Colonel Contin
Bluelighter
About 3 years ago I started experimenting with phenibut. After chipping in on a 100g bag with a buddy of mine, we tried various doses, starting small, and eventually settling on 3g (oral) as an optimal active dose. The effect was mildly euphoric, but the larger draw for me was phenibut's non-sedative anxiolytic properties which seemed to carry on through the day and into the evening, assisting with restful sleep. As a person who has always self-medicated I felt like I'd scored big, and though we had done our research and read through the forums, making us well aware that phenibut is habit forming and is widely associated with a gnarly withdrawal syndrome (ranging from anxiety and insomnia to full on psychosis), I decided to take the plunge and add 3g of phenibut to my list of morning medications/supplements.
Needless to say, within a couple weeks I was phenibut dependent, and within a couple months I had doubled my daily dose, religiously taking over 7g of phenibut on a daily basis.
If you've ever heard the horror stories or have been physically dependent on phenibut yourself you probably know that this was sort of a pickle... Despite phenibut's legality and availability, my habit became expensive and harder to manage, not to mention that the positive effects I experienced from taking the drug were heavily diminished by the tolerance I had built up.
Around the one and a half year mark I decided that I had to draw the line. I was horrified of the withdrawal, but I was sick of being dependent on yet another substance (in addition to suboxone prescribed daily and various other substances I was taking at the time). Luckily I was in no rush and I figured if I took my time tapering, the process might be relatively painless... which brings me to the point of this whole post:
As of this week and after two and a half long years, I have finally made a clean break from phenibut, and though the process involved a year of meticulous tapering, I parted ways with the substance experiencing no discernible withdrawal symptoms.
The moral of the story is, phenibut is a scary substance that has caused a lot of people a lot of discomfort when they attempted to quit taking it abruptly while physically dependent. For the sake of those of you who are struggling with phenibut dependence and feel like there's no way to get off the stuff, or for anybody just generally interested in the details of my taper, I will sketch out a rough timeline below:
First I bought a capping/tamping apparatus and some gel caps along with a milligram scale. Both are readily available online and are relatively inexpensive (these also come in handy for portioning out <1mg doses of suboxone, which I am currently tapering).
The '00' size gel caps will hold roughly .75g of phenibut powder each if tightly tamped, and my dose at the time I decided to quit was around 7.5g (two daily doses of 3.75g each). So..... that's 5 capsules, twice a day.
Month 1:
The first part of the taper was easy and didn't really require much measurement. I simply knocked off one pill at night so I was only taking 9 caps a day. Two weeks later I subtracted one from my morning dose, bringing me down to 8.
(6g daily)
Month 2:
7 pills a day for two weeks (4 morning/3 evening)
6 pills a day for two weeks (3/3)
(4.5g daily)
Month 3:
5 pills a day for two weeks (3/2)
4 pills a day for two weeks (2/2)
(3g daily)
Month 4:
At this point I decided to start marking half capsules for fear that the taper might effect my ability to sleep at night. To do this I just filled some without tamping them... the result is not by any means exact, but it worked out.
3.5 pills a day for 2 weeks (2/1.5)
3 pills a day for 2 weeks (1.5/1.5)
(2.25g daily)
Month 5:
3 pills a day for 2 more weeks
2.5 pills a day for 2 weeks (1.5/1)
(~1.85g daily)
Month 6:
At this point I was finding the drops in my dose a little more noticeable, so I decided to slow down.
2.5 pills a day for a month (1.5/1)
(~1.85g daily)
Month 7
2 pills a day for a month (1/1)
(1.5g daily)
Month 8
1.5 pills a day for a month (1/0.5)
(~1.2 g daily)
Month 9
At this point I was no longer able to comfortably decrease my dosage in half-pill increments, so I decided to start weighing my doses. I admit that I hesitated for a while, just because of how much of a pain in the ass weighing out two doses of powder a day seemed, but it was really worth it... using the scale, I was able to taper very gradually, making the rest of the rest of the process feel much smoother.
I took 1.1g a day for two weeks (.6/.5)
And .9g a day for two weeks (.5/.4)
Month 10
.7g a day for 2 weeks (.4/.3)
.5g a day for 1 week (.3/.2)
.4g a day for 1 week (.2/.2)
Month 11
.3g (300mg) a day for 1 week (150mg/150mg)
260mg a day for 1 week (130/130)
220mg a day for 1 week (110/110)
180mg a day for 1 week (90/90)
Month 12
At this point I went and got a big pill organizer and weighed out the whole month's doses in a sitting. The daily doses went roughly as follows 180, 170, 170, 160, 150, 140, 130, 120, 110, 100, 90, 80, 75, 70, 65, 60, 55, 50, 45, 40, 35, 30, 25, 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 12, 10, 10
Once I reached the 10mg mark (2 daily doses of 5mg), I was able to jump off rather painlessly. I may have lost a little sleep the first couple nights, but otherwise I didn't really experience any withdrawal symptoms.
I realize that a one year taper may not really be all that practical for many people, but for those of you who have the time and access to enough phenibut, I'd say a long taper beats cold turkey with this stuff any day of the week. I hope this is useful or relevant to somebody.
Now... if I could only quit taking this pesky suboxone... Hopefully I will return with taper details on that venture before too terribly long. Wish me luck
Cheers,
-Squiggler (~)
Needless to say, within a couple weeks I was phenibut dependent, and within a couple months I had doubled my daily dose, religiously taking over 7g of phenibut on a daily basis.
If you've ever heard the horror stories or have been physically dependent on phenibut yourself you probably know that this was sort of a pickle... Despite phenibut's legality and availability, my habit became expensive and harder to manage, not to mention that the positive effects I experienced from taking the drug were heavily diminished by the tolerance I had built up.
Around the one and a half year mark I decided that I had to draw the line. I was horrified of the withdrawal, but I was sick of being dependent on yet another substance (in addition to suboxone prescribed daily and various other substances I was taking at the time). Luckily I was in no rush and I figured if I took my time tapering, the process might be relatively painless... which brings me to the point of this whole post:
As of this week and after two and a half long years, I have finally made a clean break from phenibut, and though the process involved a year of meticulous tapering, I parted ways with the substance experiencing no discernible withdrawal symptoms.
The moral of the story is, phenibut is a scary substance that has caused a lot of people a lot of discomfort when they attempted to quit taking it abruptly while physically dependent. For the sake of those of you who are struggling with phenibut dependence and feel like there's no way to get off the stuff, or for anybody just generally interested in the details of my taper, I will sketch out a rough timeline below:
First I bought a capping/tamping apparatus and some gel caps along with a milligram scale. Both are readily available online and are relatively inexpensive (these also come in handy for portioning out <1mg doses of suboxone, which I am currently tapering).
The '00' size gel caps will hold roughly .75g of phenibut powder each if tightly tamped, and my dose at the time I decided to quit was around 7.5g (two daily doses of 3.75g each). So..... that's 5 capsules, twice a day.
Month 1:
The first part of the taper was easy and didn't really require much measurement. I simply knocked off one pill at night so I was only taking 9 caps a day. Two weeks later I subtracted one from my morning dose, bringing me down to 8.
(6g daily)
Month 2:
7 pills a day for two weeks (4 morning/3 evening)
6 pills a day for two weeks (3/3)
(4.5g daily)
Month 3:
5 pills a day for two weeks (3/2)
4 pills a day for two weeks (2/2)
(3g daily)
Month 4:
At this point I decided to start marking half capsules for fear that the taper might effect my ability to sleep at night. To do this I just filled some without tamping them... the result is not by any means exact, but it worked out.
3.5 pills a day for 2 weeks (2/1.5)
3 pills a day for 2 weeks (1.5/1.5)
(2.25g daily)
Month 5:
3 pills a day for 2 more weeks
2.5 pills a day for 2 weeks (1.5/1)
(~1.85g daily)
Month 6:
At this point I was finding the drops in my dose a little more noticeable, so I decided to slow down.
2.5 pills a day for a month (1.5/1)
(~1.85g daily)
Month 7
2 pills a day for a month (1/1)
(1.5g daily)
Month 8
1.5 pills a day for a month (1/0.5)
(~1.2 g daily)
Month 9
At this point I was no longer able to comfortably decrease my dosage in half-pill increments, so I decided to start weighing my doses. I admit that I hesitated for a while, just because of how much of a pain in the ass weighing out two doses of powder a day seemed, but it was really worth it... using the scale, I was able to taper very gradually, making the rest of the rest of the process feel much smoother.
I took 1.1g a day for two weeks (.6/.5)
And .9g a day for two weeks (.5/.4)
Month 10
.7g a day for 2 weeks (.4/.3)
.5g a day for 1 week (.3/.2)
.4g a day for 1 week (.2/.2)
Month 11
.3g (300mg) a day for 1 week (150mg/150mg)
260mg a day for 1 week (130/130)
220mg a day for 1 week (110/110)
180mg a day for 1 week (90/90)
Month 12
At this point I went and got a big pill organizer and weighed out the whole month's doses in a sitting. The daily doses went roughly as follows 180, 170, 170, 160, 150, 140, 130, 120, 110, 100, 90, 80, 75, 70, 65, 60, 55, 50, 45, 40, 35, 30, 25, 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 12, 10, 10
Once I reached the 10mg mark (2 daily doses of 5mg), I was able to jump off rather painlessly. I may have lost a little sleep the first couple nights, but otherwise I didn't really experience any withdrawal symptoms.
I realize that a one year taper may not really be all that practical for many people, but for those of you who have the time and access to enough phenibut, I'd say a long taper beats cold turkey with this stuff any day of the week. I hope this is useful or relevant to somebody.
Now... if I could only quit taking this pesky suboxone... Hopefully I will return with taper details on that venture before too terribly long. Wish me luck
Cheers,
-Squiggler (~)
