My Experience With Suboxone

Why Suboxone Didn’t Work For Me

        I’ve been in various recovery groups and they were all mixed: some of us were on methadone and some were on Suboxone/Subutex/Zubsolv (did I get all of them?).  I have been prescribed both at different times in my life and after three years drug free I can clearly see where I went wrong on Suboxone.

        To understand why it didn’t work for me I need to go back to my first year of hard drug use.  I was using heroin daily and it had become difficult to maintain my habit.  I was still living at home, I still had a car, a job, and trust from my family.  I was waking up sick and it was more inconvenient than anything.  I had heard from some of my friends mine that also used that Suboxone would keep you from getting sick.  This is all that I really cared about.  I found a doctor that would see me and my dad paid $200 for my appointment.  He also paid close to $300 for my prescription for a month.  He didn’t know anything about this medication, just that it would help me with my problems.  My dad really tried to help me in the beginning of my addiction.  He didn’t know anything about why I had become this way, but he meant well.  I saw the doctor, told him that I was a heroin addict, and he wrote me a prescription for 30 strips of suboxone.  I took it to the pharmacy, they filled it, and I was on my way!  I didn’t have to check in with the doctor until the next month, so I would take a strip when I couldn’t get any heroin.  I would also sell a couple to buy the drugs that I wasn’t able to afford otherwise.  This continued for about four months until my dad realized that I was not getting any better.  I was looking worse and I had starting exhibiting behaviors that led him to believe that I was using more.  He had stopped paying for my appointments and I had even been kicked out of his home.  My downward spiral had officially taken shape.

        Over three years later, I was sick and tired of my addiction.  By this time, I had lost my job, crashed two cars, been kicked out of rehab, kicked out of a recovery house, lived in a car, a hotel, and on the street.  I had lost my dignity, sold myself, contracted hepatitis, had overdosed many times, and been arrested.  (Does this cover everything that comes with a heroin addiction?)  My boyfriend at the time was tired of getting sick constantly too so we went to a methadone clinic.  I had learned in rehab that methadone can make you feel better when you are dope sick.  The methadone clinic had very strict rules that I didn’t really want to follow.  I wasn’t ready to quit at this time either, even after going through all of that-I STILL loved getting high too much.  I had to go there every day and take the methadone in front of a nurse.  I was drug tested weekly.  I had to talk to a counselor weekly also.  I was accountable this time, whether I liked it or not.  I continued to get high for five months when I started at the clinic.  It was a difficult time for me but slowly the methadone started to bind to all of my hungry opiate receptors as the doctor increased the amount that I was taking every couple of weeks. 

        Nowadays, methadone clinics will dispense suboxone/Subutex in a more controlled setting to help with this issue.  Physicians with a license to prescribe it will do it out of their office under the right conditions.  The chemicals that make up these medications are different and I might cover that in a different post but they ultimately work to achieve the same goal.  I absolutely do not think that one medication works better than the other and I can’t stress this enough.  Three years ago, I wasn’t beaten up enough.  This mixed with the lack of accountability that the doctor gave me allowed me the freedom to continue with my addiction. 

        While I did have to go to the clinic every day for a large part of the first year of my sobriety, I no longer do.  I go once a month and pick up my bottles of individually dispensed methadone.  I also only see a counselor once a month.  Whatever medication you end up going with, make sure you have some accountability.  It really saved me and gave me the clarity to accomplish so many wonderful things.