Loperamide related heart death mentioned on the Adam and Dr. Drew podcasts

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noone1

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Adam and Dr drew Podcasts # 255: the middle east july 16, 2015

Around half way through the podcast they took a listener call from a woman who's younger sister was abusing loperamide and ended up dying from it. She was hospitalized earlier for heart related problems, her boyfriend continued to sneak her the medicine afterwards.

Dr Drew was very skeptical and thought it might be from something else she was taking ditto what the doctors who did the autopsy said. That makes sense since there have been no studies and it is still a rare enough addiction that even anecdotal info isn't really out there.

There is a very real connection with taking massive doses of loperamide long term and heart problems.
 
I know methadone can mess with the hearts qt interval the electrical signals the heart gets can be lengthend causing heart problems. When I first read about lo g qt syndrome I thought well, better get off this shit...
 
'medicine cabinet' said:
I know methadone can mess with the hearts qt interval the electrical signals the heart gets can be lengthend causing heart problems. When I first read about lo g qt syndrome I thought well, better get off this shit...
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I was told that "this was true for patients on higher then normal doses" which at my clinic is 90mg/day. I think it is a bit much to start all patients on, sure the majority but my 80lb (at the time) g/f should not have been at that dose. Sure it was great for 2-3 weeks as transitioning was easy for her she spent the whole time sleeping and when they lowered her dose so she was awake it had been almost a month since she shot up lol.

But I would say given how that is a documented occurrence and as there probably arent many studies into the effect of high doses over an extended period of time applying what we know in this manner is the best we got for now. It has my vote for the potential to be a real thing.
 
Given the highly unsubstantiated claim a caller chimed in with i'm not sure what if any stock I would put in this.

Given lope does not seem to cause a "high," im kinda sceptical that its addicting. From what I have seen it can cause physical dependence or replace another opiate in a person who is dependent and or addicted already.

Does anyone have first hand knowledge or experience with an addiction created solely from taking lope?

Edit: https://madmargaret.wordpress.com/2...learinghouse-password-protected-see-comments/
 
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i do. i took it for extended periods of time. while the term 'high' is subjective i would say it does cause euphoria only it has a very dirty streak to it. it's a clear depressant and a great pain suppressant. it gives you the same compulsion to redose just like any other opioid and when you're in withdrawal it's devastating and worse than any other opioid i have tried. when you dose up you feel the same sense of relief and relaxation.

it was a brief period for me on the stuff because i didn't enjoy it overall. it was effective to a certain degree but certainly not worth the constipation which is argued is the same as other opioids but i would have to abjectly disagree. it also has some bizarre inexplicable side-effects atypical of any other opioid. it's one drug that i can say with certainty that i would never touch again. something about it didn't sit right in the worst possible way.
 
Interesting. Was that the only drug she was on?

I took it for a little while during one withdrawal and wanted more, but I was also on Lyrica and valium for 4- 5 days so it's hard to tell what was what. I think it helped me somewhat, albeit I did read it can cause a dependence of sorts, thus I got off of it quickly.
 
neversickanymore said:
Given the highly unsubstantiated claim a caller chimed in with i'm not sure what if any stock I would put in this.

Given lope does not seem to cause a "high," im kinda sceptical that its addicting. From what I have seen it can cause physical dependence or replace another opiate in a person who is dependent and or addicted already.

Does anyone have first hand knowledge or experience with an addiction created solely from taking lope?

Edit: https://madmargaret.wordpress.com/2...learinghouse-password-protected-see-comments/
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There are several threads here about people addicted to loperamide and a couple from people who have experienced heart problems from this addiction, too lazy to look for it but there was one fairly recently in the other drugs forum.

Of course it's always possible that the caller read about it from bluelight or another drug forum and just faked the call for info but it didn't seem that way she sounded pretty genuine. I wouldn't be surprised if her sister was a bluelight user either way. Using loperamide to get high is pretty rare.

Smoky said:
Interesting. Was that the only drug she was on?

I took it for a little while during one withdrawal and wanted more, but I was also on Lyrica and valium for 4- 5 days so it's hard to tell what was what. I think it helped me somewhat, albeit I did read it can cause a dependence of sorts, thus I got off of it quickly.
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That's what they where speculating on in the podcasts the only other thing the caller mentioned was benadryl in the autopsy but that wouldn't do it. The thread in other forums with sources to people experiencing heart problems from this leads me to believe this is genuine. But it's just such a rare addiction there is almost no legitimate medical information on it.
 
Yup, I mean it's not something I'm probably ever going to use as a substitute again, when I had a nasty tolerance and was more curious than cautious I definitely used loperamide to get a substantive buzz. The last two times I used it at high doses like that (120-160mg) I didn't have as much of a tolerance and it ruined my poor bowels for days, albeit much like heroin had when I first started using it daily long ago.

Ive talked to a few other responsible users (more or less), and we all experienced a lot of side effects. Dehydration was by and far the most common, well and constipation, as well as insomnia. I can't remember talking about it, but I do remember higher doses raising my heart rate in annoying ways. I never used it more than four days in a row and I didn't talk to anyone who used it more than two weeks or so. Taking so many 50-100 2mg pills made me sick half the time though (they taste suck to do this by itself).

There are a lot of reports of extremely high dose loperamide use here and on opiophile, people here do not seem as open to the possibility that high dose lope use could produce a high/buzz.

And considering that the EM doctor did not believe I had only taken Baclofen when I was found unresponsive and taken there, the only time I've had to visit a hospital or had any kind of serious OD, I can certainly imagine doctors not believing when they here people take 150mg doses of loperamide for any reason.
 
I didn't realize people actually did it to get high, though I have heard it can be addictive and ruin your heart. I do know it's killed my kratom withdrawals, but I take as few as possible until symptoms are tolerable and only for a few days tops. Like someone said, the constipation is just not worth it. But it's a def life saver going through opiod withdrawals. i read a research article that showed heroin addicts were able to reduce or eliminate their withdrawals with loperamide. But i can't say how much they had to take and I would not recommend doing so. Just be upfront with a dr. that specializes in addictions.
 
This isn't surprising at all, life threatening arrhythmias from high doses of loperamide have been documented before. In the past few months alone I have seen at least 2 threads about these arrhythmias from loperamide. Curiosity got the best of me and I started researching the topic a bit more and found many reports of heavy loperamide abuse... some as a result of opioid maintenance, others from the opiate naive in seek of a "high". To be fair the latter is certainly the minority, nonetheless they are out there.

I also found out that there's a subset of people self medicating their IBS with huge daily doses of loperamide. I think more awareness of these issues needs to be brought to the light with all the recommendations I see for loperamide as a withdrawal remedy. I've been guilty of it myself before hearing about these heart issues. There has also been a couple reports of death in the loperamide megathread, though I'm unsure if they were cardiac related.

Full offense to Dr. Drew, his skepticism is meaningless. I've heard him confidently argue that attraction to thicker woman is pretty much always linked to childhood trauma 8). He has an excessive need to explain everything and when he has no explanation he will immediately jump to skepticism. It's equally as fascinating as it is annoying.

Recent BL threads:
http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/760492-loperamide-dangers
http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads...iotoxic-A-warning-for-those-who-use-megadoses

Related articles and studies:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25345436
https://www.clintox.org/NACCT/2013/NAACT2013_Poster_Sessions_III.pdf (PDF)
http://www.empr.com/medical-news/li...-linked-to-loperamide-overuse/article/396218/
http://www.lycaeum.org/forum/index.php?topic=34137.0
 
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Very cool info, thank you plasticity. How did I forget to mention how much I hate "Dr" Drew, a man who's reality tv show drove (idiot) participants to their deaths...
 
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