Withdrawal Syndrome After Consumption Of Designer Drug 'Spice Gold'

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090709072911.htm


Withdrawal Syndrome After Consumption Of Designer Drug 'Spice Gold'


ScienceDaily (July 10, 2009) — A clinical report from Dresden supports the impression that “Spice Gold” is strongly addictive. In the current edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, Ulrich S. Zimmermann, from Dresden Technical University, and his colleagues describe a young man who developed physical withdrawal symptoms after regular consumption of this designer drug, accompanied by a dependence syndrome.

Since 22 January 2009, “Spice Gold” has been subject to the German Narcotics Law. This means that production, free trade and possession are forbidden - but initially for only a year. There will be a permanent regulation at the end of the year. More information about “Spice Gold” is currently being collected. The authors' case report is a scientific contribution to this discussion.

When he came to the hospital, the patient had been consuming “Spice Gold” daily for eight months. Because of the loss of activity, he had rapidly increased the daily dose from 1 g to 3 g. He felt continuous craving for the drug and this caused him to carry on consuming it, in spite of the cognitive impairment it caused him. This led him to neglect his duties at his workplace and he was now threatened with unemployment.

He had already been forced to be abstinent for a time, because of a bottleneck in supplies, and this had triggered typical withdrawal symptoms, such as internal unrest, tremor, palpitations, headache, nausea, vomiting, depression and desperation. These symptoms had abruptly disappeared when he started consuming spice once again. He suffered similar symptoms during drug withdrawal in hospital.

The authors interpret the symptoms as indicating a typical withdrawal disease, very probably due to the admixture of synthetic cannabinomimetics.
 
How strange... I can't see how it would act that much differently on the body than Cannabis does..
Think it flicks a few other receptors than other "Natural" Cannabinoids?
 
I can personally back this story up. I ended up horribly addicted to spice and spice-a-likes and upon cessation, I went through a week of withdrawal. I was irritable, depressed, had horrible insomnia and rampant cravings.

Never touching the stuff again.
 
I got some unpleasant symptoms from quitting Spice Gold, but they were about the same as from quitting pot. Stronger than some people report, but the point is that they were close to the same as withdrawing from good ol' marijuana, which different people react to differently.

See this thread for a discussion of different people's withdrawal symptoms when quitting pot: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=448920

The way the article makes it sound like it is so much stronger than pot, in terms of addictive quality, is really quite sensationalist. And the sample size of one, as "a thing" noted above, is hardly sufficient to make any statement with confidence.
 
IME it is no more addictive than cannabis, except perhaps psychologically for some people since it is A) shorter acting, B) kicks in within seconds rather than up to 15 minutes, C) has a higher peak, D) because of this peak effect the user is better able to "feel the high" even with a tolerance

but physical withdrawal? no...
 
The perils of Research Chemicals (as we euphemistically call them). I don't think enough is known about designer cannibanoids and specifically what is actually in Spice and similar knock-off products.
 
Totally Tchort. It's the same with all the "Legal Highs". Nobody, but the company that created it, and then maybe only 2 or 3 people in that company, know what're in these products.

Each "Spice" product will have a different synthetic Cannabinoid (SC) compound in them. Some may even have multiple SCs in them as a mixture to get a slightly different feeling. Using different SCs for different durations, different highs, different potencies. These compounds are relatively new in regards to human consumption that the odds are that you'd be much safer using the illegal alternative than the "legal".
Infact, on a BBC documentary shown recently (called something like "Can I get high Legally?"), a Doctor of Biochemistry (I think) actually said "I would rather have someone take MDMA than the Legal equivalent purely due to the amount of research that has been done on each of the chemicals" [speaking of BZP].
 
The moral of this story is to not do spice or spice a likes. If you want to try a cannabinoid, then try jwh-018, jwh-073, etc. I have never experienced any withdrawal symptoms from smoking 018 or 073 in over a 8 month period of starting/stopping. When a company gets involved, i.e. Psychedeli, thats when profits become the main ingredient.
 
It's likely that JWH-018 or / and JWH-073 are in the Spice and "Spice-a-like" (I like that =D) products.
 
we know what's in spice, and we know how much we need to smoke in order to get a buzz comparable to a cannabis buzz. and since it works the same way as THC, i think it's reasonable to assume that this article is just part of what will be the end of legal spice (aka, like any prohibition, non-factual :P )
 
qwe said:
IME it is no more addictive than cannabis, except perhaps psychologically for some people since it is A) shorter acting, B) kicks in within seconds rather than up to 15 minutes, C) has a higher peak, D) because of this peak effect the user is better able to "feel the high" even with a tolerance

but physical withdrawal? no...
Click to expand...

My experiences differ from yours, apparently, unless I didn't understand which one you were talking about.
For me,
A) Spice Gold is much longer acting than cannabis (5+ hours vs. 3-4 hours)
B) Spice Gold takes 15 minutes to kick in, but marijuana takes more like a minute or two
c) Spice Gold does not have as high a peak as marijuana.
(Is this what you were saying? It seemed that your use of "it" right before your letter A referred to Spice Gold, but I wasn't entirely certain.)

I had physical symptoms during withdrawal from both Spice Gold and marijuana.
They persisted for several weeks strongly, tapering off after only about a month.
 
Virtuoso said:
Cannabis has a withdrawal syndrome as well.
Click to expand...

Cannabis, like virtually all psychoactive substances can produce abstinence syndrome consisting of rebound symptoms when use is consistent and sustained for moderate to long periods of time then abruptly stopped.

Withdrawal syndrome is specific to opioids (and I suppose Nicotine); in this case, during habitual, repeated and compulsive use, the body creates more receptors to bind to opioids. During the abstinence syndrome from opioids (which contains most features of abstinence syndrome of any CNS depressant), these new receptors die off, process called down regulation.

It is this aspect that, I believe, constitutes 'Withdrawal Syndrome'. Rebound symptoms from abstinence of other substances (Amphetamines, Benzodiazepines, Cannabis, Anti-Histamines, Beta-Blockers, etc) are simply Abstinence Syndrome.

What are your thoughts on this?

I bring this up a lot (in situations like this one) due to annoyance/frustration at the way the words associated with addiction (including addiction) have been so watered down and co-opted by society that the definitions for words associated with it are myriad. People say they're addicted to tuna fish sandwhiches, or watching tennis on TV, etc.
 
slimvictor said:
My experiences differ from yours, apparently, unless I didn't understand which one you were talking about.
For me,
A) Spice Gold is much longer acting than cannabis (5+ hours vs. 3-4 hours)
B) Spice Gold takes 15 minutes to kick in, but marijuana takes more like a minute or two
c) Spice Gold does not have as high a peak as marijuana.
(Is this what you were saying? It seemed that your use of "it" right before your letter A referred to Spice Gold, but I wasn't entirely certain.)

I had physical symptoms during withdrawal from both Spice Gold and marijuana.
They persisted for several weeks strongly, tapering off after only about a month.
Click to expand...
i should have specified that the product i used was spice DIAMOND

different spice products seem to have different ratios of different JW's

i got gold too (tried both of them, but they are a lot more expensive than weed so havent since) and yeah GOLD was about similar to weed. but diamond seems to be quite shorter acting. sorry for the unclarification
 
Tchort said:
Cannabis, like virtually all psychoactive substances can produce abstinence syndrome consisting of rebound symptoms when use is consistent and sustained for moderate to long periods of time then abruptly stopped.

Withdrawal syndrome is specific to opioids (and I suppose Nicotine); in this case, during habitual, repeated and compulsive use, the body creates more receptors to bind to opioids. During the abstinence syndrome from opioids (which contains most features of abstinence syndrome of any CNS depressant), these new receptors die off, process called down regulation.

It is this aspect that, I believe, constitutes 'Withdrawal Syndrome'. Rebound symptoms from abstinence of other substances (Amphetamines, Benzodiazepines, Cannabis, Anti-Histamines, Beta-Blockers, etc) are simply Abstinence Syndrome.

What are your thoughts on this?

I bring this up a lot (in situations like this one) due to annoyance/frustration at the way the words associated with addiction (including addiction) have been so watered down and co-opted by society that the definitions for words associated with it are myriad. People say they're addicted to tuna fish sandwhiches, or watching tennis on TV, etc.
Click to expand...
i agree, not only with this, but that all of addiction, dependence, tolerance, the labels we use are so fuzzy and meaningless because of all of the emotionally charged politics and such involved

i guess we could say:

there are different types of dependence:

short term (binge rebound) vs long term;
receptor downregulation,
autoreceptor upregulation,
endogenous ligand production decrease (aka endorphins no longer being produced at the same level),
and probably much more

so, like always, different drugs are, well, DIFFERENT drugs

still, we can classify them in terms of dependence liability generally, with sedating drugs at the top, followed by stimulating drugs, and psychedelic drugs at the bottom (GENERALLY). of course, we then have to take into account the individual and psychology, which allows some to even become "dependent" in a sense on marijuana
 
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