Matt: What’s up, guys? Matt and Greg, Project Unbroken. Today we want to answer a question and go into a little bit of depth about brain fog when it comes to suboxone and methadone. We got a comment on our YouTube channel. A guy was saying that he’s on .5 milligrams of suboxone, which is towards the end of the road as far as maintenance goes, and he was asking if the brain fog goes away.
Matt: We’ll talk a little bit. I’ll talk about my experience with brain fog and suboxone. Greg’s going to go over some stuff with methadone, but to answer the question, yes, it does go away eventually, and it’s one of those things that it’s kind of hard to notice.
Matt: Again, .5 milligrams, he’s starting to taper off. That’s a lower dose of suboxone. Still very effective, but it’s a lower dose. You can definitely feel that there’s some kind of haze going on in front of you. If you’ve been on the maintenance program for a while or on suboxone for a while, it can become frustrating because you can almost sense yourself dazing off and just you’re in a trance almost.
Greg: It’s like you can’t compile your thoughts.
Matt: It sucks.
Greg: Yeah, and you lose your train of thought, stuff like that.
Matt: You lose your train of thought. Even I can remember, I’d be having conversations and it wasn’t like dope high where I was nodding off or anything, but I would just lose interest, or I couldn’t pay attention to anything. It’s really frustrating.
Matt: The nice thing is is the brain fog goes away pretty immediately after the suboxone is completely out of your system. At least it did for me. There’s other things that you’re dealing with, maybe some slight anxiety from being off the suboxone. Some people deal with low level depression or high level depression, whatever it is, but the brain fog’s not there, so you have to just balance out what’s happening and use that clarity of mind to help you get through the other stuff, but it does go away.
Greg: Yeah, no, I made a post on a forum, it’s called Drugs-Forum.net, when I was going down to one milligram of methadone, which is super low for methadone. I was worried about coming off and if I was going to feel withdrawal and just trying to share my story. I went back to that post and I read it, and about two weeks after I got off zero completely, I said I was feeling great. It seemed like it took a couple weeks for me once I got off methadone before the brain fog went away.
Greg: Also, I don’t know what your habit was like when you were on suboxone, but I started eating better. I started working out. I think even if you’re on methadone or suboxone, if you start concentrating on diet now and exercise, it can really help the brain fog. I know if I go off my diet, I start getting that brain fog.
Greg: I think a lot of people who are on drugs or taking methadone or suboxone, they don’t take care of themselves as well. It’s just what goes along with it, what they’re used to with that lifestyle. I think that can really contribute to the brain fog. When you were on suboxone, what was your diet like? Probably nothing like now, I would imagine.
Matt: Well, I will say this. It’s nothing like now, but as I started to taper off, and it wasn’t because of the brain fog, because honestly, I didn’t even really notice the brain fog until it was gone.
Greg: Yeah.
Matt: I wasn’t doing anything specifically to fix that, but I was doing everything within my power to make myself feel better mentally. I started exercising. I started cleaning up my diet. I got sugar pretty much out of my diet and real starchy carbohydrates to try to get them out of my diet.
Matt: I just read that that causes brain inflammation and it’s not good for your gut bacteria, which your gut’s where you produce 80% of your serotonin, which is that feel good chemical that goes into your brain, so that’s another topic for another time. I did start exercising. I did start eating better, and Greg and I are both big believers in diet and exercise and the power that it has in how you think and feel.
Greg: You said you started diet and exercise. Is that when you came off methadone or while you were on it still?
Matt: Suboxone.
Greg: Or suboxone.
Matt: While I was still on it.
Greg: While you were still on it.
Matt: Yeah.
Greg: Do you remember noticing a difference when you started doing that, or not really?
Matt: I noticed I started feeling better.
Greg: Okay, but you didn’t pay attention to the brain fog.
Matt: I didn’t pay attention. I will say, I didn’t notice that the brain fog was there until suboxone was out of my system.
Greg: It’s common sense. If you change your diet, if you have less sugar and all that that causes inflammation, that brain fog’s going to go away.
Matt: Yeah.
Greg: It might not go away all the way.
Matt: It’s common sense for us, but I think a lot of people out there don’t really appreciate or understand the relationship between food and thought, and it’s powerful.
Greg: Yeah. For those of you on methadone or suboxone, if you have that enough where it’s affecting you, you’re like, “Man, I just can’t think straight,” try changing your diet.
Matt: 100%. I own a gym. I work with my clients with their diet, and this is more for performance and weight loss and stuff like that, but almost every single person that I work with, they come back later and they say, “I can’t believe that I feel as good mentally as I do.” A lot of people think, “Oh, a cheeseburger tastes so good. Blah blah blah.” I don’t really give a shit what I look like physically. That’s not why I eat the way I do. It’s 100% about the way I feel in my mind. That’s why I don’t like eating garbage.
Greg: Yeah. Well, it’s like you eat the garbage and it’s good for a few minutes, and then it affects you for a long time. Same thing with drugs. Drugs feel good for an hour or so, and then they fuck you up for a while, possibly the rest of your life. It’s kind of like that instant gratification thing there.
Matt: Yeah. I don’t think many people understand it until they really start to go down that path, but anyway, that’s something you’ve got to learn for yourself. If brain fog is an issue, 100% diet and exercise will start to make that dissipate, whether you’re on a maintenance program or not, absolutely.
Greg: Yeah. You made a good point, because I don’t think I realized how bad I felt until I started feeling good. I think it was two weeks after, I read on my post, I was like, “Oh my god. I feel great. I can’t believe how I was feeling. I can’t believe I was living like that.”
Matt: I look back now. It’s unfortunate, because Greg and I see all the time an old friend that dies of an overdose or whatever and I’m like, “Holy shit. They’ve been living this way since before we quit.” That’s 10 years.
Greg: 10, 15 years.
Matt: They’ve still been doing it, and again, when you’re out of it, you can look back in the rear view and be like, “Jesus, that was hard.”
Greg: Yeah. That’s part of the reason I think we do these videos is we know how shitty it is to be stuck in that cycle and it’s possible to get out.
Matt: Absolutely. You guys just have to put a little bit of faith in it. If you’re struggling with that, throw it out there. Who gives a shit? Try to change your diet. Try to exercise. It can’t be worse than being stuck in an addiction. We know. We’ve been there.
Greg: I agree with that. If you all have any more questions on brain fog, anything else related to anything with addiction, let us know and we’ll answer the best that we can.
Matt: Thanks for watching, guys.
Greg: See you.
