Many patients taking buprenorphine live in fear of a dark world around the corner where they will have to taper off the medication. They see horror stories on YouTube posted by people who, for some reason, abruptly stopped the medication and kept a video log of their experiences. My own patients sometimes ask, nervously, if I plan to retire some day. Some have asked what they should do if I ever, say, drop dead.
It needn’t be all that bad. Yes, sudden discontinuation of a typical dose of buprenorphine will result in withdrawal symptoms. But if you taper correctly, your body will slowly reset your tolerance without putting you through the wringer. In this post I’ll describe my typical approach to helping a person through that process. But first we should correct some of the misconceptions about buprenorphine and opioid dependence.
It does NOT get harder and harder to stop buprenorphine the longer you take the medication. I have heard that idea over and over in one form or another, and I presume it comes from the experience people have with active addiction where use tends to grow with time, and other facets of life gradually fade away. But the opposite occurs in patients treated with maintenance agents like buprenorphine or methadone, where use of the medication does not trigger a reward or relieve the ‘punishment’ of withdrawal. The conditioning that occurred during active addiction is slowly extinguished, and most people gradually lose the desire to use opioids. I’ve witnessed this process literally hundreds of times over the past 12 years in patients on buprenorphine or methadone. Patients of successful treatment also develop interests and accomplishments that help them avoid returning to opioids. And after a few years away from ‘using friends’, people no longer see themselves as part of the using scene. Patients get to a point where they have too much to lose to get close to that world again.
Opioid withdrawal has physical and psychological dimensions. During short-term detoxes, minor physical symptoms trigger fears that magnify the perception of those symptoms. A bead of sweat on the neck signals that hot flashes, diarrhea, and depression are on the way. Patients who have been away from the cycle of using and withdrawal don’t seem to have as many emotions about their physical symptoms. I see the change very clearly in methadone-assisted treatment, where the minor withdrawal at the end of the day is a big deal to people starting treatment, but a minor inconvenience in patients tapering off methadone after several years of treatment.
Does buprenorphine ‘get in your bones’? YES, of course! Bones are living tissue, so anything in the bloodstream gets in the bones. Glucose gets in your bones. Aspirin gets in your bones. But so what? When you taper off buprenorphine, the buprenorphine in your body will be metabolized and removed. It does not accumulate or stay in bones or other tissues beyond what occurs with other fat-soluble molecules.
Is buprenorphine or Suboxone ‘the hardest opioid to stop’? No. The brain keeps no record of the molecules that pushed opioid tolerance higher. The challenge during a taper is that opioid receptors have become down-regulated by opioid stimulation, resulting in reduced endorphin tone as the opioid is removed. Opioids that leave the body quickly tend to have more-intense discontinuation effects than those that leave more slowly because the latter mimics a taper, where opioid activity decreases over time. The longer half-life of buprenorphine also slightly extends the total period of withdrawal by a few days.
I’ve heard people claim that ‘heroin was much easier to stop’, and rather than tell people what they should think I’ll let them have their opinions on the issue. But that opinion is not supported by studies comparing withdrawal from different opioids. Usually the claim is followed by the comment that ‘with heroin I was fine after 4 days’ or something along that line. But it takes longer for tolerance to reset, after ANY opioid. I suspect that perception comes from the severity of early heroin withdrawal, making subsequent weeks easier by comparison. Again, the brain doesn’t care which opioid you used to take; it only cares that the opioid stimulation that was there is now gone.
In a few days I’ll share the approach I recommend to patients tapering off buprenorphine.
Tag: opioid taper
Missing the Point of Buprenorphine Treatment
A forum reader wrote about concerns over a partner on buprenorphine. Her concerns pointed out a common misperception about the goals of treatment of opioid use disorder using buprenorphine, or using methadone for that matter.
Her question, amended for privacy:
I married the love of my life. He is still he love of my life but has been an addict for 15 of them. Our children have been greatly affected by his addiction. He made promise after promise that he was clean, and I dove back in with complete faith time after time only to get burned.
His addiction started with recreational pills increasing over time, but now he is abusing Suboxone. He was taking up to 12 mg depending on the day, but no pain pills for the last year. I suggested a Suboxone doctor and a plan to get off, and my husband called one and was able to get right in.
At the visit the doctor did a half ass intake and called in a prescription for an 8 mg tab for induction. After induction they called in prescription for 20 mg/day. My husband stayed with 4 mg once a day and was “blah” in the afternoon and irritable but not physically sick. On his next visit to the doctor he was proud, but when he told the doctor he had only take 4mg in the mornings she got angry. She told him she wouldn’t see him anymore if that’s what he was going to do. He asked how long he would be on it and she wouldn’t give any kind of answer. I asked again before we left and she snapped at me.
I see a profound change in him after each time we see her and she tells him to take more. We walked away last time with another prescription for 16 mg a day which is just about double what he’s been taking for the last year and a half. So my question is, how does it make sense to treat someone taking 8 mg as their addiction with the same medication at double the dosage? Since seeing her he has decided he needs to take it more than once a day as well as up the dosage. Is this right? Is it right to treat Suboxone addiction with Suboxone? A heroin addict isn’t treated with more heroin and a pill addict isn’t treated with more pills. While I understand the concept of treating his original pill addiction with Suboxone, I am having a very hard time wrapping my head around what’s happening.
Me again…
The writer raises interesting questions. Regarding the ‘drug for a drug’ questions, buprenorphine has significant pharmacologic differences from heroin or pain pills. Those differences, including the long half-life and ceiling on agonist effects, allow the medication to create a level degree of mu-receptor agonism across the dosing interval. Tolerance to that level mu agonism allows patients on the medication to feel ‘normal’ throughout the day, or at least normal from an opioid standpoint.
But her broader point provides an example of the basic misunderstanding many people have about medication assisted treatment, in focusing on the same short-term goals that their addicted loved ones have focused on: controlling the dose of opioid and tapering off. That goal is natural, of course; anyone who loves a person addicted to opioids wishes and hopes that the person will reverse the using behavior and climb down from opioid use. Those hopes are bolstered by ads for rapid detox, even as studies show that detox is mostly useless.
My response:
I would not be concerned about increasing the dose of buprenorphine, because there is no increase in effect after a dose of about 8 mg per day. A higher dose might reduce mild withdrawal symptoms at the end of the dosing interval, and sometimes provides a reduction in cravings through a placebo effect.
So why increase? Because the goal with buprenorphine treatment is to put cravings into remission for a considerable length of time. If your husband is still having cravings as he gets by on 8 mg, then his dose is not high enough. Buprenorphine is a safe medication that is used as a tool to extinguish the conditioning that was part of your husband’s addiction.
One of my patients saw a different buprenorphine physician for years, and her dose was constantly lowered over the past year. She would run out of medication after 24 days each month and then go without for 6 days, craving opioids and experiencing wtihdrawal during that time. In some ways, her entire time in treatment was a waste. She could boast, I suppose, that she was prescribed less buprenorphine over time. But in most ways she is just as far from stopping opioids as when she entered treatment, still lying to her husband, lying to her doctor, and feeling ashamed of herself. All of those things keep her addiction in the dark, where it stays active.
When I started treating her my goal was to promote legitimate behavior. I increased her dose to 12 mg per day, from 8 mg. After a month she still ran out early, So I raised the dose to 24 mg per day. Now, after 6 months, she has taken the medication as prescribed. Her focus on buprenorphine is going down, as we want it to do. She isn’t lying, and she isn’t craving pain pills or buprenorphine. My goal is for her to take the medication like she would take a vitamin or blood pressure pill, without any special attention or interest.
How long will we do this? I can’t say now. We know from research that the longer a person stays on medication, the less risk of relapse after stopping. I don’t like to push anyone off buprenorphine, because I’ve seen so many people who have relapsed after being pushed off by their former doctors. I find that many people eventually decide that the time has come to taper off buprenorphine, and those efforts are usually successful. From my perspective, people forced to taper off buprenorphine do not generally do well. That perspective is just an opinion, but an opinion based on treating 800 people with buprenorphine over the past 11 years.
Opinions aside, the goal is not about getting off opioids as fast as possible. Your husband can accomplish that in a couple weeks with a remote hotel room and a bottle of clonidine, or a couple weeks in jail. But those experiences rarely lead to prolonged abstinence, and they sometimes precede overdose, when people return to using with a lower tolerance.
I can’t tell whether your husband’s doc is on the right track or not– but she might be. She is a better doctor telling you that she can’t give a time estimate, than a doctor telling you he will be off in 3 months. Ideally, your husband will be in a state of ‘remission’– on a dose of buprenorphine that virtually eliminates interest in opioids– for a year or more. He can taper for some of that time, but the taper should be slow enough that he doesn’t return to using. If he returns to active use, he starts over in many ways.
Try to drop the focus on ‘how much’ or ‘how long’. Those things are not important; what is important is to get his interest back on you and the family, not on buprenorphine or other opioids. That will be easier if you let him know that he has your support, even if he takes a medication, and even if he needs that medication for a long time. You would want the same from him if you ever needed a medication for hypertension, diabetes, or anything else.