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Opioids why do opiates make you crave sugar?

Before i started doing opiates i never ate a whole lot of sweets, and my teeth were in great shape because of it. Now i eat a lot of candy, cake, ect and I've had 4 cavaties. I never even had a cavity until like a year ago. I blame my opiate addiction, cause i have a feeling if i didn't start doing em i wouldn't have eaten nearly as many sweets and my teeth would be in better shape. It sucked going to the dentist and getting 4 fillings all at once, especially when it was my first time ever getting one...
 
the only thing opiates make me crave is massive amounts of water (not enough to be dangerous tho) but still.. i will drink a water bottle every hour or so. or try to eat ice but i can't as the cold hurts my teeth, i would love to have the money for a couple fillings i need.. than i could eat ice again :|
4 years on bupe and i still always need to have a drink with me at all times.
 
does anyone else crave sweets while on opiates? i swear sometimes i have to have ice cream when im on methadone.
[ 03 November 2002: Message edited by: kristofires ]

Iam not that big on sweets but like you i want something sweet :)
 
the only thing opiates make me crave is massive amounts of water (not enough to be dangerous tho) but still.. i will drink a water bottle every hour or so. or try to eat ice but i can't as the cold hurts my teeth, i would love to have the money for a couple fillings i need.. than i could eat ice again :|
4 years on bupe and i still always need to have a drink with me at all times.

I used to always have a cup of water with me when i used to do fentanyl, that was partially because i was too fucked up to swallow my spit though
 
I defo get this. Do you think opiate users are more prone to diabetes? A lot of us keep an empty stomach for better effects and then tend to eat sugary foods. I miss breakfast, lunch then have a big dinner and sugary deserts etc. Probably not not keeping my blood sugar levels happy.
 
I've noticed that I over indulge in sweets/chocolates while high on opiates as well. It almost feels as if my body is craving sugar because of biological changes in the body/mind. Probably something to do with blood sugar and insulin levels but unfortunetly I do not know enough about the subject to make an educated assumption.

I began opiate replacement therapy with suboxone about a month ago and i still suffer from unusually large sugar cravings especially in the evenings. I do not know if this is related to the bupe or if this is simply a learned habit from all my years of opiate abuse. I've had to watch my intake a lot lately as I'm begging to gain weight now that I'm stabilized on suboxone. I'm eating normally and over indulging on sweets in the evening so naturally I'm gaining weight.
 
when I shoot dope I reach for a smoke right away. And always have a big supply of candy. I've noticed this as well, and sometimes would eat only candy for a weekend!
 
I actually know a guy who was high on H and craving sweets one day, and he went to a grocery store by his house to steal some skittles and got caught lol. That dumbass
 
Woohoo! Bringing back a thread that was already brought back in 2010 which was brought back from 2002 and 2006!
Sweets on opiates is great! Even if i do too much and start puking I just eat some more sour patch kids and tootsie pops
 
Wow this thread has been off and on.
I totally get the craving for sweets when I do opiates, but not ice cream like a lot of people seem to. I like to be warm and like the warmth opioids bring, wouldn't want to ruin that with something so cold.
I like to eat candy like Reese's cups, Kit Kats, York's Peppermint patties, chocolate bars, hobnobs, digestive biscuits, etc. I also crave high fat foods for some reason too, like grilled cheese sandwiches or fries.
There was a study, or write up or something, about people on methadone gaining weight because they were craving sweets all the time and most gave into their cravins, but that doesn't explain the rest of the opioid family. Though someone in the beginning posted something that does...
I love finding posts that explain things I can totally relate too, even if they were started 10 years ago.

I think, because I used to smoke cigarettes when on opioids (because it intensified it for me, during the smoke, like when I'd move my head sideways I would get a headrush but also I'd usually throw up after I finished my cigarette.. ) and now I don't smoke I'm looking for something to fill that hole. I never used to eat really anything, only needed H but now I always feel like eating something delicious.

I was 12 when this thread started.
I was 14, I think. I wonder how old they are now, if they still are...
 
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I can definitely confirm this.

Although to the contrary of what people have been saying about oxycodone, I find it has this effect. I'd never even consider stooping to robbing, mugging, stealing etc. for opiates (although I get mine for free on the NHS anyway.

But candy and munchy food?

I have a very sweet tooth to begin with, always have had; but after shooting up a couple of OC 80s then I swear, I would ransom the inmates of an orphanage just for the big bags of bubblegum bonbons I have right here=D, a pack of baccy, some beer and a large thin-crust, pentuple cheese black olive and pepperoni pizza.

Absocuntinglutely.
 
another confirmation here, definitely get a craving for sweets, have to have some kinda candy bar around in the evening otherwise the day doesn't feel complete. And the funny part for me is it's not that stoned munchies feeling that always feels kinda artificial to me (not that it stops from eating a mixing bowl of cereal), it's more like a slow almost natural buildup throughout the day where the body is quietly telling me need sugar. Thinking there's something to the hypoglycemic effect
 
I have been on methadone for 20 years and all I seem to want to eat are high sugar foods. Alcohol , which I used to love, just appears to sit in my stomach and make me nauseous. Anybody else have the same or similar reactions.
 
Its not opiates that gets me craving food or sugar it's Xanax and only this benzo only not the other ones(ativan,klonopin etc)and food taste a lot better too on Xanax it's completely crazy
 
Link Between Opioids and Sugar

"Evidence from both preclinical and clinical studies demonstrates that chronic opioid exposure is associated with increased sugar intake. Preclinical research has attempted to refine the potential pathways and mechanisms of action through which opiates may regulate sugar intake, and how sugar consumption may affect the endogenous opiate system. Preclinical animal studies suggest that direct action of mu agonists at the nucleus accumbens shell, hypothalamus, and paraventricular nucleus is associated with development of sweet preference (2–7). This process possibly involves GABA-b activity in the ventral tegmental area (6). Consumption of palatable foods, especially on intermittent schedules, is associated with acute binding of the endogenous opiate B-endorphin in the hypothalamus, accumbens shell, cingulated, hippocampus, and locus ceruleus of rats (2,8,). Furthermore, in rats, intermittent access to sucrose leads to decreased enkephalin MRNA production (9). It is theorized that this down-regulation of enkephalin MRNA production may be associated with increased mu-opiate receptor agonism associated with the rats’ sugar intake (10).

Methadone-maintained patients assessed at entry to treatment, 9 months and 4 years into treatment demonstrate increased consumption of sugary food, fewer complex carbohydrates, less fruits, vegetables and fats from fish or vegetables (11). It was noted that female methadone patients consumed fewer total calories, but maintained similar BMI to the national average (BMI 22.7) with sugar accounting for 31% of caloric intake. The authors speculated that weight was maintained with fewer calories because of the patients’ “sedate lifestyles” (12). Clinical literature demonstrates that chronic exposure to mu-opiate agonists leads to heightened taste preference for high-sugar foods (12–15). Yet human subjects chronically exposed to opiates maintain their ability to distinguish various tastes compared with control subjects (15), indicating that taste preferences associated with opiate exposure are not related to an impaired taste sense.

Further, studies of mu-opiate antagonists (naloxone and naltrexone) in non-human opiate-dependent subjects, as well as clinical trials of binge eaters without opiate dependence, demonstrate decreased preference for high-sugar foods, with decreased caloric intake from those types of foods (3–6, 16–20). It has been found that the novelty of the diet may alter the effect of an opiate antagonist. With naltrexone, rats decreased both fat and carbohydrate intake from an established diet, but selectively decreased either fat or carbohydrate from a novel diet (17). In a study of normal human subjects who were administered a single 2.5mg oral dose of the opiate antagonist nalmefene, subjects described the same initial hunger ratings, and satiety with 22% less food intake than with placebo (16).

Buprenorphine, a partial mu-opiate agonist, appears to decrease saccharine consumption in non-opiate-dependent male Sprawg-Dawley rats, behaving like an opiate antagonist (21). Similarly, buprenorphine acutely decreased rhesus monkeys’ consumption of sweetened fluid, but not of candy (22). However, this effect of buprenorphine becomes extinguished during chronic administration (23). In rats receiving their normal complement of food, while chronically administered buprenorphine, decreased sucrose intake in reward situations was noted; however, the rats would generally consume their overall expected quantity of food (24)."


Source
 
Just to clarify for some of the youngsters on here, you don't start craving the sugar till you are sober. The gear kills your appetite. Also, this is more with heavy and long term users. These wierd traits develop after some time.
 
That's a very interesting study posted by Mr. S above. It and this thread confirms years of my own guess work.

When I was on large amounts of oxycodone I would pound full pints of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey on a daily basis. Along with Twix bars, Dunkin' Donuts chocolate cake donuts, and super sugary coffee. I was stunned at my consumption of sweets when I was high. It was like the munchies from weed but to a multiple of 100. It felt visceral too, like I had no control over it. I needed to get the sugar and I'd get it just like I got drugs. I'm on Suboxone now and my sweet tooth has almost completely disappeared.

I'll occasionally get very strong urges for sweets almost like I felt when I was on Oxycodone. I've begun to think that these urges for sweets are highly correlated to my cravings for oxycodone which are now "partially" masked by the bupe.

Very interesting stuff. Food for thought no doubt. Pun intended.
 
I definitely experience this. Never really had a sweet tooth until I got hooked on opiates.
 
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