Suboxone Treatment

What is Suboxone?

Suboxone is an orange, hexagonal tablet intended for the treatment of opiate dependence. Suboxone can be an effective treatment for heroin addiction, as well as addiction to opiate based prescription pills like oxycontin, oxycodone and vicodin. Suboxone can only be prescribed by a license suboxone provider and is part of a wider treatment plan that includes addiction counseling and therapy. Suboxone is taken orally, has an unpleasant taste and cannot be swallowed. Instead it is administered under the tongue, where it dissolves in the patient’s mouth after a few seconds. Drinking a lot water beforehand is advised so that the suboxone can dissolve more quickly.

What Does Suboxone Do?

Suboxone is the first ever opioid approved by the FDA for the treatment of opiate dependence in an office based setting. Suboxone is administered in 2 mg and 8 mg tablets and is comprised of two separate medications: naloxone and buprenorphine. These two separate medications work in conjunction with one another to help block the effects of existing opiates while simultaneously helping to ease opiate withdrawal symptoms.

Buprenorphine is a partial opioid itself, meaning it gives the patient partial opiate effects, so that the body can better cope with the current opiate withdrawal. This dosage will be tapered off throughout the treatment until there are no more opiates in the system. Naloxone is used to help prevent the misuse of suboxone by releasing powerful withdrawal symptoms if suboxone is taken through injection. This combination of these two powerful medications is what leads to suboxone’s overall effectiveness in treating opiate dependency.

What is Suboxone Addiction Treatment Like?

The beginning of suboxone treatment is usually the toughest. This is because your doctor will require you to be experiencing mild withdrawal symptoms before administering you suboxone. This is because high levels of another opiate in the patient can interfere with the effects of suboxone, making the patient go into an even worse stage of withdrawal.

When the patient is starting to feel withdrawal effects coming on, the doctor will then administer suboxone which will help ease withdrawal symptoms in about 20 minutes to an hour.

What makes suboxone addiction treatment different from methadone treatment is that only the first initial doses of suboxone are given in a physician’s office. This is part of something known as the induction period, where the rest of the time the patient can get suboxone through a prescription and take it from the comfort of their own home. This induction period is designed to find a comfortable daily dosage level that the patient can take also known as their maintenance level. The patient’s maintenance level is defined as a certain level of suboxone that is right for each individual patient whereas they no longer have withdrawal symptoms and can function comfortably. One this maintenance level is achieved; the patient will take one suboxone pill once daily, usually in the morning.