Why Are So Many Suboxone Patients Buying the Drug on the Street?
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
By Patrick Skahill, WNPR
For some patients looking to break their addiction to heroin or prescription painkillers, there’s a drug out there that works. It’s called Suboxone, but government regulations and individual doctors have made it difficult to get, which is leading many to buy it illegally.
A lot of people using Suboxone for the first time don’t get it at a doctor’s office.
“I took it when I couldn’t find drugs,” said a 32-year-old personal caregiver from Danbury who didn’t want WNPR to use her name. “I was, actually, buying it off the street — and I did that for, God, almost a year.”
Following a knee surgery, she started using, and eventually abusing, prescription opiates like Percocet. She bought Suboxone illegally for months before getting it legally at her doctor’s office in New Haven.