A large number of patients with
heroin dependency fail to enter a treatment program because of dropping out during or immediately after detoxification. This article presents an open study of symptom relief of 10 patients withdrawing from
heroin with a high-dose rapid tapering
buprenorphine detoxification protocol. It also presents a pseudo-experimental comparison between 208 patients treated with a
clonidine/dextropropoxiphene detoxification protocol and 246 patients treated with the high-dose rapid tapering
buprenorphine detoxification protocol to evaluate differences in patients' ability to continue in treatment of addiction immediately after detoxification. The results indicate that 24 mg of sublingually administered
buprenorphine beginning when the patient judges himself to be in a withdrawal state followed by another three days of daily administered and rapidly decreased doses resulted in a significant reduction of
withdrawal symptoms. Also, when the
clonidine/dextropropoxiphene protocol was replaced with this
buprenorphine protocol the number of patients continuing in treatment immediately after discharge from the detoxification ward increased from 41.3% to 58.1%.
Buprenorphine given in high doses with rapid tapering when
withdrawal symptoms occur seems to offer an effective symptom-alleviating treatment, probably also decreasing the number of drop-outs after detoxification.