Posted by bleauberry on August 14, 2011, at 9:13:53
In reply to Buprenorphine: long term success?, posted by Zonked on August 13, 2011, at 10:23:55
I agree with SLS in that I do not recall anyone having a stable longterm improvement with any of the opioid choices. Short term for sure, great stuff for some people including me. I tell you what, last year I came home from outpatient surgery with a bottle of vicadin, didn't even take as much as the minimum amounts suggested, and yet depression was gone, life was back, and I felt 20 years younger. It was not euphoria. It was not a "fake" feeling. It was a bona fide very real feeling of normalcy, remission. And it happened in less than a day! No 6 week wait.
Woud that continue if I kept taking it? I seriously doubt it. I use it as an emergency med for really unusually bad days.
Here's another weird thing about it with me. Vicadin has a very short half life. Sometimes a dose I take is so small I can't even hardly feel it. And even if I did, it is wearing off in 3 hours. But, the next day is a good day. Very strange. It somehow does something today, in a short time, that makes me feel better tomorrow after it is gone. So weird.
Anyway, there is a bright side to your experience. That is, your dealings when pain have produced a happy accident....you now know what circuits are involved in your mood problems....the opioid circuits, which indirectly ties into dopamine and the others, with the opioids leading the way. That's a great clue....it pretty much rules out almost anything a pdoc would commonly prescribe and saves a lifetime of wasted med trials.
So how can we target the opioid system without taking opioid meds?
Rhodiola rosea. D-Phenylalanine. N-acetyl-cysteine. LDN (low dose naltrexone). Maybe DL-Phenylalanine if you don't mind the extra noradrenaline component in it. Maybe just a dash of 5htp along with the other stuff (by a dash I'm talking 5mg-25mg). Regular heavy exercise or dance. Acupuncture. All of the above are going to work directly on the opioid circuits, with some side benefits to the other circuits. NAC is not directly a neurotransmitter substance, but what it does is mop up crap that might be competing with your own neurotransmitters for receptor sites. Crap equals metals, plastics, toxins from microbes, herbicides, pesticides, toxins from inappropriate metabolism of foods....it cleans stuff out. Actually it does a ton of stuff, enough to write a book. it can directly help mood, sleep, energy, brain fog.
So anyway there ya go. Some opioid stuff to work on and experiment with before embarking on a slippery slope of opioid meds. Hopefully you won't need those. The supps I mentioned are more potent at what they do than people realize. They just don't get the advertising or marketing the meds get, so we don't hear about them as much. A pharmaceutical rep won't be pushing them on you, by I will, because I happen to feel they are at least as good and not uncommonly better than whatever the pharm rep has to offer.
Back to vicadin. Here's my theory on why it works for me. Toxins of many kinds, including those of lyme organisms, have a high affinity for opioid receptors. Therefore my own natural opioids have competition and are being partly or mostly blocked out of the receptors where they are intended to dock. I have also had lab tests showing high mercury, lead, and cadmium, which also do the same blockage. Well, I think vicadin has a stronger affinity for the receptors than do all those toxins....so it competitively displaces them and let's the receptors work the way they are supposed to....and thus feeling better even then next day....the toxins haven't had enough time yet to sneak back in after being locked out.
poster:bleauberry
thread:993628
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110809/msgs/993723.html