Another Phenibut casualty

[mac245]

I've taken a lot from these forums so I want to give something back by sharing my experience with Phenibut. I went into this with my eyes wide open having read all the good and the horror stories. I started taking phenibut about 2.5 months ago. My daily dose never went above 3G (had caps, so I know) and I managed to take two day breaks although these got exponentially harder as time went on. In the beginning, phenibut was simply unreal. I can only describe it as the drug NZT in the movie limitless. The only difference is that phenibut works by making you think you're a legend in your own mind rather than making you an actual legend. Either way, I've take it on days I had interviews only to hear back that I was 'overqualified'. I'd be overly confident, too comfortable and pretty much slinging the sh*t if you know what I mean. It was all honeymoon in the beginning, the best I've ever felt in a looong time. Fast forward to now. I backed off on the 3g dosage down to 2g / day because it was feeling kind of toxic. My ears were ringing, shooting pains throughout my body (lower back / legs) that seem exactly like sciatica. Sitting for periods of time is unbearable. I've never had problems with sciatica before. I stopped for 3 days and yesterday and I didn't experience anxiety, but I did experience anhedonia, depression, prickly skin, rumination about my life, etc. Total mindf*** stuff. I took 500mg to take the edge off, but I'm delaying the inevitable. I'm going to put aside 5- 500mg caps, chuck the rest and hunker down for hell. I can't see any upside to phenibut anymore aside from maintaining and somehow it seems to aggravate if not outright cause my sciatica. If anybody has ever experienced body pains from phenibut, please let me know, I've never read anybody having these. I usually read that people feel "horrible" or "anxious". I'm starting a new job in 10 days, if I can bring this plane down and keep it there I might ... *might* be human enough to wobble in and maintain my sanity. I'm not the kind of person who can take phenibut 2 times a week and put it down, I'm sort of all or nothing. I may update this as I got if it helps anybody. I guess I'm writing it as a statement to myself that I can get off this stuff.

Mac.

[GhostfaceKillah]

Mac - best of luck over the next week. Phenibut has a long half life, so unfortunately things are going to become progressively more miserable for the first 3-4 days before you begin to see the light. Stick with it, and focus on all the positives you can expect by ridding yourself of this habit. Expect sleepless nights, depersonalization, anxiety, and sweats. If you do not have access to a long acting benzo or barbituate, judicious use of alcohol may be used to take the edge off.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

[kassem23]

It's weird since it's chemical half-life is 5 hours...

[rjm07]

If the half life is 5hrs it would still mean your receptors (GABA-B) would have downregulated from months of (ab)use.
GBL has a horribly short half life but you can still get days of sleepless nights, sweats, hallucinations,etc once you stop the drug?

[eclypz]

ughh. I hate reading about this. Best of luck!

[mac245]

Thanks Ghost and all, If I can get 4 days under my belt that will be a huge achievement. The phenibut stash needs to go, it's too easy to just take one and then it's a whole other day delayed. the half life seems like 24 hours from what I can tell even though the literature says 5 hours. Something about phenibut seems more addicting than benzos, there's a dopamine component, I can feel it. I've been through benzo withdrawal and it last months, absolute torture. Well, like benzos, the only way out is through. I may be too depressed to post, but I'll keep at it. Thanks!

[metalhead0]

3g a day? Damn. The most I ever used was 500mg (pill form) which made me feel super socially outgoing and friendly and talkative and awesome. I usually used half of that dose (250mg). I hear of people getting sick when they go over 1.5g. Did you start at 3g or did you work up to it? However, most of the experiences I've read where people used pills said they stayed well below 1g and that was definitely enough, but when people said they used the powder then I heard of doses going to 1.5g or over. I wonder if that's a quality control issue. Did you use premade caps or did you cap your own from powder?

This stuff is dangerous. I can imagine someone who doesn't do any research (let's be honest, that's a lot of people) taking one pill, feeling awesome, and taking it every day and ending up in a bad situation. Even the bottle mine came in said to cycle it, but IIRC the suggested use was still far too frequent.

I limited myself to 2 or 3 times a month because I was afraid of it, and I probably only took it 6 or 7 times total.

I don't really have any advice for getting off of it, I just wanted to share my experience and what I'd heard. Good luck.

[CleverMouse]

Mac, this is not cool for you, I'm sry to hear about your experience, but I guess you'll survive eventually. It's always "interesting" to read about high dose phenibut adventures.

Like metalhead0 writes it seems to be the dose that screws people over. I've taken phenibut for several years, like a couple times/week and never really experienced the horrible sides. My doses would be 500mg up to 1.5G always in pill form. Also, I've never really had the "phenibut euphoria" except for 2 times (took 2 grams iirc).

Regarding your body pains, that sux, especially if we can't really explain it. I've had similar "symptoms" from high dose PEA years back. That was SUPER annoying!
Maybe bump up your b vitamins (especially folate) and SAM-e for a while.

edit: I should add that phenibut didn't always treat me nice (or I didn't treat phenibut nice). I remember years back one night I took phenibut (1.5 grams) before hitting the town, and went drinking. MAN! The next day I was horribly ill, barfed all day. Never doing that again...

[mac245]

Believe me, I wanted to run around like I found the key to life and share it with people, people I love, but thank God I didn't. It's so addictive and I know people that would dose this above the 3g / day level and not think twice until it was too late. Today is day one and of course it's not that bad. I don't expect the fun to start until day 3 or 4. I'm just documenting this for other people really, I've read just about every phenibut thread there is and I know about using L-Theanine, benzos (I won't do this), alcohol, baclofen (frying pan into the fire possibly) etc. I do have some clonidine my doc gave me for calming myself a bit for interviews - this I'll use. I found from going through benzo withdrawal that lack of sleep will drive you literally insane, not the first night, but the 3rd,4th and 5th -- bed, wall punching crazy especially around 4AM when the damn birds start chirping. Knowing what I know about gabanergic substances, I should have know better, but. oh well. Metal .. I started at 1g and worked up to 3, but had the will not to go over that. It had a self-governing aspect to it where I felt that 3g seemed toxic. My pupils were pinned and sleep was completely wrong. What I mean by this is I would sleep for 3 hours and wake up feeling just fine. That's overclocking and rationally my mind knows my body can't handle this. Almost every post I've read where people have *serious* issues with phenibut are from unmeasured doses and 5g+ doses. I've also read the posts where people took 500mg before bed for a month and were in for a big surprise when they stopped. I have no idea where the aches and pains are coming from, who knows when on phenibut you can sit for hours and do nothing and be entertained, everything seems interesting. I want to get back to baseline to see if this is the cause of my sciatic issues. I'll start a vitamin regimen and SAM-e may not be a bad idea, although I don't want to introduce too much to this equation.

[metalhead0]

What brand were you using? Did it come in pills or were you capping your own pills from the powder?

I also have Clonidine although I take it for a different reason. What dose of that do you use?

[mac245]

I was using Phenibut XT 500mg 4x per day. I settled at 2g per day for the past month. I could have probably been fine at a lower dose. My clonidine is oral pill 0.1 mg tablet. As you know, Clonidine can help with blood pressure spikes. Even if it's placebo it's better than nothing. Taking 1.5 of these definitely makes me drowsy, but once you're used to it it stops doing that (for me anyway). Got to be careful with these.

[GhostfaceKillah]

Documenting your cessation experience should be therapeutic. Not just to help you process the hell one day at a time, but also as a reminder in the future of your perseverance and deterrent for relapse.

[metalhead0]

I was using Phenibut XT 500mg 4x per day.

Serious Nutrition Solutions brand? That's what I had, too, I think. The red and white capsules.

Wow dude, that 4x a day...

I settled at 2g per day for the past month. I could have probably been fine at a lower dose. My clonidine is oral pill 0.1 mg tablet. As you know, Clonidine can help with blood pressure spikes. Even if it's placebo it's better than nothing. Taking 1.5 of these definitely makes me drowsy, but once you're used to it it stops doing that (for me anyway). Got to be careful with these.

I started at 1/2 of a 0.1mg pill and I could barely stay awake during the day. I eventually reduced it to 1/4 pill per day (0.025mg).

I was originally given Mylan brand which gave me a bunch of side effects including loss of libido, eye pain, and dizziness every time I stood up. I later switched to Actavis brand which has barely any side effects but gives me the same benefit.

[CleverMouse]

You know what, I tested the daytime 2G dose yesterday, and boy, I'm not doing that again. I felt semi "drunk", dizzy, and just uncomfortable, no euphoria. I did sleep very good.

There seems to be a "threshold" ~1.5 grams. Beyond that, it feels "toxic" like Mac describes.

[rjm07]

Why would anyone go near this shit GABA-B is a nasty receptor. Even when you cane alcohol in one night it can produce withdrawal symptoms the following night (sweats, insomnia, very mild hallucinations/visuals when trying to sleep). People should stay away from anything that interacts significantly with GABA-A or B.

I would only need to take one dose of GBL and it could significantly fuck my sleep up due to the withdrawal. Nasty horrible stuff.

[mac245]

Well, I'm on 60 hours away from phenibut and so far all I've had was some irritability. I've had no anxiety and last night's sleep was the best I've had in weeks. I took 0.5 mg of clonidine and an anti-histamine named phenyltoloxamine, it's found in a preparation called aceta-gesic. For me, it's much better than diphenhydramine (Benadryl) in that it helps with pain, doesn't cause restless legs and it's an excellent sedative. I didn't take L-Theanine because I'm still not 100% certain if this helps or hurts my ability to sleep. Aside from some negativity, prickly skin and being grumpy things have been manageable. It's still early and I'll probably need 100 hours under my belt to really know, but this is all I have. Hopefully my morning coffee won't send me to the loony bin.

Mac

[rjm07]

All the best dude

[metalhead0]

In for support, how are you doing?

[mac245]

Thanks for checking in. Yesterday I was fine aside from feeling unmotivated. I had no anxiety, no sweating, panic, etc. I still went out and proceeded with life as usual, but mentally I'm not back to pre-phenibut. It's hard to explain, but I can only compare it to when you stop taking an amphetamine after a period of use, there's a dead-zone. It wasn't even that bad because I actually enjoyed parts of my day. Last night's sleep was not great - 4 hours, but I've had night's like this before so I'm not alarmed. I'm at 80+ hours and I'm physically fine, just mentally low. I've read a lot of horror stories of what this would be like only to have it be an anti-climax, but I'm grateful it's nothing more. I also believe phenibut withdrawal could get worse after repeated exposure similar to benzos. The only reason I can think of as to why I wasn't more addicted to phenibut is that I did stick to the 2 day washouts recommended by the manufacturer, even though almost everybody agrees 2 days is not long enough. Those 2 days were looong and I can't live like that. Also, I had discreet dosing in 500mg caps - NO unmeasured doses, NO north of 5g per day hog wild phenibut orgy. So there you have it. I'll add to this if anything else comes up, but I appreciate everybody's support and hopefully this helps someone. Remember, this is my experience, 2g per day could be a huge problem for someone else. Oh, one more thing. My sciatic problems are 95% gone. I think I've read that GABA receptors are widely distributed throughout the body so who knows how phenibut could influence something like this.

Mac

[alias45]

Use gabaA drugs to come of GABAB drugs and visa versa; dose up high enough (GBL withdrawal needs about 40-100mg valium the first few days) but you wont notice a thing.

Probably a better withdrawal too as there appears to be some kind of rebound inflammation (gabaergics are anti inflammatory) according to the symptions id say its not healthy to get off without another gabaergic.