If you are dealing with a substantial addiction to opioids like prescription painkillers or heroin, you would likely encounter significant withdrawal symptoms should you decide to stop using. Depending on several factors, your withdrawal symptoms might besiege you as soon as six hours after you last used your substance of choice.
In case you are wondering what kind of withdrawal symptoms you might face as an opioid addict, the list includes, but is not limited to:
- Onset of certain psychosis
- Trouble with your respiratory system
- Sudden increase in your heart rate and blood pressure
- Nightmares and hallucinations (visual and auditory)
- Tremors in your hands and feet
- Muscle cramps and body convulsions
- Memory problems
- Vomiting and nausea
- Problems with body function
Given the possible severity of these symptoms, you would be better off going through withdrawal in a licensed detox clinic. Under the care of medical staffers, you would get the chance to detox as naturally as possible with a focus on exercise and nutrition. However, you would also be subject to medical intervention should you start to show signs of pain and distress. Intervention might include prescription medication from a doctor. Here is what you really need to know. If there is enough evidence that your addiction to opioids is severe, the risks associated with you go through withdrawal will escalate. If there were to escalate enough, it could put you in harm’s way.
If a treatment professional believes that risk exists, it’s very likely they will want you to go through a detox tapering program. As part of a detox tapering program, a doctor would prescribe a tapering drug like suboxone. In reality, suboxone is an opiate narcotic that has many of the same properties as prescription painkillers and heroin. However, it’s not nearly as addictive as most other opioids. The doctor would prescribe enough suboxone to satisfy your cravings, but not enough to give you the same high as your drug of choice.
Over time, he would start lowing your prescription until you have been completely weaned off opioids. In all, this process could take weeks to several months, depending on the severity of your opiate addiction. While this is a viable detox option, there is a risk, which we will discuss in the next section.
Would Getting High on Suboxone Ruin My Chances of Recovery?
As long as you are taking your suboxone as the doctor prescribed, you should be fine as you detox. The risk comes should you decide to go against your doctor’s orders and start using high doses of suboxone more often than your prescription dictates. Remember, suboxone might not be as addictive as other opioids, but it is addictive. The last thing you want to do is trade one addiction for another addiction.
As far as getting high on suboxone ruining your chances of recovery, that depends on several things. First, you might initially experience a little bit of a high when you start taking suboxone. That should be temporary, eventually diminishing as you continue your tapering program. If you continue getting high off suboxone, there is a very good chance it would be affecting your recovery. It’s a matter of you being honest with your doctor about what you are doing. If you violate the doctor’s orders and continue to get high on purpose, you still have an addiction problem, which means you still have a lot of work to do. That’s because you would then possibly be addicted to multiple substances.
Will it ruin your chances of recovery? Of course not. The only thing that would ruin your chances of recovery is to not seek treatment. In that case, your life would continue to spiral out of control until you end up with a horrible fate or do seek help. What continually getting high off suboxone will do is interfere with your recovery for as long as you continue that behavior. Now that you are privy to the danger associated with suboxone, you can see the worst-case scenario regarding detox. What you first have to concern yourself with is getting into treatment in the first place.
Nothing can move forward until you are ready to stop using drugs and reach out for help. If you want help, we want to provide it. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call our facility at the following number, 833-497-3812.