12 replies to this topic

[moleface]

From what I understand, alcohol acts primarily on gaba-a with only mild gaba-b action, and phenibut's mechanism of action is the opposite.

I'm about to take my usual month break from phenibut, and this time I'm going to try to cover up the withdrawal by drinking small non-recreational doses of alcohol every few hours. I'm basing this on my theory that since alcohol acts mostly on gaba-a, this will mitigate most of my phenibut withdrawal symptoms while also allowing the gaba-b receptor to recover. Obviously a short run on benzos would be more ideal since they're far more selective to the gaba-a receptor, but I have no way to obtain any of those.

Thoughts on this theory? Does anyone happen to have any info on just how profoundly alcohol affects the gaba-b receptor?

[Mike_N]

Kava Kava Extract may work as well.

From my own experience and from what others have told me, kava will lessen the effects of
alcohol and benzo wihdrawal so maybe it will help with the phenibut.

Kava appears to dance around the GABAa receptor but has virtually no addictive qualities for some reason.

NOTE: When I used this for withdrawal from alcohol, I USED A LOT. I had the NOW brand (250 mg 30% kavalactones).
I took as many as 50 caps in one day and probably 200+ caps over the course of 5-6 days. It didn't eliminate the
withdrawal symptoms but made them somewhat liveable.

I know about the liver fears..... but it did not seem to harm my liver.... aka, I'm still here.

[moleface]

Kava Kava Extract may work as well.

From my own experience and from what others have told me, kava will lessen the effects of
alcohol and benzo wihdrawal so maybe it will help with the phenibut.

Kava appears to dance around the GABAa receptor but has virtually no addictive qualities for some reason.

NOTE: When I used this for withdrawal from alcohol, I USED A LOT. I had the NOW brand (250 mg 30% kavalactones).
I took as many as 50 caps in one day and probably 200+ caps over the course of 5-6 days. It didn't eliminate the
withdrawal symptoms but made them somewhat liveable.

I know about the liver fears..... but it did not seem to harm my liver.... aka, I'm still here.

Thanks for the helpful advice, but I've already ruled out kava. I've got a limited timeframe between semesters of school, so it's necessary for me to start the withdrawal right now and I can't wait the time it would take for kava to ship.

Incidentally, you should look into http://www.nakamalathome.com/ brand kava in the future. I always got the same mild effect as you from the capped kava extracts until I tried this brand. Their stuff is profoundly intoxicating. Their Stone kava even had a moderately strong psychoactive element to it for me.

[Mike_N]

I might have to try that sometime!

[moleface]

I might have to try that sometime!

Yeah, you won't regret it. I was really surprised by the Stone kava they sell.

The only downside is that I got kind of a gross queasy feeling from it. Still though, I couldn't believe that kava was actually making me feel overt euphoria like this stuff did, especially considering how my previous experiences with kava had all yielded mediocre valerian-ish effects.

It isn't neurotoxic, so it's a great replacement for alcohol if you're looking for something like that in the future.

[moleface]

Well, this is certainly odd -

Day two of phenibut withdrawal and I don't feel any rebound anxiety. My hands are steady, I slept well last night, and I don't feel particularly anxious.

I've been taking it from the same batch for months, and the stuff definitely works - aside from the anxiolytic effects that I guess could be attributed to placebo, it also dilates my eyes like crazy.

The only thing I've been doing differently over the last several months is taking it with low dose dextromethorphan, which I'd heard helps prevent tolerance to daily use of various drugs. I wonder if that could have something to do with this. Weird.

On edit - I made the mistake of drinking a green tea, and now I can suddenly tell that I'm going through phen wd. Slight cold sweats, shakiness and elevated blood pressure. Still no mental crash or noticeable anxiety though.

Edited by moleface, 04 May 2013 - 02:23 PM.

[moleface]

I resumed the phenibut today after a week off.

Some notes on using alcohol for the withdrawal -

I wouldn't recommend it. My plan to drink limited amounts didn't work out too well - smaller amounts of alcohol didn't seem to do a whole lot to mitigate the phenibut withdrawal and instead I ended up just drinking to intoxication for the first four days of withdrawal. Although it allowed me to thankfully pass out for 5-6 hours each night, I woke up every morning feeling like DEATH. I could tell that I was never in any danger as far as seizures or anything like that are concerned, but the mental crash from a hangover on top of phenibut withdrawal made the entire experience far more unpleasant than it had to be.

So to sum up - small amounts of alcohol for phen wd produced negligible relief. Larger doses nicely covered up the symptoms, but the next day felt like monochromatic hell. Benzos would've been a much better choice, since they lack the shitty depressed feeling that alcohol hangovers tend to give me, but I don't have access to those.

Regarding the GABA-A vs B issue I brought up in the original post - I'd now assume that alcohol produces pretty minor GABA-B activity, since I drank pretty heavily for four days and it still didn't seem to impede my goal of reducing my phenibut tolerance. I've done this phen detox four times a year ever since I decided to take the stuff longterm, and nothing less than a week is ever enough to reduce my tolerance. In the past I tried 3-5 days off and it never works - and if the alcohol I drank for four days in a row had been acting heavily on GABA-B, that would've meant that I actually only gave the B receptors three days to recover. Yet today i took half the amount of phenibut I'd been taking a week ago and I'm getting profound effects from it again. Yay.

Edited by moleface, 11 May 2013 - 04:45 PM.

[lammas2]

First of all, did DXM help you with the tolerance?

Secondly, GABA-B agonism causes dopamine release, so besides GABA-B receptor downregulation, the downregulation of dopamine receptors is also a major player in phenibut withdrawal. To be more precise, only lower doses of phenibut increase dopaminergic activity, while higher doses actually inhibit it. This is also the reason why you can only get euphoric effects from lower doses, while higher doses cause excessive sedation (at least for me it's like that).

[Kaid]

You should jot down your dose amount for phenibut, dxm and ethanol for posterity

[Galaxyshock]

Best things for Phenibut wds:

Ashwagandha - "GABA mimicing", agonizes both GABA-A and GABA-B, in general doesn't produce wds itself but is effective
Gotu Kola - GABA-B agonist and increases the conversion of glutamate to GABA, very safe and no wds
Theanine - upregulates GABA-B, neuroprotective/anxiolytic through other mechanisms
Magnesium - NMDA-antagonist
other herbal anxiolytics like chamomile and valerian can help too. if depression is experienced, st.john's wort should help, + it also has GABA-affinity.

Alcohol is a bad choice as it releases endogenous PEA that phenibut actually antagonizes

[renfr]

Wow good luck, phenibut withdrawal is a true horror and when I mean horror it's worse than alcohol withdrawal, more like an in between between alcohol and benzos.
If you have a benzo to withdraw take them, I'm not sure how potent ashwagandha is as to agonism even with magnesium it may be not enough, don't hesitate to go to the ER if you feel like you're going to have a seizure.
I would suggest taper off and reduce the doses then use what the others suggest (magnesium, ashwagandha, bacopa is a good choice too), going cold turkey can result in deadly seizures.

[Galaxyshock]

A strong extract of Ashwagandha like Now brand (over 20mg withanolides per cap) is surprisingly potent. Enough to mostly vanish my phenibut wds for like half the day.

[GLubomirov]

A strong extract of Ashwagandha like Now brand (over 20mg withanolides per cap) is surprisingly potent. Enough to mostly vanish my phenibut wds for like half the day.

 

Hi,

 

I realize that this thread is pretty old but I'm interested. How much and for how long did you take Phenibut before the withdraw? I'm interested up to what point of severity of the withdraw the Ashwagandha can be usefull?

 

Greetings,

George