Opioids Memantine for Opioid withdrawal

[plumbus-nine]

So, I found a high dose of memantine to stop opiate withdrawal. More than just once, but confirmed it again. No diarrhea. No misery. Nothing. It's just gone.

How? Through some weird receptor interaction, which isn't limited to acute but also includes the dreaded post-acute withdrawal. I feel completely normal at day 4 of what otherwise would be withdrawal from 120mg morphine. Not like on morphine but also unlike off it. Just took high doses (40-80mg) of memantine for 3 days, no more dissociation present. Sleep is difficult but it's a hundred times better than going through withdrawal.

The downside is that it's difficult in many places to get a script to memantine. Yeah, this compound is currently only approved for Alzheimer's but see the links or a general PubMed search about the thematic and you'll notice that it's backed with a ton of research, which weirdly gets not applied to everyday practice.

But there are no dangers or real problems, really one can use this to cycle on pain medicines and avoid tolerance etc. Read that some doctors give e.g. DXM along with opiates to reduce tolerance but it's used much much too less and DXM is way more dirty. Memantine has a well established safety profile and doses up to 60mg/d have been studied. I don't see what's the point.

 

[plumbus-nine]

Whyever this topic (NMDA antagonists & opioid withdrawal) doesn't get more views, I can only guess. But it's now a day later and still nothing besides a little droppy nose (which indeed tends to be the least cheatable symptom about abstinence in me, besides diarrhea). Maybe I should take some more memantine but then I can forget the night. I couldn't tell that I didn't take my morphine in the morning.

 

[simstim]

Sounds right to me. I would definitely take some memantine if I had it and was in withdrawal.

 

[JTemperance]

So, I found a high dose of memantine to stop opiate withdrawal. More than just once, but confirmed it again. No diarrhea. No misery. Nothing. It's just gone.

Interesting.... I know I've read some journal articles (mostly Iranian ones IIRC) that found DXM in medium-high doses (like 4 x 120mg daily) to significantly reduce withdrawal symptoms, but I don't think I ever saw any similar experiments done with memantine.

Do you find the effects of memantine pleasant under normal conditions? Is the memantine "headspace" at least tolerable and not too intrusive at the dosage you're using for W/Ds?

 

[plumbus-nine]

Do you find the effects of memantine pleasant under normal conditions? Is the memantine "headspace" at least tolerable and not too intrusive at the dosage you're using for W/Ds?

Memantine, in doses significantly higher than 10-20mg, behaves like any dissociative but specially clean and has a well established safety profile (e.g. no bladder toxicity). It's not the best one to make first experiences with because of its 70h+ half life but overall not the worst one!

You'll get pronounced dissociative effects at a reasonable dosage but no psychotomimetic ones, it shouldn't be intrusive or lead to bad trips etc. also memantine lacks the sinister vibes of DXM..

 

[soulwentmia]

I have to mention that I used memantine to get off of lyrica and baclofen. I was taking 1.8 grams minimum of lyrica and 300mg baclofen and in 2 months I'm now at 35 mg lyrica. I also used phenibut and gabapentin but memantine allowed me to make drops twice a week at first.

I did 10 mg daily for a week then upped it to 20. Now I only take it when I start to feel weird and i'm almost running out but also almost sober and done with the taper.

It might work well for alchool and benzo withdrawals too, it's a shame it's not studied this way.

 

[Dtuc17]

I have tried memantine for gabapentin, benzo and opiate withdrawal. Gabapentin it helps the least benzos it fixes like 50% in my experience and opiates like around the same . When I come off subs or something strong tho it definitely isn't a miracle symptoms cure it definitely shortens it tho

 

[Robtuse]

Thank you for this thread, it has been a life saver. I typically don’t contribute to online forums (save bluelight every few years) but this is worth coming out of the shadows for. BL has always been my favorite go-to for all things drug related and, hey, I’m still alive and well after decades of poly substance abuse so that’s saying something. If this is TLDR skip to paragraph 5 for my success story with Memantine and opioid withdrawal.

I’m surprised more people haven’t tried this approach and/or commented on it. Mayhaps there are other threads on it that I haven’t found? It wasn’t super hard to find bulk and/or prescription Memantine online after some research (and I’m not super internet savvy - no darknet or bitcoin required), so hopefully that’s not a barrier for people.

So, just to set this up briefly without a detailed history no one wants to read: I’ve been an opioid addict for the last 25 years (everything from various pain pills to 3g/day heroin, fentanyl, methadone and even loperamide and others) with a few years of abstinence here and there.

In the last couple years I started messing with high dose Tianeptine and have found that, for me, nothing relieves withdrawal symptoms very well. Stuff like Phenibut, gabapentin and clonidine helps a little but not much. I still get the intense sweating, hot/cold, skin crawling, restless legs/muscles, insomnia, extreme fatigue, etc. For me, ymmv, acute Tianeptine withdrawal is more extreme—albeit shorter than—any other opioid withdrawal I’ve experienced. Things like hydrocodone and megadoses of loperamide do very little. Kratom is useless. Buprenorphine takes up to a week to fully relieve symptoms. Again, my personal experience, ymmv. Maybe heroin/fentadope works but thankfully I don’t have access to that. If I did I wouldn’t be wasting my time with Tianeptine.

Memantine relieved 80-90% of all withdrawal symptoms. I used no real taper down from 4gpd Tianeptine sodium (I cut my use down by about a gram a day for the last 3 days). As suggested in the opening post, I used 40-80mg per day. I found that, for me 50-70mg is perfect; not terribly dissociating but enough to ameliorate withdrawal symptoms.

This isn’t a cold turkey withdrawal down to nothing, I am transitioning onto bupe via an abbreviated version of the Bernese method. I’ve done this before and there has always been an unavoidable 2-4 day period of near full blown withdrawal before the bupe even starts to work (7-10 days until stable).

Today is day 4 and I haven’t even felt the need to take Memantine since day 2. I would estimate my physical symptoms are 95% gone and I’m feeling/functioning at about 70% mentally. I’m also able to sleep several hours at a time. Normally I’d be completely incapacitated and unable to sleep still at this point. Truly unbelievable and amazing. I imagine this would work without bupe simply by taking memantine a little bit longer.

Again, thank you for putting this info out there. This is by far the most effective method I’ve ever used to withdraw from opioids. I hope the proverbial piper doesn’t hunt me down, cuz he definitely didn’t get his due this time, lol. I hope that this can help others and that they share their experiences!