Buprenorphine for Relapse Prevention
Yes, buprenorphine is a great way to recover from drug addiction and detox of prescription painkillers or other opioid-based drugs without dealing with withdrawal symptoms. But in the world of treatment, relapse prevention is a huge part of healing and maintaining a drug free life. Subutex and Suboxone are great for that, too.
Says Dr. McDowell, a prescribing physician of buprenorphine: “If you get stressed out and decide you want to get high, you can go see your dealer but you’re wasting your money because there’s that three-day safety cushion where buprenorphine is blocking the receptors.”
The statistics—my favorite form of evidence-based practice—show astounding results in relapse prevention when Subutex or Suboxone is prescribed. Take, for example, the patients who take buprenorphine for drug addiction at Dr. McDowell’s clinic: only 5 out of 43 people relapsed in their first six months of treatment, a success rate of about 88 percent. Compare this with the relapse rate of methadone users in their first six months of treatment: 50 percent.
And check out Europe, or France, specifically. Doctors have been prescribing Suboxone and Subutex to treat drug addiction for a decade now and in that time that number of deaths due to opioid-based drug overdose have dropped by nearly 80 percent. As Dr. McDowell rightfully marvels, “In the field of addiction treatment, those figures are just unbelievable.”
What’s unbelievable is that anyone on 40 milligrams of methadone or less would opt to continue to choose that form of detox when buprenorphine is available. The benefits, including the incredibly low relapse and overdose rates, are reason enough to at least try it.
If you like this post subscribe to the feed
