Misc Does anybody have info or anecdotes on if/how well Fasoracetam will help treat benzo withdrawal?

[Drag2019]

So I read in a post about Fasoracetam and I read a few positive anecdotes online and I thought I'd come post here to see what my fellow bluelighters think of it and if anyone here has any personal experiences with that were positive?

 

[Didgital]

Fasoracetam

I have never heard of this compound, very interesting. Is it known to be psychoactive?

I am seeing quite a bit on reddit. Seems like it has mixed reviews. Seems some people love it and some people hate it.

This was pretty informative article

Fasoracetam: What We Know So Far (Potential Uses, Mechanisms, and Side Effects) - SelfDecode Drugs

The nootropic fasoracetam has been claimed to boost memory and mood - but what does the science say? Read on to learn more!

drugs.selfdecode.com

 

[negrogesic]

I wouldn't hold your breath. From my very painful experience, almost nothing measurably improves the symptoms of benzo withdrawal other than time.

Plus from my recollection fasoracetam is thought to upregulate GABA-B rather than GABA-A, so perhaps would be more useful for phenibut withdrawal?

 

[Vastness]

Maybe it would have some impact depending on your level of withdrawal. I haven't used it in a while but it is one of the few racetams that can actually help with sleep, I found, when I did take it, in doses of around ~80mg or so which IIRC is consistent with the doses that have actually been studied. At the time I wasn't using benzos that often but I probably was using phenibut a little more than is advisable.

I can't say honestly that I remember experiencing much benefit beyond the times I'd take it for sleep, although I definitely have taken it in the day as well, looking for some kind of mood enhancement or cognitive benefit, which probably means it is not going to be reliably useful for benzo withdrawal either. If you're through the worst of the aftereffects and just interested in something to potentially improve your mood or, indeed, help with sleep, then it's probably worth a try. If you're still in the early days of post-acute withdrawal, apathy, anhedonia and such, unfortunately I wouldn't expect it to have a majorly significant effect, like most of these compounds that have been around a while but aren't widely used the magnitude of effect is just not that large... perhaps it couldn't hurt to try depending on your means and expectations though.

Definitely if you're still using benzos you absolutely cannot rely on it for the acute phase of withdrawal, it is nowhere close to being strong enough and has a fairly short duration of action (IIRC it was mostly studied with 3x / day redoses) so it's not realistically going to have any chance even touching the sides of the significant dysregulation induced by benzos and depending on your level of use could be actually unsafe.

 

[Drag2019]

I figured it can't hurt to maybe try using this to aid my slow recovery from lowering my benzo dose and or baclofen etc. but 1 thing that I'm wondering about fasoracetam is any potential interactions with other medications or more specifically illicit recreational substances. Like if I wanted to take some shrooms and MDMA do I simply wait 24 hours after my last dose/skip my dose for the day I plan to use any recreational substances? Or does it not have any known interactions with anything else which AFAIK that's the case?

 

[Keif' Richards]

Racetam's are not new medications. There are numerous Racetam analogs in circulation at this time. There are some that are used in medicine like Levotiracetam (Keppra) and there are myriad used in the "supplementing" community, where they are often touted as drugs capable of improving cognition. I don't know if the term "smart drugs" is still being thrown around, but if so, Racetams would definitely fall into this category. Many are not controlled by any kind of laws so are traded openly on the internet.

I would be super-duper surprised to find that a Racetam would be effective in reducing the intense negative symptoms of Benzodiazepine withdrawal. I seriously doubt it man. I can see how perhaps a "smart drug" could have a place in the long-term plan for a person's recovery. For instance, we know that among other things, Benzodiazepine withdrawal interferes with the efficiency of our though process, emotions etc. If this drug truly did what people say it does, it could be helpful in the weeks or months that are involved in fully regaining homeostasis.

If you're looking for something to help you get off Benzodiazepines, we can help you with that. There are lots of threads out there already and you're free to start your own as well. We'd be happy to help you out. It's not an easy process, but with help and dedication, people get out of this situation that you're in.

 

[Vastness]

I figured it can't hurt to maybe try using this to aid my slow recovery from lowering my benzo dose and or baclofen etc. but 1 thing that I'm wondering about fasoracetam is any potential interactions with other medications or more specifically illicit recreational substances. Like if I wanted to take some shrooms and MDMA do I simply wait 24 hours after my last dose/skip my dose for the day I plan to use any recreational substances? Or does it not have any known interactions with anything else which AFAIK that's the case?

All racetams (AFAIK) have potentiating effects on practically all substances except dissociatives (given that one of their primary neuromodulating effects is NMDA-agonism), so I'd expect fasoracetam to be the same. Likely it will potentiate stimulants and psychedelics especially (psychedelics in potentially significant and unpredictable ways!) - 24 hours will almost certainly be a safe and reasonable time to wait however, fasoracetam has a short half life and duration of action even compared to other racetams so you should not expect any significant interactions beyond this point.

Be aware though that racetams typically ALSO potentiate GABAergic substances, in somewhat unpredictable ways as there are reports of people feeling both more lucid and significantly "messier" when combining GABA drugs such as benzos with racetams, probably (off the top of my head) this might have something to do with the generalised increase in cerebral blood flow that these substances induce, but I'm not aware of any reports about fasoracetam specifically in COMBINATION with benzos - I think it is safe to say though that the GABA affinity of fasoracetam is introducing an additional wildcard that the other racetams do not have.

For this reason the idea of using fasoracetam concurrently with benzos - rather than after having tapered off safely, to manage PAWS or more vague mood issues - seems significantly more sketchy to me. Either it will potentiate your benzo dose which will screw up your taper, or it will possibly have some kind of blocking effect which will lead to too rapid a reduction of benzo dose, potentially endangering yourself and screwing up your taper, OR there's a very outside chance it has just the right level of allosteric GABA-activity such that it will be both subjectively and therapeutically helpful... but this seems unlikely. Again, it's so short acting compared to benzos that while you're feeling this out it's just going to induce a neurological yoyo which is completely counter to the purpose of tapering. Unless you're at a dose of benzos already where you could already just jump off without fear of seizure or crippling anxiety, fasoracetam IMO is unlikely to be helpful and could be actually harmful.

 

[Drag2019]

Racetam's are not new medications. There are numerous Racetam analogs in circulation at this time. There are some that are used in medicine like Levotiracetam (Keppra) and there are myriad used in the "supplementing" community, where they are often touted as drugs capable of improving cognition. I don't know if the term "smart drugs" is still being thrown around, but if so, Racetams would definitely fall into this category. Many are not controlled by any kind of laws so are traded openly on the internet.

I would be super-duper surprised to find that a Racetam would be effective in reducing the intense negative symptoms of Benzodiazepine withdrawal. I seriously doubt it man. I can see how perhaps a "smart drug" could have a place in the long-term plan for a person's recovery. For instance, we know that among other things, Benzodiazepine withdrawal interferes with the efficiency of our though process, emotions etc. If this drug truly did what people say it does, it could be helpful in the weeks or months that are involved in fully regaining homeostasis.

If you're looking for something to help you get off Benzodiazepines, we can help you with that. There are lots of threads out there already and you're free to start your own as well. We'd be happy to help you out. It's not an easy process, but with help and dedication, people get out of this situation that you're in.