Does Buprenorphine Really ‘Save Lives’?

Loura Shares A StoryJanuary 23, 2019April 26, 2021Healthcare Reform, Mental Health, Opinions, public policy reformaddiction, andrew kolodny, bad doctors, bad science, bad studies, big pharma, bupe, Buprenorphine, Disability and Chronic Illness, dr. kolodny, drug abuse, drug addiction, drug addiction treatment, drug detox, drug treatment, drugs in the usa, healthcare, Healthcare Reform, healthy society, illegal drugs, MAT, medication assistated treatment, Mental Health, naloxone, narcan, Public Policy Reform, reckitt benckiser, street drugs, suboxone, suboxone clinics, suboxone treatment, subutex

Legal disclaimer: Nothing in this post is meant to be construed as medical advice. I am not a physician or pharmacist. Discuss any medications, changes, or questions you might have with your medical provider. Do not suddenly stop any medication unless under the direct guidance of a medical provider.

Today was a weird day. What began with some light historic-ecclesiastical reading and plans to write a piece about a specific trend in feminism in antique literature, turned instead into a Twitter brawl in which I repeatedly questioned doctors and pharmacists on a certain status quo, and received 5th-grade-style memes of Homer Simpson in response. What was the cause? Buprenorphine.

More popularly known as Suboxone or Subutex, buprenorphine (“bupe” for short) has been touted in recent years as “the” drug of choice to treat opioid dependence disorders (formerly known plainly as “addiction,” for politically-incorrect and insensitive jerks like me, or so I was told).

Although my concerns about the safety and efficacy of buprenorphine became quickly misinterpreted as a war on drug addicts (or whatever the PC term is now), I ended up spending the day reading through study after study (see below for a list), but was hopelessly ganged up on by dozens of angry and less-than compassionate “professionals” who took the time to point out I must know nothing about the subject because I also “make jewelry.”

They insisted I could not read scientific or medical literature although such things are written in English and I am blessed to have access to ‘foreign’ objects like the internet and dictionaries to look up any unfamiliar terms, and in short, I had it all wrong, and my misinformation would inevitably lead to the untimely end of numerous, unnamed individuals. I just needed “to trust my doctors,” insisted one.

They had already read all the studies and charts I supplied, which is why they needn’t bother to look at the ones I provided and actually answer my questions. I hadn’t been privy to that much gas-lighting since the most recent family holiday.

I guess I touched a nerve.

What is Buprenorphine?

Buprenorphine is most commonly used in the US to treat opioid addiction. The idea is to transition people off heroin (and dirty needles, and other unhealthy practices associated with street drug addiction) and/or illicit painkillers. In much, much smaller doses (micrograms vs. milligrams), it is used to treat severe pain. Bupe is an opioid, and can cause addiction in and of itself.

Money, Money by the Pound!

There have been many back-end, sly marketing techniques, going on for at least a decade by the makers of bupe, Reckitt-Benckiser/Indivior, recently accused of attempting to artificially prolong the patent on Suboxone.

There is a ton of money to be made by doctors who prescribe it (average $300 for first appointments, $150 or more for subsequent/monthly appointments, and whatever can be earned in lab and pharmaceutical kickbacks).

Bupe, in the form of Suboxone, costs an average of $151-518 for just 30 days of sublingual filmstrips for the uninsured, depending on dosage, and about $180-720 for 30 days of sublingual tablets, depending on dosage, up to 3x/day, although an original study of the drug, paid for in part by Reckitt-Benckiser, show the drug can last up to 3 days before needing a new dose. This was, in fact, a huge selling point of bupe, that people would not need to come daily to Suboxone clinics for the medication.

Patients on bupe can successfully go for 2-3 days on just one dose, reducing the need for daily clinic visits, and/or “reducing the need for take-home medications [which] decreases the possibility of illicit diversion and abuse of opioid dependence pharmacotherapies (Section 6)”

No Such Thing as Chronic Pain?

That Old-Time Naloxone is Good Enough for Me

“The doses of naloxone that precipitated withdrawal [in patients given 8mg of sublingual and 3 and 10mg doses of BPN/day]…were approx. 10 times greater than those that precipitated withdrawal in patients maintained with 30mg oral methadone” (Section 3.2.3).

The One “Good” Opioid in the Epidemic?

Why Aren’t People Getting Clean with Bupe?

99 Problems, and the Studies are 1, 2, 3…

This is Not Treatment

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