog;  you are then welcome to bring a copy of the post to your doctor. You can also tell him/her to read prior posts, where I explain all of this in greater detail.

For Doctors and Insurance Formulary Committees:

I implore you to look into the facts of this situation with an open mind.  I have a PhD in Neurochem, besides 10 years of experience as an anesthesiologist and training and experience in psychiatry.  Some insurers cover buprenorphine;  they are, of course, the smart ones.  Your company can save a great deal of money by simply allowing the generic equivalent to be covered.  States that mandate the use of Suboxone or Suboxone Film could save large sums of money for their taxpayers.  And doctors–  your cash-paying customers could really use the break, especially in this economy.  If you are concerned that a patient is injecting medication, I understand your hesitancy— even though, frankly, it is misplaced, given that BOTH Suboxone and buprenorphine can be injected.  If your patient pays cash, and never injected medication, do you REALLY think that person is going to start injecting buprenorphine– since doing so would not create any effects?  The ‘ceiling effect’ is in place for ANY route of administration, so a patient taking sublingual Suboxone, who injects buprenorphine, will feel… NOTHING.

Give your patient the gift of affordable treatment as a Christmas present.  You may be saving someone’s life.

JJ

As I give my last post more thought….  I wonder if there is ANY clinical difference between $uboxone at $7 per dose, vs. generic buprenorphine at $2.33 per dose?  Researchers out there– can anyone send me a reference?

Read my last post for details– but the essence is that naloxone is destroyed when Suboxone is taken properly (orally, sublingually), and has no action whatsoever– on that issue there is scientifc agreement (although there is a great deal of ignorance among prescribers about this fact).  The ONLY think naloxone does, is to supposedly serve as a deterrent to IV injection of buprenorphine.

Sounds good, but…  we know that people divert Suboxone intravenously, naloxone and all.  Buprenorphine binds opioid receptors very tightly- so tightly that the naloxone doesn’t effectively compete with buprenorphine.

The State of WI requires Medicaid patients to take expensive Suboxone Film, whereas in other cases they require prescribing the generic.  What is the argument for requiring the film?  RB would argue (now that the tablet has lost the luster of being on-patent) that the film is harder to ‘divert’– i.e. to inject.  But frankly, the intravenous diversion of buprenorphine is a tiny issue compared to things like heroin addiction and a budget crisis.  Most of the diversion of buprenorphine, either Suboxone or generic, is not injected, but rather taken orally to ward off withdrawal– and the film makes no difference in that case.

Insurers, likewise, are wasting millions of dollars (literally) by paying for Suboxone— sometimes exclusively(!)  Have the bean counters fallen asleep on this issue?

I have nothing personal against Reckitt-Benckiser, beyond the fact that they refuse to engage in conversation with me.  If the good Brits at RB have discovered a way to suck millions of dollars from the weakest members of society, more power to them.  But I am a big fan of intellectual honesty, particularly in regard to the science behind medical practice.  So if someone has evidence that $uboxone is clinically different than generic buprenorphine, whether used properly or injected, please send it my way.

I have been kicking these observations around for the past year, and have been unable to find a big fish willing to ‘bite’.  I truly believe that the observations below have the potential to dramatically change the approach to opioid treatment of chronic pain.  Since I have a blog, I have a soapbox– so I’ll share the idea, and welcome comments in return.  I do ask that proper attribution be provided if this article is shared.

Introduction:

Long-term opioid analgesia without tolerance, respiratory depression, or euphoria?  Introducing the Holy Grail for chronic pain treatment!

Premise:

The miracle of opioid pain relief is fatally limited by tolerance, addiction and respiratory depression.  Buprenorphine, when combined with a mu agonist, results in game-changing effects.  Patients experience potent, dose-related analgesia from the agonist, but have NO euphoria.  The therapeutic window is widened.  Patients unable to control their use of a mu agonist alone gain that control when on buprenorphine. And most exciting, buprenorphine indefinitely anchors tolerance, maintaining analgesia WITHOUT DOSE ESCALATION. This finding offers huge implications for pain management.

Discussion:

Use of opioids for chronic pain has severe limitations.  Tolerance removes the benefits of opioid analgesics over time.  Worse, tolerance is associated with dependence and withdrawal.  Many patients use additional doses of their prescription early in the month, then suffer through withdrawal while awaiting refills.  Others find opioids through less-reliable, non-clinical sources.

At the same time, addiction to mu opioids is a nationwide epidemic.  Reformulation Oxycontin has pushed many opioid users toward diacetylmorphine—brand name Heroin.  Some physicians recommend avoiding mu opioids altogether for chronic pain (e.g. Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing), while pain treatment advocates argue to ease narcotic restrictions.

Over the past six years I have treated over 500 patients using buprenorphine, mostly for opioid dependence.  Buprenorphine, a partial mu agonist, is the active ingredient in Suboxone, a medication used for treating opioid dependence. The majority of my patients began their addictions with narcotics prescribed by doctors for back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, fibromyalgia, chronic headaches, and other conditions.

Many of my patients found their pain reduced or gone after stopping mu agonists and substituting buprenorphine.  Buprenorphine has the mu activity of 40 mg of daily methadone, but this activity is unlikely responsible for significant analgesia, since patients rapidly become tolerant to the agonist actions of buprenorphine. Instead, their pain while on mu agonists was likely maintained by psychological forces.

Patients on buprenorphine occasionally need opioid analgesia, just like other patients.  My patients have had knees replaced, gallbladders removed, hysterectomies and c-sections, rotator cuff repairs, and in two cases, cardiac surgery.  In all cases, sufficient analgesia was provided by maintaining daily buprenorphine at 4-8 mg per day, and using potent mu agonists, usually oxycodone, in doses ranging from 15-45 mg every 4-6 hours as needed.

Several patients have severe chronic pain from avulsion of the brachial plexus, failed spinal fusion, or other conditions, where prior opioid use resulted in rapid tolerance that prevented effective analgesia. These patients are now successfully maintained on combinations of buprenorphine plus mu agonists.

The combination of buprenorphine plus mu agonists has provided perioperative analgesia for patients on buprenorphine.  Patients universally describe adequate pain relief, even after major surgeries.  They also described the absence of euphoria, and to their surprise, the ability to control their use of pain medication—something impossible before taking buprenorphine.

But it is the effects on chronic pain that suggest a ‘game-changer’ for pain treatment.  Even after over a year on combination buprenorphine/oxycodone, my patients 1. have no euphoria;  2. are often able to manage their own narcotic medication; and most important, 3. describe stable analgesia WITHOUT agonist dose escalation.

The ability to treat pain long-term without tolerance or dose-escalation is as exciting a development as was the initial discovery of opioids for pain relief!

Properties of a combination agent

Buprenorphine is administered sublingually, and could be prescribed as a separate medication, and use verified through urine monitoring.   But greater safety benefits would come through regulations requiring buprenorphine (or a similar partial agonist) to be an inseparable part of every opioid prescription.  Such a policy would dramatically lower the addictiveness and reduce the respiratory depression of mu agonists WITHOUT removing efficacy.  The most obvious formulation would be a transdermal system that delivers buprenorphine and fentanyl, since both are already available in separate transdermal systems.

There may be situations, for example hospice care, where euphoria would be a desirable part of opioid treatment.  But for other cases, analgesia without euphoria has obvious benefits.

I have written to several pharmaceutical companies with this idea, and have heard back that while the idea is interesting and scientifically sound, the generic nature of the component medications reduce the potential for profit that would motivate development.  But given the potential value of this approach for multiple problems– addiction and chronic pain among them—I have to think that there is money to be made—not to mention the advances in treatment that the approach offers.

Reference:

Some supporting background information can be found in:  Alford, D., P Compton, and J Samet, Acute Pain Management for Patients Receiving Maintenance Methadone or Buprenorphine Therapy.  Ann Intern Med. 2006 January 17; 144(2): 127–134.

I also discuss this approach to pain treatment in my ‘Users Guide to Suboxone’, sold on Amazon and at bupeguide.com

Jeffrey T Junig MD PhD

Please do not reproduce without attribution.

When Suboxone first became an option for treating addiction to pain pills back in 2003, some people were excited about having a cure for opioid dependence. Those people were mistaken. It is true that Suboxone has been a huge benefit for treating opioid dependence, but the medication cannot cause the permanent changes in the brain that would be necessary to prevent relapse. Instead, in order for the medication to work, people must do what they do with other medications—keep taking it.

Not all scams are so obvious

I recently read an article on another web site that advocated a certain person’s ‘method’ for rapid opioid detox. I went to the primary web site for the developers of that method—pulled to the site in the same way that I am drawn to watch late-night commercials for get-rich-quick schemes or male enhancement products. On the web site I read that they have a new reason to take large sums of money from those addicts fortunate enough to have money, and unfortunate enough to believe their hype— a special, rapid way to change brain function.

We are spending tens of millions of dollars through NIH to understand neuronal ‘plasticity’—the term for the ability of the brain to adapt in response to the environment—and here some guy at a detox clinic has it all figured out!

As I read the web site, I thought about all of the addiction ‘cures’ that I’ve read about over the years, such as the secret blend of amino acids that one program offers (I wrote to the advocates of that treatment to ask how it works, and was told that they would give me the recipe for only $15,000). I thought about my opportunity a year or two ago to review the bill of a person treated at one of those $70,000 per month addiction treatment centers out west somewhere; the bill was padded with one type of therapy after another, with names like ‘mood therapy,’ or ‘PTSD resolution therapy,’ or ‘energy-field releasing therapy.’ The charge for a ‘treatment’? Prices ranged from $700 – $1200… per SESSION, day after day. On many individual days, the person was billed for multiple types of therapy, each costing $1000 or more. Now I know– THAT’S how you get to 70 grand per month!

With all this in mind, I have to wonder– is addiction treatment the last refuge for snake-oil salesmen? Where are the good folks at the FDA when people throw scientific mumbo-jumbo to extract money from desperate people? Maybe I should quit charging the peanuts of a typical private practice—where insurers think an hour is worth a hundred bucks, and the state considers an hour worth $37.50—and instead hang a sign, and make a web site, and offer ‘Selective Cranio- Axial Meningotherapy’ (SCAM) or Bitemporal Sensory (BS) Therapy or Rapid Intentional Pseudo – Olfactory Field Focusing!

I’ve criticized doctors who prescribe Suboxone as well; namely those who take the quick buck to get a person started on Suboxone, then leave the person to find a long-term prescriber on his/her own—knowing that such doctors are impossible to find in many areas.

It is relatively easy to get a person clean for a few weeks. In fact, if anyone desperately wants to get off opioids, bring me $20,000 and I will chain you to the steel post in the center of my basement—and I’ll even throw in meals. The hard part, of course, is keeping you clean AFTER you leave. So for an extra $50,000—the same price charged by many month-long treatment centers—I will provide a couple hours of therapy each day (weekends off of course), and put out an easel for you to draw pictures of traumatic events from your childhood.

Sounds silly, I know—but the truth is even sillier. I bet that the number of long-term cures from MY basement treatment would rival those from any of the methods or programs that I alluded to. From either program—mine or theirs– the long-term relapse rates would be very high.
Fortunately, there IS a long-term treatment for opioid dependence— buprenorphine– that has proven to be safe and effective. The way to make the treatment work is to follow the same principles that are used for a host of other medical conditions: 1. Get a good doctor. 2. Start the right medication. 3. Keep taking the medication. Psychotherapy might be helpful as well, but definitive studies on the value of psychotherapy for Suboxone patients have not yet been done. But we DO know the importance of staying on the medication.

Who knows– you might even save yourself a bundle.

I recently received a question about stopping Suboxone (buprenorphine)…. I deleted the message but I remember the bulk of it, and I have a copy of my response. I thought that someone else out there may find it useful, so here it is:

The question:

I have decided to go off Suboxone after that was recommended to me by almost everybody. My doctor told me to taper off by going down to 2 mg per day, and then take 2 mg every other day, then every third day, and stopping after I get to every 4th day. I followed those instructions and I am taking it every other day, but I am now getting sick every other day. Is this a good way to stop Suboxone, or do you recommend another way?

My response:

I’m not certain who is giving you advice. More and more, the standard of care is to keep people on buprenorphine for at least a year, and many people stay on ‘remission treatment’ indefinitely– just as we do for other chronic illnesses. There is no evidence or truth to the idea that ‘it is harder to stop buprenorphine the longer you take it’; tolerance does not increase after reaching a plateau, usually in a month or so, and I have found that patients are more successful at stopping buprenorphine the further they get from the period of active use. There is no significant toxicity from the medication when it is taken properly; it is far safer than medications used to treat other illnesses, such as hypertension, elevated cholesterol, asthma, diabetes, or arthritis– let alone other potentially fatal illnesses like cancer.

If you DO go off buprenorphine, the method you described won’t generally work because of the pharmacokinetics of the drug. The plasma half-life of buprenorphine is 2-5 hours, but the elimination half life is over 30 hours. The volume of distribution of the drug increases with dose because of dose-dependent protein binding. Finally, the ceiling effect creates a non-linear relationship between blood level and pharmacologic effect. The practical result of these factors is that larger doses of buprenorphine produce opioid effects that last longer than smaller doses. A typical buprenorphine pain dose of 50-100 micrograms lasts for 6-8 hours, but in the super high doses used for addiction (8 mg equals 8000 micrograms), the opioid effects last much longer- allowing for once per day dosing.

As the dose is lowered, the effects of buprenorphine become shorter in duration. So the person tapering buprenorphine need to not only take smaller amounts each day, but must also divide that daily amount into two, then three, then maybe even four doses to avoid withdrawal symptoms at the end of the dosing interval.

On my forum, SuboxForum, people discuss the ‘liquefied taper method’– a method that I believe I was the first to describe, where a tablet of Suboxone is dissolved in a small amount of water, and doses are administered by drop from a medicine dropper or TB syringe. Any small medicine bottle and the included dropper can be used. I would suggest taking the time to calculate the microgram per milliliter concentration, and using the dropper to dose known amounts.  A TB syringe is more accurate, as it has the amounts marked on the side. For this purpose, a ‘cc’ is the same as an ‘ml’. There are 1000 micrograms per milligram (mg). I’ll leave the rest of the calculations to you!

Another option might be to use ‘Butrans’, a buprenorphine skin patch, after tapering to a low sublingual dose. The biggest patch releases 500 micrograms (or 0.5 mg) per day, and there are a couple smaller sizes with the smallest patch releasing 0.1 mg per day or 100 micrograms. One could taper down to a quarter of an 8 mg tab per day, and then change to the 0.5 mg patch. That sounds like a big drop, but only a small percentage of the sublingual dose of buprenorphine is absorbed– some estimates as low as 15% of the dose. By that estimate, a 2 mg sublingual dose of buprenorphine would be comparable to 0.5 mg of transdermal buprenorphine.

I wrote Butrans might be used because under current law, doctors cannot prescribe Butrans to treat addiction—and I assume that includes tapering off buprenorphine. Federal law that allows for use of controlled substances to treat opioid dependence (DATA 2000)—an exception to the Harrison Act— only allows use of medications that are indicated for opioid dependence. At the present time, Butrans is indicated for treating pain, and not for treating addiction. By my understanding of the law, doctors can use Butrans to taper patients off buprenorphine only if the indicated use for the buprenorphine is any condition other than addiction.

But again, do give some thought to whether you should be stopping buprenorphine, as the relapse rate for opioid dependence is, unfortunately, very high.

Sorry about the re-run—I wrote this several years ago, and I still agree with the concept of ‘dynamic character defects.’ As I read it now, I recognize how things have changed; buprenorphine (Suboxone) has been incorporated into many of the major treatment centers, and even the smallest programs have at least become familiar with the medication.

Some substance abuse treatment programs make use of other drugs to flush out the more addictive and dangerous substances in an addict’s body.

There still exist some programs where the staff remain ‘anti-Suboxone’, but those places are becoming the exception, and are essentially marginalizing themselves out of the treatment industry.

You may note that I had an attitude of cooperation when I wrote this post, years ago. I suggested that those who prescribe buprenorphine work WITH those treatment centers that were ‘anti-Suboxone;’ that they recognize each others’ strengths. Since then I’ve known several people who were taken in by the anti-sub treatment community, and who eventually died– all the time believing that they were failures at finding sobriety. The shame is not theirs; the shame belongs to those who tricked them, and kept them from the medication that would have saved their lives.

To those treatment centers that do not offer buprenorphine, and that employ counselors who fret about their own jobs to the point of keeping people away from buprenorphine, SHAME ON YOU. Your treatment centers WILL close. And given the high death rate of opioid dependence, I am glad to have such self-centered charlatans out of the industry. Each closing is one less place for people to waste money–while searching for real treatment.

Where was I? Oh yes—my old post about buprenorphine and character defects. This post gets to the issue of the ‘dry drunk’, and why I don’t see that happening with buprenorphine. The post also has implications for the discussion of whether counseling should be a part of EVERY buprenorphine prescription. As always, thanks for reading what I have to say…

I initially had mixed feelings about Suboxone, my opinion likely influenced by my own experiences as an addict in traditional recovery.  But my opinion has changed over the years, because of what I have seen and heard while treating well over 400 patients with buprenorphine in my clinical practice.  At the same time, I acknowledge that while Suboxone has opened a new frontier of treatment for opioid addiction, arguments over the use of Suboxone often split the recovering and treatment communities along opposing battle lines.  The arguments are often fueled by petty notions of ‘whose recovery is more authentic’, and miss the important point that buprenorphine and Suboxone can have huge beneficial effects on the lives of opioid addicts.

The active ingredient in Suboxone is buprenorphine, a partial agonist at the mu opioid receptor. Suboxone contains naloxone to prevent intravenous use; another form of the medication, Subutex, consists of buprenorphine without naloxone.  In this article I will use the name ‘Suboxone’ because of the common reference to the drug, but in all cases I am referring to the use and actions of buprenorphine in either form.  The unique effects of buprenorphine can be attributed to the drug’s unique molecular properties.  First, the partial agonist effect at the receptor level results in a ‘ceiling effect’ to dosing after about 4 mg, so that increased dosing does not result in increased opioid effect beyond that dose.  Second, the high binding affinity and partial agonist effect cause the elimination of drug cravings, dispelling the destructive obsession with use that destroys the personality of the user.  Third, the high protein binding and long half-life of buprenorphine allows once per day dosing, allowing the addict to break the conditioned pattern of withdrawal (stimulus)-use (response) – relief (reward) which is the backbone of addictive behavior.  Fourth, the partial agonist effect and long half life cause rapid tolerance to the drug, allowing the patient to feel ‘normal’ within a few days of starting treatment.  Finally, the withdrawal from buprenorphine provides a disincentive to stop taking the drug, and so the drug is always there to assure the person that any attempt to get high would be futile, dispelling any lingering thoughts about using an opioid.

At the present time there are significant differences between the treatment approaches of those who use Suboxone versus those who use a non-medicated 12-step-based approach.  People who stay sober with the help of AA, NA, or CA, as well as those who treat by this approach tend to look down on patients taking Suboxone as having an ’inferior’ form of recovery, or no recovery at all.  This leaves Suboxone patients to go to Narcotics Anonymous and hide their use of Suboxone.  On one hand, good boundaries include the right to keeping one’s private medical information so one’s self.  But on the other hand, a general recovery principle is that ’secrets keep us sick’, and hiding the use of Suboxone is a bit at odds with the idea of ’rigorous honesty’. People new to recovery also struggle with low self esteem before they learn to overcome the shame society places on ‘drug addicts’;  they are not in a good position to deal with even more shame coming from other addicts themselves!

An ideal program will combine the benefits of 12-step programs with the benefits of the use of Suboxone.  The time for such an approach is at hand, as it is likely that more and more medications will be brought forward for treatment of addiction now that Suboxone has proved profitable.  If we already had excellent treatments for opioid addiction there would be less need for the two treatment approaches to learn to live with each other.  But the sad fact is that opioid addiction remains stubbornly difficult to treat by traditional methods.  Success rates for long-term sobriety are lower for opioids than for other substances.  This may be because the ‘high’ from opioid use is different from the effects of other substances—users of cocaine, methamphetamine, and alcohol take the substances to feel up, loose, or energetic—ready to go out and take on the town.  The ‘high’ of opioid use feels content and ‘normal’— users feel at home, as if they are getting back a part of themselves that was always missing. The experience of using rapidly becomes a part of who the person IS, rather than something the patient DOES.  The term ‘denial’ fits nobody better than the active opioid user, particularly when seen as the mnemonic:  Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying.

The challenges for practitioners lie at the juncture between traditional recovery and the use of medication, in finding ways to bring the recovering community together to use all available tools in the struggle against active opioid addiction.

Suboxone has given us a new paradigm for treatment which I refer to as the ‘remission model’.  This model takes into account that addiction is a dynamic process— far more dynamic than previously assumed.  To explain, the traditional view from recovery circles is that the addict has a number of character defects that were either present before the addiction started, or that grew out of addictive behavior over time.  Opioid addicts have a number of such defects.  The dishonesty that occurs during active opioid addiction, for example, far surpasses similar defects from other substances, in my opinion.  Other defects are common to all substance users; the addict represses awareness of his/her trapped condition and creates an artificial ‘self’ that comes off as cocky and self-assured, when deep inside the addict is frightened and lonely.  The obsession with using takes more and more energy and time, pushing aside interests in family, self-care, and career.  The addict becomes more and more self-centered, and the opioid addict often becomes very ‘somatic’, convinced that every uncomfortable feeling is an unbearable component of withdrawal.  The opioid addict becomes obsessed with comfort, avoiding activities that cause one to perspire or exert one’s self.  The active addict learns to blame others for his/her own misery, and eventually his irritability results in loss of jobs and relationships.

The traditional view holds that these character defects do not simply go away when the addict stops using.  People in AA know that simply remaining sober will cause a ‘dry drunk’—a nondrinker with all of the alcoholic character defects– when there is no active recovery program in place.  I had such an expectation when I first began treating opioid addicts with Suboxone—that without involvement in a 12-step group the person would remain just as miserable and dishonest as the active user.  I realize now that I was making the assumption that character defects were relatively static—that they develop slowly over time, and so could only be removed through a great deal of time and hard work.  The most surprising part of my experience in treating people with Suboxone has been that the defects in fact are not ‘static’, but rather they are quite dynamic.  I have come to believe that the difference between Suboxone treatment and a patient in a ‘dry drunk’ is that the Suboxone-treated patient has been freed from the obsession to use.  A patient in a ‘dry drunk’ is not drinking, but in the absence of a recovery program they continue to suffer the conscious and unconscious obsession with drinking.   People in AA will often say that it isn’t the alcohol that is the problem; it is the ‘ism’ that causes the damage.  Such is the case with opioids as well—the opioid is not the issue, but rather it is the obsession with opioids that causes the misery and despair.  With this in mind, I now view character defects as features that develop in response to the obsession to use a substance.  When the obsession is removed the character defects will go way, whether slowly, through working the 12 steps, or rapidly, by the remission of addiction with Suboxone.

In traditional step-based treatment the addict is in a constant battle with the obsession to use. Some addicts will have rapid relief from their obsession when they suddenly experience a ‘shift of thinking’ that allows them to see their powerlessness with their drug of choice.   For other addicts the new thought requires a great deal of addition-induced misery before their mind opens in response to a ‘rock bottom’. But whether fast or slow, the shift of thinking is effective because the new thought approaches addiction where it lives—in the brain’s limbic system.  The ineffectiveness of higher-order thinking has been proven by addicts many times over, as they make promises over pictures of their loved ones or try to summon the will power to stay clean.  While these approaches almost always fail, the addict will find success in surrender and recognition of the futility of the struggle.  The successful addict will view the substance with fear—a primitive emotion from the old brain.  When the substance is viewed as a poison that will always lead to misery and death, the obsession to use will be lifted.  Unfortunately it is man’s nature to strive for power, and over time the recognition of powerlessness will fade.  For that reason, addicts must continue to attend meetings where newcomers arrive with stories of misery and pain, which reinforce and remind addicts of their powerlessness.

My experiences with Suboxone have challenged my old perceptions, and led me to believe that the character defects of addiction are much more dynamic.  Suboxone removes the obsession to use almost immediately.  The addict does not then enter into a ‘dry drunk’, but instead the absence of the obsession to use allows the return of positive character traits that had been pushed aside.  The elimination of negative character traits does not always require rigorous step work— in many cases the negative traits simply disappear as the obsession to use is relieved.  I base this opinion on my experiences with scores of Suboxone patients, and more importantly with the spouses, parents, and children of Suboxone patients.  I have seen multiple instances of improved communication and new-found humility.  I have heard families talk about ‘having dad back’, and husbands talk about getting back the women they married.  I sometimes miss my old days as an anesthesiologist placing labor epidurals, as the patients were so grateful—and so I am happy to have found Suboxone treatment, for it is one of the rare areas in psychiatry where patients quickly get better and express gratitude for their care.

A natural question is why character defects would simply disappear when the obsession to use is lifted?  Why wouldn’t it require a great deal of work?  The answer, I believe, is because the character defects are not the natural personality state of the addict, but rather are traits that are produced by the obsession, and dynamically maintained by the obsession.

Once the dynamic relationship between use obsession and character defects is understood, the proper relationship between Suboxone and traditional recovery becomes clear.  Should people taking Suboxone attend NA or AA?  Yes, if they want to.  A 12-step program has much to offer an addict, or anyone for that matter.  But I see little use in forced or coerced attendance at meetings.  The recovery message requires a level of acceptance that comes about during desperate times, and people on Suboxone do not feel desperate.  In fact, people on Suboxone often report that ‘they feel normal for the first time in their lives’.  A person in this state of mind is not going to do the difficult personal inventories of AA unless otherwise motivated by his/her own internal desire to change.

The role of ‘desperation’ should be addressed at this time:  In traditional treatment desperation is the most important prerequisite to making progress, as it takes the desperation of being at ‘rock bottom’ to open the mind to see one’s  powerlessness. But when recovery from addiction is viewed through the remission model, the lack of desperation is a good thing, as it allows the reinstatement of the addict’s own positive character.  Such a view is consistent with the ‘hierarchy of needs’ put forward by Abraham Maslow in 1943; there can be little interest in higher order traits when one is fighting for one’s life.

Here are a few common questions (and answers) about Suboxone and Recovery:

-Should Suboxone patients be in a recovery group?

I have reservations about forced attendance, as I question the value of any therapy where the patient is not an eager and voluntary participant.  At the same time, there clearly is much to be gained from the sense of support that a good group can provide.  Groups also show the addict that he/she is not as unique as he thought, and that his unhealthy way of visualizing his place in the world is a trait common to other addicts.  Some addicts will learn the patterns of addictive thinking and become better equipped to handle their own addictive thoughts.

-What is the value of the 4th through 6th steps of a 12-step program, where the addict specifically addresses his/her character defects and asks for their removal by a higher power?  Are these steps critical to the resolution of character defects?

These steps are necessary for addicts in ‘sober recovery’, as the obsession to use will come and go to varying degrees over time depending on the individual and his/her stress level.  But for a person taking Suboxone I see the steps as valuable, but not essential.

The use of Suboxone has caused some problems for traditional treatment of opioid dependence, and so many practitioners in traditional AODA treatment programs see Suboxone as at best a mixed blessing.  Desperation is often required to open the addict’s mind to change, and desperation is harder to achieve when an addict has the option to leave treatment and find a practitioner who will prescribe Suboxone.  Suboxone is sometimes used ‘on the street’ by addicts who want to take time off from addiction without committing to long term sobriety.  Suboxone itself can be abused for short periods of time, until tolerance develops to the drug.  Snorting Suboxone reportedly results in a faster time of onset, without allowing the absorption of the naloxone that prevents intravenous use.  Finally, the remission model of Suboxone use implies long term use of the drug.  Chronic use of any opioid, including Suboxone, has the potential for negative effects on testosterone levels and sexual function, and the use of Suboxone is complicated when surgery is necessary.  Short- or moderate-term use of Suboxone raises a host of additional questions, including how to convert from drug-induced remission, without desperation, to sober recovery, which often requires desperation.

Time will tell whether or not Suboxone will work with traditional recovery, or whether there will continue to be two distinct options that are in some ways at odds with each other.  The good news is that treatment of opioid addiction has proven to be profitable for at least one pharmaceutical company, and such success will surely invite a great deal of research into addiction treatment.  At one time we had two or three treatment options for hypertension, including a drug called reserpine that would never be used for similar indications today.  Some day we will likely look back on Suboxone as the beginning of new age of addiction treatment.  But for now, the treatment community would be best served by recognizing each other’s strengths, rather than pointing out weaknesses.

I’m not sure about the make-up of readers of this blog.  I know that there are about 20,000 page views each month, but I don’t know how many are by people addicted to opioids, people taking buprenorphine, family members of addicts, or physicians who prescribe buprenorphine.  If you fall into that latter category– i.e. if you prescribe buprenorphine, or if you prescribe other medications to treat opioid dependence such as Vivitrol or methadone– consider joining the group at linkedin.com called ‘Buprenorphine and other medication-assisted treatment of opiate dependence.’  If you already belong to LinkedIn, you can simply follow this link to join: http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=2710529

I have always resisted separating those who prescribe buprenorphine from those who are prescribed the medication.  I have avoided, for example, placing a ‘doctors’ section’ at SuboxForum, as I don’t want there to be two separate discussions.  Clearly, each group would benefit from the wisdom of the other.  But there are some physicians who want to discuss prescribing habits, techniques, and science with other docs, who are not comfortable discussing some topics in the ‘presence’ of their patients.

Non-docs, please don’t flame me for this decision;  I’ve wrestled with it, and have made this decision, at least for now.   Frankly, the discussions at SuboxForum are far more interesting than anything that has come up so far at the linked in site!    But some docs who prescribe buprenorphine are isolated out there, perhaps even looked down on by their peers for working with addiction– and that is a crying shame.    I want to get those docs some support.  My goal ultimately is to bring the two sides together, so that docs can talk to addicts and realize that they are the same species as the rest of their patients!

Thanks all,

JJ

I often receive e-mails asking for advice on tapering Suboxone, or asking how long Suboxone withdrawal should last.  People who read my blog know my approach to stopping Suboxone; I see it as an exercise in futility even in the rare cases where the person is successful, because of a relapse rate that verges on 100%.

A couple myths to get out of the way… there is NO evidence that withdrawal becomes more difficult the longer a person is on buprenorphine.  In fact, from my experience the opposite is true.  The feelings and emotions during withdrawal are aggravated by the guilt and shame of active using, and the further from active using a person gets, the less the suffering during withdrawal—and the better able the person is to keep some perspective on what is happening, rather than drowning in despair.  I believe that the severity of withdrawal is subject to a ‘kindling effect’, a phenomenon that affects seizure disorders and other neural activity as well.  In other words, the pathways of the brain that are used the most frequently are the pathways that are most likely to fire again.  So a person who has been through very severe withdrawal is likely to experience withdrawal as very severe, no matter what agent the person is stopping.  It would make sense that the more time that goes by in between episodes of withdrawal, the less powerful would be the kindling effect—sort of like ruts in a muddy road being erased by repeated cycles of weather over time.

Many people write on blogs or forums that Suboxone withdrawal is worse than coming off opioid agonists.  This is simply ‘poppycock!’  I have seen many, many people go through opioid withdrawal, and have experienced it myself (gratefully, many years ago!).  People going through withdrawal from agonists are very miserable; they tend to stay in bed, getting up only to race to the bathroom because of severe diarrhea.  Their legs shake involuntarily—a very uncomfortable experience that is similar to severe ‘restless legs.’  The mental effects are perhaps the worst; most people have severe depression and thoughts of suicide.  Eventually, when the person attempts to get out of bed, he/she faces weeks of profound fatigue and weakness.  During my own detox ten years ago I remember my family visiting after a week or two, and being able to walk about half a block before needing to sit and catch my breath.  Appetite is gone for weeks as well, and most people lose significant weight during detox.

Withdrawal from buprenorphine, on the other hand, rarely forces addicts into bed for more than a day or two.  I’m not saying that they don’t FEEL like staying in bed, but they will still usually get to work and engage in the activities of daily living—eating, showering, getting dressed, etc.  A simple look at the forums shows a profound difference between Suboxone and agonist withdrawal; people coming off Suboxone write about how bad they are feeling, whereas people coming off agonists are nowhere to be found— and are certainly not able to sit at the computer and type!

There are two basic approaches to stopping Suboxone.  One is to taper slowly, and the other is to just ‘jump’ and handle the withdrawal as best as possible, sometimes with the help of clonidine, benzos, or other substances.  Some people find that THC helps, but I can’t really recommend that approach—at least not in states where there are no laws allowing the use of ‘medical marijuana.’  There are a couple taper methods described here and there on the web; I described something called the ‘liquid taper method’ on the forum that uses tiny doses of dissolved buprenorphine, administered by an eye dropper.  As I mentioned in an earlier post there is a new transdermal buprenorphine system hitting the market soon, and that should make things considerably easier.  The main problem with any taper is that the person usually gets to a certain point and then realizes that a full dose would cause a ‘buzz’—and that buzz is almost impossible to say ‘no’ to, especially after being in minor withdrawal for several days or weeks!  The transdermal approach is appealing because it would allow the person to get rid of all tablets that could be used to bail out of the taper.  I can’t imagine that there is much chance of success if the person has 8 mg of tablets stashed away in the house somewhere!

Because of the tendency to bail out of a taper, most people who start out tapering end up ‘jumping’ at some point—raising the question of whether people should just jump from the start, planning to be miserable for a good few weeks, and then just tolerating it.  For those taking that approach, the main thing is to STICK WITH IT.  In order for your receptors to return to normal, you MUST be miserable— that misery is what causes the neurons to manufacture new receptors.  If you take a break from the misery by using for a day, you turn off the forces that are moving you toward feeling better, delaying the process by days to weeks.  To be direct, the quickest way to stop Suboxone and get back to zero opioid tolerance is to avoid opioids completely until you feel better.

Again, in my opinion, all of this is folly because the chance of staying clean is low. At minimum, a person must be completely free of any contacts who are using or who have access to opioids.  The person should be actively involved in some time of recovery program.  The person should have someone in his or her life who can act as a ‘reality check’ to speak up if the person starts to harbor resentments, or if the ego begins to grow out of control.  If you don’t have these things at a minimum, consider just sticking on buprenorphine.  You will save yourself a great deal of money, time, embarrassment, and who knows what else.

If you do stop buprenorphine, expect withdrawal to peak at about 4-7 days after you finally discontinue taking Suboxone, followed by slow recovery that accelerates each week.  By four weeks, you will be done with the creepy crawly legs, and your energy will be starting to return.  By two months, your sleep should be coming back—unless you are also stuck on benzos, which make sleep a big problem if you use them for more than very short-term.

By three months, you should be back to normal—assuming that you did not use opioids at all.  And you will recover fastest if you get some exercise, eat right, and stay as active as possible, even when you don’t feel like it!