Author: TeeJay
Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2013 7:22 pm
Depression after opioid dependence, or any addiction, whether it’s methadone, Sub, Oxy, heroin, cocaine, benzos or whatever, is quite common. It’s a symptom of PAWS. Go to any drug & alcohol rehab and there’s always a number of people struggling with psych issues. Whether it’s transient and will go away with time as they get more recovery, or part of more lasting damage left over from addiction, it’s still something many people gotta deal with and learn to stay clean through.
I just want to make it clear that this problem is not isolated to buprenorphine. It’s a symptom of early recovery from all drugs of addiction. Opioids especially directly target the brain’s mood centers, that’s why we loved them. After a period of use the brain’s mood centers gotta go through a period of recovery and it can be real hard work sometimes. Experiencing mood problems is more the rule than the exception. But as long as you stay clean, it does get better.
Also people with pre-existing mental health issues are more likely to get sucked into addiction, usually because they see the drug as the answer to their problem. Often it’s hard to tell what came first, the mood problems or the substance abuse, but many people in recovery can identify that there were struggles prior to discovering their drug-of-choice.
Addiction is a really complex issue, and it’s easy to pin all the blame for the damage it causes on Suboxone. Maybe it’s because Sub is for many people the last drug they use before they get off all opioids? Maybe the stability that comes with Sub treatment makes people finally awaken to the realisation that there’s been some damage done, and then they blame it all on the one drug that’s left? I dunno.
All I know is Suboxone doesn’t cause hypoxic brain damage like the full-agonists (heroin / Oxy / morphine etc) are capable of. In active addiction, people stop breathing for periods of time that starve the brain of oxygen. Staying clean on bupe doesn’t do that, and even allows the brain to recover from the damage caused by active addiction.