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Opioids Is it possible to reverse opioid tolerance?

DXM gives zero withdrawal effects. Definitely none.

As for lowering tolerance, your best bet is time, time, time - as you mentioned. More time the more you're on, and more time the more breaks you've taken. I've gone down significantly with month breaks before. Also, if you do a certain amount and only "gift" yourself with slightly larger amounts, that'll keep it lower longer(what I mean by this is, say you've done 20mg per dose usually and you get a lot? well if you get a huge amount and wanna go crazy and do double for the hell of it/coz it'll feel great, just don't - maybe do 25 or 30 instead. don't get excited or anxious for more. use your head and keep tolerance in mind, and it'll make a huge difference!).
 
I really think it has to do with body chemistry and how much you take.

Tolerance scares me to death. I worry about that everyday. Especially since lately I'm hurting more and more.

Once my pain levels out again. I reducing my meds to avoid having to take higher doses for the same pain relief. It's hard to lower tolerance when you have to take them daily.

But it can be done.

Time with taking care of your body and eating right, taking vitamins, and refraining from similar drugs should drop your tolerance down. For me not taking opiates for a month drops my tolerance to zero. Then I get all the itching and s/e of the opiates again.
 
Swimmingdancer said:
^Does DXM create dependence? Like do you get any withdrawal symptoms or rebound symptoms like worsened insomnia if you stop taking it?
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DXM is the shittiest opioid in the world, it creates no dependence. It's like Tylenol.
 
Swimmingdancer said:
"So sorry to hear about your brother Laughing Man :(. I think when people are administered naloxone they should be warned that it may greatly decrease their tolerance and that if they are going to use opioids again to use much less than their usual dose."

@swimdancer.
Thanks. He was 52 and had been IV H/C/meth for many decades. I know a lot about drug abuse but even I was not aware of the effect naloxzone had on temporarily lowering tolerance until after the fact.
Ihad saved him a couple times before from H overdoses using naloxzone but I did not have any and wasn't around him whenever it was he crossed that line. His "friends" just dumped him off at the doorstep. Not in an urban area. The junkies here are not street smart. At least in a larger city most will dump off an OD at an ER and dash.
I always knew it would eventually end badly. Unlike me, he had a very addictive personality. I've been able to quit everything I've ever gotten into without any effort except god damned cigarettes. I kept trying to tell him we were too old to do what we could get away with in our 20's. Of course, a true addict never listens.
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I'm really sorry that you lost your brother, It really pains me to read things like that. <3
 
Ksa said:
DXM is the shittiest opioid in the world, it creates no dependence. It's like Tylenol.
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Ribcaged said:
DXM isn't an opioid. It's used in high doses as a dissociative drug - alters reality.
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DXM is not normally considered an opioid, but it is actually in fact a weak U, O and K opioid receptor agonist. It is used in low doses to prevent drug tolerance, as a cough-suppressant, as a pain reliever, and as a sleep aid, and in high doses as a dissociative hallucinogen. My purposes would be to use it in low doses to help lower my methadone dose by helping with withdrawal symptoms, potentiating the methadone, and helping with tolerance, and to help with sleep.

Even Tylenol does cause rebound symptoms, like headaches, if you take it frequently. I wouldn't be surprised if taking DXM every day created a dependence, even a mild one - it has many mechanisms of action. Ksa - Do you have any evidence upon which you base your assertion that it creates no dependence? Ribcaged - Did you mean that you experienced no withdrawal symptoms when you took it daily for a long time and then stopped abruptly? Were you taking other drugs at the time? I have found published reports of dependence and withdrawal syndrome resulting from DXM (examples: 1 & 2), but I'm curious to know how common it is and whether it is likely to occur from low doses. I don't really want to be taking any more dependence-causing drugs. But I can't imagine it being too difficult to taper off...


Laughing Man - That is so sad :(. I have known people in similar circumstances who died of ODs. It really saddens me that his friends did not help him and that he was not warned about the naloxone lowering his tolerance. Both seem linked to the ridiculous "War on Drugs". I hope it gives you some comfort to share your knowledge with others in the hopes they don't have the same fate. <3
 
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You can lower it! At my "high point" I would have to bang 5 or 6 Roxi 30s just to get a semi decent rush. I used morphine to taper down over about a year and now it only takes 1 to get the same rush. I think there is a point where you can't get anymore opiate naive. I wish I could go back in time to high school where I could take a few percocet 5s and get cooked. Ahh the good old days...
 
No doubt about it, drug abuse is a dangerous hobby.
I go back a long time and we used to have a saying that went, "There is no room in the drug subculture for amateurs." It was funny and yet it must be understood that abuse of drugs is dangerous.

Personally my preferred method for reducing tolerance is to simply taper the dosages. Do it gradually and you can have a very soft landing.
I have used that method for many types of recreational drugs from opiates to cocaine. It isn't hard for me but it depends a lot on your physiology and psychology.
 
It shouldn't take more than 3 weeks to taper off any opiate.
However, I agree that you can never quite reset completely and recover that first time feeling no matter what you do.
There must be a permanent change in our brains' which prevent ever returning to that perfectly opiate naive state.
 
I'm dealing with DXM tolerance... it's not that I want to to DXM but it has made me tolerant of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, anything. I'd be willing to try Ibogaine as I've found this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9401754 a study on Norbigaine which is extracted from Ibogaine or is more concentrated I'm not totally sure but it looks promising. I am hoping for a sort of reset button because I haven't tried DXM for 6 months and there is no difference. Nothing i've tried so far works, shrooms even.
 
i've always wondered about reversing my tolerance.

even after 6 months/8 month breaks my tolerance would still be at the same level as it had been before. it really pisses me off.
 
I fully believe my use of methadone and dxm has helped slow my rate of tolerance increase and therefore has been like a small blessing in getting adequate analgesia from the same or lesser doses of my pain meds.

90 days post op and my pain hovers between a 6-7 daily but I've been able to go from 240mg Oxy IR/day to 180mg with similar results.

But no, there is no way to "reverse" your tolerance except through abstaining from opioids. Even then I feel like in the past my old tolerance would return a week or 2 into getting back into using opioids so really its kind of a double edged sword once you ever start using opioids (for both pain and abuse).

But using potentiation techniques and NMDA antagonism I really feel like this experience (last 2 surgeries over 6 months) has been the most successful in terms of managing to go down/stand pat on my 2 meds ER/IR and getting similar results.

Another reason why bluelight is such an amazing resource!
 
If I had a dollar for every time myself or others pondered this question... well let's just say I'd have enough cash to not have to worry about tolerance ever again anyway.
I've always just been told and read that time is the only really effective solution.
But time has yet to reduce my tolerance in the slightest bit.. No difference whatsoever after 3 months clean.

I have access to K but I've just really never liked it. I don't think I could use it, not even in the name of reducing opiate tolerance.
Swimmingdancer, just thought I'd update you since you were so much help to me recently. I start bupe tomorrow :)
 
^Glad to hear it. Hope you're doing well! :)

Yeah, I don't think even time completely resets one's tolerance, and even if it goes down over time when you aren't taking drugs, anyone who has ever used opioids for any extended period of time will regain their old tolerance much faster if they start using opioids again.

I have 2 main reasons for asking about reversing tolerance - and by "reversing" I mean lowering one's tolerance while continuing to take the drug, not resetting it to zero, although that would be interesting too of course. My reasons are because I would love to be able to take less methadone without suffering so much, and because I think that lowering (or resetting, if possible) one's tolerance has got to have other beneficial effects, like making you more sensitive to your body's own natural endorphins, enabling you to get effective pain relief from opioids again, etc.

Varsha - I wouldn't recommend using ibogaine for the sole purpose of lowering your tolerance to DXM. I'm not sure whether it would be effective for DXM, but even if it was, iboga/ibogaine/norbigaine is a pretty extreme/intense and not always pleasurable experience. It is usually used to get people off drugs completely, to help with mental addictions of physiological dependences. It is not for the faint of heart and can be dangerous if not administered in a supervised setting or if used while you are on other drugs, have any health conditions, etc. The other thing is that that study didn't say whether the norbigaine gave a lasting reduction in morphine tolerance or only for a short time after taking it. In my experience, ayahuasca, which is similar and used for similar purposes, seems to simply lower my tolerance for a short period of time, like maybe a day, and then it goes back to normal, so I think it is more likely a slight potentiating effect and/or is just relieving/masking some of my withdrawal symptoms.
 
Swimmingdancer said:
^Glad to hear it. Hope you're doing well! :)

Yeah, I don't think even time completely resets one's tolerance, and even if it goes down over time when you aren't taking drugs, anyone who has ever used opioids for any extended period of time will regain their old tolerance much faster if they start using opioids again.

I have 2 main reasons for asking about reversing tolerance - and by "reversing" I mean lowering one's tolerance while continuing to take the drug, not resetting it to zero, although that would be interesting too of course. My reasons are because I would love to be able to take less methadone without suffering so much, and because I think that lowering (or resetting, if possible) one's tolerance has got to have other beneficial effects, like making you more sensitive to your body's own natural endorphins, enabling you to get effective pain relief from opioids again, etc.

Varsha - I wouldn't recommend using ibogaine for the sole purpose of lowering your tolerance to DXM. I'm not sure whether it would be effective for DXM, but even if it was, iboga/ibogaine/norbigaine is a pretty extreme/intense and not always pleasurable experience. It is usually used to get people off drugs completely, to help with mental addictions of physiological dependences. It is not for the faint of heart and can be dangerous if not administered in a supervised setting or if used while you are on other drugs, have any health conditions, etc. The other thing is that that study didn't say whether the norbigaine gave a lasting reduction in morphine tolerance or only for a short time after taking it. In my experience, ayahuasca, which is similar and used for similar purposes, seems to simply lower my tolerance for a short period of time, like maybe a day, and then it goes back to normal, so think it is more likely a slight potentiating effect and/or is just relieving/masking some of my withdrawal symptoms.
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Yeah, inevitably people who use opiates have to up their dose, take a break, or quit. I need to quit... This is extremely random but I just nodded out and had this odd dream(?) that we both drove up to a 4 way stop sign and I felt I'd come to a stop first but you cut me off :( and you were driving an old muscle car. Wtf lolololol. But yeah instead getting euphoria and energy which would help me get through my work day with tolerance the high has also changed... I get a lot more sedation and nodding. And when I nod I get all these weird mini dreams. But I'll be great as soon as I get off this garbage.

I've mentioned it before, but someone in my immediate family takes 257mg of methadone. A very high dose. And even though he takes it for the right reasons it's still not good for his body... He has so many side effects. A low dose is always the best.. But you can never stay at those low doses and they have yet to find a way to void tolerance. So far the best method would be to potentiate. Benzos potentiate methadone big time, that's what my dad had to do in the hospital after his surgery because morphine, dilaudid, percocet... nothing worked. But it's extremely dangerous.
 
The only thing I can think of to reverse opioid tolerance would be naloxone, or a similar antagonist. =\
 
1. You mean one time use (as someone described his friends or brothers fatal OD when being administered naloxone the day before), or regular injections?
2. Also, do you think that the lowering of tolerance this way would be permanent?
3. Is using naloxone after some break from using opioids (like 2 weeks) nasty or you don't feel it?
 
tricomb said:
The only thing I can think of to reverse opioid tolerance would be naloxone, or a similar antagonist. =\
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Ouch much? Naloxone is only worth it when it's naloxone or death.
 
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