I've gone for a week or more before.
*I* would tell you, if I were sitting on the other side of the screen, and telling me what I just posted that no way in all hell is that possible.
I don't understand it, I don't have a clue how or why. My dose, is 192mg (calc. as chlormethiazole base) three times daily, along with rescue packs for treating breakthrough seizures that can double that on occasional weeks.
I speak only what I see, I do not pretend to know how it is so. I only know, that the drug is genuine, coming from a pharmacy, the smell being identical to homemade chlormethiazole base from thiamine, bisulfite cleavage, cleanup of the intermediate alcohol from the toxopyrimidine and after desiccation of the alcohol intermediate, reaction with thionyl chloride. Smells the same, works the same, tastes the same, and I have no reason to believe that it is in the least different to that which I can with absolute faith, state IS the same having been there, adding the SOCl2 dropwise from my own pressure-equalized addition funnel, vacuum distilling the base myself.
I can only say, that I know how much I am scripted, and I know how often I put how many capsules into my mouth and swallow them. And that if I've been forced to go without for a week or more, no physical withdrawals. All in all, I find it to be a lovely, clearheaded GABAergic, with wallbanger capability in there if sought for. Works wonders on both preventing the atonic or myoclonic and atonic-myoclonic mixed biphasic seizures I sometimes have, and if I have a breakthrough seizure, a couple of those wee wallbangers will have me bang to rights within a very short time. Very lipophilic and rapid acting, Super-clean and clear headed in the therapeutic dosage regime, and even clear headed for a barb-esque wallbanger, inasmuch as such a thing can BE clear headed (its a barb/picrotoxin site ligand, but unlike the barbs, it isn't an AMPAr antagonist, so it IS more clear headed at a given equipotent dose compared to say, a dose of barbital/veronal, and lacks the highly amnestic properties of barbs.
It, and once in a while, bromethiazole (not an official name, just the logical extension of the name 'chlormethiazole' to the same molecule which has come from the same intermediate alcohol from thiamine cleavage, and otherwise identical preparation, only brominated in lieu of SOCl2 chlorination.), although being a terminal alkyl bromide, I only taste of that once in a while, for a recreational dose. Too good a leaving group, the Br- for me to consume the stuff on anything like a regular or frequent basis. are, without reserve in saying so, my absolute favourite of any GABAa agonist ligand I've ever sampled. The creme de la creme, it really is. Might melt plastic and smell kinda funky (although by now, I like the scent and taste enough to swallow the capsules when I've deliberately eaten something that'll give me dry throat and drymouth to an extent first so the capsules sit in my throat when they burst open, causing a delightful warm, tickly kind of burning sensation down there, with the scent coming back up the hole to my nose for the flavour but without covering the tongue in the liquid base and being too strong or burn-ey. I've grown to savour the stuff like a fucking freak that I am
)
As for alcohol consumption, I have never been and will never be, an alcoholic. I do not enjoy alcohol sufficiently ever to become one, drinking only modestly. Actually yesterday, when I bought a six pack of bud and a four pack of bottled Peroni, my favourite lager, expensive as it damnably is, it is the first alcohol to enter my body in months, unless one counts the tiny amounts of methanol, isopropanol used as laboratory solvents in crystallization, that might be absorbed systemically from catching the nasty stink of the iPA, or touching a surface with a bit of MeOH on it, or the use of denatured methylated spirit ethanol for pouring over salted ice when I wish to cool something down quicktime.
But actually DRINKING ethanol, I've had two, maybe three bottles of Peroni lager split between yesterday one consumed in the day, one supped throughout the night, and now a third bottle as an accompaniment to my morning bowl of porridge for breakfast, So, I really do not count as a pisspot or otherwise GABAergic whore. I take nitrazepam, occasionally, with it on script for 10mg/d but restrict it to maximum consecutive days of two, or three if a dire situation in life that is pure unmitigated stress from the black abyss of Tartarus's own sewer. But otherwise, now and then. When pain meds are at the lowest plasma level before a new script, I'll have it in high doses. But then go without more than maybe a single tablet or a couple of half tablets over a week. IF I have any moggies in a week day. With the rare, very occasional, individual and highly irregular 'I just feel like it', although I'm not really a benzo sort of guy, unless it is a nitrobenzodiazepine, the benzos don't do it much for me to my tastes.
I like my GABAergics to be of the wallbanger kind of flavour, definitely, the oldschool sort that really do not give a flying fuck WHAT you think, they are going to put you on your ass in a molten heap of flesh dribbling slowly down the sofa. But not regularly. I just enjoy that kind of depressant rather than the farty modern non-nitro-group-bearing benzos. I used to have a problem with them years ago, almost killed me, barbs included.
A very very old-school GP, with if I am quite honest, a rather fucked up sense of humor and a very practical approach to such things, he saw it, I saw it, I knew many years back I'd be dead if I didn't get my act together.
This unconventional, now retired GP, introduced me to the drug, in that case, for a detox. Just gave me a large bottle full, and told me, more or less 'right, go and detox yourself, confirmed I knew the theoretical nature of the drug, it's steep dose response curve, and sent me off to detox myself, with whatever regime I judged correct (this guy was OOOOOLD school, possibly only nominally more modern day than the use of bloody bromide salts as antiepileptics, funny as hell, but occasionally quite twisted too. And he knew that biologically and biochemically speaking I was indeed familiar with it's nature by dint of non-first hand, non-ingestion reading well of it's nature, and that unlike your average patent he'd likely see, I'd actually be able to do it safely.)
I am convinced he decided 'right, lets not draw this out into something horrid and protracted and tormentuous, kill or cure, make it quick, make it clean, or make HIM clean.'
And, he knew full well that I'd binge on it for a few days on heavy doses first, before settling in to an honest detox. Not toxic doses just lots OF doses and fairly high ones, one after the other wore off, fucked on the stuff and hash for several days. And I bet he knew full well, although before it happened, I did not, that it would be metabolized into some virulent-smelling, stygian sulfurous mercaptanesque abomination, that would be exuded for over a week from every pore, every mucus membrane, every drop of tear fluid, saliva, nasal mucus, urine, every turd, would smell so bad it'd drive the devil to flee from hell.
And indeed I had to wear the same set of clothes the entire time, and when the ordeal was over, I had learned my lesson, and now, I have perfect control over my GABAa agonist ligand intake. The clothing, had to be double-bagged, taken out into a field down a disused railway, doused in flammable solvent and torched. Because no way could it be suffered to remain either in the house, or to go anywhere near other clothing in a washing machine, and no amount of washing in a bucket would rehabilitate it.
And I myself, was made into a walking stinkbomb of nigh weapons-grade by the release of that foul sulfurous monstrosity of a metabolite or metabolites from the binge on it.
So bad, people in the street, if I went out of the house due to unavoidable absolute necessity during the ordeal, people turned, crossed the street and fucked off quick as can be in the opposite direction.
I'm not joking either, to that, I would swear on the good name and honour of my stalker, and I would DIE for her wellbeing, if I had to do so, I'd literally offer up heart, lungs, liver, kidneys all for strip-mining if she had been hospitalized with multiple organ failure, and I proved a tissue match. And not one false word or harsh word would I ever speak of or to her.
And I swear thusly also, that the account of tolerance, and the lack thereof at the 192mg TDS daily dosing, plus intermittent rescue packs which on some weeks double it, but not by any means a rescue pack weekly, I get them, and use them when needed, for times when the seizures are prolific enough to break through even the vice grip chlormethiazole slaps down on the bastard things.
That this, can be interrupted, going from the TDS dose to a zero dose, for a week, or more, without using the nitrazepam, or any other GABAergic, save only trace-level exposure to such quantities of muscimol being possible, that would be in a finger-thumb tip sized pinch of a steak spice, sprinkled over a steak, if any GABA ligand of exogenous nature enter my system whatsoever, solely to flavour a steak, in a recipe containing fly agaric amongst a plethora of about 10 or so other ingredients, no bioactive dose, not even close, just a condiment. If ever, if any theoretical quantity of GABA-agonist ligand for any binding site enter my body. That is the sum total. And not even that, and I'll be fine.
A week, or even longer. No panic attacks, no convulsions provoked by the lack of the drug. Possibly seizures I'd have had anyway, that I take it to ward off in the first place, given the treatment would no longer be suppressing them as wonderfully as it otherwise does. But not necessarily. No lack of sleep any worse than my normal autie night-owl in-extremis and sleep during the daylight hours typical nature goes.
I find it fucked up weird and I'd love to know how its physically, biochemically possible for this to occur. I only know what I have experienced personally to be so, from inhabiting the body it happens in and to under such abrupt abstinence circumstances.
I have often thought of it, and thought 'ANY other GABAa agonist ligand I know of, bar possibly bromethiazole IF I were willing to make it and take it so often, and I would have hell on earth to pay for it', but, for whatever reason, chlormethiazole just seems to get on with my bodily chemistry, and I get on well with it, too.
Buggered if I know, but I damned well want to know.
