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Cocaine IV cocaine overriding opiate withdrawal?? Can a science-savvy someone explain this?

crzydiamond

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 1, 2013
Messages
1,035
Curious thing --has anyone else noticed this??
Scenario-- I have an opiate habit where i have to do some type of opiate several times per day or I get withdrawals. If i start doing IV cocaine, I can stop doing the opiates without withdrawal. While using the cocaine i do not go into opiate wd. But additionally, I can go on a week long cocaine binge (maybe a day or two of sleep in between, get up and resume), and when I finally crash for a day or two, after i wake up, I do not wake up dopesick, and even after being awake the wd doesn't come. I have to do
Cocaine for days straight to get this effect, like go on a daily use for at least 1-2 weeks. Not that I really recommend doing coke for a week or two to get off h, but I kicked a 6 bag a day habit like this three separate times. In fact, it was the only way i got off opiates the last 2 times i had a habit

Does anyone who has scientific knowledge have any idea why this happens???

(Now, even more strange--if I do even one bag or some oxy one time any time during the first 1-3 days after that binge, the wd comes as soon as the opiate wears off.)
 
I have used cocaine in heroin withdrawal. It only barely helped me feel better, and at this point, I had only snorted heroin for nine days.

That's just my experience though.
 
Curious thing --has anyone else noticed this??
Scenario-- I have an opiate habit where i have to do some type of opiate several times per day or I get withdrawals. If i start doing IV cocaine, I can stop doing the opiates without withdrawal. While using the cocaine i do not go into opiate wd. But additionally, I can go on a week long cocaine binge (maybe a day or two of sleep in between, get up and resume), and when I finally crash for a day or two, after i wake up, I do not wake up dopesick, and even after being awake the wd doesn't come. I have to do
Cocaine for days straight to get this effect, like go on a daily use for at least 1-2 weeks. Not that I really recommend doing coke for a week or two to get off h, but I kicked a 6 bag a day habit like this three separate times. In fact, it was the only way i got off opiates the last 2 times i had a habit

Does anyone who has scientific knowledge have any idea why this happens???

(Now, even more strange--if I do even one bag or some oxy one time any time during the first 1-3 days after that binge, the wd comes as soon as the opiate wears off.)

All in your mind.
 
perhaps it has to do with that dopamine rush. Opiates release dopamine indirectly and RLS in particularly seems to be dopamine related, as well as depression/lethargy/energy. Don't imagine it will help with the insane bowel issues though.
 
You actually are dope sick for the 2 weeks you're using coke and you're just too fucked out of your mind to notice.

/thread
 
perhaps it has to do with that dopamine rush. Opiates release dopamine indirectly and RLS in particularly seems to be dopamine related, as well as depression/lethargy/energy. Don't imagine it will help with the insane bowel issues though.

first of all, i do not believe that this is all in OP's head, or that he is simply too fucked up to notice withdrawal symptoms. when you have a heavy dependency on opiates and start going through withdrawal, NOTHING can make you forget about it, that's for goddamn sure. i have had similar experiences with IV heroin and smoked methamphetamine, and the above quote from RobotRipping follows logic similar to my own on the subject, though i'm no doctor. all i can say is that the use of powerful stimulants somehow keeps me from withdrawals.

in my own experience i can go on a meth bender knowing that i have some heroin handy and not feel like using the heroin for days at a time, whereas if i'm stone cold sober i will definitely need to use heroin somewhere around the 12-18 hour mark to keep from experiencing larger-than-usual cravings and physical symptoms. it ain't in your head crzydiamond, and i would wager the dopamine has something to do with our experiences.
 
I had a similar experience, only with methylphenidate. After finally getting diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and starting ritalin, I had no wd's from the opiates I had been taking for years. I had to start using opiates again after a year or so for pain management, and once that happened my methylphenidate didn't help as it did before.
 
Ha, I wish I could just blow through my withdrawals with a hefty coke binge... unfortunately it doesn't work like that for the majority of people. Most of the time doing any kind of stimulant when you're sick is just going to make it worse. But, there are people out there, even on this very site, that actually do get a benefit from using something like coke or meth during withdrawals. I'm just not one of them.
 
Yeah I know it's not in my head...been through too many times kicking lol that I KNoW what withdrawal feels like. Granted, during these times this happened I did do waaaayy too much coke. It was at minimum 3 grams a day, IV. And that's another thing--it only happens doing it IV, lines don't do a thing for me but make me sick to my stomach

I know it's weird, as once wd starts the absolute last thing you want to think about is coke. I wasn't in wd yet when I started the coke binging , i don't know if I could stomach the though of a shot of coke once the wd symptoms actually came...

I'm happy to hear other people have had similar experiences. And I know I'mnot imagining, last year both me and a friend who had habits went on a coke binge. After about a week's time or so I woke up n noticed it was the first morning in months I didn't wake up sick! And my friend said the same let me tell you, what an awesome feeling to wake up with mo habit as a surprise!! I was so happy, felt run over by a train feeling from the coke binge. But no wd
 
I just cant imagine the IV coke comedown while being in opiate WD's. Sounds torturous.
 
It's not though. Because you don't feel any withdrawal. You're doing coke n fucked up from that before you would start wd
 
I dont I.v so my comments maybe arent worth much in this area but id imagine it would be to do with hitting the reward buttons in your brain and releasing lots of that lovely dopamine. I would assume that alot of strong DRI's would help with heroin withdrawal, maybe thats something interesting for the chemists to explore in the future. There must be at least some withdrawal from opiates regardless but large amounts of coke must mask alot of these symptoms (even the bowel symptoms, some stimulant users suffer the paradoxal side effect of constipation) and the difference in peoples experiences with this could be down to a simple fluke of body chemistry and the substance that they are addicted to in the first place. Some of the opiods have more activity in other parts of the brain and arent full agonists at opiate receptors. Either way its really interesting stuff crzydiamond and im going to have a search around and see what the web can throw up. Where are all the pharmacology students when you need them?lol :-D
 
Its just one dopamine releaser substituted for another dopamine releaser. Since stimulants have a high affinity for norepinephrine which is known to cause anxiety, using them for opioid withdrawal may not be ideal for everyone.
 
It's not though. Because you don't feel any withdrawal. You're doing coke n fucked up from that before you would start wd

You don't feel it because you're high. Opiate withdrawal makes you depressed, you feel like you have no energy, you get RLS/overexcitability, insomnia, the chills and a lack of appetite. Stimulants cure the depression and lack of energy and the side effects of stimulants include overexcitability, insomnia, increase in body temperature and a lack of appetite. It's just a matter of the effects of stimulants matching up perfectly with the symptoms of withdrawal.

I bet the comedown from 2 weeks of coke use on top of the depression you get from opiate withdrawal is way worse than either of the two alone though.
 
in britain at least, when crack became accessible alot of heroin addicts changed over to habitual crack use without any major withdrawal symptoms. When ive seen this in the past they dont exibit any WD effects including cravings. That would suggest to me theres a little more going on then just masking the symptoms. As with most things in life the truth is prob a mixture of both with a large dash of personal perception.lol
 
Here's the abstract from a study done on cocaine reducing opiate withdrawal from methadone and bupe.

source

Abstract:

"In a 6-month randomized trial comparing 125 opiate-dependent patients who were assigned to four treatment groups (2 or 6 mg of buprenorphine and 35 or 65 mg of methadone), we examined the effects of cocaine use on opiate withdrawal symptoms measured on a 25-item scale on which the scores range from 0 to 75. For the methadone-maintained patients receiving the relatively low dose (35 mg), weekly withdrawal symptoms were highest when the urine toxicology for that week indicated no cocaine use. Similar associations were found for buprenorphine. Thus, when using cocaine at a low maintenance opiate dose, persistent opiate withdrawal symptoms were reduced, which is consistent with previous naloxone-precipitated withdrawal studies. Interestingly, with a higher dose of buprenorphine (6 mg), cocaine may have increased opiate withdrawal symptoms, suggesting a possible mechanism for the reduction of illicit cocaine abuse also recently observed in another study in patients treated with high dose (120 mg) methadone maintenance. This has led to a two-component model for the relationship between cocaine and opiate withdrawal-like symptoms at high versus low opiate maintenance dose. This two-component model also reconciles the contradictory findings of prior studies."
 
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