Codeine tolerance

[danceofdays]

So I know everyone says your tolerance never goes back to baseline after acquiring an opiate habit, and I can attest to this. After quitting daily use of oxycodone (usually 40mg in ~six lines over the day), I was totally clean for a month or so, then started doing it or hydromorphone once every week or two here and there. But I was having to snort at least 20mg (4-6mg of hydro) at once to get a noticeable effect, way more than before quitting! And I'd probably need double that to actually catch a good nod or anything.

At some point I figured out how to remove the caffeine and aspirin from AC&C pills, which are OTC here, and haven't really gone back to the harder stuff since then. Besides the fact that it kicks in as fast as a line of oxy and lasts longer, oh and the fact that a few bucks a day is actually possible to maintain, I really like how my tolerance to codeine doesn't seem to increase at all. The very first time I did the extraction, I took ~125mg and didn't feel anything (before the oxy habit 100mg would get me high as a kite). Since then, I've always taken 300mg once or rarely twice a day, except for a few higher dose trials that fucked me up harder but didn't add to the mood lift etc. Been doing this for maybe a month and a half or more now.

Now, when I "relapsed" for the first and presumably last time, those 20mg lines of oxy weren't cutting it anymore by the end of the second day so I said fuck it and stopped. I know codeine is supposed to be less habit-forming and cause less tolerance that other opiates, but damn, in my experience it's a whole different beast than even the mid-level narcotics like demerol and hydrocodone.

So I guess my questions would be, 1) has anyone else noticed a blatant lack of tolerance buildup when using higher-than-therapeutic doses of codeine? and 2) why might this be, from a pharmacological perspective? I'm guessing it has something to do with ts unique metabolism. Thanks!

 

[sekio]

1. No, in fact if you abuse codeine your tolerance will go up. See also: people dosing 400mg of codeine at once to get shittered.

2. Codeine's metabolism into morphine is limited by the enzymes in your liver. In addition I suspect that codeine acts at other targets (histamine release at least) and is a much "dirtier" opioid than selective mu agonists like fentanyl or whatever.

Don't worry, if you keep using codeine recreationally for long enough you'll build a tolerance. Enjoy it while it lasts.

 

[TheLostBoys]

So I guess my questions would be, 1) has anyone else noticed a blatant lack of tolerance buildup when using higher-than-therapeutic doses of codeine? and 2) why might this be, from a pharmacological perspective? I'm guessing it has something to do with ts unique metabolism. Thanks!

Ive heard this before from several other people. I myself only had codeine several times at 50mg each time & caught a decent high every time but only last about an hour. I cant get codeine anymore nowadays & you would think it would be easier.

Codeine has given me the most euphoria of any opiate I have ever taken to date. Oxycodone gives me the least euphoria of any opiate I have taken to date.