L-Glutamine for Opioid Cravings

[pema]

L-Glutamine Supplementation for Opioid Cravings?

L-Glutamine shall be able to reduce cravings. I read some texts that said L-Glutamine would be good for heroin withdrawal.
I don't know if this is really true. I did an online search and found that L-Glutamine can reduce sugar and alcohol cravings.
Because alcohol may cause exaggerated insulin secretion resulting in hypoglycemia, glutamine can help. It suppresses insulin to stop the further decline of the sugar levels and it also stimulates glycogen to be released to help increase the blood sugar to normal levels.
So I believe that glutamine really helps for sugar and alcohol craving. But I am really not sure if it can help with opiate craving or nicotine craving as I read sometimes. But I found no medical/scientific/clinical text about that.
Maybe some people read that it can reduce cravings and recommended it therefore also for heroin and nicotine cravings without real knowledge.
Actually I don't know what really causes the craving for heroin. So I cannot know if it maybe could help. I don't really believe that glutamine would help but I do not know it.
Has anybody tried it? It is often recommended so maybe somebody has tried..? Any experiences with L-Glutamine and heroin withdrawal or heroin PAWS?
Any studies that it could possible have a benefit for opiate withdrawal or heroin PAWS?
Or something about benefits and nicotine withdrawal/craving?


EDIT (addendum):
Now I found a study where glutamine was used.

Lorini G, Fazio L, Fusari A, Cocchi R. Suppression of the opiate withdrawal syndrome with GABA analogs, low-dose psychotropic drugs and acupuncture. Minerva Med. 1982 Mar 31;73(13):707-10.

The original study is in Italian but the short abstract is English. Unfortunately the abstract is a little bit strange...
First it looks good. It seems that it was possible to reduce heroin withdrawal symptoms just with l-glutamine, sodium valproate and pyridoxine (vitamine B6). But as I read the abstract th second time, I realized that they also gave something else.

Therapeutic program was based on GABAergic drugs (l-glutamine, sodium valproate, pyridoxine), low doses psychodrugs and acupuncture

"Low doses psychodrugs" - What does this mean? Nowhere is written what they used. Maybe this was responsible for the reduction of withdrawal symptoms. Unfortunately there is no information about this. Strange. Maybe the full text article would give more information...
In any case: strange study. When they want to test the effect of GABAergic drugs on heroin withdrawal, how can they see what really works, when they also give some "psychodrugs" and use acupuncture?

And the other thing I don't understand is the abbreviation "Ss". Perhaps it is a common abbreviation and I just don't understand it because English is not my native language. Can somebody help? What is meant by "Ss" here?

A full avoidance of the withdrawal syndrome was reached in 15 out of 18 Ss

while the remaining 3 Ss experienced

The 2 Ss manifesting evident symptoms of withdrawal

 

[c0rt3x]

Interresting. Thanks for posting this!

 

[sekio]

I believe in this context "Ss" = "subjects".

To be honest I do not believe that most unmodified essential amino acids show a central psychotropic effect, or at least not one significantly stronger than placebo. I personally think the craving for heroin is caused by the same sort of positive reinforcement that causes many other cravings (food, sex, other dopaminergic drugs (cocane, meth, MDMA, etc)) and that a positive lifestyle with many other diversified sources of pleasure is the best way to combat them. If you keep your mind occupied with other pleasurable activities it should be much easier to avoid relapsing into what is essentially floodign your brain with pleasure at a moment's notice.

Without seeing the study fulltext I cannot say what the "low dose psychotropics" were. Nor can I say that this is a double blind study that means anything. I think the valproate and acupuncture are probably doing more for the subjects than the glutamine is. Otherwise you could treat heroin w/d with parmesan cheese effectively...