THANK YOU FOR ALL THIS INFORMATION.WE WERE LOOKING FOR HELP FOR SOMEONE IN OUR FAMILY. IT JUST PUZZLES ME WHY THE TREATING DOC WAITED FOR OVER THREE AND A HALF YEARS TILL HE MENTIONED THERE WAS A SUBSTITUTE TO THIS DEBILITATING METHADONE. HOW EXPENSIVE IS SABAXONE IN THE US?

BUpe is a life saving med. if you are opiate dependent you cannot abuse it. you can shoot/plug/snort it and the same effects. those are nothing, jsut normal curbed w/d. and ive been on it. dont let those fancy guys in suits tell u people are shooting it to get high, cause thats CRAP. if you want to talk about how safe bupe is please email me. ive been on for 2 years now and it has saved my life. go after oxycontin, morphine, fent and leave our bupe alone . mikells43 at aim dot com yea

Let me correct what i just said at the end. Oxy's are being abused at such a higher rate than Suboxone, why do you think people have to take suboxone? If you want to make things stricter, it is so so easy to get oxy's either from a Doctor, even if you are in perfect health. Tighten the rules yes, but don't , don't don't don't make it so people who need help from Suboxone , impossible to get it. If people trying to quit see that it takes to much or to many things to get seen or prescribed this, what do you think will happen. Finding M.D's who prescirbe it is hard enough, and we taken correctly it isn't absued. People aksing for help aren't going to mis-use it. I have never once mis-used the drug. It has saved me!!!!!

I think that while a patient is taking Suboxone, that M.D's should provide or recuire counseling and blook work while on the Meds. Most patients are blessed to have the medicine becaue it turns thier life around and never ever mis-use the drug. Want to talk about mis-use, do you realize how many doctors are giving oxy's , again some people are using them correctly and more than 75% aren't. Thats the word on the street and sometime thats the best word

I have been prescribing buprenorphine for as long as it has been legal. We limit the number we serve, require random drug testing and counseling and give the individual limited supplies until he has proven himself. Some physicians do not require any testing ever including prior to prescribing the drug, give multiple refills and seldom if ever see the patients. This is not treatment. My clientele assure me there is a huge amount of the drug available on the street and that such prescribers are the source, directly or indirectly through resale. Further credence is given to the amount available by the fact that we not infrequently have patients testing positive for the drug even though they are not seeing clinicians licensed to prescribe it. It concerns me greatly. I believe buprenorphine to be an excellent adjunct to other treatment, but more intervention should go with it beyond just a prescription pad.

I work in the field of addiction medicine. I work in a methadone program which has many standards and guidelines. I also work in a private office which prescribes buprenorphine. There are no mandatory standards or guidelines for bupe patients. Any physician, no matter what their specilaity, can take the 8 hr class and begin prescribing. Prescribing a medication for a disease, without addressing all aspects of the illness is not safe medicine. An eight hour class is not enough information to understand the disease of addition. I am fortunate to work with a physician who believes in treating the whole person. All of our buprenorphine patients, as a condition of treatment, must receive individual and/or group therapy.

I'm currently taking suboxone to replace my close to death addiction to pain medications. I've been on the medicine for 14 months and in that time I have saved my marriage, kept my house, received a promotion, and rebuilt my relationship with my two children. I thank suboxone for being developed. It gives addicts a chance to stop their addiction because withdrawal is delayed until the addict has his or her life together enough to then taper off the suboxone. What is key to any success is an educated suboxone Doctor along with group meetings and if you can afford it a drug counselor. Learning how to manage life sober is so important for an addict that I would say if that one part is not worked on and understood that I would bet my life on a relapse suboxone or not. We all want to know how to stay sober. The first step is to help the addict not go into full blown withdrawal. We need to stop feeling sick long enough for us to work to a sober mind set. Yes suboxone can be abused so can Ice Cream. If people are getting high off this stuff by shooting it then their addicts that will abuse anything. This drug taken correctly has no high effect at all. To me that is the true gift of the medicine along with of course breaking my withdrawal systems helping me stay off pain meds. Suboxone really has helped save my life and it makes me sad that it's being shared in the news this way without saying but suboxone used right can help save people from dying basically. I also think not all addicts have to go the suboxone route. My thought is simple. Do what keeps you heading toward pure sobriety. If cold turkey is your way and you stay sober GREAT but if your like me and you just can't because of sickness and your life won't allow it then suboxone can give you the time you need to stop your addiction and begin your healing. I also want to say that I plan to get off suboxone soon. I can with the Doctors help ween myself in a kind way where I can get off completely with some insight that I might feel like crap for a couple weeks but I'll be ready for it and thats a big advantage for any addict heading toward complete sobriety.

Ramping up buprenorphine prior to retooling and upgrading the current clinical infrastructure is irresponsible. Likewise, the irresponsible marketing and/or lobbying of addiction-meds should be met with stiff financial penalties. Addiction is a chronic bio-psycho-social process. No silver bullets, please.

Here is the way I have seen presription drug reps.,doctors and nurses behave for 14 years. I have been a waitress at a few fine dining restaraunts in my area for about 14 years. I have actually made money off of this too so I feel guilty. I have waited on (several times)a lot of doctors, nurses and the reps. The drug reps. invite the docs and their nurses to these little functions. It's always on one check and the alchohol bill is always higher than the food bill that is allready a little outragous. I get a pretty darn good tip, that's good for me. But the way I see it is that these people are supposed to be getting educated on these drugs that they will be giving samples of to their patients. All they ever do that I have seen for 14 years is hand each person a pamplet or two and they don't even go over any of it . They are to busy eating steaks and sucking down more booze than should be allowed! Yes, I have made alot of money off these partys, but at the same time I feel guilty when I know that there really are people suffering with pain that can't afford medicine. And I know first hand that there are also kids starving because maybe their parents have to make choices over food or medicine. Anyway that just goes to show you that the people are not getting properly educated on the medicine that they are presribing. I would not say this about all doctors and nurses, but I have seen too much!!!

Perhaps if legitimate access to buprenorphine were to be made more widely available to opioid dependent individuals, there would be less diversion on the streets, where nothing causes more fear among addicted individuals than potential withdrawal symptoms. It seems that what is needed is more access to the medication by untreated individuals, as opposed to less access to it (provided that it is administered with more structure and monitoring, and in concert with appropriate levels of psychosocial counseling).

Buprenorphine is an excellent alternative to Methadone for replacement therapy in opioid addiction. Yes, it should be prescribed in tandem with behavioral therapy and close monitoring. Lets not blacken the water due to a few selfish doctors. Lets look at the entire picture in context.

Buprenorphine is saving lives and providing a safe effective treatment for thousands of persons. While it is SAMHSA/CSAT's job to monitor this treatment let's not over react to the greed of a few doctors or the behavior of persons affected by the disease of addiction. Let's learn, correct the problems, and above all not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Greedy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,and not concerned with the patient's well being.

very reassuring to hear that mds know of and are seriously concerned about doctor/dealers- unfortunately professional lobbyists for medical professionals don't always have that concern

I do not fully agree with "a small minority of doctors are not practicing good medicine". I work on an ACT team and we actually delivered Suboxone daily and observed administration. However, we didn't deliver weekend doses, and the client still sold or gave or misused the doses. Opiate addicts are wise, and will find a way to help their friends, make a few bucks and still avoid dope sickness. I don't believe that giving a "30 day supply" is the answer to how this med is getting onto the street.

I read with great interest what is said here. I question whether any of the above have known patients that have died, literally, or contracted a fatal disease while waiting for "room" at a methadone clinic. If you have, more to the point, if you have ever waited yourself for a slot, than you realize how wonderful Buprenorphine is. In 1969, I was involved in a less than "stellar" private for profit methadone clinic as a patient. It saved my life. I currently treat many patients as a clinical social worker in conjunction with an accredited physician. I do not think that we should look to be excluding patients, but reaching out to include. There are still more people seeking care that don't even know where to get it. I am personally appalled at the physicians that extort money and use buprenorphine as if it were legal drug dealing. I have referred some patients to other states and I was amazed at the lack of care, lack of program, lack of treatment, but demand for cash. I do wonder, is it because they are bad providers? Lack understanding of addiction medicine? Is their practice so bad that they need to take money from society's most vulnerable population? Would you want to be treated by a physician like that? Do our pets get better treatment? I might sound scattered, but there are a few issues here that are being confused. Please let the treatment community be more proactive and positive. If better training is what is needed, so be it. An old cliche, let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. I would be happy to help educate, offline or any other forum, practitioners about buprenorphine. Ask your patients who have changed their lives, many tell me that this medicine has saved their life, nothing short of a miracle.

Christopher: you are correct that the Sun article did not explicitly report that problems w/ the medication were the focus of the meeting. We have posted a correction, above. - Join Together

Buprenorphine is such a safe drug, and so effective that physicians forget that it only works when it is closely monitored. We cannot forget that using Buprenorphine should be but one element in an integrated Pharmacopsychosocial Treatment framework.

The MDs who are "mis-prescribing" bubrenorphine are probably the "pain experts" who have been "mis-prescribing" opiates and benzodiazepines for years. It would take only minimal research to learn the identity of these "respectable" dealers, yet there does not appear to be any attempt on the part of the medical community, DEA, or licensing bodies to put these operations out of business. The war on drugs people would have more success and impact by identifying these doctors rather than trying mainly to intercept people importing drugs from outside the country.

Prescribing buprenorphine should be done only as part of a comprehensive treatment program that is closely monitored, especially in the first year.

It should be made clear that, contrary to the ipmlication of this article and the actual Sun article, the meeting was not convened primarily "to discuss problems associated with buprenorphine" but was for the discussion of all aspects of buprenorphine. The majority of what was discussed was not "problems" but the overwhelming positive aspects of the medication and its use.

The expert committee is right on track with the need to provide better education of prescribers. But more than that, many prescribers in my region take only cash, do not talk to patients, do not perform urine drug screens or require self help meetings. In other words: are they 'undertrained' or just greedy?