I have been on a methadone treatment program successfully for 5yrs.I have not used any opiates in that time outside of the prescribed medication for the program and I have excelled dramatically in my recovery. Now I am going to switch to a suboxone program on their recomendation. The issue is that I have severe allergies and had taken suboxone once before and gotten hives from the drug... I believe.I have so many allergies it is hard to tell if that was the specific reaction to the drug. Before switching over is there a test to determine if I am allergic before I withdrawal from the methadone? i know the two drugs interact and I cannot take them together to see if the reaction is from an allergy. The problem is I do not want to ruin all of my work on recovering if the suboxone does not work for me. Would it be safer to withdrawal totally from the methadone program and not attempt to switch to suboxone in the case of having possible allergies? i am finding that people think I am making up a story, but I honestly believe the medication suboxone gave me terrible hives.I do not want to take a leap to another medication which can possible make me terribly ill or possibly stop my breathing to prove I have an allergy.I have had SEVERE hives from iodine and a few other substances, and carry an epi-pen.Can the suboxone be placed on the skin to see if hives appear without it affecting other medications? I am on 30mg of buprenorphine and am stabalizing my dose to switch to subutex then suboxone in less then a month. i have been searching for answers to allergy tests for medication but have found none. Basically if I switch over and the medication causes an allergic reaction I would be force to go through severe rapid withdrawal, or use illegal drugs to be accepted back into a methadone program..neither option sounds very safe or smart at this point. I'm looking for any safe solution. I have come to far to take a leap backwards over an allergy.
Is there a test that can be done to see if you are allergic to Suboxone before taking the drug?
Question posted by Pheonix2u on 15 June 2011
Last updated on 14 June 2011 by LaurieShay
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Answers
Hey Pheonix2u,
First let me get clarification, you said that you are on 30 mg buprenorphine, did you mean 30 mgs methadone? Suboxone is buprenorphine with naloxone. So I think you meant that you are presently on methadone and are switching to Subutex and then to Subxone? Why not just stay on the Subutex and not switch to the Suboxone. The Subutex and the Suboxone are the same drug, buprenorphine, just the Suboxone contains the additional drug Naloxone to keep abusers from injecting the medication. It may well have been the Naloxone you were allergic to before anyway. Otherwise, you are kind of stuck testing the Suboxone by taking and seeing what happens as I don't know if the doctor will do a skin patch test. You could ask them to do a skin patch test and see what they say.
Hope this helps some,
Laurie
Related topics
suboxone, opiate dependence, opiate withdrawal, methadone, opiate, medication
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