Neuroscience L-Dopa reduces certain alcohol wd symptoms, brain damage, and PAWS depression

[Quasimoto]

I stumbled across this article that I found interesting. I have never heard of L-dopa or any dopamine drugs medically implicated in being helpful for recovering from alcohol withdrawal.

In my layman's understanding, the L-DOPA needs to be used at the beginning of withdrawal. It works by rebalancing your dopamine receptors, which in turn has the upstream effect of rebalancing your glutamate receptors. This in turn reduces some of the withdrawal symptoms, reduces or reverses several areas of the brain which become damaged (too over my head), and reduces depression from alcohol PAWS.

In my own anecdotal experience, it does work. It's impact is palpable. I'm surprised more people have not mentioned this legal supplement more for booze wds. (By legal supplement I mean mucana purens standardized to 15% L-DOPA.... not the pharmaceutical pills that contain L-DOPA, but they are basically the same thing)

(They do mention that they used an inhibitor that prevents a certain amounts of the L-DOPA to be peripherally metabolized, but I don't think this is truly required.... They also theorize a direct more potent dopamine agonist would work better.... but please don't go do drugs. L-Dopa is not an agonist, it's technically a precursor to dopamine)

Dopamine Restores Limbic Memory Loss, Dendritic Spine Structure, and NMDAR-Dependent LTD in the Nucleus Accumbens of Alcohol-Withdrawn Rats - PMC

Alcohol abuse leads to aberrant forms of emotionally salient memory, i.e., limbic memory, that promote escalated alcohol consumption and relapse. Accordingly, activity-dependent structural abnormalities are likely to contribute to synaptic ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

(if anyone more educated than me can tell me if I'm way off, please correct this )

 

[Neuroprotection]

i’m really glad you brought up this topic, nice to know someone else is interested in dopamine as well.
To find out that a neurotransmitter that is typically thought of as excitatory could alleviate alcohol withdrawal is quite surprising but once you understand more about dopamine, things start to fit together nicely and it makes sense.
Dopamine is actually a special type of neurotransmitter called a neuromodulator. rather than directly transmitting signals itself, one of its main functions is to change how target neurons respond to glutamate or GABA. because of the different types of dopamine receptors, their downstream signalling pathways and where they are expressed. in the brain, dopamine can selectively excite behaviourally relevant brain circuits either by boosting their sensitivity to glutamate or enhancing glutamate release in those regions, or decreasing inhibitory GABAergic input to them.
This is why, despite the D1 and D2 dopamine receptor classes having opposite downstream signalling pathways, The overall result of their activation is enhancement of the brain circuits mediating reward, motivation/drive, movement and possibly wakefulness amongst others.
I really believe that the behavioural affects of dopamine are underappreciated in the neuroscience field, at least when it comes to translating it into human medicine. perhaps the role of dopamine in initiating and maintaining drug addiction has made any attempts to enhance it somewhat unofficially taboo as an addiction treatment.
You might be interested to know that dopamine, via D2 receptors has an anticonvulsant effect which might explain one of its many benefits in alcohol withdrawal.

But it’s not just alcohol withdrawal that is alleviated by dopamine replacement, opioid withdrawal is also. A lot of people on this site have talked about how amphetamines dramatically decrease or halt their opioid withdrawal symptoms, although on paper The opposite should have been true Adam amphetamine releases excess norepinephrine. it’s quite obvious that the dopamine. is powerful enough to override the adrenaline. and makes brain changes that at least temporarily eliminates the opioid withdrawal.

There’s so much more I want to share with you, but I don’t want to overwhelm you. If you want to keep discussing dopamine, please let me know and I can share some fascinating studies with you.

 

[Quasimoto]

There’s so much more I want to share with you, but I don’t want to overwhelm you. If you want to keep discussing dopamine, please let me know and I can share some fascinating studies with you.

One concern I thought of is that using too much could potentially trigger alcohol hallucinosis.

Unlike other dopaminergic drugs, alcohol does not increase dopamine turnover. It simply creates more dopamine and lets it float around.

Alcohol hallucinosis is believed to be caused by excess dopamine in the limbic system.

Anyways, I have yet to form a conclusion on this topic. It seemed to help the first few days, but afterwards it would give me anxiety and make me feel worse, so I stopped taking it.

And don't worry about overwhelming me. I don't always have time to read everything but I always try to eventually respond.

 

[Smyth2]

I bought some Levodopa (high strength) on ebay a couple of times but found it to have no effect and a waste of money.

Doesn't it have to be taken with a MAO(B)I such as Carbidopa for it to have therapeutic benefit?

 

[neversickanymore]

Love to see a study looking at adderal looking at this. Moderate to pretty significant alcohol withdrawal appears to be significantly reduced in some people. Should be studied imho.

 

[BK38]

I'd like to see how psychedelics are used to treat PTSD, schizophrenia and bipolar conditions. I wrote a paper on it re PTSD, but I'd like to see more.

Psychedelic Medicine

 

[MedicinalUser247]

I have an entire bottle of L-Dopa. I just don't use it often.

 

[Neuroprotection]

I bought some Levodopa (high strength) on ebay a couple of times but found it to have no effect and a waste of money.

Doesn't it have to be taken with a MAO(B)I such as Carbidopa for it to have therapeutic benefit?

Drugs like carbidopa or bencerazide are not MAO Inhibitors. Instead they inhibit peripheral aromatic El amino acid decarboxylase. that prevents the levodopa from being broken down prematurely in the blood, allowing it to reach the brain where it can then be converted into dopamine.
Combining levodopa with MAOis, even highly selective ones for the B type is extremely dangerous without medical supervision and likely carries a high risk of psychotic or manic behaviour.
Nevertheless, the reasonably selective MAOB inhibitor selegiline has actually been used along with levodopa in Parkinson’s disease with some good results, particularly as it allows the levodopa doses to be significantly lowered and for smaller doses to remain effective for longer.
Hope that helps, please feel free to ask me about anything you want to know more about.

 

[Quasimoto]

I bought some Levodopa (high strength) on ebay a couple of times but found it to have no effect and a waste of money.

It's not exactly something that will get you high or have a profound psychoactive effect.

The first time I took 120mg, I got a nice little 1-2 hour dopamine buzz, but that never happened again.

I generally take it to reduce RLS during opioid withdrawals, not to feel a psychoactive effect.