Big Ol' Collection of Opiate Withdrawal Aids

[Troglodyte]

This is a list ive compiled from the scientific literature and subjective experience/reports of agents that attenuate withdrawal symptoms.
I can supply the link to the studies that support most of these drugs, so if you'd like to read any of them, just pm me.
Please add anything i've missed. Let's try to make this sort of a big and dandy-my-god-kill-me-make-it-stop thread, with an exhaustive list of drugs that will help do just that. I will continue to add to this list when i find more potential w/d aids. And hopefully one day the "silver bullet" will be found that stops the whole chain reaction near it's sources. Til then:

Guanfacine
legally attainable(online) nootropic, that shows all the benefits of clonidine (a2A receptor agonist) but with less sedation and effects on blood pressure. It also causes endogenous secretion of HGH

ADDX-OX...Oh shit...this seems like a great candidate for a silver bullet against withdawal!!!
ADDX-OX has been pursued for optimization with the intention to be a truly powerful total addiction cessation agent, either as a stand-alone agent or within an integrated protocol for promotion of the very most optimal addiction cessation outcomes. The whole conception and subsequent design and R&D behind ADDX-OX was to create a superior and wholly adverse effect free non-psychoactive agent for addicition cessation that surpasses the efficacy of Ibogaine. Within that this forumation encompasses potent activation of the same pathways expressed by ibogaine, other than the psychomimetic pathways, as well as additional supportive addiction cessation pathways."

This is a new and experimental aid that is available online, tho it's pricey. It was created by a collective of respected chemists, neuroscientist, pharmacologists, and other researchers, specifically as an addiction sessation aid. "Scientifically Engineered Proprietary Herbal Extract Formulation Optimized with Goals within Acting Upon Resetting Addiction Targeted Pathways, Promoting Cerebrotonic Restoration, and Counteracting Hyper-Psychoneurodysfunctional States..."

"In human trials ADDX-OX demonstrated rapid and near complete alleviation of cravings and withdrawals in >86% of subjects within a broad range of substance addiction paradigms. In the majority of subjects a complete negation of cravings and withdrawals was demosntrated after just the first dose..."



SORM-OX
optimized low-tolerance analgesic extract. It is a very atypical agonist at the opiate receptors, it features a greatly reduced beta-arrestin expression which indicates a greatly reduced tolerance formation which may have significant effects if one were to substitute this for thier doc and taper. tho this is a very experimental compound and you'll have to research this one for yourself. I don't claim to have had the time to adequately research it and contemplate it's potential in this regard. i list it to raise the notion of it's existence, you'll have to take it from there til i get more time



ondansetron
inhibitory on 5ht3 receptor, helps nausia and potentially more

buspar
serotonin 5HT1A receptor partial agonist
acting through the serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenergic
systems useful in both acute w/d and as adjunct to taper

NMDA receptor antagonists
can significantly attenuate secondary symptoms caused by excess excitory amino acids
Research supports DXM and Ketamine for this purpose. I wonder if more subtle NMDA antagonists like memantine share this property. i have not found anything in the literature

Benzos

microdose naloxone/naltrexone during taper
Potentially very effective. unfortunately the study had a very unscientific administration of the low dose naltrexone, as they just put some in the water of the mice. However my experience supports a .1mg- .3mg dose being effective

gabapentinoids inc. phenibut, baclofen, gabapentin, and pregabalin
somehow, they are magic pills that fell to earth from a divine and empathetic ethereum

clonidine or lofexidine
stop noradrenaline efflux and related symptoms

Leviteracetam

Quetiapine(seroquel),
an atypical antipsychotic acting through the
dopaminergic and serotoninergic pathways, was tried for opioid detoxification in an
open label study. With 4 hourly use of 2 tablets 25mg each there was reduced
anxiety, pain and craving for the opioids

verapamil
calcium channel blocker. careful dosing is essential. serious or even life threatening side effects can oocccur in large
doses, however currently accepted therapeutic doses were well tolerated

methocarbamol (to possibly aid in
Aching muscles and limbs
Anxiety
Insomnia
Goosebumps/chills
Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS)
Gastrointestinal (GI) distress

5-HTP was proven in studies to help with muscle spasms to some degree

loperamide
large doses, 100mg+, associated with prolonged QT interval and issues of electrical conduction in the heart which can be fatal in people with with cardiac conditions, known or undiagnosed. Yet the long half life of lope creates a cumulative effect upon repeated large doses that can cause serious heart arrhythmias including Torsade de Pointes and/or death in even healthy heart tissue. CAUTION

dicyclomine
addresses abdominal cramping

ibuprofen
Displays more robust effect than other NSAIDs or OTC pain relievers

cyclobenzaprine
God i hate it, yet many find it relieves the muscle spasms of akasthesia and rls. Gabapentinoids like baclofen, phenibut, lyrica
and gabapentin are also very effective for this

Dopamine agonists such as pramipexole (Mirapex), rotigotine (Neupro), and ropinirole (Requip)
are very effective for RLS/akasthesia

trazodone or seroquel
are effective for insomnia as are other sedating atypical antipsychotics and tricyclics, also remeron has proven effective.
Wish i had any of these...Been up for many days... sleep, please, sleep

diphenhydramine or hydroxyzine
For Pruritus and/or rhinorrhea, However many people find antihistamines to worsen some symptoms like rls


-------------------------For Paws---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PHENYLPIRACETAM
LEVITERACETAM
modafinil
adrafinil
noopept
amphetamine
citicoline
rhodiola
LOW dose tianeptine(only if you have will power)
SSRI's
Gabapentinoids (they just keep popping up, don't they?)
Bupropion


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I plan on arranging them according to some logic that escapes me at the moment, but should add context.
As i said, i will be adding drugs as i find them, and i encourage anybody to add to the list, whether from scientific literature or personal experience
Opiate withdrawal is an extremely complicated and layered process. There are primary causes(like correction of mu receptor regulation and noradrenaline efflux inervating many, many targets), and there are secondary causes(like excitory amino acids like glutamine running amok), plus many other downstream reactions. Much of it is a chain reaction, So i would think that there are many places where the process can be interupted to some extent, A drug that stalled the chain reaction would be the silver bullet (the coors light) that everyone is looking for.

Hell, i still can't explain the spontaneous remission of my opiate dependence/addiction. I've been using for the better part of 15 freaking years and one day i planned on switching back to sub, so i was waiting to get sick, and...well, it just never freaking happened. I'm 20 something days clean today, the longest in at least 7+ years. and the only w/d i had was 2 nights with mild-moderate rls/akasthesia, and significant insomnia. But i'm well aware that that's nothing! I'm lucky and it is a miracle, but something must have happened in my brain to permit this. My best guess is some sort of calcium channel blockade/gaba b activity from high dose gabapentin plus phenibut(these are NOT calcium channel BLOCKERS, high doses of those can be fatal), but it would have to be repeated to know for sure. And then addiction to either or both of those(esp phenibut) needs to be avoided. But however it happened, It taught me that it IS possible to find that silver bullet. i'm trying to contact addiction researchers to take a look at my case in hopes of learning something from it that can help others.

In the meantime, here's this list. Lets add to it whenever we find a significant aid to the symptoms, or, in time, perhaps block/avoid them all together.

 

[Troglodyte]

Hopefully this will be useful to someone. And ideally I'm hoping people have more to add to the list. Drugs, supplements, herbs, balms, exercises, meditation(but good luck doing that during acute phase, if you can your a better man than i) foods, vitamins, light therapies, an all cookie diet, suspending yourself from hooks... I don't know, Whatever has helped you or someone you know in the past get thru w/d with less pain. Please share it. In conclusion, bump...

 

[F.U.B.A.R.]

Unfortunately there is no silver bullet to 'cure' withdrawal. Taking lots of other shit only makes the problem worse.

You either suffer, or substitute for a long half life opiate such as buprenorphine or methadone, then reduce very, very slowly. This DOES work, but can take years.

However, the biggest factor contributing to a painless withdrawal is your state of mind. You have to REALLY, REALLY want to get clean. If you don't, there's no point trying.

 

[curtdog]

Hi. I have been wanting to quit after 15 so on years also and feel the same way as you. Can you explain a little more on how you did it.

 

[Troglodyte]

I have to respectfully disagree with the majority of what you've said. For starters, you talking to someone who was able to walk away from a 15 year habit(and i get sicker than anyone i know generally) by accident and had essentially zero withdrawal. And trust me, it was not my attitude at the time. Why do you say there's no way to arrest the cascading process of withdrawal near it's origin? what is that statement based on? In theory, it should be very possible and there are many well respected researchers who also think it's possible and are working on it now.

The are at least 2 points that i'm aware of where the process could be stopped. First is stopping the norepinephrine efflux that innervates many regions of the brain, thus kicking into action much of the withdrawal process. They've done solid studies using mice where they administer low dose naltrexone along with morphine, then induce withdrawal. when they do this they find greatly reduced activation of these projecting neurons, and they suggest a few possible mechanisms for how this might happen, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18367303 i used to have a link to the full text, which is where the really useful info is, but i can't seem to find it right now. The second juncture, where at least part of the process can be stopped, is at the NMDA receptors, as a surge of glutamate is responsible for much of the withdrawal effect, although from what i can gather, that part of the process is downstream from the norepinephrine efflux, so if that can be sufficiently arrested, we might not need to bother treating the glutamate surge as there wouldn't be one. And this is what i mean by catching the process close enough to it's source as to prevent all the further aspects of the chain reaction.

It seems That the most rudimentary starting position would be at the mu- delta- and kappa-opiate receptors themselves, which is one of the most likely sources for the lack of efflux in the low-dose naltrexone mice studies. If a method to completely normalize those receptors like those of an un-addicted person, then i person should theoretically just avoid withdrawal completely. This is what they think is behind the greatly attenuated w/d in the mice, that the low dose naltrexone administered along side the morphine helped to return more normal functioning to the opiate receptors. i believe medical science can perfect that. It's accomplished far more difficult tasks in the past, and currently there's more research into this area than ever before.

I completely agree that you need to Really, REALLY want to be clean, and take certain steps to help minimize the risk of relapse, cuz that part might be the hardest one to accomplish in absolute terms. I don't think that mind state can make the difference between a normal withdrawal and a painless one however. I think it just helps us to better endure the pure hell we'll be going thru and increases our chances of seeing it all the way thru, and certainly more.

And lastly, taking a bunch of other shit can possibly make it worse, but thats very much dependant on which shit we're talking about and how long it's used for. the majority of meds on the above list present very little risk of making things worse. Loperamide can because it seems to have a knack for being used/abused in an ongoing manner instead of being used as a taper. Among the many dangers of this is the way that repeated high doses WILL SERIOUSLY fuck up the electrical conduction in the heart, to the point of torsades de pointes, and death is proving not uncommon. With other meds, a new addiction can be a whole new problem you don't need. This is true for benzos and high dose gabapentenoids. The latter of which is what i see as the only real option for my lack of withdrawal. I did use low dose repeated naloxone/naltrexone for a couple weeks before i stopped, but i also was using gabapentin in doses of about 7 - 10g(with some tolerance) along with 1 - 1.5g phenibut. Please don't start at crazy doses like that, you'll just get sudden release of skeletal muscles resulting in discomfort and an epic case of the "dropsies", then you'll pick whatever it was back up, and possibly fall over because your leg just gave out. This level of these drugs is completely unnecessary. My tolerance is to blame for those doses, without a decent tolerance, do not attempt that, and remember it takes 2 hours for it to work, so dont just keep taking pills thinking nothings happening. Now Up until the day before, i had used the 1-2 bags of quality shit that i had lazily tapered to, then i was waiting the next day to get sick so i could switch to sub(i took the gabbies and phen to ease this transition... and also for recreation)...and it never happened, i just didn't get sick. Both of those meds are calcium channel modulators(NOT blockers, high doses of calcium channel blockers can be fatal), and, not sure if it's relevant, but phen is also a gabaB agonist. But perhaps some sort of saturation effect of those drugs on calcium channels essentially just stopped the whole process. I don't know nearly enough about the effect of the calcium channel modulators to speculate on how or where they might help in the process of withdrawal, but they surely freaking do. I was also able to lower those doses a lot and still have little to no withdrawal. It took about 2 weeks, but then i just stopped everything and i'm clean. Shit, its probably almost 2 months now. Thank flaming athiest christ! But remember that large doses of gabapentin, and far more so, phenibut, can cause it's own addiction. Don't trade addictions. Instead reflect on finally being free!

I can't promise anyone that they'll have the same experience as i did, with almost no withdrawal. But common sense measures, like tapering down, and adjuncts like ultra low dose naloxone(repeated every few hours) or naltrexone (twice daily), can help significantly too.
I wish anyone and everyone the best of luck in thier own journeys. And i will try to keep this list updated when i find new info. Cheers

Unfortunately there is no silver bullet to 'cure' withdrawal. Taking lots of other shit only makes the problem worse.

You either suffer, or substitute for a long half life opiate such as buprenorphine or methadone, then reduce very, very slowly. This DOES work, but can take years.

However, the biggest factor contributing to a painless withdrawal is your state of mind. You have to REALLY, REALLY want to get clean. If you don't, there's no point trying.