Hey,
Yeah you can take a higher doseage than needed for too long which will give you the pick me up u miss from the opioid. You really dont want to condition your self to stay at any amount rather than slowy come off. I started with 8mg a day and I am down to 2mg and I feel fine. That coming off about a 12-13 per day vicoden 7.50 along with muscle relaxers somas 2-6 a day. Some times its good to feel something it keeps you from relapsing from it being too easy
Zelda,
You can stay on suboxone forever if you choose, whether it is for chronic pain or for opiate addiction / dependency. It doesn't offer as good of pain relief, but it also doesn't have a lot of the negatives those other opiates do. You don't get tolerant of suboxone either, so your dose would never have to go up...in fact you could easily taper to 4 mg over a several month process and feel just as good most likely.
Both my primary care Dr. & my suboxone Dr, whom is a psychiatrist, want me to stay on it forever, but i choose to at least try and get off of it. I started where you are , at 8 mg a day (was prescribed 20 mg) and have weaned down to 1.3 mg a day, over the course of a year. It's mighty powerful stuff!
Hope that helps
mano
PS...I just noticed you are from S. Africa so perhaps things are different there, but this is how it is in the U.S., and normally consists of seeing a dr. 1x a month for a refill, unless you are in an outpatient program, then you may be more restricted on your prescription.
They are not so strict. I go twice a seek to Neurologist and then we see how I am doing. I decided he is too expensive and now I go to my GP. The bad thing is that we only have subutex in SA and not suboxone. It is very expensive!
The are essentially the same thing, the suboxone just has an added ingredient to keep people from injecting it. It is very expensive here as well....about $5-6 per 8 mg tablet, and the doctors who dispense it usually charge above average rates. People who have tried both typically prefer the subutex and say it works better, but I don't really know.
I'm not sure of the exact date, but the generic version of sub will be available in a few years, so that will make it a more widely used drug at that point I believe, and be a big help for people using it as a maintenance drug.
Hi, guys. I pay R2600 a month for subutex. It is a sh.tload of money for meds. I went to a bigger pharmacy,because they have it ready whenever I need it, while my local pharmacy still has to order it and then I only get it the next day. The bigger pharmacy cost me R1400 for a month supply!! Provigil usually cost me R840 and I paid R620 there!! Unbelievable.
Methadone is also used, but now that there is Subutex/Subuxone, they'll be more likely to prescribed that. Changes of abuse and overdose is more likely with methadone.
Re: chronic use of Subutex/Suboxone? 
