Opioids STIMULANTS to kick OPIOIDS? Not as preposterous as it sounds: Historical overview and summary. Add your experiences, success stories, fiascos👇

[Jabberwocky]

Swapping one addiction for another is a huge win if the one you now have involves a kick that's subjectively much easier from an opioid addicts perspective.......

So you kicked meth finally, what was that like?

Worst thing I ever went through in my life

What happened?

I slept for two whole weeks. I mean I didn't sleep the whole time. Plus when I got up I was starving. Ate everything I could find... Twinkies, zingers.
But that s*** didn't satiate me so I had my ex bring me In-N-Out, Del Tac. Ate huge quantities. Also healthier stuff. She still cares about me. She was the one who inspired me to do it, by breaking up w me. Fucking b****

So how you doing now?

I'm depressed, life seems pointless and I think about smoking meth all the time.

But you haven't?

Nope. Not yet at least. But this brain fog sucks, which is why I drink about three cups of coffee when I wake up and more throughout the day.......

I have had 2 runs with meth. The first one lasted 6-8 moths of daily IV use and I managed to quit that and stay clean for 4-5 years. I quit mainly by five steps:

1) Removing all meth connections from my life and relocating to a meth free area
2) Taking heavy doses of prescribed Seroquel for about a year then switching to much lower doses of Abilify (these prevent meth working effectively)
3) Taking 30 mg a day of prescribed dexamfetamine (these help cut through the antipsychotic mental fog)
4) Doing 100 NA meetings in 100 days (these are a constant reminder of my goals)
5) Doing yoga and lap swimming every single day for around 6 months (these give some pleasure every day)

During this period I also had a serious relationship that really gave me a reason to stay straight. I only picked up again after that relationship collapsed for non-drug related reasons.

My second run with meth has lasted 18 months or so. It started as IV but after 6 months I switched to smoking. It’s quite different to the first experience because it’s a lot more connected to chemsex (which I didn’t have anything to do with the first time). In this second time around I have been able to stop for periods of 1 week to up to 2 months a few times but always relapse. Each time I stop usually involves 2 days of utter exhaustion where i stay in bed.I have relied more on will power than the steps outlined above. I have a lot deeper connections with meth suppliers now and they are connected to the sex industry which complicates things quite a bit.

Recently I’ve taken to locking my drugs in a time lock safe for a week at a time. I bought it on Amazon for $150. That has been quite helpful. This time around I don’t want to take antipsychotics although I know how helpful they can be. They make me too tired and sap all my energy. So I’m trying to rely more on will power and distracting myself with some work. It is really not very easy and I often pick up the pipe and suddenly lose a whole week of doing nothing but smoke, whore, and whinge on Bluelight. The amount of money i can spend doing so is ridiculous.

I now I need to restart that 5 step strategy outlined above because it is proven to work. But it;s hard because it makes me face the fact I don’t have anything much in life besides drugs.

Obviously I can’t speak for opiate users, but i feel the psychological demands of meth are extremely difficult to overcome relative to the physical ones. 2-3 days of feeling like an exhausted piece of shit and you are through the physical stuff.

 

[darvocet21]

I have had 2 runs with meth. The first one lasted 6-8 moths of daily IV use and I managed to quit that and stay clean for 4-5 years. I quit mainly by five steps:

1) Removing all meth connections from my life and relocating to a meth free area
2) Taking heavy doses of prescribed Seroquel for about a year then switching to much lower doses of Abilify (these prevent meth working effectively)
3) Taking 30 mg a day of prescribed dexamfetamine (these help cut through the antipsychotic mental fog)
4) Doing 100 NA meetings in 100 days (these are a constant reminder of my goals)
5) Doing yoga and lap swimming every single day for around 6 months (these give some pleasure every day)

During this period I also had a serious relationship that really gave me a reason to stay straight. I only picked up again after that relationship collapsed for non-drug related reasons.

My second run with meth has lasted 18 months or so. It started as IV but after 6 months I switched to smoking. It’s quite different to the first experience because it’s a lot more connected to chemsex (which I didn’t have anything to do with the first time). In this second time around I have been able to stop for periods of 1 week to up to 2 months a few times but always relapse. Each time I stop usually involves 2 days of utter exhaustion where i stay in bed.I have relied more on will power than the steps outlined above. I have a lot deeper connections with meth suppliers now and they are connected to the sex industry which complicates things quite a bit.

Recently I’ve taken to locking my drugs in a time lock safe for a week at a time. I bought it on Amazon for $150. That has been quite helpful. This time around I don’t want to take antipsychotics although I know how helpful they can be. They make me too tired and sap all my energy. So I’m trying to rely more on will power and distracting myself with some work. It is really not very easy and I often pick up the pipe and suddenly lose a whole week of doing nothing but smoke, whore, and whinge on Bluelight. The amount of money i can spend doing so is ridiculous.

I now I need to restart that 5 step strategy outlined above because it is proven to work. But it;s hard because it makes me face the fact I don’t have anything much in life besides drugs.

Obviously I can’t speak for opiate users, but i feel the psychological demands of meth are extremely difficult to overcome relative to the physical ones. 2-3 days of feeling like an exhausted piece of shit and you are through the physical stuff.

Great post with tons of hard-won wisdom

 

[Keif' Richards]

I really wish that I could say that this was a viable means of quitting Opioids, but I really, really don't think it is. I've used stimulants when I've been in the midst of Opioid withdrawal in the past and I would have to say that each time was an utterly negative experience. Instead of a magnification of a normal thought process, it just felt like all of my withdrawal symptoms were instantly exacerbated.

I'm a major proponent of using drugs to quit drugs, but in my experience, the goal is to help ease symptoms of withdrawal as opposed to getting high. There is actually a lot of evidence regarding people trying to quit Opioids using Cocaine and on the flipside, people using Heroin to quit Cocaine.

There is a really famous surgeon named William Halsted who is widely considered one of the fathers of modern surgery. He was known to have championed practices like wearing gloves during surgery among other stuff we now take for granted. His heyday was in the early 1900's. He was one of the founders of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

He was also a wicked drug addict. I'm probably paraphrasing here, but my understanding is that he used Cocaine heavily and developed a debilitating addiction to it. He was studying the effects of the drug in a variety of scenarioes and even developed the practice of injecting Cocaine into the vertebrae to induce anesthesia. Well, he began using Cocaine way too much and eventually became unable to fulfill his duties. He eventually became addicted to Morphine and Heroin as they were prescribed as aides to ease his withdrawal from Cocaine. He then spent much of his career completely addicted to both Cocaine and Heroin.

Sigmund Freud is a great example of the naivete that leads to addiction. I love Freud because you can really kind of dive into the dude's mind because he was such a voravious writer of letters. He wrote letters all the time to everyone he knew and many of them are available to read. You can easily trace his downfall to Cocaine as he starts writing about how it is a flawless, miracle substance, then he starts mentioning how he almost killed a patient with Cocaine and you seem him start coming to the undeniable realization that it is a toxic substance. This only comes after a significant period of exposure to the drug. Freud never ended up as bad as Halsted did.

Freud had a friend, whose name is escaping me right now, Fleisch maybe? His friend was addicted to Morphine as a result of an amputation that left him with chronic, debilitating pain. Freud, innocently enough, thought that this new substance, Cocaine, could be used to rid him of his Morphine addiction. I know that his friend ended up severely addicted to both Cocaine and Morphine and I'm pretty sure he died in the gutter and Freud regretted it his entire life.

There's definitely some precedent for this notion, but it doesn't seem to be at all effective.

 

[Keif' Richards]

I guess I should temper this answer with some other possibilities. I don't think that its entirely insane to take 10mg of Amphetamine in the morning to make up for the lack of energy during Opioid withdrawal, but I still tend to bet against its usefulness.

A lot of drugs are out there that make us feel good in normal situations. Stimulants, alcohol etc. However, my experience is that using Alcohol during withdrawal is an absolute nightmare. 5 minutes of relief, followed by a nearly instant hangover and severe worsening of Akathisia.

Stimulants, like I said, are not much better. I would have to say that the experience is like "being on speed and being in withdrawal". The speed doesn't actually change or improve the withdrawal.

Both using Alcohol and/or stimulants can also greatly reinforce your desire to use Opioids. The hangover/comedown will put you into a frenzy for Opioids in my experience.

 

[darvocet21]

Oh my Lord, opioids are God's antidote to stimulants! They're also the antidote to many other things... which might explain why so few things are antidotes for opioids.

I believe the historical evidence that cocaine works but have serious doubts about amphetamines and similar drugs like Ritalin. Its possible cocaine blunts opioid withdrawals due to some mechanism related to its anesthetic properties.

And yet cocaine is such a paradoxical substance and also such a potentially toxic one that I cannot recommend it in good conscience to anybody.

Still and all if anyone has the experience of using cocaine or another stimulant prior to, during or after detoxing please share it. I keep thinking there's something we're overlooking here. Maybe it's related to focusing on not combining them... Which is sort of counterintuitive when speedballs are one of the oldest and most popular drug combinations of all time.

 

[keseyhitchens]

I guess I should temper this answer with some other possibilities. I don't think that its entirely insane to take 10mg of Amphetamine in the morning to make up for the lack of energy during Opioid withdrawal, but I still tend to bet against its usefulness.

A lot of drugs are out there that make us feel good in normal situations. Stimulants, alcohol etc. However, my experience is that using Alcohol during withdrawal is an absolute nightmare. 5 minutes of relief, followed by a nearly instant hangover and severe worsening of Akathisia.

Stimulants, like I said, are not much better. I would have to say that the experience is like "being on speed and being in withdrawal". The speed doesn't actually change or improve the withdrawal.

Both using Alcohol and/or stimulants can also greatly reinforce your desire to use Opioids. The hangover/comedown will put you into a frenzy for Opioids in my experience.

Do you have access to Kratom?

 

[Keif' Richards]

Do you have access to Kratom?

Yo Kesey, what's up? I'm a deadhead mysef. Many a time have I considered swapping my tired, old, shitty-resolution avatar for a steal your face or marching bear. Maybe someday. Have you seen Dead and Company live at all? I saw them a couple years ago. It was my first dead show since seeing Furthur in Manchester, NH. I'm always asking people how they feel about John Mayer. I was so resolute against him being in the band, not because I hate the guy, I just didn't really see how his musical style would jive with the rest of the band. I had to trust their judgement and give him a chance. I'm not saying he is even 10% the musician that Jerry was, but I was surprised by how his jams complimented the band. Anyway...

Are you asking me directly if I have access to Kratom? I've never actually used it, but I've thought about it a few times. It was just always easier to get dope. C'est lav vie. I'm not using dope anymore so I don't really have any use for Kratom. I am however, heavily addicted to Salvia Divinorum. My life is a constant psychedelic nightmare hell, moments of total boredom, punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

C'est la vie quand tu es complètement foutu my dad was a quebecois immigrant to Massachusetts. He taught me french for basically no reason. Not only that, he taught me the dialect of French spoken in Canada, thus, I can't even really communicate with people from France. Is my life just a giant mistake?? A cosmic joke? Am I alive?<Panic Attack>

 

[DeathIndustrial88]

I've used methamp to get through heroin & tramadol withdrawals numerous times. Of course it helps but depending on how you control your intake of the harder stimulants, you could end up stuck in heroin withdrawal & a stimulant crash at the same time, which is brutal.

I have been on buprenorphine maintenance for a long time. I didn't get on it to get off or away from opioids though. I still love them & believe they offer me both medicinal and recreational qualities. Being on bupe gave me the option to still get the medicine my body/brain needs without having to be a criminal or spend tons of money or hunt down the dope man every other day. But as we know, bupe is a very lackluster opioid, almost impossible of causing any euphoria after a certain time on it. This ends up causing cravings to return and I have found that with long enough clean time from meth/amp that just taking 1 25mg tablet of ephedrine or 120mg of psuedo synergizes nicely with the buprenorphine.

I know that in the past, they use to make opioid/stimulant combination medicines because the actions of the 2 combined are a greater sum (for analgesic purposes & recreational IME) than either used alone. So I find the mild stimulant properties of ephedrine to sort of give the buprenorphine more of a 'glow', which can help immensely.

So while not exactly withdrawals if you're on maintenance, but I find if you know what you're doing a bit of a mild stimulant can really help with cravings (for either opioids or stimulants). Although it is not something attainable if used daily.

 

[darvocet21]

Yo Kesey, what's up? I'm a deadhead mysef. Many a time have I considered swapping my tired, old, shitty-resolution avatar for a steal your face or marching bear. Maybe someday. Have you seen Dead and Company live at all? I saw them a couple years ago. It was my first dead show since seeing Furthur in Manchester, NH. I'm always asking people how they feel about John Mayer. I was so resolute against him being in the band, not because I hate the guy, I just didn't really see how his musical style would jive with the rest of the band. I had to trust their judgement and give him a chance. I'm not saying he is even 10% the musician that Jerry was, but I was surprised by how his jams complimented the band. Anyway...

Are you asking me directly if I have access to Kratom? I've never actually used it, but I've thought about it a few times. It was just always easier to get dope. C'est lav vie. I'm not using dope anymore so I don't really have any use for Kratom. I am however, heavily addicted to Salvia Divinorum. My life is a constant psychedelic nightmare hell, moments of total boredom, punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

C'est la vie quand tu es complètement foutu my dad was a quebecois immigrant to Massachusetts. He taught me french for basically no reason. Not only that, he taught me the dialect of French spoken in Canada, thus, I can't even really communicate with people from France. Is my life just a giant mistake?? A cosmic joke? Am I alive?<Panic Attack>

Salvia addiction: hooked on hyperspace

 

[JTemperance]

PLEASE SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE USING STIMULANTS TO HELP WITH OPIOID WITHDRAWALS (VOLUNTARY OR INVOLUNTARY), THE GOOD, BAD & UGLY!

Mild doses of stimulants seem totally logical for relieving withdrawal symptoms, especially the lingering fatigue and depression.

Yes, there are the "horror stories" of morphinists getting stung out on cocaine in the 1880s or S.F. junkies being prescribed Methedrine ampoules to IV in the 1950s. But within reason, I think it is perfectly sensible.

I recall the "protocol" at a fancy detox place (the first outpatient one in NYC, I believe, catering to middle-class addicts), where patients were prescribed a combo of: methylphenidate, clonidine, lorazepam, and trazodone. In what doses, I don't know, but it seems like a good mix to me (though I'd only want it after my 21-day methadone taper, not in lieu of it).

Personally, I've found tramadol to punch far above its "weight" in analgesia when used in withdrawal, which I think is largely due to the stimulating properties it has as an SNRI. Also, real stimulants like methylphenidate or dextroamphetamine serve as a good counterbalance to clonidine-induced fatigue/hypotension.

I've personally noticed that a decent dose of amphetamines will eliminate about 80% of my symptoms in the moderate states of withdrawal. I've heard some experienced users suggest kicking a habit over the course of a massive several-day binge on cocaine or amphetamines, which makes some sense too.

There is a danger of the stimulants working too well in withdrawal, tempting you to go crazy with the stims, especially since comedowns are much worse ("just like I remember them!") without an XL shot of heavy-duty opiates to take the edge off.

Of course, a lot of people stockpile or otherwise obtain benzos for an opiate kick, and balancing out the uppers and the downers can be an entertaining way to pass the time as you withdraw from opiates (not to mention the entertainment value of gabapentinoids in that time)... but it shouldn't persist too long, naturally