Please review my prior post, as my comments will refer to an email in that post.

There are many directions that we could take as we review that message.  My overall impression, as I read the letter, was of a person struggling to accept the reality of his condition.  Over and over, the person repeated the same behavior, starting Suboxone, stopping, and thinking this time will be different.

One thing I’ve learned as a psychiatrist, more than anything, is that change is difficult, and rare.  The writer ends with the thought that maybe this time will REALLY be different.  I have no idea if it will be, and for his sake, I hope it is… but unfortunately, the odds are that history will repeat itself.

I received the following email last week.  I considered trimming it down, but the story is well-written and describes a history that is similar to that of many of my patients.  As usual, I will write a follow-up post in a week or so.

Dear Dr. J,

I have read many of your posts over the past few years. Like many, I started out disagreeing with your comments and insight, while blaming my inability to manage my addiction on the Suboxone treatment. My active addiction to opiate pain medications was brief, about 4 months of hydrocodone/oxycodone use in the end of 2007. In early, 2008), I reached out to my primary care physician who directed me to an inpatient stabilization followed by Suboxone maintenance/addiction therapy.

When I entered treatment I maintained the belief that I was not an addict, and my doctor initially supported this attitude. He described my situation as physical dependence stemming from treatment of pain. I was a recent college graduate, I had a wonderful upbringing, a bright future…I believed that “people like me don’t become drug addicts.” So of course I wanted to minimize the seriousness of my illness.

I convinced myself that this physical dependence “happened to me,” and I was doing what needed to be done to resolve the issue. So I saw my doctor monthly and went to weekly addiction therapy sessions. I did not use “street drugs,” or any other RX meds, so my UAs were always clear, and eventually I was seeing the doctor for a refill every few months.

I often receive emails from patients on buprenorphine (or Suboxone) who are preparing for surgery or other painful medical procedures.  Ideally in such cases, the surgeon would have a discussion with the person prescribing buprenorphine, in order to coordinate the plan for treating postoperative pain.

In practice such discussions don’t seem to take place, leaving patients to scramble for effective pain control after surgery– when it is too late to take the steps necessary for a smooth perioperative course.

I am familiar with an NIH article that describes pain control in people who take buprenorphine.  I’ve also prepared a handbook that describes the issues that must be considered in such patients;  the handbook can be found easily-enough by searching for the User’s Guide to Suboxone.

Even with those descriptions ‘out there,’ I’ll get requests for a short, ‘just-the-facts’ note that patients can give to their surgeons.  I realize that unfortunately, the average surgeon will not sit down for an in-depth discussion of post-op pain control, so I have prepared a few paragraphs that lay out the issues.  People on buprenorphine who are having surgery are welcome to copy the paragraphs below and give them to their surgeons, in order to facilitate discussion.