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My Phenibut Affair (Really F'n Long)

pinpoint

Bluelighter
Joined
Jul 24, 2007
Messages
2,361
This is a story of a journey I took over the past 4 months on a mission to find sustainable zen. With the advent of WebMD, Wikipedia, forums and the never-ending flow of information found on the internet these days I, like many, have become something of an internet doctor. I diagnose myself free of charge and waive all rights to sue for malpractice. So in an attempt to replace my previous hard drug addictions with a natural, legal alternative I stumbled across a product called Phenibut. I had heard of it before, but with heroin and benzodiazepines flowing in the front door who has time for obscure chemicals with funny sounding names? At this point though I had been off the hard stuff for several months, but I still wasn't feeling 'right' - whatever that is. So for $20, shipping included, I took a chance. I waited for that brown UPS truck and in the meantime I read everything I could about this miracle cure. By the time it arrived I signed for it like I was putting my signature on the Declaration of Independence. I had predetermined that 2 grams was the best starting dose and thus with a plop-plop fizz-fizz I was back on tour.


The first effect I noticed that I couldn't write off as placebo was a curious giddy feeling when interacting with people that afternoon. It was an MDMA-like empathy that caused me to draw out conversations much longer than they needed as if I was drinking in the nectar of sociability. Now, I am a salesman by trade, but I'm actually a closet introvert with a self-conscious form of anxiety. In fact I got into sales a decade prior at the behest of a therapist. It was his thought that throwing myself to the wolves, so to speak, would allow me to deal with my anxiety issues. It worked like a charm - at least I thought it had until I realized I was self-medicating with opiates and benzodiazepines to succeed. But I digress, back to the Phenibut. In addition to the empathy I was in an excellent mood. I don't mean a 'it's Friday night and I feel all right' mood, I mean an 'all is right with the world, my career, my life' mood. It was truly magical after months of feeling 'off' due to the PAWS phase of recovery.


That night after re-dosing another gram something told me to get on my elliptical at home. Something also told me to bring music - lots of music. Let me tell you, never have a felt such manic happiness from exerci- scratch that, from anything - and yes I've done MDMA. That night was bliss. I'm no exercise buff so this was a strange deviation from the norm. I assumed I had achieved some sort of runner's high and I continued on that elliptical until I could bare no more. I felt amazing. No anxiety yet fully cognitively functional. In fact I was beyond functional - I was 'takin' care of business' at a whole new level - nothing could stop me, nothing could bring me down. Thus began my love affair.


Now, I had been warned via internet forums and postings about the withdrawal, but when you feel this good your brain cares not what some nerds on the internet are blabbing about. I was one bad motherfucker. I was the guy from the movie Limitless and I could do no wrong. If you were of the opposite sex and above a 4/10 you were gonna get the shit fucked out of you with my eyes. If I got the chance to speak to someone who would listen they were going to hear all about everything on my mind at approximately 120 words per minute. I felt as though I had finally found 'it' - that perfect mix of stimulation, mood enhancement and anxiolysis with no side effects - at least not yet. Music and exercise as well as eating healthy and socializing became a religion for me. This further lulled me into a sense of 'this is forever sustainable and healthy to boot' mindset.


A couple weeks went by in what can only be described in retrospect as a hypomanic state. Everything I said was the word of God himself and I owned every place I went. I was the god damn CEO of bosses and the world was my oyster & my playground as long as my servant, Phenibut, was by my side. My friends loved the new me and my family felt that I was the perfect son. I started running each night, music pumping, singing to the stars and not giving a damn about anyone who saw. I quickly worked up from 2 miles to 5 miles to 8 miles. My body was looking great - I had never felt better in my life.


One sunny Sunday summer morning I woke up and dosed like every other day. Something inside me, much like the voice that first told me to get on that elliptical, told me I should spend the day running to the beach. Now, the beach is 15 miles from my house. This seemed like an exciting challenge and now looking back on it I was in a full blown hypomanic state. It was like a 12 hour MDMA peak, I shit you not - 80 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, heading to the beach, not a care in the world. The only care I had was the thought of why other people weren't as happy as I was. Each person I passed who said 'hi' back to me gave me a rush of bliss as if they had just awarded me the Nobel prize with a simple acknowledgement of my existence. That day came and went and boy was I sore the following day. What I didn't realize is that Phenibut rapidly depletes Potassium and could've landed me in the ER had it not been for my copious intake of health food.


Eventually side effects reared their ugly heads - I had cramps in my limbs often and woke early, albeit refreshed, but knowing full well that 4 hours of sleep per night may become an issue. Another side effect began to make it's presence known, which was a bloated mid-section. I always had a flat tummy, except for the time I had used Gabapentin, which caused water retention, so I assumed it would go aware upon cessation of Phenibut. But wait, how could I stop? The new and improved me is dependent on this chemical to sustain my newfound lifestyle. I had a day or two when I ran out and the Express shipment didn't arrive until a day after it was supposed to - holy shit. It was bad. I knew I was in for a real treat. However, thanks to my previous addiction my brain had already had close to a decade of experience coming up with ways to get what it wanted just one last time in a never-ending fashion.


Alas I was dosing on a 24/7 schedule and it wasn't keeping me out of withdrawal and when it did I would still have nasty GI side effects and pains in what I assume to be my organs - not a good sign. I became nervous that perhaps taking my anxiety & fear department completely offline was preventing me from making the logical connection between Phenibut and serious bodily harm. I couldn't believe that what had happened to everyone else was actually happening to me. I just wanted to be back out on that sunny Sunday summer morning again. The days that I would search the internet for answers to why I was so happy all the time and if it was unhealthy to be so fucking happy that you shit rainbows. That was the magic that was lost now and no matter what I tried it wouldn't return.


I was consuming at least 10 grams per day, so I attempted to taper in a futile fashion. The pull to take more with the hope of one last hoorah was too much. I waited until a holiday weekend when I knew that I would simultaneously run out and be unable to get an overnight shipment delivered until halfway through the following week. I work Monday-Friday so I scheduled the withdrawal to begin early Saturday and hopefully peak sometime on Sunday or Monday. I brought nothing but what one would find in Mr. & Mrs. Average's medicine cabinet. That was a mistake. What came that Sunday was a preview of what I'd imagine hell would be like. It was a constant non-stop panic attack with the most bizarre delusional paranoia that combined itself with torturous bodily sensations that played into the paranoia to make you truly believe you were dying. Sleep was non-existent and the few half hour blocks when you did pass out from exhaustion were horrifying. The most realistic nightmares I've ever experienced and they were totally mindfucking in an 'Inception' style where you'd wake up, jump out of bed and immediately fall off a cliff and into the pits of hell - nightmares within nightmares within nightmares ad naseum.


By the time the night was over I literally could not differentiate between reality and nightmare - I was psychotic with no prior history of psychosis. Now, normally nobody is as logical as me - I have a mind like steel trap - or so I thought. While all this was going on I had absolutely no desire to interact with anything or anyone. Nothing I used to do was the least bit satisfying, people were like poison, the thought of exercise made me nauseous, and my appetite was lower than a meth addict's. I felt as though my personality had died and gone to hell. My attempts to tell people to stay away due to 'the flu' were successful, but at the time I truly believed they hated me and knew I was nothing but a big, fat phony. The stress that my body was undergoing caused me to develop a terrible cold just to, you know, put the cherry on the shitcake. However the first sign that God still existed was when the world's longest panic attack ended roughly 48 hours in - gone without a trace - granted with no cessation of other symptoms. Once the anxiety lifted I was left with a strange dopaminergic stimulation that actually felt pretty damn good, at least during the day. My nights were still filled with full on psychosis with OEV/CEV - not the good type, schizo-style voices, and hellish hallucinations of every sort. Of course you were forced to be awake for every moment of it lest you spend what feels like eternity living in a movie called 'Nightmare' starring yours truly.


Thankful beyond thanks at day 7 I was back to normal - what ever that is. I still had trouble sleeping through the night and still had strange thoughts from time to time, but my anxiety is noticeably less than when I started the Phenibut. I've chalked this up to the idea that MY PERCEPTION of anxiety has forever changed. No more do I see transient daily anxiety as a threat. So in a way Phenibut has helped cure some of my psychological issues by showing me that the anxiety that I do live with is something to be scoffed at for it is weak unlike the hell that I knew. This was an unpleasant-beyond-words way to learn this, but a week in hell should yield years of serenity. Any time I get anxious I think back to that 48 hour panic attack and the nightmares which my memory has somehow encoded to the section of my mind called 'shit that happened irl' - in other words they were nightmares which were vivid and real enough to cause PTSD in those prone to it. The bloating has slightly subsided but I cannot help but think I may have caused some damage to my liver or kidneys. I will be getting blood tests shortly.


Nobody knows about this experience other than my current therapist who didn't even know what Phenibut was and wrote it off as some bad reaction to a homeopathic drug - I didn't attempt to take that conversation any further. The family and friends who knew I was taking some sort of powder stuff assumed it was a supplement for exercise, which I guess you could kind of say it was.


So would I recommend Phenibut to anyone? Yes, in fact, I would. For the lessons learned alone I would say yes. I would never deny anyone the happiness and bliss that this chemical provided me, not for anything in the world. It was magic - at first. You quickly learn who you are, who you could be, what you need to do to become who you could be - and if you're like me - you actually become who you could be before the cons outweigh the pros. I have made lasting improvements in my personal, financial, business, and family life. Unlike a drug like heroin that isolates the user into a lonely death, Phenibut brought out the best in me.


This all happened a couple months ago and I've been clean ever since. So why am I writing this experience now? Well you see, I'm an addict. What I mean to say is that I have 1000 grams of Phenibut on my doorstep right now and I don't know how this story will end but I know where it begins and I want to get this on paper while I'm in my right state of mind so that it may perhaps help, entertain, upset or enlighten.


Time to see how deep this rabbit hole goes...
 
I really found this enlightening because though I had heard of phenibut, I'm not too familiar with it. I take it you weren't using conservative doses when you say it got to the point of 24/7 schedule not keeping you out of withdrawal. I would hate to see you go back on phenibut and put yourself through that hell again.

It's a good idea like you said to get bloodwork done and make sure you have no liver damage. Sounds as if you're leaning towards getting back on it. If you are, do you think that you could limit your usage to just a few times a week? You're a great writer, by the way! I think this would make a nice recovery journal so let us know how you're doing.
 
wow i have had some very pleasant experiences on phenibut but you make it sound like it is a wonder drug...i noticed right off the bat the downsides like 'brain fog' and an almost manic like energy phenibut provided..that could be looked at as good or bad..phenibut is great at increasing social drive and yes, you can work circles around women while on it...i found though with the more i used daily the less quality sleep i got..daily tiredness became a problem and sleeping in general became difficult so i got off with help of gabapentin..i noticed some minor withdrawals like insomnia and low mood and motivation but nothing like u mentioned, then again my top dosage was around 5 grams a day...

its very hard to just write phenibut off completely as it has some tremendous effects but downsides like everything else..i have found that the best way to use phenibut is by using a small daily dosage(1.5 grams daily for me) and then when certain events come up, ramp up the dosage to around 4-5 grams, then it packs one hell of a punch!
 
Seems like you got off pretty easy when it comes to the withdrawal. Do you plan on using again? If so, does your previous history of depence worry you?

Awhile ago I used phenibut for a few months and had a terrible withdrawal. I recently bought an OTC product that contains Phenibut. Took it one night and slept great. Woke up the next day with slight rebound anxiety, came to my senses and dumped the rest of the stuff out.

Phenibut can be very nice , but for me it's just not worth it.
 
Hi there Pinpoint-great post about phenibut. I'm also taking this way too much than I should, and know I need to taper, as I'm getting through almost 100 grams every fortnight. I try to take 3 days a week, but I really miss that wonderful "feel like a god" feeling you were describing; without that euphoria I feel pretty depressed and lethargic.
 
I don't understand! I've taken phenibut a BUNCH of times and nothing happens. I have tried upping the dose, but when I get to 2 grams (the most I've ever taken at once) I fall asleep for like a week. I've tried 2 grams twice, conked out both times and pissed off my family, 500 mg, 1 gram, and 1.5 grams on five separate occasions spaced apart by at least 4 days. NOTHING. However I have been known to abuse gabapentin, and that feels AWESOME...my family is tolerable (and I live with my in-laws, hence my heavy drug use, lol) and my anxiety is GONE, and things are just...great. Eventually, one of these days, I'm going to stop abusing it and just use it AS PRESCRIBED for my anxiety...FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.
 
Phenibut's a very odd one, I've heard shit loads of people saying it did nothing for them at all, and also it sounds like quite a lot of people are becoming addicted to this stuff. I take Suboxone, so maybe it's interacting with the phenibut, and that's why I'm getting such positive effects?
 
The stuff is related to GHB and carries the same risk of dependency. Long term use will result in dangerous seizures and other withdrawal symptoms. What really makes this stuff addictive is the tolerance and how quickly it builds, you have to keep upping the dose until you are taking grams and grams a day.

I find it disgusting that this stuff is being touted as a wonderful new supplement and nootropic. Promoting this stuff as a cure all is the same as telling someone to take GHB or Xanax everyday for their emotional and mental issues.
 
This is a total repeat of the Nubain fiasco years and years ago in the bodybuilding and fitness community...
 
And now you have naive kids with no concept of pharmacodynamics getting hooked on this stuff.
 
Yeah it's a type of modified GABA that crosses the brain barrier, and I think it's a full GABA-b agonist as well. And there's definitely a lot of people becoming addicted to it. I'll say this: tolerance builds up faster than probably every drug I've taken, so it's definitely not one to be used recklessly IMO
 
Thanks for the great post. Admittedly, I've not been able to read all of it just yet because I'm about to leave the house, but I'll come back later and take it all in. I must say: Phenibut has changed my life for the better. before I started taking it, I had no sex drive, insomnia, and great difficulty in social situations. Phenibut cured all. I only take 500mg twice a week, and I've been taking it for 8 momths now. I prefer it to al-lad or any of the benzos. I'll come back later, and thanks for taking the time to write this post.
 
Pinpoint- great read, but the magic never comes back, and the withdrawals do, like almost immediately. I've fucked with them all and no drug fucked me more and faster than phenibut. It can be a total nightmare.....probably too late but I'd bin that kilo tub ASAP. I speak from, uh, too much experience. Phenibut WD's are worse than G....at least with GBL/GHB you can get some fun after time off, with phenibut it is nice the firs time than just staving off withdrawals.....and the WD's last sooooo much longer than G. Ive learned the hard way that my GABA-B receptors are finicky little fuckers!

Guido- hah, funny I remember all that Nubain stuff....I was playing with it as an opiophile in the 90's and heard all about the body building scene with it.....but never figured out what was going on....dudes just didn't know it was an opioid and would lift like a mofo with no pain? Gotta give the gym dudes some cred though.....Nubain, GHB, GBL, and now phenibut. They like their drugs! The best threads on phenibut addictions can be found on such sites....
 
I agree with those who said this is an interesting read. Mainly because I sit in a situation where I must be clean for some time, anticipating a hair test, but fortunately not having it too soon. I also have been pretty consistently on opiates for a good while, as well taken benzos(fortunately never really got into too deep water with them like I ahve with the opiates). I am on Suboxone.... but its been around 10 days of that and its getting quite old. What I'd give to just pop a couple benzos and smoke a bowl, or even just smoke a bowl after drinking a couple beers (I need an anxiolytic with weed, fyi).

Obviously being on this site I have read about the Phenibut, too. I always thought it's effects were very similar to benzos, but from reading the OPs post I would never expect a benzo to provide any energy or stimulation or motivation like that. Opiates on the other hand did do all that when I first started, but eventually that turned into just content with apathy, though I still would be appeased in most situations if properly high on opiates.

So what I am kind of wondering is, if its possible for anyone to answer it is in terms of addiction potential is Phenibut more similar to opiates or benzos? I feel like with benzos I can spread out use enough to prevent crippling physical dependence when I stop them(especially using long acting ones). While I can't do that with opiates, its all or nothing with opiates.
 
Sorry 2x posting but everytime I try to edit it will not save, just freezes up. Somy interest in this stuff is because I have a lot of stressful situations in the next 1 to 2 months and do not have any options available that could cause me to fail a drug test. Although I don't think most labs doing hair tests check for benzos, I won't take that risk and I also might be piss tested on top of it.
 
I came back and read your full post, Pinpoint, and it was a fascinating read.

Are you going to retain control this time? I must say: I take phenibut twice a week, 500mg before bed each time. I sleep well and I experience a sociable, pleasant mood the following day. This will last throughout the day, and I also feel horny as fuck. Every woman I look at is beautiful in her own special way and I just wanna fuck 'em all.

It's good stuff, and I plan on continuing to take it for the foreseeable future (I've been taking it for 8 months so far) but the main point is: control. I'll never take more than 1g per week. If I do, it's time to stop.

I hope this time is a better ride for you regards your control of intake and thanks for sharing your story with us. I think it's very important for people to be aware of the nature of phenibut and how to take it responsibly if they wanna take it long term and contrinue to reap the benefits.
 
the rapid tolerance build is completely exaggerated by people..listen i have taken phenibut for several years overall and 3-4 grams STILL has a profound effect on my sociability and mood..the key to phenibut is not taking that high dose daily but take a smaller doe like 1.5 grams.. phenibut is no cure-all but i have found it to work much better in several areas than ssris or others anti-depressants i have tried..as with each drug, there are good and bad effects..

i remember nubain and was part of the group that used it..you could still feel pain on it, but is just gave you a very functional 'high'..it
 
Isn't Nubain just a partial opiate agonist like buprenorphine? Nubain might've been a temporarily popular thing but people using a partial agonist to get high is most certainly not. Its just that with the creation of Suboxone, bupe is a much more attainable drug these days.
 
One thing I've been wondering about Phenibut: does it have a positive synergy with SSRIs. The reason I wonder is because I stopped taking Lexapro during the Autumn and my Phenibut doses left me in a bit of a bad mood. I'm back on lexapro now (10mg daily) and the positive phenibut experience has re-appeared. Hmm...
 
I'm not sure about that, but I take an SNRI, and it gives me a definite mood-lift, sometimes almost bordering on euphoria, although I do also take Suboxone and tramadol, so that may contribute to it.

Have to remember to brush my teeth after taking phenibut; I bet the acidity in the stuff will just destroy teeth if taken on a regular basis, which I do.
 
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