Dosage and Frequency

[Otter]

Dosage and Frequency

Detox and easing off

The doctor is saying we should ease off a bit with the level of dosing and then fine tune in a few days/weeks when the AL is out of the system. The total dose is not that important so long as it is regular and in the system with top ups when necessary to stop the craving breaking through. (What would be good would be some sort of slow release Baclofen!!)

If you push the baclofen up the craving for alcohol should go down.

Don't try this at home...unless you have to.

You are having a binge of a litre a day or so. Start taking 30 mg of Baclofen every hour. By the afternoon/evening, the drinking will slow down and you will pass out. Keep taking doses when/if you wake up. You should wake up the next morning free of craving. Carry on taking the Baclofen through the tiredness which should last all day. If you have sickness perhaps reducing the dose. If you reduce too much and start drinking again, go back up to 30mg an hour and the drinking will taper off and you will again be AF the next day.



Then keep the doses regular, higher doses for a couple of hours in the morning until you feel tired then reducing by about half.

It is like a see saw. The more Baclofen you push into your system the less alcohol you want so if you OD on the Baclofen you should push all the craving for alcohol out. It is not particularly dangerous to go up to 40 mg an hour. The worst that will happen is you will fall asleep and the booze and the Baclofen will make you throw up the next morning. Keep taking doses through the sickness. It helps if you have been on Baclofen before so the SEs are not so bad.

How is that for a one day alcohol cure!

[Topsy-Turvy-Tracy]

Dosage and Frequency

Whoa. That sounds pretty hard, Otter. I'll try to avoid having to do that.

[susanna]

Dosage and Frequency

This protocol to stop the binge?

Otter - are you saying this is a protocol for someone in the middle of a binge that can help them stop the binge?!!

My brother is on BAC - started on it about 16 days ago when in the middle of a binge - he is still severely spiralling on this binge - and he is taking his bac - today he was going to go up to 160 mgs (up from 140 past 5 days). He is suffering terribly and doesn't care what the side effects are to get to AF state.

So with that as backdrop - are you saying he could try this - take 30 mgs every hour until he either passes out or the craving diminishes? He's really desperate to do anything - he can't control the AF intake and has been suffering terrible for 18 days but following the slow titration model.

Susanna

Otter;974899 wrote: The doctor is saying we should ease off a bit with the level of dosing and then fine tune in a few days/weeks when the AL is out of the system. The total dose is not that important so long as it is regular and in the system with top ups when necessary to stop the craving breaking through. (What would be good would be some sort of slow release Baclofen!!)

If you push the baclofen up the craving for alcohol should go down.

Don't try this at home...unless you have to.

You are having a binge of a litre a day or so. Start taking 30 mg of Baclofen every hour. By the afternoon/evening, the drinking will slow down and you will pass out. Keep taking doses when/if you wake up. You should wake up the next morning free of craving. Carry on taking the Baclofen through the tiredness which should last all day. If you have sickness perhaps reducing the dose. If you reduce too much and start drinking again, go back up to 30mg an hour and the drinking will taper off and you will again be AF the next day.



Then keep the doses regular, higher doses for a couple of hours in the morning until you feel tired then reducing by about half.

It is like a see saw. The more Baclofen you push into your system the less alcohol you want so if you OD on the Baclofen you should push all the craving for alcohol out. It is not particularly dangerous to go up to 40 mg an hour. The worst that will happen is you will fall asleep and the booze and the Baclofen will make you throw up the next morning. Keep taking doses through the sickness. It helps if you have been on Baclofen before so the SEs are not so bad.

How is that for a one day alcohol cure!

[ignominous]

Dosage and Frequency

Frightening?

[muchthought]

Dosage and Frequency

whoa. crazy. But if it works...does it work? Or is it a theory? I'm not prone to binges like that, but the craving sure isn't going away, and I am queen of slow titration (like it's taken 10 months to get to 85), so ... at the very least I will be more diligent about maintaining the dose even perhaps taking one in the middle of the night. hmmmm thanks, otter

[ignominous]

Dosage and Frequency

I'm sure it would work I just don't want that to be my future regime.

I like the idea of the "switch" and then weening yourself of the Bac. I suspect that the switch dose needs to be maintained long enough to successfully rewire your brain. How long that is probably depends on how thoroughly fucked up you've been.

[susanna]

Dosage and Frequency

Well, my brother is now trying the "Otter method" for his acute bout of Ameisons Disease.

Will let you all know how it goes for him. The poor dear is ready to go to the wall to pull out of this binge cycle, and to start an AF life.

Dosage so far:
7:30 am: 40 mg
10:50 am: 30 mg
11:50 am: 30 mg

Will keep updating for people's edification here. Maybe some of you are in the same bac + binge quandary.

ss

ignominous;975028 wrote: I'm sure it would work I just don't want that to be my future regime.

I like the idea of the "switch" and then weening yourself of the Bac. I suspect that the switch dose needs to be maintained long enough to successfully rewire your brain. How long that is probably depends on how thoroughly fucked up you've been.

[Isolde]

Dosage and Frequency

Well, I tried the consistency method yesterday, taking 10mg Bac every 2 1/2 hours. Not as effective in fighting cravings as taking more in the afternoon/evening for me, and I ended up drinking. I didn't end up getting the strange uncomfortable feeling that I sometimes get from taking more bac close together like I had been, but better that than drinking. In addition, slept terribly last night, woke up really early and couldn't go back to sleep, and then started feeling all around wretched after I got up. Not hungover though. Called out of work, took a bac and finally went back to sleep. Slept like a rock for a few hours and feel much better now.

[Lo0p]

Dosage and Frequency

Alright, I've gotta chime in here... BRB

[susanna]

Dosage and Frequency

Lo0p;975062 wrote: Alright, I've gotta chime in here... BRB

Sorry if I am being dense here - but what are you saying LoOP?

[Topsy-Turvy-Tracy]

Dosage and Frequency

A cliffhanger.

[Seethepony]

Dosage and Frequency

"You are having a binge of a litre a day or so. Start taking 30 mg of Baclofen every hour. By the afternoon/evening, the drinking will slow down and you will pass out. Keep taking doses when/if you wake up. You should wake up the next morning free of craving."

Sorry but this sounds like complete CRAP. If a doctor suggested it, it's clearly a doctor who has never even taken a sniff of Baclofen, much less ingested it.

I was on a (permanent) binge when I started Baclofen. I went up to 40mg Baclofen/ day kind of suddenly and I thought I was going to die - I didn't measure my blood pressure but I knew it had gone ballistic. Had I forced 30mg down my throat every hour, I'm sure my eyeballs would have exploded.

[Lo0p]

Dosage and Frequency

For Ig: I did this last year, it's kind of a cut and paste of a couple of old posts I found of mine.

Lo0p wrote: An exponential decay process can be described by any of the following three equivalent formulae:



where

* N0 is the initial quantity of the thing that will decay (this quantity may be measured in grams, moles, number of atoms, etc.),
* Nt is the quantity that still remains and has not yet decayed after a time t,
* t1 / 2 is the half-life of the decaying quantity

Lo0p wrote: I followed this out to 156 hours (6 1/2 days) and if this is indeed how our bodies metabolize baclofen then it does not progressively accumulate in our bodies.
But there is a whole lot of stuff going on behind the scenes which can alter the truth dramatically. You found this out as you started digging into the half life of baclofen. Here is an example with Naltrexone that shows that plasma half life is not necessarily the most important thing to consider:

Lo0p wrote: This is a graph I made illustrating the plasma half life of naltrexone. Upon first pass metabolism, most of the naltrexone dose is converted by the liver into one many metabolites. The most important of which is 6-beta-naltrexol, which has a half-life of 13 hours. It alone is responsible for most of the effects of a naltrexone pill, not naltrexone itself. Ignore the commentary about 'blockade failure'. This was just a guess i made, ignore it completely.

And...

Lo0p wrote: But plasma concentration isn't nearly the whole story:



So nal and 6-b-nal seem to hang on to the receptors much longer than their plasma clearance times would suggest

[Lo0p]

Dosage and Frequency

So... My personal conclusion is:

You can do all the digging around in that vein all you want (I did) and all you're gonna come up with is more questions than answers. The best way to assess it is just to do what we are already doing by evaluating the results that we get and tweaking it and working from there.

And Otter, yes :hijacked: I apologize. We'll get it back on track. My response to you is next.

[hangingoninFL]

Dosage and Frequency

Seethepony;975133 wrote: "You are having a binge of a litre a day or so. Start taking 30 mg of Baclofen every hour. By the afternoon/evening, the drinking will slow down and you will pass out. Keep taking doses when/if you wake up. You should wake up the next morning free of craving."

Sorry but this sounds like complete CRAP. If a doctor suggested it, it's clearly a doctor who has never even taken a sniff of Baclofen, much less ingested it.

I was on a (permanent) binge when I started Baclofen. I went up to 40mg Baclofen/ day kind of suddenly and I thought I was going to die - I didn't measure my blood pressure but I knew it had gone ballistic. Had I forced 30mg down my throat every hour, I'm sure my eyeballs would have exploded.

I think everyone's biology is different when it comes to BAC, I have heard several of you say that you got severe SE on very low dosages, but in my case, I might as well have been popping sugar pills until I hit around the 120 per day mark. I believe that Dr. Levin is correct that the switch is not determined by body weight but rather genetics and other biochemical factors.