Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

[MickeySoFine1972]

Hi All

I've been taking Baclofen for the past two months and lately I've been finding that the ant under your skin and heart palpitations have been increasing.

I've also found that I get a feeling especially in my arms that I'm cold, are these normal?

I've seen that the baclofen is working, (I've had a few days without alchohol in the last week after drinking every night for years), but found that recently after reaching about 180mg per day I'm getting more of these effects which didnt seem to be very strong until then.

Does anyone have any advice on what to do to counter act them? if so is it a matter of seeing my GP? (I'm in the UK). or can I buy stuff without prescriptions that will help? (like in ASDA or some other place)

I'm really happy that its working but struggling with the side effects so any points you could give would be awesome!

[lewis123]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

Do you feel tiredness to during the day?

[MickeySoFine1972]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

Yes but thats to be expected.

I'm mainly feeling like my breathing is very laboured and I can't help thinking I should be taking something like a supliment.

I've been taking a multivitamine but that hasnt solved the breathing thing. It feels like when I have a panick attach but even went I'm not stressed about anything

[neophyte]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

Mickey, heavy breathing is normal when going up, it goes away after a few weeks. i remember when my breathing was shallow and laboured, i would panic that i was not breathing enough, but here i am.

[chelsea98]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

hi mickey, i had the palpatations that you mention but not the cold arms. i had one strange side effect where i would get severe frissons when watching films and hearing bangs etc whilst listening on earphones, through my whole body, i've not seen that mentioned before so like me,you could have a whole new side effect all to yourself there. i drank my usual amounts, 6-8 x 5.0-5.2% 500ml cans a night up until about 180mg a day and one thing's for certain, drinking on baclofen will definitely INCREASE the side effects. you'll find, once you stop drinking completely that the breathing will improve, pretty much everything will improve and the side effects you're getting will be much more tolerable.

i found that similar to you, the side effects seemed to jump up a good notch when i got to about the 150-180 mark, i soldiered on up to 240 and they didn't get any stronger. now that im down to 60 the only one's i really have now are somnolence and i still get exaggerated "tics" at night.

[chelsea98]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

mickey, i just read on another post on here that you're at 210 per day? if so, do you think you're ready yet to drop it dead? i had my hand forced so to speak, my wife and some friends were on at me and i agreed to stop drinking on a particular date, oct 5th last year. i stuck with that date and haven't looked back. i did actually soldier on from the 180 i was on at that date all the way up to 240 so i can't actually be sure where i hit my switch. it could be the case that if you're still drinking, you've maybe already sailed past it? i think that was the case with me. i carried on drinking thinking it would stop me when i actually had to do the stopping myself to realise that bac had already sorted my head out!!

[skullbabyland]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

Hi, I experience both the ants and the palpatations. They seem to be manageable if I manage my coffee intake (keep to 2 cups per day) and supplement with magnesium citrate. But I also had to change to a very healthy diet, and that could have effected it too.

My two cents- go to a doc and get comprehensive blood panels done- if your magnesium, hormone, etc. levels are low you'll want to know, and that'll help you know what to supplement, if any.

I still get the heart palps from time to time but the ants seem to have gone away.

[MickeySoFine1972]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

Thanks to everyone for the comments its made things clearer for me.

I've titrated up quickly, or I would consider that quick, as some on the forums say they took 5 months to get up to 270mg and I'm on 210mg a day after 8 weeks.

I think that I would have stopped drinking earlier but I have experienced a large amount of anxiety when reaching certain levels of dosage which made me want to drink more to cope with my dilemas.

As time has passed they have subsided due to my using EFT to try and resolve my inner conflicts. As with most of you guys I sufer from existencial anxieties apart from the normal money and relationship worries type stuff. EFT really helps me with that sort of stuff.

As it is its been a couple of days and the ants have gone and the heavy breathing too!

Although I do find myself long-blinking especially in the afternoon, but I see other guys I work with doing that and they arent even on baclofen!

Thanks for all the advice!

Mickey

[skullbabyland]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

Cool to hear that the SE's have subsided for you. Your titration does seem really quick, that always scares me to hear but some people handle that OK, at least better than I could. Either way, best of luck and glad to hear things are balancing out. Let us know how things go for you drinking-wise.

[MickeySoFine1972]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

Actually I was perfectly fine up until I reached 180mg then it hit me like a ton of lead!

I've managed to get to 210mg but it was brutal getting there!

I'm going to slow down now as I literally cant remember what I did last week and I have a job to hold down.

I'm giving myself until the weekend before I titrate anymore and at that I will only be going up by about 6mg at a time as I have gotten some new tablets that can be snapped into quaters without the need of a pill splitter, (which a rubbish at best).

As for amounts, I can barely manage two 500ml 5% cans of kronenburgh as it just puts me to sleep now! although the other night, when I was gasping for breath and it hadnt occured to me that it was the baclofen and not a panic attack, I managed about 7 cans before being able to sleep.

So depending on my level of anxiety I'm ranging from 2 - 7 cans so far. Thats a hell of a difference for me because I've seen myself drink a bottle of whiskey a day at low points.

Mickey

[neophyte]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

it definitely gets harder as you go higher. i was going up 25mg every 7 days or so. when i was at 295 and jumped to 320. i was becoming extremely anxious and seeing red dots everywhere. some other stuff too i don't remember. so i stayed at 295 and it ended up being my switch dose. it makes me think in hindsight that if i had just waited a bit longer at lower doses, then perhaps that would have been good enough.

[MickeySoFine1972]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

Well I mamaged to have another night of no alchohol last night but it was a weird exprience as I found myself getting tired by 10:30, (never happens to me normally).

I went to bed and found myself wide awake at 1am with a weird kind of tingling sentation all over. I couldnt help thinking that it was like the weird sense of euphoria that comes before seizures from withdrawl. Like the french doctor writes about in his book.

I've never had seizures before though so I thought would just lay still and see if it passed. It didn't but I fell asleep about 2am I think and woke this morning with the same feeling still there but no sign of the dreaded seizures! Though I was drenched in sweat so I guess I must have lost about a stone! (tell I'm english yet?)

One of the earlier posts suggested that I should avoid alchohol so i can tell if I reached my switch so I'm going to try the same tonight and see if I have a new found resolve to choose not to drink. That I havent previously had

Mickey

[chelsea98]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

hi mickey, certainly give it a go without booze tonight and try and build up consecutive nights. what you may find and this is what happened to me, is that after a couple of days or a few, you'll realise that you just haven't thought about beer at all for a day or so. that was my eureka moment and something which hadn't happened to me for years and years. that as far as i was concerned was my switch but as i've said before, i went onwards and upwards to a higher dose just to ram that point home.

as for the sleep irregularity, that is also a major side effect. i was getting very tired at about 10-11pm but i would soldier through that and then find myself wide awake until about 2am. i would then pop awake at about 7am. i was more than able to manage on reduced sleep. it screws with your sleep but look at it this way, if you can overcome all these side effects and get to a stage where you're not thinking about booze so youre not drinking booze, it'll all be worth it!!!

here's another thing to point out which you may not have thought about but was pointed out to me. find something to do with all this spare time you're going to have when you're not drinking. my drinking time was from 6pm til midnight, thats 6 hours to fill with other stuff. start reading, writing, painting, dig out an old hobby, get into fitness(highly reccommended) or just spend time with your partner or kids (again, highly reccommended)

keep going and good luck!!

[Xadrian]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

MickeySoFine1972;1647210 wrote: I found myself getting tired by 10:30, (never happens to me normally).

I went to bed and found myself wide awake at 1am............I fell asleep about 2am I think and woke this morning

Since on baclofen, I mostly go to bed before 11:00 PM, often even earlier. It's no sense for me to stay awake and watch TV then, because I will fall asleep in front of it.

For the waking up at night thing and can't go back to sleep: for some of us it helps to take some of the morning dose of baclofen to fall asleep again.
I take it with some milk in the rare occasions it happens.

The sweating thing is likely caused by alcohol withdrawal. It happened a lot of us and will pass if you stay AF for a couple of days.

Congrats on your AF day!

[Alky]

Baclofen side effects and how to deal with them

So this is totally off topic, but are we to assume you're a Toni Basil fan?