well pods manage to amaze me once again. i went 38 hours from my last dose, did a small maint dose, and then 8 hours did a dose to get high. it got me higher than i've been in at least a month from pods alone.
i've dosed a half cup every night for the past month at least and haven't gotten anything more than a buzz. skipping one dose and getting sick for a day really seemed to drop my tolerance, and gave me a break from constantly chasing the high that i couldn't get. i dont think it dropped my tolerance but it sorta "reset" me or something. i usually dose right before i get sick or around the 24 hour mark and felt nothing. gonna try again tonight and see if i feel anything then skip tomorrow.
I know exactly what you mean about not dropping the tolerance but "resetting" you. I think that dopamine is probably the primary rewarding sensation involved in opiates. I imagine it creates the warmth, euphoria, motivation, empathy, etc. The sedation aspect of opiates isn't necessarily rewarding but combined with that warmth and euphoria it can be enjoyable (and who doesn't love nodding off when you feel so good).
I'm not sure of the exact mechanism (and I don't think anyone is really) of how opiates release dopamine, but I believe that when you release large amounts of dopamine, it takes time for your brain to build up the levels again. So you take a dose of poppy tea 2 or 3 days in a row and you end up spending most of that dopamine, it gets to the point that the warmth, euphoria, and motivation disappear and you are left feeling groggy/ and or sedated. Dopamine is manufactured pretty quickly, so if you stop releasing it with opiates for 24 - 48 hours it builds back up again and then when you dose, BAM you get the excess dopamine and the rewarding effects come back.
I always notice that when I dose several days in a row, I will usually get higher at first because of the build up of morphine, but after about 3 days I just feel lazy and not really euphoric at all when I dose. Skipping a day and going 48 hours will definitely help a little bit, but my favorite method is to go 48 hours without a dose, take a maintenance dose at 48 hour mark and then take a normal dose at 72 hours. Obviously, the longer you can make it and/or taper the better it's going to be! So to sum it all up, taking short breaks from PPT doesn't necessarily reduce your tolerance by much, it just gives your brain a chance to regenerate more dopamine. More dopamine being released = more euphoria, warmth, etc.
It makes sense that this is problematic with poppy pods because of the long half life. Short acting opiates release dopamine too, but they don't do it for 12 hours like poppy pods do. As a result of this, short acting opiates are more "fiendy" than long acting ones.
Now even though I think that dopamine is probably the reason why such a short break is helpful, I do think that short breaks also cause a reduction in tolerance, just not by much. In my own experience, taking about 5 days off will cause a noticable lowering of tolerance. A couple of weeks ago I was expecting a shipment on a Wednesday and used up almost all of my pods on Monday night. The package was late, so I used the few pods I have left to kill the withdrawals Wednesday night. Thursday night I used up all of the stems I had and it was only enough to make me 90% well (I was also quite worried at this point because it was the absolute last of my poppy material). Friday night I took a moderate dose of loperamide (16 mg) and finally the package arrived saturday. I took my normal dose that night, and then when I took the same dose on Sunday I was way too high. I couldn't keep my head up and kept slouching forward while I was sitting down. I was even a little worried I may have went too far!! So those 4 days I was basically doing a rapid taper and it was enough to reduce my tolerance. It pays to be careful, if I had taken much more I could have overdosed. Sometimes tolerance drops quicker than we expect and/or realize, it just seems to take forever. Everyone is different though too, so maybe it's just me I know a lot of heavy abusers have said that even taking months off hasn't lowered their tolerance, so its probably related to the individual person and how high their tolerance actually is.
Hopefully with any luck I can stay at 12 awhile then cut it down to 6 and rinse and repeat. I do find you have to dose more often though, at least at first before minor WD's set in.
