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Long term neurological barb sequelae, my problems, my theory

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Limpet_Chicken

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Long (and nasty) story short, a few years ago, I used to big time abuse barbs, barbital being my barb of choice at the time, and way too much of it.

Now I've been having a lot of problems, for quite a long time forming short and longterm memory, memorising dates and appointments (and oh boy is my probation officer pissed at me every so often:P), some generalised weakness on the left side of my body, and problems with visuospatial processing ability, as well as big time ADD-ish effects, my concentration/attention span has been severely impacted, although thank ye outer gods that my intelligence hasn't been affected.

What I didn't know then, was about AMPA agonist activity of barbs (and I just bet its what causes seizures in high dose barb ODs), and I have a theory, that perhaps what I am experiencing, is akin to amnesic shellfish poisoning, which is caused by domoic acid, a nasty dinoflagellate marine toxin which acts as an AMPA agonist and is pretty selective in fucking over the hippocampus and parts of the amygdala.

I have been doing a bit of research into the stuff and its toxicology, and thought in combination with any possible hypoxia caused by respiratory depression, this could be the cause of the problem, as the retrograde and anterograde amnesia have been both severe and persistent, and its becoming quite disabling, and gets me into no end of shite with the aforementioned government goon squad.

I have little time to elucidate further at the moment, as I'm connected to the net via a particularly odious mobile phone connection, thats as slow as frozen dogshit and tenfold as annoying (not that I meet much frozen dogshit, unless again one counts the goon squad=D) and my battery is running on empty, so, anyone got any input on this one?

I might add at the moment I'm taking codeine for post-operative pain relief (and getting off on it mind you), and smoke a fair bit of everyone's favourite green herbal product, but even on extended breaks, and after getting out of jail a few years ago and smoking a grand total of two joints in 8 months, the memory issue has neither declined nor recovered.
 
worth noting that ampa agonism is a problem with methaqualone and analogues as well- though I'm guessing that effect is more pronounced with the other quinazolinones.

I have similar issues, too, though. 50% of the time I'm fine, 25% I'm okay, and the other 25% I can't finish a sentence without getting help.
 
Makes me think twice about if I ever want to try any of those entire series, although I admit I think I'd risk methaqualone at least for the experience, but for longterm use/abuse I really think they might be quite seriously neurotoxic, Does anyone have any binding/efficacy data for the barbs (or -qualones)

Out of interest, have you tried any of the nootropics, particularly 'racetams, AMPAkines or cholinesterase inhibitors? because I reckon I need some sort of help to long term as well as short term.

sort it out pharmacologically speaking, especially if as I think, the barbs could cause some actual cell death, it doesn't seem to be getting better much if any.
 
'racetams and ampakines? hmm....

how can it be that ampa-agonists reverse the damage caused by ampa-agonists?

either (thats what i think) the racetams and ampakines work by an entirely different main mechanism, or any agents of that kind will worsen your symptoms.

a little hint: there are novel ampa-antagonists in the pipeline for treatment of epilepsy which are also said to be neuroprotective. probably you already knew that but if not, you could do research on them.
 
Hm oops, I read a while ago that barbs were AMPA agonists like the 'qualone family, but seemingly they are antagonists and can confer some degree of protection against some kinds of neurotoxicity.

I read a paper though that seems to suggest they cause damage and potentiate excitotoxic neuronal death by a glutamatergic agonist means.
Possibly NMDA agonism, but I'm not completely sure, most of what I can find on the 'net seems to be about AMPA antagonism.

I cocked that one up, but they apparently DO have some means of causing excitotoxicity.

Morphiquet, direct glutamatergic agonists are neurotoxic, by allowing Ca++ to flood the cell and kill it, but positive allosteric modulators such as the ampakines are not.
 
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