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Misc How does dependence to similar drugs develop?

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candidsurprise

Bluelighter
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Oct 18, 2017
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I made an account just for this question!


From what I understand, cross tolerance is simply the accumulation of tolerance to a specific drug through the build up of tolerance to a different but related drug that acts on the same receptors . Cross dependence is the process whereby taking different but related drugs contributes the development of the same physical dependence. For instance, using a moderate dose of ambien one night to sleep, temazepam the next day and klonopin the day after that would lead to dependence. Even though using each individual drug once every three/four days in the same way, but without using the other drugs, would likely lead to no dependence. Those substances would be cross dependent. So really I have two questions:


1) What confuses me is to what extent can substances be considered cross tolerant but not cross dependent? What I mean by that is substances seem to be able to share cross tolerances, yet do not perpetuate the dependence of the other. For instance, during my GBL withdrawal period I used baclofen and phenibut to completely eliminate withdrawal symptoms and emerge from the other side basically experiencing no withdrawal at all. But if I had used GBL for the 2 weeks that I used its 'cross tolerant' substances (i.e. baclofen and phenibut) and instead of them, obviously I would have have had to emerge from those two weeks looking forward to a week plus of shakes, no sleep and the whole schabang. So why do these substances get me through withdrawal scot-free when they directly ramp up tolerance to the drug that I'm withdrawing from? Shouldn't they just prolong withdrawal as would happen if I just took GBL instead, given that they act on identical receptors?


2) More importantly, what are the implications of this when it comes to developing dependency? I was under the impression that alternating or rotating between two drugs that hit the same receptors would contribute to a 'GABA B' dependence if we were to use the example of rotating GBL, phenibut and baclofen on different days PRIOR to the development of dependency to any one of those drugs. Is this not the case? If it is not the case, how is that reconciled with the fact that, for example, alternating between different benzos will definitely lead to a singular dependency on benzos? Is it because all benzos act on the same receptor in the same way, whilst GBL, phenibut and baclofen act on the same receptor in different ways?


Or am I missing something more obvious here?


TLDR: why does phenibut get me out of GBL withdrawal without having to go through more withdrawals even though it acts on the same receptors, and does this have implications when it comes to alternating drugs that act on the same receptor before getting dependent on any one of those particular drugs?
 
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