When patients have chronic pain, they're sometimes prescribed opioid medication in order to help alleviate it. Opioid medications are strong pain killers, but they're unfortunately quite addictive. Patients also build a tolerance to them slowly, so many people find that the dose that they need to control their pain creeps up over time. Once they've been on opioids for a long enough time, they'll get withdrawals if they stop.

Unfortunately, this is physical dependency and opioid addiction — many chronic pain patients on opioids are addicted even if they don't feel like they are. It's often difficult to stop taking opioids due to the withdrawals and rebound pain when they wear off. Sometimes, patients turn to street drugs for pain relief if doctors don't raise the dose of their prescribed medication.

Suboxone is one way that people with chronic pain who have become addicted to opioids can stop successfully. Suboxone consists of two medications: buprenorphine and naloxone. Buprenorphine helps stop withdrawals, and the naloxone is added as a way to prevent abuse — it prevents the medication from working if it's injected intravenously. Suboxone treatment for addiction is a major help for chronic pain patients who have started using street drugs for pain management or who want to get off the prescribed medication that they're on. To learn how Suboxone works and how chronic pain patients can benefit from it, read on.

How Does Suboxone Work?

The buprenorphine in Suboxone is an opioid that binds to the opioid receptors in your body, preventing you from going into withdrawal. When you take opioids for a long period of time, such as when you're using them to treat chronic pain, your opioid receptors naturally become less sensitive. This causes you to develop a tolerance to opioids, and it also means that you'll go through opioid withdrawals whenever you don't have opioids in your system — your receptors have become acclimated to always having opioids bound to them. Since buprenorphine binds to opioid receptors, you won't go through withdrawals once you're on Suboxone.

In addition, the buprenorphine in Suboxone also binds very tightly to your opioid receptors. It's difficult for other opioid medications (including street drugs like heroin) to displace the buprenorphine from your receptors, which means it's much less effective. This is why Suboxone is so effective as an addiction treatment — it significantly reduces the likelihood that you'll relapse by making other opioids much less effective. Since they're not effective, you're much less likely to use them.

Can Suboxone Help With Chronic Pain?

When you're addicted to opioids and suffering from chronic pain, one of the biggest barriers to treatment is the fact that the opioids are doing something useful for you — they're helping alleviate your pain. The prospect of going without them can be frightening.

Thankfully, Suboxone treatment for addiction can help. Since the buprenorphine in Suboxone is an opioid, it does provide some pain relief. You won't have to go entirely without pain medication when you're using Suboxone to treat your opioid addiction, since the Suboxone acts as a partial replacement.

One caveat with using Suboxone to relieve pain is that it isn't as strong as other opioids. It only partially activates the opioid receptors it binds to, whereas other opioid medications fully activate them. If you have chronic pain and you're thinking about Suboxone treatment for addiction, it's a good idea to find a program that offers help with non-opioid methods of treating pain, such as physical therapy and meditation.

How Do You Get Started With Suboxone Treatment for Addiction?

Find a doctor or treatment center in your area that offers Suboxone treatment for addiction and schedule an appointment. You'll be asked to slowly reduce the amount of opioid medication you're taking before the appointment until you go into minor withdrawals, and then you'll be given Suboxone at the clinic until you're no longer in withdrawal. Once you're stable on the correct dose of Suboxone, you'll continue taking it instead of your current pain medication. If possible, try to find a provider that offers additional services for patients who also suffer from chronic pain, as combining multiple treatment methods to alleviate pain will be the best help in living pain-free. For more information, contact a clinic like Triangle Wellness and Recovery.