While I don't disagree that there's a serious issue with the medical system, it's interaction with drug addicts and opioid prescription/maintenance, I think to predict that any single drug or treatment will offer a treatment for all forms of addiction, everywhere, let alone do so universally within the next 5 years, is... incredibly optimistic, at very best.
Even if this Ibudilast you're taking about really is the addiction panacea you claim (which I highly doubt), the process of getting it trialed, authorized, produced and distributed would alone take a decade or more and cost millions of dollars.
I utterly agree. The point of my post was really to articulate the mechanism of drug addiction/withdrawals which are the critical reason for chronic drug use in the face of terrible consequences for the individual.
I must admit that my previous explanations are terrible and actually wrong. I have spent the last many many weeks buried up to my eye balls in neuropsycholgy papers trying to learn how the brain works. This is probably the 9th draft/reply to this thread i've created. Anyway see below for my current explanation.
Oh My God!!!! I have been trying to find a different post that mentioned this stuff for so long! Im on methadone and have a bad(and getting worse) meth habit, plus all the clonazepam to control the side-effects of methamphetamine. This stuff sounds like a miracle drug! I don't quite understand how it works but whatever drugs I have access too(except alcohol, deleriants & psychedelics which I use properly) I will abuse the heck out of.
So here is what is happening:
There is a receptor (TL4) in your brain. When it turns on it floods your body with pro-inflammatory cytokines. These pro-inflammatory cytokines create inflammation, fevers, pain, discomfort and other stuff. Pretty much its why you feel sick when you have a virus. Traditionally it gets activated when you've suffered some sort of damage/attack. Proteins from the attack bind to TL4. I don't know what the purpose of the inflammation products are but this is the reason why we take paracetamol or ibuprofen when we're sick, to combat these pro-inflammatory cytokines. There is also a body of work that suggest that pro-inflammatory cytokines are involved in depression and other psychological disorders.
Now what appears to happen in a addict is when you were baby, stress hormones your mother made, specially cortisone, caused your brain to develop differently. There is lots of research to suggest this causes fucks up in the production of dopamine(hence kids with ADDD) but it also for some reasons unknown causes a constantly, low level activation of TL4, resulting in the production of pro-inflammatory molecules.
If you've always lived feeling sick you'll never really know any other feeling or life. This is why for those of us with this problem that first time you took drug X you felt fucking great. It was like as if a massive weight was taking off your shoulders.
As a small child committing bad behaviours, over-eating, adrenaline, anything that distracts the body from the discomfort of these inflammation products created conditioning in the individual. Do a naughty thing, get lots of dopamine/Adrenalin to rush your body, you feel good for a little while hence the incentive to keep doing the naughty stuff. Add to this the irregular supply of dopamine and you have the class early life of addict. Poor learning outcomes, hanging out with the bad kids, a history of early childhood abuse and so on.
As you get older and are exposed to opiates and for that matter most narcotics, this is where the big problem happens. When opiates go into your brain they bind to all sorts of stuff making you feel good and taking away pain. When they breakdown however a key metabolite, M3G activates TL4 causing it to create pro-inflammatory cytokines. You feel yucky and sick as a result. More opiates, more M3G and the sickness gets worse and worse.
This is the heart of what we call addiction. Its a positive feedback loop. You take opiates for pain and discomfort but they create as they are metabolised more pain and discomfort causing you to take more opiates.
It would appear that Benzodiazepines, cocaine, and methamphetamine all to vary levels in and different ways all activate TL4 in some way or another hence the fact that these hard-drugs are the ones that cause withdrawal affects and hence encourage more usage. Opiates definitely have the most direct, most powerful effect though.
So what is the cure. Well suppressing TL4. he researchers who discovered all of this have basically reduced withdrawals and tolerance so much so that in the trials and research I've seen they've basically cured opiate withdrawals. Now of course people want to get high. This isn't about stopping people from getting high. This is about stopping the physiological and psychological affects of drug withdrawals which are the number one reason for relapse.
Now you will say but chugs your sooooo wrong. What about mu-receptors, what about NA and god and faith. And what about my deadbeat uncle who got so many chances and took drugs.
Look all i know is that researchers have cured drug addiction. So much so that you can get TL4 binding drugs in high end clinics in the US - namely Ibubilast as it is already in use in various countries for several different conditions (so its already passed LD50 tests and such). The fact that clinics are all ready doing this says volumes about what I've written.
Yet there is a massive massive gravy train in addiction treatment. It will take years before this drug filters down. Drugs law enforcement, legal and correctional costs, combined with the health, productivity, overdose/deaths, and treatment, health and education costs of drugs is massive - we are talking about a global cost to the planet of something exceeding at least $2-3 trillion a year. In Australia I've estimated at least $25-30b a year.
Don't expect such a massive cog in the global economy to be fixed immediately when so many people are dependent on the money.
Also suppressing TL4 doesn't fix real root cause i.e. the broken bit in our brains that is activating TL4 thus making us feel sick.
On a personal note long before I used drugs I was constantly getting sick. I would have sniffles and aches and pains, almost all the time. I went to dozens of doctors and nothing was ever discovered or worked. Yet when i went onto suboxone I have had the longest period of good health ever. My family is very surprised. An aunt last Easter said that this was first time she had seen me not sick.
TL4 activation is the cause of drug addiction. It shows that drug addiction is not a choice. Seriously who wants to be sick all the time like this? I like taking drugs but i have found that if i am not feeling sick or awful that i tend to use my drugs in moderation. When your feeling awful all the time of course that goes out the door.
In fact its very hard to say no to drugs when you feel sick and you have the means to feel better.
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References. I will fill in the dozen or so papers that basically back up all that i've written. I do however need to get back to work. Reports won't write themselves.