Opioids Guanfacine to treat Opiate Addiction?

[SecretDoperMan]

Hello everyone! I just wanted to share a personal experience about going through opiate withdrawal; and how I dealt with it.

First of all, a little background on my use and bio.

I am a 220lbs Male, 6' 5", Slim and lanky build! (Think string bean...) I'm 28 years old and have been abusing Opiates since I was about 23. Like a large number of you, my abuse started out after a simple surgery! I LOVED, the well-being and warm fuzzy I got after ingesting a couple of Vicodins. Too make a long story short, I ended up with a 400-500mg per day Oxycodone habit. (Substitute Oxy with any opiate if I was unable to obtain it... You get the idea; shit ton of opiates!)

Now, I have tried and failed to quit taking opiates over a dozen times in my short bout with opiates. I have tried Methadone taper, Suboxone taper, and clonidine/DXM therapy; all to no avail! I became curious if there were alternative NON-opiate treatments. Then, out of pure luck, or whatever you want to call it, I was raiding my good girl friends medicine cabinet and pulled out a shopping bag full of old medications.

I asked her if she knew what was in there and she didn't. Lucky for me I busted out the ol' smart phone and started Googlin' the meds (as well as hitting this site and another "safe drug use website". After going through about 4 meds I was ready to give up and call it a day. Then, bam! I hit on one with potential! Guanfacine! She explained it was tried by her son's doctor to treat his ADHD. It did not work she later explained but she didn't bother to toss the bottle of 90, minus 20 from their attempt at tackling the ADHD. So, I am left with 70 pills and a little bit of background information on the drug.

To cut to the chase, after a few hours of poking around the net, I decided what the Hell! I popped 3mg of the little buggers and waited. 1 hour passed, still felt shitty. 1.5 hours passed... Placebo from the desperate want for this to work? Perhaps, let's wait some more shall we? At around 2 hours I sure felt "something"! My RLS subsided, my stomach settled, I almost felt giddy! A short while after this I felt the urge to drink fluids and eat a large lunch! WOW! Could this be true?! An ADHD med actually helping my opiate withdrawal?! You bet your ass it did and I will put all I own on this statement!

Please, don't get me wrong; I am not a doctor and have very little medical know-how. I am an Electrical Engineer by trade and do consider myself fairly intelligent. I put my body and life at risk to guinea pig this desperate experiment. I was lucky, it worked. It worked wonderfully! I highly recommend to anyone who has access to this wonderful medication to try it! It killed ALL, of my withdrawal symptoms including the cravings and the dreaded "shits"!

In conclusion, please perform your own research and attack plan for your next inevitable withdrawal. I encourage you to check out the studies I post below. Safe drugging and be safe everyone!

FYI: I am now 3 days "clean" from opiates. Zero relapse and very little mental cravings thus far. I hope this drug works as well for you as it did for me!

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/45179725/Guanfacine-In-Treating-Opiate-Addiction---Patent-4380550

http://www.mendeley.com/research/comparative-effectiveness-of-alpha2-adrenergic-agonists-clonidineguanfacine-in-the-hospital-detoxification-of-opiate-addicts/

http://www.druglib.com/abstract/mu/muga-r_med-clin-barc_19900210.html

http://www.patexia.com/patents/04380550/description

 

[Pjkt2501]

Congrats on quitting! However, have you substituted another chem in in the place of opiates, or are you only sparingly using this new chem?

 

[SecretDoperMan]

I have honestly only used the guanfacine! I have been hitting up some of my pharamcy buddies to try and obtain more information. I assume they are sleeping as I have not yet heard back from them. I hope to speak with a few of them come tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Oh, this drug is supposedly very easy to obtain and most doctors that deal with addiction will pass this out faster than they would Suboxone. (So I am told!!!)

 

[_Synapse]

I was prescribed to this shit. It did nothing of value for me for adhd.... its an alpha blocker, it helped my blood pressure though haha

it is in the same class of drugs as clonidine

 

[SecretDoperMan]

I agree. Hypotension is a major risk factor in taking this medicine. Did you see the reasearch when they pitted Clonodine and Guanfacine against each other? G, always came out on top, upwards of 70% higher success rate... Just food for thought! No disrespect intended. %)

 

[lovingmomof5]

I just wanted to share my personal experiance with using guanfacine to help with opiat withdrawl....i was addicted to percocet for 2 1/2 years several attempts to quit several failures ...i ended up getting pregnant with my fiance and I's 5th child after doing lots of research on withdrawl during pregancy i decided not to take that risk... at about 25 weeks pregnant i finally got up the nerve to tell my docs and fiance about the problem.I was told that I needed to get into a methodone clinic so I did for the sake of my baby.I had a beautiful healthy baby boy who only needed mild intercention for his withdrawl symptems.Well its a little over a year later and my medical insurance got shut off which was paying for my methodone treatement.I was put on a "financial" which they bring you down 5mg a day (just so inhumane) I was on a low dose already (29 mgs)because i was currently in the middle of a slow detox... so 5 days i was out of the clinic...i was fine until the 2nd day after my last dose (not feeling 100% but ok)whenI say I cried like a baby I mean i was on my knees begging my fiance to do something to help I have never felt so much pain in my life. So my instict was call my mama she said she was doing research and she has a bottle of my little brothers old gaunfacine that she tried for his ADHD and it wasnt successful she read it would help so I went and got them i took 2mgs waited about 2 hours and finally some relief angels were singing my upset stomach went away, my restless legs and joint and bone aching was gone, and I could actually get up eat and take care of my children....I would recommend taking this to help with withdrawls to anyone.If you are going through this and you can get your hands on some of this drug I highly recommend it they say you can take up to 4 mgs a day depending on your severity of symptems please do your owncresearch before you takeit as I am not a doctor. Good luck!!!!

 

[ner0sr0me]

You don't know how happy I am to have found this.... I'm on a methadone taper right now. I was trying to hit up my local GP for some Adderall so I could at least get off the floor when the apathy and fatigue portion of post withdrawal began, and all he would give me was this intuniv 2mg (generic guanfacine)... 3 refills. I tried to get an rx for clonidine at an urgent are clinic last year when my local pd dumped out all my doses during a traffic stop, but the gp would only rx me an antidepressant... Sigh.

 

[kleinerkiffer]

Closed for now, as this is a really old thread