Ibogaine Treatment for Suboxone & Buprenorphine Addiction

Subutex and suboxone are opioids, and their long-term use poses health risks. Therapeutic doses of opioids can affect your life at work, school, and home — but this is just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to these side effects, there are many acute side effects of suboxone that happen immediately after a single dose. These side effects include:

Three opioid use side effects are of particular note:

Suboxone consists of a combination of naloxone and buprenorphine, medications that help prevent withdrawal symptoms during opiate addiction recovery. Naloxone is an opiate antagonist, while buprenorphine acts as a partial agonist-antagonist. The two drugs together act much like opiates in the brain. Yet the risks from suboxone are reduced, compared to traditional opiates.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), buprenorphine can produce euphoric effects in users, but those effects are weaker than any euphoria created by standard opiates. Furthermore, taking large doses of buprenorphine fails increase the drug’s euphoric effects over time. This limits the chances that patients will abuse suboxone. But in some instances, people still become dependent on it while they try to treat an opiate addiction.

According to SAMHSA, there are three phases used as part of suboxone treatment:

Suboxone treatment starts with the induction phase, which begins 12 to 24 hours after the last dose of an opiate. Treatment should start before opiate symptoms worsen during withdrawal.

After withdrawal symptoms and cravings subside, the stabilization phase of suboxone treatment begins. At this point, the patient experiences few, if any, symptoms of opioid use. The supervising physician may adjust the patient’s dose of suboxone and frequency based on his or her individual needs.

Finally, the patient reaches the maintenance phase of treatment. This phase involves a steady, long-term dose of suboxone that is eventually tapered off under medical supervision.

Getting off suboxone may be challenging, and an individual may experience various side effects. According to the US National Library of Medicine, common side effects of suboxone include:

To avoid these side effects, a doctor may sometimes recommend a suboxone alternative like buprenorphine.

The buprenorphine molecule was introduced by British company Reckitt Benckiser (known as Reckitt & Colman at the time) in 1978. It was offered as an injection to treat severe pain and released as a sublingual formulation in 1982.

Buprenorphine is a narcotic analgesic. It acts as a partial agonist/antagonist that works against opiate receptors, even at low doses (2 mg). In addition to buprenorphine’s receptor blocking, when naloxone is mixed into the drug (suboxone), buprenorphine delivers an additional μ-opioid receptor blocker.

In October 2002, the US FDA approved buprenorphine (using the brand names Subutex and Suboxone) for use in opioid maintenance.   The Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000 made it possible for physicians who received special training in their use, to prescribe Schedule III, IV, and V narcotic analgesics like Buprenex for the purpose of treating addiction with substitution therapy. To put it simply: within the United States a clinician can prescribe Subutex or Suboxone, and you can go to a pharmacy and refill your prescriptions for these drugs as needed.

From a medical perspective, using buprenorphine in substitution therapy for opioid maintenance presents significant problems when a patient attempts to detox. Comparatively, ibogaine addiction interruption therapy and treatment for opioid dependence is effective for people dealing with addictions to Subutex and Suboxone. In fact, it can sometimes take 4-6 weeks or more of gradually tapering your use of buprenorphine and switching over to short-acting opioids (SAO’s), prior to receiving ibogaine therapy for opiate dependence to treat an addiction to Subutex or Suboxone.

Subutex is essentially a brand name for buprenorphine. Conversely, Suboxone presents its own unique complications relative to ibogaine treatment for detox from opiates and opioids, due to the fact that it contains the opioid antagonist naloxone. Since naloxone occupies opiate receptors within the body and displaces other molecules, it is paramount not to have any naloxone present in the body prior to receiving ibogaine therapy.

When a patient is unable to switch to short-acting opioids prior to arriving at Transcend Clinic’s ibogaine treatment clinic in Cancún, Mexico, successfully detoxing from buprenorphine can take between 10 days to over 2 weeks. Prior to receiving ibogaine detox therapy, we switch a patient to short-acting opiates, stabilize him or her on SAO’s, and administer multiple doses of ibogaine as required, with several days of downtime between booster doses. Please note: Transcend Clinic will not treat patients who are on more than 8 mg of buprenorphine when they arrive at our treatment facility.

Believe it or not, there are many ibogaine treatment clinics that make promises and are happy to take your money for an ibogaine detox that cannot possibly work when applied to a heavy buprenorphine addiction. But let’s be clear: ibogaine cannot help you detox from high doses of buprenorphine in short periods of time. Anybody who claims otherwise is significantly misrepresenting how ibogaine interacts with buprenorphine and knowingly selling you a treatment that will not have a positive outcome.

Suboxone and Subutex addiction is not an easy condition to treat. Therefore, it is important that you, your clinician, and our M.D.’s, remain in contact in the days leading up to your ibogaine treatment. At Transcend Clinic, we have had tremendous success utilizing ibogaine addiction interruption therapy to mitigate upwards of 95% of withdrawal symptoms related to detoxing off of buprenorphine. It is the most advanced protocol we have developed, and as such, it takes the greatest amount of time to successfully complete. To learn more about our comprehensive ibogaine therapy options, please call us today at 760 621 6203.

In a less-than-ideal situation — in other words: the real world — when a patient is unable to make the switch to short-acting opioids prior to arriving at Transcend Clinic’s ibogaine treatment clinic in Cancún, successfully detoxing from buprenorphine can take between 10 days to over 2 weeks of time. Prior to receiving ibogaine detox therapy, we need to switch you to short-acting opiates, stabilize on SAO’s, and then administer multiple doses of ibogaine as required, with several days downtime between booster doses.

Please note: we will not treat patients who are on more than 8mg. of buprenorphine at  time of arrival. Unless you plan to stay in Cancun for 2-3 months, it’s not going to work. Period. There are many ibogaine treatment clinics who will make assurances and promises and are happy to take your money for an ibogaine detox which cannot possibly work when applied to a heavy buprenorphine addiction, with the expectation being that you’re going to be reset in a week.

Ibogaine cannot detox you from high doses of buprenorphine in short periods of time. Anybody who claims this is possible, is at best ignorant, at worst, significantly misrepresenting how ibogaine interacts with buprenorphine, and knowingly selling you a treatment that will not have a positive outcome.

Suboxone and Subutex addiction is not an easy condition to treat, and it’s extremely important that you, your clinician, and our M.D.’s, remain in contact during the period of time leading up to your ibogaine treatment.

We have had tremendous success utilizing ibogaine addiction interruption therapy to mitigate upwards of 95% of withdrawal symptoms related to detoxing off of buprenorphine. But this is the most complicated protocol we have developed, that takes the greatest amount of time to complete successfully.