Opioids How effective is Clonidine at treating opioid withdrawal symptoms? (esp methadone)

[Swimmingdancer]

Just wondering if people have tried Clonidine to come off opioids and how it affected them. Did it really help with the withdrawals? Did it excessively lower your blood pressure? Any side effects?

I am researching different ways to help me get off methadone.

 

[Tommyboy]

Clonidine is actually all I use to kick. I haven't really used methadone, but I am talking about heroin and oxycodone mostly. I've been using 2-5 days a week since I got back from school less than a year ago, and I've kicked about 4-5x for a few weeks here and there, and clonidine is my go to drug for that.

It makes me pretty tired, so I take it at night. It really helps with RLS, but I also get pretty sedated from just one 0.2mg pill so I can actually sleep. It helps a little with the anxiety too. The only bad side effect is that I get dizzy upon standing, and my arms will fall asleep when my hand is elevated for a while, so it definitely lowers my blood pressure.

I'm always busy so can't just stay in bed for 3-5 days kicking, so I can only really use it at night. If I could just stay in bed for those 3-5 days and take a pill 2-3x a day instead of just once at night my detox would be fine.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Clonidine is actually all I use to kick. I haven't really used methadone, but I am talking about heroin and oxycodone mostly. I've been using 2-5 days a week since I got back from school less than a year ago, and I've kicked about 4-5x for a few weeks here and there, and clonidine is my go to drug for that.

It makes me pretty tired, so I take it at night. It really helps with RLS, but I also get pretty sedated from just one 0.2mg pill so I can actually sleep. It helps a little with the anxiety too. The only bad side effect is that I get dizzy upon standing, and my arms will fall asleep when my hand is elevated for a while, so it definitely lowers my blood pressure.

I'm always busy so can't just stay in bed for 3-5 days kicking, so I can only really use it at night. If I could just stay in bed for those 3-5 days and take a pill 2-3x a day instead of just once at night my detox would be fine.

Very interesting. I wonder if it would help equally well for deathadone?

My only 3 concerns are:
a) I already have low blood pressure, would it be dangerous to lower it even more?
b) Some sites say that a clonidine detox requires "constant supervision" and should only be done in a detox centre or sometimes by a person who is able to go to the doctor every day. Is that true and do you know why they would say that?
c) I doubt I'll be able to use ayahuasca while taking clonidine.

 

[Tommyboy]

From what I have heard doctors don't really have a problem prescribing it, so I don't think it needs that much supervision.
Your blood pressure may increase during withdrawals, so even in you usually have low blood pressure, it might get higher when detoxing.
The pills come in one lower dosage than the ones I take, so maybe try 0.1 to see how it effects you. I only take the 0.2 since I take it at night, but if I were to take it during the day 0.1 would be fine for me. I seem to be sensitive to it though, because other people take higher doses than me and don't get as sedated.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

From what I have heard doctors don't really have a problem prescribing it, so I don't think it needs that much supervision.
Your blood pressure may increase during withdrawals, so even in you usually have low blood pressure, it might get higher when detoxing.
The pills come in one lower dosage than the ones I take, so maybe try 0.1 to see how it effects you. I only take the 0.2 since I take it at night, but if I were to take it during the day 0.1 would be fine for me. I seem to be sensitive to it though, because other people take higher doses than me and don't get as sedated.

Generally during withdrawal my bood pressure goes way down, then way up and so on. I think I will see if I can make a doctor appointment soon and ask for clonidine.

 

[Transcendence]

Clonidine is a wonderful drug and everyone should have it in their medicine cabinet IMO. No, it won't lower your BP to dangerous levels and doesn't require supervision. It's a very safe drug in general. It works wonderfully for opiate withdrawal, especially in combination with some loperamide (and maybe a little DXM). It's also good for sleep in general and coming down off of stims.

I don't recommend using ayahuasca (but then again I don't know why the hell you'd want to trip balls while kicking junk).

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Clonidine is a wonderful drug and everyone should have it in their medicine cabinet IMO. No, it won't lower your BP to dangerous levels and doesn't require supervision. It's a very safe drug in general. It works wonderfully for opiate withdrawal, especially in combination with some loperamide (and maybe a little DXM). It's also good for sleep in general and coming down off of stims.

Cool, thanks.

I don't recommend using ayahuasca (but then again I don't know why the hell you'd want to trip balls while kicking junk).

Haha, that's the whole point, ayahuasca is a treatment for opioid addiction. I can post some links if your interested. It's also very healing for a lot of mental health issues when taken under proper supervision. Currently I am taking it only about once a month.

 

[Transcendence]

That's interesting. I knew about ibogaine for opiod addiction but I didn't know that ayahuasca was used for that purpose. It sounds like it would be a brutal experience, but I can see how it would allow you to step away from the cycle of addiction. I've noticed that effect from psilocybin before but it's short lived unfortunately.

 

[BiggDirty01]

I've also used clonidine to great success in detoxing. The only danger/issue is that using it several times a day for more than a few days can cause rebound hyper tension once you are detoxed, so tapering is recommended versus cold turkey. Other than that, clonidine is a wonderful drug for most of the symptoms of opiate withdrawal and can definitely make kicking much more comfortable and do-able.

Good luck OP!

 

[Donewthislife]

Clonodine/Catapres was given to me when I went to rehab. It really helped with the withdrawals especially the anxiety and RLS part of withdrawals. Before every dose they would check my blood pressure to make sure my diastolic/systolic numbers we not below 90 or else they wouldn't give it to me. It was a godsend for sleep too. As for side affects, I don't know if I had any since I was coming off a pretty high Oxycodone habit and they gave it to me my entire time in detox which was around nine days.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

That's interesting. I knew about ibogaine for opiod addiction but I didn't know that ayahuasca was used for that purpose. It sounds like it would be a brutal experience, but I can see how it would allow you to step away from the cycle of addiction. I've noticed that effect from psilocybin before but it's short lived unfortunately.

Personally I've found it to be most helpful with the mental aspects of addiction. And yeah, it can be brutal sometimes, it's a very intense and somewhat unpredictable and scary psychedelic. It only temporarily reduces the withdrawal symptoms so it's more suited for shorter-acting opiates (unless you are going to go to a centre where you take it every night for a month or something, maybe that would help but it sounds a bit too intense for me), but I am using it to get off methadone so it hasn't eliminated WDs for me. But even though I am still experiencing bad withdrawal symptoms I have no desire to use. It's like I can now bear the suffering without immediately having the uncontrollable urge to run out to get some heroin or do whatever humanly possible to make the symptoms stop. Does that make sense?

I think it also really helps if your intention in using it is to get off drugs. If someone was just taking it for fun (although I don't see why someone would use ayahuasca for "fun" lol) and had no commitment to get off drugs or knew it was used for that purpose, then they'd probably be less likely to stop taking their DOC and would just take it out of habit as soon as the effects wore off.

I've also used clonidine to great success in detoxing. The only danger/issue is that using it several times a day for more than a few days can cause rebound hyper tension once you are detoxed, so tapering is recommended versus cold turkey. Other than that, clonidine is a wonderful drug for most of the symptoms of opiate withdrawal and can definitely make kicking much more comfortable and do-able.

Good luck OP!

Great thanks for the info and support

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Clonodine/Catapres was given to me when I went to rehab. It really helped with the withdrawals especially the anxiety and RLS part of withdrawals. Before every dose they would check my blood pressure to make sure my diastolic/systolic numbers we not below 90 or else they wouldn't give it to me. It was a godsend for sleep too. As for side affects, I don't know if I had any since I was coming off a pretty high Oxycodone habit and they gave it to me my entire time in detox which was around nine days.

Oh that's a good idea, I can test my blood pressure at home. I am pleased and hopeful that everyone seems to be reporting good results with clonidine so far

 

[ErgicMergic]

Beta blockers (propranolol, metoprolol) and alpha agonists (Clonidine) are extremely useful for opiate withdrawal, even more useful than benzos in treating the physical anxiety and insomnia symptoms from the source instead of just "masking" them.

Beta blockers block the fight or flight response caused by the absence of a relied upon dosage of opiates. There is tons of NE surging through your system during opiate w/d, and these medications block that response, lowering HR, BP, panic, physical anxiety, etc.

They are truly a "big gun" medication for blasting away w/d symptoms for opiate addicts. Every addict or chronic pain patient should have some on hand just in case they run out of drugs or can't find any. The best option is always to taper slowly, though.

 

[Sepher]

Swimmingdancer, the problem with questions like 'how effective is it' is that you'll still feel pretty damn dreadful using it to detox but you've no way of knowing how much worse you'd have been without it! It should definitely help cut some of the very worst symptoms, like the restless agitation and the spaced-out feeling I always associated with a stimulant crash, the sustained overproduction of Noradrenaline that Clonidine's used to alleviate feeling pretty similar IME. I didn't tolerate it very well as it did overly crash my blood pressure to the point standing up too quick would have me verging on blackout, sometimes actually keeling over.

In the UK Lofexidine ( aka Britlofex, manuf. Brittania Pharmaceuticals ) is often used in preference to Clonidine as it's a little easier to live with blood-pressurewise. I've never heard anyone else on here mention it so I've no idea what the availability is like elsewhere or how expensive it might be compared to Clonidine but IME it seemed a better option all round.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Swimmingdancer, the problem with questions like 'how effective is it' is that you'll still feel pretty damn dreadful using it to detox but you've no way of knowing how much worse you'd have been without it! It should definitely help cut some of the very worst symptoms, like the restless agitation and the spaced-out feeling I always associated with a stimulant crash, the sustained overproduction of Noradrenaline that Clonidine's used to alleviate feeling pretty similar IME. I didn't tolerate it very well as it did overly crash my blood pressure to the point standing up too quick would have me verging on blackout, sometimes actually keeling over.

In the UK Lofexidine ( aka Britlofex, manuf. Brittania Pharmaceuticals ) is often used in preference to Clonidine as it's a little easier to live with blood-pressurewise. I've never heard anyone else on here mention it so I've no idea what the availability is like elsewhere or how expensive it might be compared to Clonidine but IME it seemed a better option all round.

I'm not sure whether Lofexedine is available here in Canada, I know it isn't available in the USA. I will look into it. Thanks for the tip. I know clonidine can't be a magic withdrawal-eliminator and will affect everyone differently, but from the sounds of it it certainly has to be better than nothing for most people.

When I asked how effective it was, I was assuming there were people out there who had been through opioid withdrawal with and without clonidine, so basically I was looking to hear about the difference in their symptoms compared to when they didn't take clonidine. I will know if it's helping if it makes me feel any better after I take it

 

[adder]

^ Concerning the UK, is it a problem to get a prescription for lofexidine from a first-contact doctor?

In Poland there's no way I walk in a physician's office and say something like "could I get a prescription for clonidine because I've been trying to taper off methadone for almost 2 years and I can't, and the local maintenance programme, just as all the programmes around, turned me down?". With all recent hysteria about forged prescriptions (it was a piece of cake in Poland...) they introduced a couple of weird solutions like when prescribing e.g. a benzodiazepine derivative, there must be an amount of milligrams written instead of amount of pills, stupid as hell, especially when you have to write something like "sixty-two and a half milligram".

All in all, physicians from National Health Fund were never prone to helping and I don't feel like visiting private shrinks.

 

[Atlien3]

aweseome, got it while kicking in jail, made errrrthing better

 

[Sepher]

^ Concerning the UK, is it a problem to get a prescription for lofexidine from a first-contact doctor?

Probably more of a problem these days than it used to be. There was a time 12-15 years ago when I could get a full detox kit consisting of Dihydrocodeine, Lofexidine and Nitrazepam from my family GP, but these days they tend to refer anything addiction related to specialist addiction units with more expertise who are also able to offer none-medicinal treatments like NA, counselling, etc. I think that's policy these days. Same applies with alcohol addiction, my GP being either unable or unwilling to prescribe for that too so had to self-refer to the addiction unit for treatment.

 

[OntarioGuy]

^^^Canada is pretty good about prescribing controlled drugs for taper/detox situations In my personal experience (I've met people who can't get fuck all though)

As far as Clonidine goes,I've been Rx'd this med a few times for detox,and in my opinion it sucks and makes you feel worse (obviously every one is different)

I'd much rather go for a few days of Benzodiazepine use.

 

[tricomb]

reduces my WD by up to 50%. Probably the best thing to treat WD symptoms besides low-dose bupre or a proper methadone taper, even a rapid detox.