Opioids opioid effects on weight gain/weight loss. anybody know about this?

[vikenRedbull]

definitly lost weight making sure i saved room for next dose. didnt like eating a huge meal to get that hard nod and pass out,

 

[grace/wastelands]

my first 3 months of heroin use (IV only) I went from 170 to 130 lbs. Been on suboxone for the past 6 months and my weight has stayed at 125lbs. I'm 6foot tall btw...

 

[BurnedMan]

not to mention you (read:I) can lose 20+ lbs in one day thru sweat/vomiting/diarrhea when in WD.

20+ lbs seems a bit too high, man. Now I realize it's "water weight" but in ONE day? I seriously doubt that. Not calling you a liar or anything, it just sounds too extreme. I've had my fair share of WDs although vomiting doesn't affect me much (I take antihistamines if I feel nauseous) and usually I feel cold and not sweating, esp in the winter. I also take loperamide for diarrhea so I just can't imagine losing anything more than five lbs in a WD day, no matter how intense.

 

[VegasFulham]

I dropped a bunch of weight using heroin back in the day. I was also a squatter so had to walk a lot. It decreased my appetite. After a couple of weeks, I dropped around 20 pounds. I was pretty much getting high and walking and barely eating. Combine all of that and I was losing weight pretty quickly.

 

[Phat5o]

This topic has piqued my interest. I've been on MMT since August and this has become a large problem for me. I swear I gained at least 20 kilos (35-40 lbs) in a matter of, well, 8 months of daily methadone use. Now, lemme clarify something. Even on methadone I was always chasing the euphoria, and so I'd take my weekly dose (once a week), save it, and take it only twice a week, half a week's dose worth... in only one day. That's about 240mg of methadone a day, twice a week. Needless to say, the tremendous weight gain is exactly what caused me to stop taking it. My last dose was about 280mg, and I took it on 4th of April. Now I'm almost 1 month methadone-free and I've already lost a few kilos I think.

While codeine and oxy, on the contrary completely killed my appetite. Codeine especially made me LOSE about 20 kilos. Being quite overweight and all, it was a welcome change. I had finally reached my optimal weight through opiate addiction. Still, there's only so long you can get high with codeine, so the rest is history. I think every opiate affects the body differently, or everyone is just different, in the end.

good job on getting off the methadone. methadone, anti-depressant and anti-psychotics seem to be the worst offenders. i also heard of big weight gains on pregabalin and gabapentin. looks as most opioids seem to be pretty trivial in terms of weight gain/loss and largely depend on how use affects eating habits. like for me, i know when i get on hydro or oxy i get very intense sugar cravings.

 

[limonov]

I was addicted for about 18 months, about a year of which was maintaining an addiction with poppy tea (I worked out I used around 750-1000kg worth of poppy seeds in a year heh) as well as taking homebake (morphine sulphate cooked into heroin), oxycodone, methadone, desethyltramadol, morphine & DHC to top things off.

When I was just taking opiates I lost a bit of weight, though it plateaued at what apparently is a fairly healthy weight for my height...but I was pretty fucking skinny and I undeniably lost like 30kg over about 6-8 months...though I was overweight. My diet initially wasn't too bad too.

When I started heavily abusing dissociatives (ketamine/methoxetamine/PCP/3-MeO-PCP) my health got a lot worse...the methoxetamine particularly suppressed my appetite quite heavily, I'd forget to eat for a day or two. My diet also got worse. I also started abusing benzos fairly heavily (3.5g of diazepam over a couple of months, something like 150 midazolam vials over a month). I lost about 15kg, I think I was about 64kg at my very very lightest, which is particularly fucked considering how constipated I was.

Interesting, once I cut out the dissociatives and heavily reduced my benzo intake...though continued to be addicted to opiates, I gained back the 15kg that I had lost. I ate much better and stopped skipping meals. Once I quit opiates I gained a little weight very slowly, only about 5kg in like 8 months. I took benzos (like 1g of diazepam, 0.5g of alprazolam) for about a month when I kicked, it was really shitty but very doable wih heaps of benzos and a bunch of preparation. I think I had mild benzo withdrawal...I did take retarded amounts of alprazolam to sleep for ages, and suffered days of brutal insomnia, muscle spasms & 'brainzaps' for a week or so. I was much healthier when I quit, but certainly didn't gain weight suddenly or anything.

From observation, it will make you lose a bit of weight, but it is very easy to be overweight and a junkie...it really comes down to lifestyle, how active your life is and how much you eat. Adittedly, my period of addiction was fairly extreme, but I think it shows how it really comes down to lifestyle. Opiates probably help you keep weight off, but despite my excess I was a healthy (if slender) weight for about 80% of my addiction. It took serious dissociative use for my weight to actually drop substantially & worryingly. And benzos didn't seem to affect my weight either.

 

[Oxide]

Each time I pick my habit back up where I left off, I drop at least 20 pounds.

It's difficult for me to put the weight back on, and causes me a lot of "holy shit, I look terrible" type of moments.