L-Acetyl-Carnitin for Opioid withdrawal?

[pema]

L-Acetyl-Carnitin is easy to get without breaking any laws. It need not to be pescribed by a medical doctor.
It is not very expensive and it looks like it could help in alleviating opioid withdrawal symptoms.
Unfortenately I found only one study. I have no access to the full text articles in the medline database.
I can only read the short abstract. So I cannot really assess the quality of the study or if there are any mistakes.
In that case the abstract looks good. It is a randomized, placebo-controlled study.

Janiri L, Martinotti G, Tonioni F, Ghelardini C, Nicolai R, Galeotti N, Mosconi L, Calvani M, Bartolini A, Iannoni E:
Acetyl-L-carnitine in the management of pain during methadone withdrawal syndrome.
Clin Neuropharmacol. 2009 Jan-Feb;32(1):35-40.

30 methadone-dependent persons got 2 grams L-Acetyl-Carnitin daily. It alleviated significantly pain and withdrawal symptoms like muscle tension, muscle cramps and insomnia.

It sounds interessting. Has anybody heard of this? Are there any other studies? (This was the only one I could find.)
Or maybe - has anybody tried this by himself/herself? I would be interessted in reports if someone did try.

I have a bad leg injury for more than a year. I nearly can't walk and I've got a lot of pain. The next month I will surely still need my masses of opiates. But then it is time for a withdrawal.
Then I am going to test some things like L-Acetyl-Carnitin, L-Aspartic Acid and so on. I will post the used amounts, the results and everything else that is important.

 

[atrollappears]

I used to take L-acetylcarnitine, but not with opiates. It has a slight stimulating, mood elevating effect. I'm also pretty young and it seems to be more effective the older you are. In rats at least it has a surprising ability to elevate dopamine and 5-ht levels, as well as improve scores on tests of depressive behavior. It doesn't seem to have any side effects, and to top it all off, it'll straighten your penis: http://www.life-enhancement.com/article_template.asp?ID=610

 

[endotropic]

I took a minute to read over the paper you linked pema (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18978503), and since you can't access the full text I'll post some of the things that caught my eye.

The reported differences between groups were:

Insomnia, coldness, pain, muscular spasm intensity, muscular tension lower in ALC group than placebo group
Stomach cramps, yawning higher in ALC group than placebo group

The time course of the ALC treatment:

"The structure of the study foresaw 3 weeks of treatment:
during the first week (T-7-T0), methadone was gradually reduced
to 20 mg daily (orally) from the starting dosage (30 mg),
then methadone was abruptly suspended for the final 2 weeks of
study. For the first week of treatment, ALC (or placebo) was
given (2 g\d) orally, subdivided in 3 times daily, then intravenously
at the same dosage for the remainder of the study
(T1-T14)."

My question is (and this isn't addressed anywhere in the paper) why did they switch from oral to IV dosing once methadone therapy was suspended?

Other treatments the patients received:

"During the study period, patients were only given
trazodone (100 mg\d) for the abstinence-related sympathetic
responses of tachycardia and hypertension, and given diazepam
(20 mg\d or equivalent) for insomnia according to established
and validated protocols."

Again this clouds the picture slightly, but assuming both groups got the same amount of these treatments (again not addressed) it still appears that ALC is having some effect.