The words of the song say a lot about drug addiction:  "Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die."   For an addicted person, heaven can be equated to being off a drug or drugs and dying is the process that they experience when they withdraw from the drug or drugs.

 

It is not true that the great majority of people addicted to prescription drugs, and some street drugs, are not interested in handling their addiction.  Many addicted people have attempted to withdraw from opiates like heroin, oxycodone and morphine and many other prescription drugs on their own.  But a "cold turkey" withdrawal can be extremely uncomfortable, painful and even medically dangerous.  Most who try to withdraw are unable to finish and are driven back to taking the drug to which they are addicted. 

 

If operated properly, a medical detox facility can greatly ease the withdrawal from prescription drugs.  One of the medications that can be used specifically to reduce the pain and discomfort from opiate withdrawal is Suboxone®, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2002 and administered in tablet form.  Only doctors approved by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a department in the United States Department of Health and Human Services, are allowed to dispense Suboxone®.

Suboxone® contains buprenorphine, an opiate that triggers a response in the body similar to the response triggered by heroin, oxycodone,  and morphine.  Unlike heroin, OxyContin and other frequently abused opiates, buprenorphine increases the effect on the person only to a certain point and then no longer adds to the effect no matter how large the dose.  

Suboxone® also contains naloxone which slows or prevents the triggering of the receptors.   If Suboxone® is not taken under the tongue but crushed and injected into the bloodstream, the naloxone will prevent the buprenorphine from triggering the euphoric response and almost certainly cause the person to quickly go into a painful withdrawal.  However, if the Suboxone® tablet is placed under the tongue and allowed to dissolve gradually, the buprenorphine effect predominates, and very little naloxone reaches the bloodstream, so what the patient feels are the effects of the buprenorphine.

Suboxone® comes in two dosage forms: 2 mg buprenorphine/0.5 mg naloxone and 8 mg buprenorphine/2 mg naloxone. The Suboxone® drug label is available on the FDA Web site at: http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/subutex_suboxone/default.htm

Suboxone® is used in medical detox to ease the pain and discomfort of withdrawal from oxycodone, heroin and other similar opiates.  The medical doctor must determine that the opiate-addicted individual has abstained from using opiates for 12-24 hours and is in the early stages of opiate withdrawal before the first dose of Suboxone® is administered.   This is because Suboxone® can precipitate acute and painful withdrawal symptoms if the patient still has other opiates in the bloodstream.

If the Suboxone® dose is properly tapered until its use is discontinued, the addicted person  experiences a much milder and more comfortable withdrawal.   Since many addicted people want to "go to heaven" and be free of the drugs and "don't want to die", Suboxone® is a tool that a medical detox facility should incorporate into its protocols for opiate withdrawal.