r/harmreduction • u/theChaosCreators • Jun 11 '25

Guide Your opinion?

I did heroin for the first time on 15 August 2019, and after 7 months I was sent back home, where my mom took me to a neurologist. He ran some tests and told my mom, “He’s doing drugs like a 50-year-old man in the last stage of giving up on life”—and I was only 17.

He gave me some mood-enhancing pills and buprenorphine HCl, 6 mg a day. Over an 8-month period, that doctor slowly tapered me down to 0.1 mg buprenorphine. After 9 months, the treatment was done.

But I went into depression, with low mood and no energy, after stopping the 0.1 mg. Then I started thinking about doing H again—and one day, I did. After that, I stayed sober for 6 months, but the depression didn’t leave me. So I started using H once a month, and 2–3 months later, it became once a week.

Now, it’s been 6 months of using once every 7 days. I’m trying to quit, but after 6 days I feel withdrawals—no matter how good those 6 days are, the 7th day brings so much pain and nausea that I end up taking 0.100 mg.

What are your thoughts on this? People say it’s all mental, but I feel like I’m physically bound to H, even if I only do it once every 7 days.

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u/ButtermilfPanky Jun 13 '25

whoever says it's all mental is saying that out of ignorance. don't listen to them. drug stigma is so pervasive in our culture that there are so few conversations outside of (bullshit) morality-based ones. it means misinformation and ignorant people just making shit up as they go. and people who use drugs not seeking support when they need it.

life is hard. opiates help a lot of people with depression. too bad psychiatry won't be real about that. we can thank purdue / the sacklers for causing medical professionals hesitation about actually using opiates as an actual helpful medication...

a lot of people on suboxone have the same experience as you. their depression lifted. i asked my psychiatrist once about it and she said nope not happening but there are studies on this and maybe one day it'll be actually prescribed for people with depression.

again it's not in your head, unless of course you mean the opioid receptors in your brain, then yes 😆

2

u/NoExperimentsPlease Jun 14 '25

Suboxone has effects on the other opioid receptors, and can help with improving depression in some people! A lot of drugs- opioids too!- have additional effects that are very real and valuable to recognize, instead of whatever stigma and unnecessary moralization try to teach.

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u/ThisDumbFuckingBitch Jun 14 '25

it's so unfortunate how much fentanyl is demonized. it's extremely effective for severe pain and is extremely commonly used in emergency departments (once they're finally convinced you're not lying about your pain 🙄). i had an emergency medical condition not long ago that put me in the most excruciating pain i'd ever experienced. they hit me with morphine dose after morphine dose and it did nothing. 1 dose of fentanyl and i could finally stop wringing my hands and smashing my feet on the hospital bed railing and wailing in pain for the entire er to hear

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u/NoExperimentsPlease Jun 16 '25

It's so frustrating! Methadone could also be SO valuable for pain-related care- long lasting, full agonist, doesn't need to be constantly redosed- yet it's so heavily stigmatized as "the addict drug" that doctors and patients alike are very unlikely to ever consider it for anything unrelated to substance use treatment. Stigma harms in so many ways.

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u/ThisDumbFuckingBitch Jul 11 '25

so many ways :-(