Benzos, nal and baclofen

[beatle]

Benzos, nal and baclofen

Baclofen without prescription?

Ok, I'm convinced. Now, how do you get a hold of Baclofen without a prescription?

I'm just like most of you, hate drinking, want to stop forever, and I know the only way to accomplish this for me (as I obviously don't have enough willpower) is to stop the cravings, instead of quitting at great pain, only to start again, then stop again -- probably over 100 times in the past 3 years. Nothing works for very long. And I really don't like the idea of TSM, even though I'm convinced it works for lots of people -- eventually- (the eventually is my problem with it).

It sounds like some of you are getting Baclofen without a prescription -- if so, please tell me how!

And thanks, Bill, for sharing all your knowledge and experience -- and I really appreciate your sharing your viewpoint as well.

[Goin4More]

Benzos, nal and baclofen

Bill P., I apologize for giving the (wrong) impression about being perturbed over your advocacy of baclofen. I think you've done many here a great service. My post was simply a diary of my own 'back and forth' inward arguments regarding the use of naltrexone vs. naltrexone with baclofen. I'm commited to the Sinclair Method, but am impatient with the long time it is taking to completely kick in. So I've seriously toyed with the prospect of adding baclofen, just to be able to more easily moderate while the extinction process goes on. Since you've often referred to your medical background, I was curious to know if you're a physician, or involved in some other capacity. See my avatar? Cats are known to be curious creatures, yes?

Anyway, I'm not opposed to baclofen or any other medication that will enable an alcoholic to be cured. If TSM doesn't work better for me in another two months, I'm planning to order it myself!

Oh, and Bob - thanks for trying to clarify for me, in my absence.

[Bill.P.]

Benzos, nal and baclofen

bob3d;635808 wrote: Kind of a harsh response for someone as nice as G4M. I mean she was nice to you and even said that your posts are informative. I don't think she was perturbed at all. She just wanted some additional information about the person who is doling out all this advice.

In fact you're such a convincing advocate, that I myself have decided to start taking Baclofen based on your recommendations. Your dosage chart is quite informative and very specific medical advice. Also, thank you for specifically recommending 4RX. I compared prices and they are indeed the lowest of the online pharmacies. Thanks!

Anyway, I am tired of TSM and I have no desire to moderate alcohol intake; I'd rather go abstinent. The Sinclair Method doesn't always lead there, though. But it appears that Baclofen does. I have no reason to stop taking Naltrexone, so I'll stay on it until I am truly abstinent. I am currently down to 7mg per day diazepam (Valium). A far cry from 60mg diazepam per day last year! It'll take another 12 weeks to get to zero mg diazepam, if I don't want those horrible withdrawal symptoms again (one time is enough to convince anyone).

I will continue to take 50 to 60 mg Buspirone ( a non-benzodiazepine anxiolytic) until I start on Baclofen, since I need something for my anxiety and hypomania. Buspar (Buspirone) can be stopped very quickly since it is not addictive as are benzodiazepines.

Anyway, I am really looking forward to getting started.:thanks:

Bob

Well my reply was awhile back not sure if I was having a stressful day or what I was thinking. So I apologize for being harsh. Just prefer anonymity at this point, call me paranoid and I didnt intend to post this long at all here, just answering questions here and there as Ive been busy putting my life back together and making a baclofen website to aggregate all the information and studies for patient and physician.

I can only wish you luck with the baclofen, it really is a miracle drug, for me and many others that I have ended up speaking with and for several who recently started who have PMd me with their initial successes at strong reduction in cravings. I'm an advocate for it b/c I think it works and I think it will become the standard treatment of choice for alcoholism within the next 10 years once more studies are completed given its great effectiveness and very safe side-effect profile.

The positive effects of baclofen for you is that it is a very strong anxiety reliever with none of the side effects of a benzodiazepine which includes a withdrawal issue you are well aware of. The buspirone can cause a 'washed out' feeling that has not been noted with baclofen. I know that also from taking myself ativan heavily as well as throwing that out and switching to buspar to get over the benzo feeling of a zombie only to have a depression like gray feeling with buspirone.
I have neither with baclofen, in fact, anxiety is gone and the concommitant depression is gone as well.
If you have naltrexone and it works for you then sure I would not knock that, I apologize if I gave that impression. I do think the best way to tackle any medical illness including alcoholism is to start with one medication, preferably the cheapest and most effective. My baclofen 10mg tabs cost 5.5 cents, naltrexone I looked at river was 3.30$ per tab.
What I probably should say is that if someone is new to trying medications for alcoholism and have no naltrexone on hand. Then a prudent course of starting is using 1 medication to start, then if no success, one could add another medication. Thats often done for blood pressure treatment.
Another reason I would recommend initially against combing the two is that I do not know of the interactions of the two drugs if any, if positive, or if they interfere with each other. Someone might want to research that and post the answer to that.
I also think that it is unnecessary as baclofen should completely eliminate the cravings of alcohol making the additional cost of naltrexone unnecessary.
The reason for taking nal with bac, would be "hey, I have it, it works for me now and I dont want to go off the wagon while I am titrating up the baclofen". Which is also a reasonable and logical position.

I am just very convinced that baclofen alone will stop alcohol cravings so the additional cost of taking another medication should be postponed. And of course, the caveat would apply to dont do this without a physcian etc... applies. Especially in cases such as yours with titrating your benzos down which can be just as dangerous as severe alcohol withdrawal. Its been forever and a day since I took buspirone but if I recall that it can be stopped abruptly although some say all psychoactive drugs should be tapered as a general rule.

And so yeah, I think there is no "best way" for everyone, were pretty much on the cutting edge of the baclofen therapy for addiction, well before all the proper high dose baclofen studies are completed. So not much to hang our hats on as far as is one approach better than the other. Someday, a study might come out that taking nal with bac is 10% better than bac alone, or 10% worse, just nothing out there now, not even bac alone at high dose, sure there are studies showing effects at a very low dose of 30mg/day, less than the starting dose for children for muscle spasticity, but not a cure like I and Dr. Ameisen believe it is when taken in sufficient quantity to flip the alcohol craving switch off. All I know is that people around me are pretty amazed that I stopped drinking. Not just that anyone stopped, but that "I" stopped b/c I was hopeless drunk. My friends come over and drink on occasion and I dont even want one, doesnt bother me at all to be around. Before baclofen, I wouldve drank all their beer in a half hour and then gone for more b/c I could not stop once I have one drink.
Being as expensive as Nal that Ive seen online is, if I had already bought it, I'd probably take it too just b/c I hate wasting things, and if it helped prevent binges in the beginning with baclofen, why not :goodjob:

Peace and please keep a daily log of your progress for yourself and others. Doesnt have to be a thread, just a simple word document or notepad. I wish you and all the best of luck and I continue to believe that baclofen will be a miracle for most all of you who seriously want to quit and titrate to a properly high dose

[bob3d]

Benzos, nal and baclofen

Thanks Bill P. for your comprehensive reply!

I am under a psychiatrist's care and have 3 month scripts for Valium, Paxil, Buspar and Naltrexone.

• Valium is dirt cheap, but I no longer want to be enslaved by it; thus the continued tapering.
• Paxil is necessary for my hypomania and OCD, so no change anticipated here. Cost is reasonable.
• Buspar is more expensive than one would think, but it was necessary to replace the Valium, before I knew about Baclofen.
• Naltrexone is not cheap, but it isn't expensive either and I have made a commitment to The Sinclair Method to wait it out.

All of the above was done with my psychiatrist's blessing prior to my education regarding Baclofen.

Baclofen solves three of my problems:[list type=decimal]It is a muscle relaxant and I have lower and upper back injuries that date back 20 years.It is an anxiolytic which treats my hypomania.It eliminates alcohol cravings, which will solve my alcohol problem.[/list type=decimal]If all goes as planned, my eventual drug regimen will be Paxil and Baclofen only, since I have no plans to drink again when this is all over.

I appreciate and respect your desire to remain anonymous. I think most people who post could use a good dose of paranoia so as not to reveal too much about themselves to the world. It doesn't take a lot of clues to narrow down who a person actually is in "real life".

I loved your observation of that "gray feeling with buspirone" you felt. I often find it difficult to find other buspirone users. I am looking forward to replacing buspirone with baclofen.

Rereading your experience is a must for me. I'll do that this evening. For instance, I don't recall how long it takes to from starting Baclofen until the "magic dosage" is reached. Obviously, it must be different durations for different people, but I'd like to get an idea of the time frames I will be looking at until it is reached; days? weeks? months? I suspect weeks, but I'll check on that.

Since I am treated for OCD, some OCD traits remain, such as record keeping. I have exact dates, dosages, events, hours, places, expenditures for nearly every detail in my life for the past 30 years. So, I have a flawless record of my drug intake and have no reason to discontinue it.

Thanks again for your response. You have helped myself and others more than you will ever know!

Bob

[bob3d]

Benzos, nal and baclofen

beatle;636077 wrote: Ok, I'm convinced. Now, how do you get a hold of Baclofen without a prescription?

I'm just like most of you, hate drinking, want to stop forever, and I know the only way to accomplish this for me (as I obviously don't have enough willpower) is to stop the cravings, instead of quitting at great pain, only to start again, then stop again -- probably over 100 times in the past 3 years. Nothing works for very long. And I really don't like the idea of TSM, even though I'm convinced it works for lots of people -- eventually- (the eventually is my problem with it).

It sounds like some of you are getting Baclofen without a prescription -- if so, please tell me how!

And thanks, Bill, for sharing all your knowledge and experience -- and I really appreciate your sharing your viewpoint as well.

I read that Bill P. uses 4rx.com. I checked out their site and it looks to be the cheapest of the legit online pharmacies. And no script necessary for Baclofen.

Bob

[beatle]

Benzos, nal and baclofen

Thanks! I'm a believer and I'll get started as soon as I can.

Until now I have been using L-glutamine, but I don't notice it helps with cravings, even though I take very high doses. I read that you can safely take up to 15-20 grams per day, which is way more than the "recommended" dosage-- but I still don't notice any effect with that.

I occasionally take Kudzu and I definitely notice a difference, in that I drink slower and I crave alcohol less, but I still drink... and I think I build up tolerance to it if I take it every day for a while. Still, I would recommend the Kudzu for people who want to moderate, or people with really strong willpower who just need a little extra help by decreasing the intensity of the cravings.

Sorry, this was a little off the subject, but I just thought I'd share that since we have been addressing specifically reducing cravings.

[Tulipe]

Benzos, nal and baclofen

Hi Dave,
I read yesterday that there is a recommended scale-down program for benzos. See source here:

Addiction and withdrawal from Bromazepam. Are you Addicted?

Note the length of the stabilitization periods during the step-down.

I am in day 2 on campral at the moment, and decided not to take the benzo last night. Instead I took 2 tylenol pm's and it calmed me down. I didn't get to sleep until around 2am but at least I got some sleep and my blood pressure didn't go nuts. I was functional after 2 cups of coffee. Maybe you could try starting to taper, then finally switching to something non-addicitive?

- Tulipe

[Goin4More]

Benzos, nal and baclofen

I'm happy for you bob3d, as it looks like you've found an answer to several of your issues. Congratulations! I'm considering ordering the baclofen, but willing to give just TSM another few weeks b/4 resorting to anything more. I will continue with naltrexone, however - my ultimate goal is to be alcohol free without the ongoing use of drugs. While baclofen is a wonderful option offering faster results, it doesn't actually 'de-addict' the brain as naltrexone does. It seems baclofen puts the addiction into remission, just so long as you continue its use. It makes total sense for you, Bob, since it may address other problems and replace a more dangerous drug as well.

Maybe having the other board go down will give some of us Sinclairians a wider view of treatment options?

[bob3d]

Benzos, nal and baclofen

Goin4More;636850 wrote: ...I will continue with naltrexone, however - my ultimate goal is to be alcohol free without the ongoing use of drugs. While baclofen is a wonderful option offering faster results, it doesn't actually 'de-addict' the brain as naltrexone does. It seems baclofen puts the addiction into remission, just so long as you continue its use. It makes total sense for you, Bob, since it may address other problems and replace a more dangerous drug as well.

Maybe having the other board go down will give some of us Sinclairians a wider view of treatment options?

I agree with you on all points. I want to de-addict my brain to the point of being a regular person again and then to not drink anymore and not having any cravings to do so any longer.

However, since I have some other maladies I must address, it appears that baclofen treats all of them. Likely it will work.

And I completely agree with your statement that since our usual website went down, it opened us up to a world of other opportunities.

Bob