Amber Hollingsworth, an addiction counselor, breaks down three medication-assisted treatment options: Suboxone (buprenorphine plus naloxone), Subutex (buprenorphine alone), and Sublocade (a monthly injection). She explains how buprenorphine cuts overdose risk and why doctors might choose one over the others.
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So this video is all about medication assisted treatment, specifically Suboxone, Subutex, and now Sublocade. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Amber Hollingsworth. I'm an addiction counselor and founder of Hope for Families Recovery Center. And my goal is to make sure you have the tools, strategies and supports to recover your life back from addiction. So make sure you subscribe so you can get all those tools, supports and strategies. Okay, Before I go much further, I do want to say that I am not a physician. I don't prescribe meds. I am a therapist. I'm a master addiction counselor. The purpose of this video is to explain to you what these medications are. Please, by no means take this. To take this as me saying to take any certain amount of this, that or not take any certain amount of this or that. Of course, you should consult with your physician before making any of these decisions. Final. Let's start with Suboxone. Okay, so Suboxone is really made up of two medications. One is buprenorphine. That's the main medication in Suboxone and it is a long lasting opiate. Now why would you take someone off of opiates and put them on more opiates? Well, Buprenorphine attaches to those opioid receptor sites. I know brain talk in such a way that makes it very difficult to overdose. And so it definitely increases safety for anyone addicted to opioids or heroin. So the other thing that's in Suboxone is a little bit tiny, little bit of Naloxone, which is an opioid blocker. And that adds a little bit more of a safety net in as an added protection for overdose. So if you understand what Suboxone is, Subutex is going to be pretty easy to understand. It's Suboxone minus the Naloxone. So that means it's just the long lasting opioid. And you might ask yourself, well, why would someone want to take it that doesn't have the blocker? There are certain reasons why people want to do that. Sometimes if someone is pregnant, sometimes if someone has a chronic pain issue. There are some specific medical reasons and there are some specific clinical reasons for why a person might want to take Subutex versus Suboxone. Well, I guess one practical reason is from what I hear, it's quite a bit less expensive because that naloxone stuff, for whatever reason, is expensive. So remember Suboxone, Buprenorphine plus Naloxone, Subutex, just Buprenorphine Pretty much. And then there's this new thing called supplocade. What the heck is that? I'm going to give you the brief overview, but if you want to know more about Supplicade, make sure you check out my interview with Mark Burroughs, who is a medication assisted treatment specialist. And he really goes into detail about this. But basically, Supplicate is Suboxone given in a once a month injection. And so you might be asking yourself, well, why would you want to do it that way? Well, because it takes a lot of the addicted behavior off the table, such as taking a medication every day, such as thinking, oh, I'll take a little extra day, I'm having a bad day, keeps you from running out early and all. Some of those other kind of things that can cause some complications in the process. So basically there are three different ways of administering buprenorphine that is the main ingredient in all of these medications. So if you're considering this route, I want you to think about two things. The first thing I want you to think about is, is medication assisted treatment. Right. For me in general. And in order to make that decision, I'm going to suggest you look at two other videos I made. That's a really good story from someone who's done both, who's done medication assisted treatment and step treatment, and he talks about his personal experience with both. So that'll give you a real well rounded look at the situation. And then if you do decide that medication assisted treatment is the way to go, then you need to think about which one of these options might be the best for you. And that is of course, when you would want to talk to your physician. So hopefully you enjoyed that really quick overview of Suboxone, Subutex and Sublocade. Make sure you check out those other videos to get the real big picture so you can make the best decision for you.
