Phenibut for alcohol withdrawal and cravings

[m314]

Slowly switching to baclofen might be a good idea. I'll decide on a plan for sure in the next week. I'm going on a mini vacation from Saturday through Wednesday, so I'll stick with phenibut while I'm travelling.

This will be my first vacation in a while that I won't use as an excuse for drinking all day every day. I'm not sure how that became the thing I always do when I have time off work.

[m314]

I forgot to mention it, but I've been sleeping better lately. I've had problems with insomnia my whole adult life. Drinking at night makes it worse, obviously. I can get to sleep fine, but I wake up 2 or 3 hours later.

At some point recently (in the last couple years), I learned that having a drink when I wake up makes it easier to get back to sleep. That became a habit. I eventually got to the point where I'd wake up and have a drink (or 2 or 3) 2 or 3 times a night. Sometimes I still couldn't get back to sleep after 3 or more drinks. That's a shitty way to start a work day, after drinking all through the night without much sleep.

Phenibut (so far) has broken that habit. I still wake up at night, but I've quit drinking to try to get back to sleep. The habit is still there, then I catch myself and think "What the hell am I doing? I shouldn't be drinking vodka at 5 am when I have to be at work soon."

I'm hoping to use phenibut and baclofen as tools to break old habits like this. I'd like to not need either of them after a certain point. At some point I'll have reestablished old habits where I was drinking in moderation and going some nights without alcohol at all.

[m314]

I also tried to reduce my dosage daily, but that led to cravings and dysphoria, and I kept topping up with extra phenibut—it’s rather like attempting to detox yourself from alcohol by slowly reducing your daily intake: it is possible (I’ve done it myself previously) but it requires a determined will.

Thanks for the details. I haven't experienced any cravings for phenibut yet, possibly because of the low dose. I barely feel anything from my biggest dose of the day. It feels like it would be easier for me to taper off since I don't crave it the way I normally crave alcohol.

The long onset seems like it would help with cravings. If I crave a drink, I have one and feel buzzed almost right away. Taking a 500 mg dose of phenibut makes me feel slightly more relaxed in 3 or 4 hours.

My main worry is the alcohol cravings coming back if I taper off phenibut or baclofen. Maybe I should take a little break from alcohol completely before I quit. Right now I'm still drinking maybe 2 drinks every night. I don't want that to turn into 5 or 10 as I'm coming off.

[m314]

That's an interesting story. I wonder how he's doing today.

I wonder if it would have been easier to just slowly taper off the phenibut. Reducing the dose by 100 mg/day seems like it would be easier than dropping a few grams at a time and adding baclofen.

[m314]

I just got back from my Florida trip. Phenibut at 1 gram a day worked out well.

I had a few beers with my stepdad one day, and I had a few beers with an old friend from high school on a different night. No hard liquor, no drinking to the point of a hangover, no morning drinking or withdrawal symptoms in the morning. I didn't feel the urge to find a bar at the airport for the flights there and back.

I had originally planned on trying baclofen instead of phenibut. I still want to give it a shot. I had my regular phenibut morning and afternoon doses today, 250 mg each. I skipped the 500 mg night dose and took 20 mg of baclofen when I got home. I'm off work tomorrow, so I'm going to try just switching to 10 mg baclofen 3 times a day.

I'll wait to see what happens tomorrow. I have plenty of phenibut and baclofen, so I could try a more gradual approach if I need to.

[Lostinspace]

That sounds like a very reasonable transition, m314. Let us know how it goes for you.

[m314]

I woke up yesterday feeling a little sick to my stomach. I took 10 mg baclofen in the morning and 10 mg early afternoon. The stomach issues got worse through the day even with baclofen. It felt like benzo withdrawal only without feeling jittery or anxious.

It wasn't terrible, but I gave up and took 500 mg of phenibut in the evening. The withdrawal symptoms went away over the next few hours. Now I'm back to taking 1 gram a day with no baclofen.

I think I'll stick with phenibut for now and use a little willpower to drink less. The key word there is "little". I'm not indifferent to alcohol, but cutting back or skipping days is easier with phenibut.

I'm not planning on raising the dose from here. Right now I'm planning on sticking with 1 gram a day for a little while, then tapering off like I described before. I'm determined to reach my goal and stick with it over time. I need to drink in moderation or not at all.

[m314]

I feel like I mostly have a handle on things, but I've slipped a few times. Last Friday we went out to lunch as a team at work. It was at a brewpub, so I had a couple beers along with everyone else. Ended up going back to work, not getting much done, and going home early.

I ended up drinking by myself after that from that Friday afternoon through Sunday night / Monday morning. I'm still on 1000 mg / day of phenibut, but that didn't stop me from the weekend binge. I cancelled plans with a friend, stopped answering the phone, and played a video game by myself with a bottle of vodka and a box of wine. It wasn't even that great; it was just hard to stop once I got started.

I felt somewhat terrible on Monday, but I got through the day at work without drinking. It felt more like a hangover than withdrawal, like it would have been without phenibut.

Now I'm back to drinking 10 ounces of wine at the end of the day. I feel like I have more control over my drinking on weekdays. I work all day, come home, and do a second workout at the gym here instead of drinking right away. Then I get some chores done around the house before I relax and have my 1 (large) glass of wine for the day. This feels like a sustainable pace.

Weekends are different. What am I supposed to do with myself for two whole days without drinking? I need to figure that one out.

[m314]

Phenibut at 1 gram a day has slowly seemed to fade into a background substance. The anti craving and anti withdrawal effects are much less pronounced than they were a couple months ago.

I'm thinking of carefully increasing the dose to get the beneficial effects back. Either that or tapering off completely. Phenibut has been a helpful tool, but I need a better strategy to get back to a healthy level of drinking and stick to that level.

[Spiritfree]

I’m surprised that it has taken two months for tolerance to have become a problem, especially as you have been using it every day.

Despite the pharmacodynamic similarities of the two drugs, phenibut is not a viable alternative to baclofen as an anti-addictive medicine. In all probability, it’s actually acting as an alternative to alcohol, and concomitant use of both substances, in the longer term, is only ever going to serve to compound that addiction.

As you’ve pointed out, you need a better strategy. I think that tapering off phenibut whilst still drinking may prove quite difficult. I know you’re already tried to cross-taper to baclofen once without success—it may be worth having another attempt. If you get the dosage correct, then baclofen could kill two birds with one stone: replacing phenibut and reducing alcohol intake by eliminating cravings and any minor withdrawal symptoms.

Of course, that is easier said than done. I can’t give you any advice on the methodology or dosages required, except to refer you to the Prescribing Guide for Baclofen in the Treatment of Alcoholism.

Hi Palladium - I am very glad that I read this post today. I have/had become very close to ordering some phenibut before your post. I had found so many positive articles/videos regarding phenibut that I was set and ready to buy. I did however keep reading on many of the sites/posts that you need to be very careful as not to use this substance everyday. Having read your posts, read the warnings from others, and knowing my past history, I have now decided in no way am I even going to try phenibut. I am out of pb market. Thank you.

NOTE:
Palladium, the reason that I have been considering taking phenibut is to feel more motivated and more calm (at the same time) -anytime that I choose. Although I no longer drink, I still have memories of alcohol acting on my brain in a way that both motivated me and calmed me -at the same time (at least for a short time). I guess that I am the ultimate poster person for world addict; I want to feel on top of my game all hours of the day-every day, except when I am sleeping,

[neophyte]

I see this come up often enough, someone wants to be on baclofen to treat their alcoholism. They find that phenibut is a gaba-b agonist, similar chemical structure to baclofen, completely legal and easy to obtain so figures it should do the same thing, right?

I myself am a life long suffer from anxiety/depression, when I was doing some research, I pondered why dopamine reuptake inhibitors (some prescribed anti depresants work this way) and dopamine releasing agents such as amphetamines do not work the same. Both drugs increase dopamine in the synamptic cleft i.e. more dopamine means i feel good and i want to do stuff. Seems like the perfect cure for anxiety, and reuptake inhibitors do not suffer from tolerance, win win. At the time I was on high dose effexor which works partially as a dopamine reuptake inhibitor. All it did was make me feel like a zombie.

Chemicals even though they both perform a similar action, look almost identical can have very different pharmacological effects.

This is the answer I got and reveals more on why looking at a chemical structure isn't so simple.

Truly selective agonists, antagonists, and reuptake inhibitors are a fiction created by the undergraduate education, in the way that the octet rule is an oversimplification taught in general chemistry, in order to make the concepts more simple for students. Names like "SSRI" and "DRI" also help perpetuate the myth that those compounds are actually selective.
The reality is that almost every psychoactive drug used to modify behavior or perception acts to a significant degree on a wide variety of monoamines, often including very different affinities for subtypes of the same receptor ligand! In addition, remember that the neuropharmacology of a given substance depends not only on its receptor affinities, but its distribution in the brain- a prime example would be amphetamine and methamphetamine, the major difference between them being the ultimate distribution in brain tissue as they penetrate the BBB (or so the consensus is in recent literature). And we're still only talking about the direct action of the drug itself, not any metabolites or receptor modulation effects (which are becoming more recognized as explaining the nuances of previously well-explored-but-not-fully-explained drugs in the brain).
In essence, I think you're oversimplifying the actions of your prototype drug as a DRI versus NRI. You can't look at a drug, measure its Ki for a few catecholamine ligands, and say "oh this will help my depression" or "look, a less-addictive painkiller." Which is unfortunate for being able to live better through simple chemistry, but of course enthralling to those of us who are (often accidentally) addicted to the mysteries of a brain.

[m314]

I've been doing better over the last week and a half. I tried going up to 1250 mg/day, but I didn't like it. I notice subtle effects from phenibut in my job performance as a software engineer. I make little mistakes and forget little things when I increase the dose. It's a million times better than alcohol withdrawal, but I'm not stuck in the drinking / withdrawal cycle anymore.

I went back to 1 gram/day, then I tapered off my afternoon dose completely. I was taking 250 mg in the morning and afternoon, then 500 mg at night. Cutting out 50 mg/day from the afternoon dose was easy

It turned out to feel stronger and more effective at 750 mg/day. Taking 3 doses through the day helped a lot at first. I don't get alcohol cravings anymore in the morning or when I'm at work, so there's no need to keep taking it through the day like that.

I've continued tapering off at 50 mg/day. Today I took 100 mg in the morning and 500 mg after work. The nightly dose feels more relaxing as I take less during the day. By Sunday I'll be taking just the one dose at night. I'll decide then if I want to stay with the lower dose a little longer or taper off completely.

I still think phenibut can be a useful tool in quitting alcohol, or at least cutting way back. It has no recreational appeal for me. Low doses have a mild feeling, and higher doses aren't pleasant to me. I just don't want to be on it forever.

[Spiritfree]

Hi M - it really sounds to me as if phenibut is better than drinking alcohol but eventually becomes a problem in and of itself. Maybe Baclofen is not such a bad answer for me after all?

[Lostinspace]

Good luck to you, m314. You’re certainly using phenibut way more responsibly than I ever did! I hope you continue to find freedom. If, however, your use starts to escalate, please get back to us. I wish you the best.

[m314]

Phenibut won't become a problem for me. I have experience with other drugs that feel better and are more tempting in general. I'm physically dependent on phenibut, in a mild way, but there's no chance of it getting out of control. Opiates, benzos, GHB, and alcohol all feel better and feel more psychologically addictive to me than phenibut. I've never had a real problem with any of them except alcohol.

I've continued tapering down at 50 mg/day. I had 350 mg today. If I keep going, I'll be down to 0 this time next week. I've noticed the alcohol cravings coming back at night as I'm lowering the evening dose. I haven't decided on a plan yet. I could taper down to 0 and keep myself busy so I won't think about drinking so much. I could go back to 500 mg/day in one evening dose, or I could try switching to baclofen again.