Direct alcohol substitutes

[Greg]

Message deleted.

[Bruunhilde]

Direct alcohol substitutes

Interesting post Greg. I hate pot, there's few things I dislike more than that high.

I do find on anxious nights if I take 1mg of xanax at the witching hour, I can manage my drinking or eliminate it if I'm doing really well.

Thanks for the info.

[coalfire]

Direct alcohol substitutes

You think a little like I do. I was an evening only drinker who was already sober when I came to the meds section. I use baclofen prn(a new experiment)https://www.mywayout.org/community/f2...prn-48569.html

I use antabuse prn but only for high risk situations.


When I first got sober I thought about cannabis. I have no history of street drug abuse and no real moral or ethical objections to it. My only concern was that I would go from sitting alone drinking alcohol on Monday to sitting alone smoking cannabis on Tuesday. I needed to clear my head and get out of my self imposed prison. However I am no martyr to the suffering and I will sit down and think about it later on in the year. I remember seeing 1 year AF celebratory posts on MWO before where people said that they have the odd smoke at parties just to..well party I suppose and get off the daily grind of sobriety. I made a mental note to myself to park that idea and take it out later. I need a longer stretch of sobriety under my belt first. Another concern would be that the cannabis might lower my inhibitions enough to reach for a drink. I was planning to make a thread mid/late 2011 to put the idea out there. I do believe now that I am well enough versed in the mechanism of addiction not to walk myself straight into another one. I am talking about a smoke every few months. You mentioned tolerance and next day side effects. Do you mean that it took more to work and that it gave you a hangover?


I also thought about kava kava. I even got as far as emailing them to ask if they shipped to Ireland. She didnt reply and I decided not to persue it for a while for the same reasons as the cannibas. Again though I will look at later on in the year. I just want to be sober now. I have read some interesting and conflicting reports about its safety. It has been banned in many places but some people say that it shouldnt be and that its only dangerous if you use the bad part of the plant ie the root or the leaves(I forget which one tonight) One is good and one is bad apparently.


Benzos I cant really talk about. I wonder will Prof David nutt base his new drink on them? He said in his blog in 2010 that he had brewers interested in it but then the trail went cold and I havent heard any more since. it would cost a fortune to hold clinical trials and then they would have to invent a breathalyser for it etc so I dont think we will be sipping it any time soon.Synthetic Alcohol Gives Drinkers a Buzz Minus the Hangover, Addiction | Popular Science

you provide an interesting list of other possibilites but as you said you would seriously need to do your homework and be comfortable poking around in science based articles before you went there. I am pleased to hear that your low dose baclofen helped to keep you sober. I am hot on your tail.

[Bruunhilde]

Direct alcohol substitutes

You remind me Coal, of when my friend went to rehab and we were desperately seeking Something she could have. I bought a book called _Opium for the Masses_ and it said you could do this, do that, including catnip blunts and man that was gross and not effective. I bought some poppies one year and they didn't come up for about three years, then they came up and I plucked them thinking they were weeds. The couple I had left after realizing what I'd done, I harvested and found the opium unpleasant.

On the other hand, I love vicodin but it doesn't always work for me, and it's impossible to get without risking a federal crime here. And it's terribly addictive, and then you have a beer with it, just one, but that turns into a bottle of wine and then you have the double hangover from hell bkz the vicodin dehydrates you just like the AL.

So. There it all is.

[coalfire]

Direct alcohol substitutes

Catnip? hmmm.Dont put ideas in my head missus !!!!! I dont know what if anything I will do. Im in good old form these days and if I stay that way I might just keep getting high on life. Im only a little baby on day 50 so no big decisions from me yet. I want to see what happens when the dust settles and sobriety just becomes life. I will think it out as the year unfolds aka make it up as I go along! Nothing is ruled in and nothing is ruled out but no alcohol alternatives for sure til I am 6 months sober.(if at all) I dont know what a vicodin+booze hangover is but it sure doesnt sound good.

[Kimberley]

Direct alcohol substitutes

Blimey the last thing I would want in the world is to have a substitute for alcohol. Actually sometimes that's EXACTLY what I want

But really, it's about what I need. I NEED to find a way to deal with life sober, to get my highs from life and to live my life without hiding from it or masking my feelings or altering my consciousness, warping my mind or getting addicted to some other goddamn substance and becoming a slave to it.

Honestly and responsibly presented point Greg, as ever, but I'm sticking by my choice. I don't need a substitute - I need *myself* to be enough.

K x

[coalfire]

Direct alcohol substitutes

"getting addicted to some other goddamn substance and becoming a slave to it."-kimberly




Yes I agree. I wouldnt want that either. One addiction is enough for this lifetime thanks very much!

For non addictive normie type use I dunno....my heads not in that place just yet.

I need *myself* to be enough.-kimberly. You sound as if yourself is doing just fine! Good for you. Keep it up. You have had some great posts going recently in the gd section. I have enjoyed reading them.

[Bruunhilde]

Direct alcohol substitutes

I agree - even as I typed it, I thought the same thing, but SOMETIMES it would be nice to have a place to escape to, a place you wouldn't want to STAY, and for me that might be something less tantilizing than AL but less horrible than paranoia cotton head pot.

I agree we need to work on whatever we have that needs fixing, physical or/and mental/emotional, take your supplements peeps. Aminos, fish oil, L-glut are my top three. Best for reducing craving, and for rebalancing/fixing broken bodies. At least, that's what I know. There are way more knowledgeable people out there. and you can be one, just memorize a few of those fab books from Joan Larson and Julia Ross.

[Greg]

Direct alcohol substitutes

Personally I do think it's best to become completely sober if at all possible, which is why I kind-of regard other drugs as last resort options for alcoholics. If I had been able to get totally sober then I would have never found any need for other substances. I must also add that I am now in the process of getting to total sobriety, so am now facing up to giving up cannabis and have already given up the Xanax (using a slow Valium taper, which is recommended to get off long-term benzo use).

Insomnia is a b**ch of a problem however so I may end up still taking something for sleep, hopefully nothing more than a non-addictive option like doxylamine (an antihistamine) or L-tryptophan. These have both worked well for me while still on cannabis but off benzos. Like anything else for sleep there can be tolerance, and it's best to rotate two or more types of sleep agents so you don't build up severe tolerance. Even a benzo or z-drug could be used with reduced tolerance issues if not used every night, eg. if rotated with another class of sleep drug.

Bruunhilde, I didn't really like the pot high either, and didn't find it the same as alcohol. In the end I accepted it as a partial substitute, and it may not be acceptable to someone looking for something that does the same as alcohol. Catnip is interesting...will have to look it up...I remember reading of morphine and opium being used as alcoholism treatments years ago and not sure if they helped people actually stop drinking but probably anything (almost) is better than drinking alcoholically.

Hey coalfire, yes I did mean that tolerance can become an issue with cannabis if used regularly, although it seems less severe than tolerance to things like benzos. And yes too about next-day hangover feelings! I have felt as if I had a very big night out on the booze some mornings after only using cannabis, even without Xanax. There is no nausea or pounding headache like a real alcohol hangover, but there is pronounced mental fatigue, tiredness, and a general "blah" feeling. Concentration and alertness can be shot. It usually takes several hours for this to go away, but sometimes it can last until afternoon.

I must also mention that the illegality of cannabis can present a few very real problems. Obviously getting caught buying or in possession is one of these. Having to deal with shady characters, who may also be interested in selling you harder stuff, is also an issue. Sometimes nobody is available to buy from, so you can run out. Many workplaces now have drug tests for new applicants or random tests for existing employees, and police are able to conduct roadside drug-driving tests in some places. Cannabis stays in the system for quite a long time too. These are all very real things to deal with if a person decides to go down this road.

Kava kava was banned in my country due to abuse of it by a number of Aboriginals (indigenous Australians) in remote rural communities. They were seeking to use it as an alcohol substitute. That's the official reason for the ban anyway, but it's probably also due to fears of liver damage. The liver scare may well have been due to kava that was prepared improperly by manufacturers not even based in the Pacific Islands, either by using parts of the kava plant other than its roots, or by using solvents like acetone in making kava extracts (these are the two explanations I have heard). The traditional preparation only involves the root of the plant and uses water as the only liquid.

Yes David Nutt's alcohol substitute idea does use benzodiazepines or a substance almost the same as a benzo. I haven't actually been able to find out exactly what it is. His 'antidote' is flumazenil, a GABA(A) receptor antagonist/blocker.

Phenibut is yet another intoxicant-like substance, presently sold as a supplement, but which can apparently create tolerance. Like baclofen it affects GABA(B) receptors, but it must also affect others in order to be able to create tolerance when baclofen is said to create little or none. Like baclofen it can cause severe withdrawals upon sudden cessation.

[Bruunhilde]

Direct alcohol substitutes

Again I agree!

Interesting about the kava "reason" for banning; sounds like the reason the USDA banned tryptophan in the 80's (was it?) so it was rx only for most of my adulthood - and for good reason, this helped the SSRI's uptake considerable profits for Big Pharma. Hmmmm. Sounds like yet another conspiracy.

[coalfire]

Direct alcohol substitutes

This program might interest you Greg. You might not have seen it in oz? Its about david nutt and his syntho

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja3z-OqyAwQ[/video]]YouTube - BBC Horizon 2009-2010 Do I Drink Too Much (Split1)

[Greg]

Direct alcohol substitutes

Thanks coalfire, that may have screened here but I didn't see it...fascinating stuff...obviously way too many substances would be needed at once to fully mimic alcohol in the brain!

Kimberly and others, yes being fully sober and not using any substances is the best way out of alcoholism and other addictions. Unfortunately this state seems depressingly far away for some alcoholics, it almost seems unachievable for some who I know personally and who talk about feeling like they can never cope with their own emotions/issues when they have gone substance-free for periods of time. Others of course do eventually find a way of enjoying life fully sober. I would never suggest any substance to a person who is able to find another way out of alcoholism.

[Bill Gorton]

Direct alcohol substitutes

Greg, this is exactly the type of thing I was looking for when I found baclofen. I wanted to find something that would substitute for alcohol that I wouldn't find it so hard to quit once I had put some distance between me and the booze. Alcohol has one nice property, though, that most other drugs like benzos don't have: zero-order elimination kinetics. While other drugs (and possibly, their active metabolites) linger in your body for many hours after you wake up in the morning, alcohol is eliminated at a nearly constant rate until it's all gone.

By the way, baclofen hasn't worked for me yet.

[Bruunhilde]

Direct alcohol substitutes

Greg, I wonder if I'll be able to cope too. It's a concern.

[Murphyx]

Direct alcohol substitutes

Is this thread really about which addictive substance would be the best to replace another addictive substance?