@bustrbrwn22 i think you asked why I was making the switch from dilaudid to suboxone? My pain specialist made this recommendation for two reasons. First, suboxone has a naloxone component to it, making it less likely for the patient to overdose. But second, and most importantly, suboxone has been used for decades to help with patients addicted to heroin and other opiates. When patients were being transitioned from opiates to suboxone in treatment centers, they kept hearing how much suboxone was helping with long term chronic pain. This was an unexpected outcome. As such, pain specialists around the country have been very successfully transitioning their long term chronic pain patients to suboxone over the last few years with great success.

Suboxone is less addicting, less likely cause overdose in patients, is easier to manage, and doesn’t require the close supervision that other opiates require — and it provides good pain coverage for long term chronic pain patients. It also only requires you to take it once a day for 24 hour pain coverage.

The downside of suboxone? The transition from opiates to suboxone requires you go cold turkey off your opiates for 24-48 hours to induce full blown withdrawal symptoms - tremors, nausea, sweating, tearing, irritability, etc. before you can start suboxone. Once in withdrawal it is then safe to initiate the ramp up onto suboxone. We have been waiting until I was well enough to make this jump.