Posted by MB on January 27, 2002, at 20:14:46
One time in detox (heroin) I was given buprenorphin sublingually to ease the withdrawal. I wasn't too impressed with it. It didn't seem to help much, but then again, there was no way of telling how bad I would have felt if I *hadn't* been givin that accepably palatable liquid to suck on. For all I know, it was a godsend, but my intuition tells me that I wouldn't have been much worse off without it.
At one point, during a physical exam (required by the clinic) the physician actually gave me an intermuscular shot of the stuff and it was wonderful (well, wonderful given the state I was already in): the goosebumbs went away, my nose quit running, and that feeling of simultaneous fever with hypothermia was moderately relieved. I would not say, however that it completely blocked the withdrawal. I still felt bad, just not quite as wretched as before. The above anecdote exhausts my experience with buprenorphine.
My limited and extremely adulterated experience with buprenorphine compels me to ask this question: what is the medication like under normal circumstances--i.e., circumstamnce where the patient is neither habituated to opoid agonists nor in a state of withdrawal from such agonists.
Is is sedating? Is it nauseating? Dysphoria, euphoria, etc. Is there a waiting period before antidepressant effects are noticed, or is relief immediate as with the pure agonists?
I've taken butorphanol before. That was weird. A lot of kappa agonism I think. Is buprenorphine anything like butorphanol?
MB
poster:MB
thread:91813
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020124/msgs/91813.html