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Opioids Baking Soda to Potentiate Methadone??

Bomb319

Bluelighter
Joined
Nov 26, 2011
Messages
583
This should work whether you're on maintenance, or just using liquid methadone as your drug of choice.

It's well known that methadone absorption is very strongly affected by acid content of the stomach. In fact, it has been said that an acidic stomach can potentially cause you to lose as much as ONE THIRD of your dose! Naturally, many people already know that taking antacids before their methadone will often result in increased efficacy and duration.

However, I find this to be hit or miss; liquid methadone is absorbed fairly quickly since it doesn't need to be dissolved. Taking a few Tums might not get the stomach alkaline enough to effectively absorb more methadone, and pills like Zantac may not either - especially since timing is always an issue. So here's what you do: right before taking your liquid dose, dissolve one to two teaspoons of baking soda into a cup of water (preferably flavored, as it tastes like shit). If you do this about 5-10 minutes before dosing, it should make a huge difference.

When I tried this, I actually got quite high from my daily dose for the first time in awhile. Almost enough to actually nod. Not only that, if you follow my posts, you probably know that I have issues with it wearing off too quickly, to the point where I can be in fairly brutal withdrawal by the next morning, and potentially much worse if I miss even one day. Last night was brutal, for example; I had doubled my dose for more efficacy, however I was so sick overnight, I was pouring sweat while shivering at the same time and basically had to force myself minute by minute to relax as much as possible and wait for the pharmacy to open.

Yet when I did the baking soda trick, nothing whatsoever happened. While no longer feeling it the next day and certainly no longer high, it lasted MUCH longer and saved me from a very unpleasant withdrawal. The day after getting "high" from it, I simply felt completely normal.

I hope people try this and report back on this topic; this could potentially really help many people who have been on MMT for years and have built enough tolerance to feel slightly sick too quickly, yet can no longer really increase their dose.
 
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Just be aware that anything which potentiates a drug by increasing it's blood levels or BBB transport (think morphine vs. heroin - both IV) is going to also increase your tolerance and possibly make your situation worse if you don't do this one day after doing it for say a couple of weeks straight. The other way to notice this is if the clinic drops your dose for any reason, but that would happen anyway.

These types of potentiation I save for special occasions when I have little of the substance I want to potentiate it, and I don't have enough for more than one dosing session. But I can only do this every so often or my tolerance takes a hit that sometimes I can't cover.

Something to keep in mind.
 
I'm gonna try this tommorow. Solid post thanks
 
Just be aware that anything which potentiates a drug by increasing it's blood levels or BBB transport (think morphine vs. heroin - both IV) is going to also increase your tolerance and possibly make your situation worse if you don't do this one day after doing it for say a couple of weeks straight. The other way to notice this is if the clinic drops your dose for any reason, but that would happen anyway.

These types of potentiation I save for special occasions when I have little of the substance I want to potentiate it, and I don't have enough for more than one dosing session. But I can only do this every so often or my tolerance takes a hit that sometimes I can't cover.

Something to keep in mind.


Normally yes, you're absolutely right. However, many people don't realize that methadone is a racemic mixture where only the left-handed form of the molecule is active as a potent mu-opiate receptor agonist (in other words, pure levomethadone is twice as potent as the common type). The dextrorotary enantiomer of methadone (dextromethadone) is not an opiate agonist, but rather a fairly strong NMDA receptor antagonist. This helps disrupt memory circuitry and is thought to be one of the primary reasons why MMT patients are often able to go so long without developing significant tolerance requiring constant dose increases. Just think about what happens if you were to dose with heroin once a day, but never increasing the amount; before long it will become quite useless except for taking you out of withdrawal.

Thank you for the warning though, and you're quite right to consider this effect in general. It may be the case that this can also increase methadone tolerance as well, however you aren't using a potnetiator per se or inhibiting your blood-brain-barrier by blocking p-glycoprotein as is the mechanism for many other forms of potentiation. You also are not messing around with its actual metabolism by inhibiting CYP enzymes as grapefruit juice and many other drugs do. All you're doing is decreasing the strong acidity of your stomach, which simply allows your regular, prescribed dose to be fully absorbed. This is the way it should ideally be absorbed anyways.
 
I would REALLY appreciate if anyone who has tried this posts their results here in this topic! If you can, can you please include the subjective effects in general, time to onset after the dose was taken, and the rough time it was cleared from your system enough so as to no longer feel any effect from it or else beginning to notice very early signs of withdrawal such as larger pupils?

Thanks all. I really hope that I'm on to something big here that can help many of us out by reducing withdrawal, maximizing plasma content and stabilizing blood levels of the drug to be as consistent as possible. If very effective for most, it may even allow some people to be on a lower dose than what would otherwise be required; this in turn has strong implications for eventual withdrawal or reduction of dose, as it would likely become easier to achieve as dosage is reduced.
 
Please DO NOT bump your threads or double post. You will get answers as people see the thread. It's Sunday morning and there's nothing urgent about this.

Take a chance to check out the User Agreement.
 
Please DO NOT bump your threads or double post. You will get answers as people see the thread. It's Sunday morning and there's nothing urgent about this.

Take a chance to check out the User Agreement.

Yeah sorry, I normally don't; however it had 86 views and 0 replies and had fallen to the second page. I could tell it was popular by the number of views, and so I didn't want to let it die.
 
You weren't joking about the taste goddamn. I'm in line at the clinic I'll let y'all know my result
 
I dosed two hours ago after drinking a decent amount of baking soda mixed with green tea. I feel like the dose is hitting me harder than normal. Tomorrow I'm gonna mix baking soda with white grapefruit juice and see what happens.
 
I have a hard time believing that 1/3 of methadone can be "destroyed" due to stomach ph. I understand that ph is going to have some effect, but that's rather drastic. Do you have references Bomb?
 
Methadone is supposedly 85% bioavailable by mouth, tho I could see very low pH conditions in the stomach causing this to be fairly skewed downward, like if you've been puking your guts up or your stomach is full of bile from w/d symptoms. Chance are that swallowing baking soda is just normalizing the pH. Baking soda is a weak base compared to stomach acid. If doing this makes the methadone work as intended/designed, then more power to you. If it truly potentiates like tagamet, then I think you're eventually going to run into problems. I wouldnt use this method all the time. my 2cp
 
Hello...does anyone know if ranitidine (or Zantac) potentiates methadone? Also what about Naproxen (or Aleve)?
 
Hello...does anyone know if ranitidine (or Zantac) potentiates methadone? Also what about Naproxen (or Aleve)?

Zantac balancing the ph would cause an increased effect due to less wasted methadone, but it's not potentiation. Aleve wouldn't do anything I don't think.
 
Baking soda is only as toxic as table salt... excess dietary sodium as a chronic condition does increase your risk of cardiovascular events (raises blood pressure and so on), but it's not like eating half a teaspoon of baking soda will stop your heart.

the other thing to remember is, your stomach is the only place that food and drugs are exposed to acids. your whole GI tract is not acidic. in the small intestine/duodenum your liver and bile ducts will secrete bicarbonate to buffer the pH back to alkaline conditions and so drugs that are=n't absorbed in the stomach will get absorbed immediately after.
 
Unfortunately I have already dosed this morning but the hubs hasn't so I'm gonna have him try this and I will post results. If this works THANK YOU!!!
 
It works moderately well. It's not a game changer by any means but it works a little.
 
So I read this last year when you posted it. First let me start off by saying I am a 27 year old male and I am a methadone clinic subscriber and have been going to a methadone Rehabilitation Clinic for the past four years. That being said, I read your post and decided to try this myself. A little social experiment. I would wake up take about a tablespoon of baking soda 30 minutes every morning before I dosed now granted I take 80 milligrams of methadone everyday so the results May Vary depending on how much you take. So I did this for one year now I'm back almost a year to the day the original article was posted. The results from these tests are pretty surprising. The first few months upon taking baking soda before I dosed I could definitely tell a difference and I felt a little higher than usual. After the first five to six months the feeling started to wear away and now almost one year later I hardly feel a difference at all. Now hopefully if everything goes great I will stop taking baking soda every morning and just take my methadone regularly and I will see how that affects me. I'll be back within the next few weeks for an update on how this goes
 
I know this is a fairly old thread, but if you're going to use an antacid to potentiate Methadone, there are better options than baking soda. Cimetidine (Tagamet) actually has influence above and beyond that of just an antacid. It also happens to affect the enzymes responsible for Methadone's metabolism. I'm not a scientist or even knowledgable in the subject, but I know from experience that you can get maybe 10% - 15% more bang, but that's about it.

The only real-deal Methadone potentiator I've ever used was Fluvoxamine (Luvox), an antidepressant. Be careful with that knowledge though folks. You could easily OD from the combination.
 
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