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Suboxone is commonly used in drug treatment plans and for minimizing the symptoms of withdrawal. For many individuals that have experience with drug abuse, regular tests will often be part of continuing treatment and preventing relapse. If the person has continued to wean themselves off of opioid medication it’s possible that ongoing tests will actually be looking for support medications like Suboxone in the system of a person that has completed their drug treatment.
In many cases therapists as well as doctors will measure how successful their drug treatment was with the use of ongoing and random screened drug testing. Sobriety is something that needs to be carefully regulated especially with someone that has had ongoing struggles with substance abuse. Random drug screenings may also be required for you to gain or maintain your employment. Whether you are receiving testing for employment or for the maintaining of your sobriety its importer member that Suboxone does not show up in a standard drug panel.
In most cases standard drug panels will test for addiction to opioid drugs. This can mean a random screening could detect the signs of oxycodone, heroin or even morphine in the system. Suboxone is not one of the medications that is commonly checked for as it is mostly used in the process of recovery. In most cases it’s difficult to penalize someone for using Suboxone as with its proper use it is to ease the symptoms of withdrawal as well as keep a person from returning to opioid use.
Suboxone is a combination of naloxone and buprenorphine and it’s commonly used in reducing the withdrawal symptoms for those that have been regularly using opiod drugs. Buprenorphine works as an opioid agonist and as a result it can mimic some of the initial feelings of opioid drugs without the intent symptoms of euphoria. Buprenorphine can help individuals to reduce their feelings of withdrawal as well as prevent cravings for opioid medication. It also works particularly well at normalizing brain function and allowing the brain to eventually take a chemical dependence. This can help individuals to prevent relapse in their opioid use.
Naloxone is an opioid antagonist and this can block out the effects of opiate drugs. In the formula for Suboxone naloxone works to prevent any type of euphoria from being enacted through opioid drug use. Naloxone actually works to fill up the receptors which are commonly affected by opioids and regardless of the amount of Suboxone taken, a person will not experience any type of euphoria. This prevents Suboxone from being an adequate use as a street drug or as a medication that someone could abuse. Suboxone is designed only as a therapy drug and that is really only used it has for individuals. It can actually cause a number of negative withdrawal symptoms if it is modified or taken via smoking, snorting or injection as it will have absolutely zero effect for preventing withdrawal symptoms in this form.
With medical treatment featuring Suboxone it’s important that patients never discontinue the use of the medication with out appropriate doctors orders. The idea of using Suboxone is to eventually wean down the doses of the drug and prevent withdrawal symptoms. Over time as a person begins to wean themselves off of the doses of Suboxone it possible for them to become drug-free. Weaning themselves off of Suboxone to quickly or stopping Suboxone in a cold turkey fashion can immediately begin to cause Suboxone withdrawal. Suboxone withdrawal does come with many major concerns but it is often easier on the body than withdrawal using other types of opioids.
Some of the main symptoms of Suboxone withdrawal include:
As a reminder Suboxone does not show up as a positive in standard drug panels and it can be an extremely effective treatment tool for managing addictions to opioid drugs. The metabolites of substances like buprenorphine will not show up on standard drug panels for testing in hair , urine or blood. If you are currently taking Suboxone you should never consider giving it up without doctors orders or before a drug test.