DOSE:	10 mg	oral	Pharms - Memantine	(daily)
	70 mg	oral	Lisdexamfetamine	(daily)
			Opioids

BODY WEIGHT:

190 lb

I have been an opioid addict for 8 years now; I have taken almost everything at least once: hydrocodone, Oxycontin, morphine, fentanyl, oxymorphone, hydromorphone, pentazocine, tramadol, heroin, buprenorphine, you get the idea (and these are just the opioids). I have spent several months at a time on 200 mg of morphine IV a day, usually 50-75 mg a shot, plus anything else I could get a hold of (to put this into some context, the starting dose of IV morphine is 4-10 mg, maybe 15 mg if you are in pain that cannot be described by words). So, needless to say, my tolerance to opioid drugs is extremely high, and my tolerance tends to stay high, even after protracted periods of abstinence.

So, I started doing some research on the neurological mechanisms of opioid tolerance/dependance. A lot of research, just go to pubmed.com and type 'NMDA antagonists and opioid tolerance', and you'll see how complicated this stuff is. So, after going through all that damn research, I decided to try an NMDA antagonist, to see if it would help with the long-term withdrawal (the 'I'm so bored and sad I could die...whats the point of doing anything?' phase of coming off opioid drugs). I had my heart set on ketamine, but I couldn't find any. I tried DXM, but I didn't want to take a massive dose. But I found my great aunt's Nemanda, and so I decided to try that.

It's been about a week and a half since I've had an opioid -- I'm not sick anymore, but I'm definitely far from okay. I tried 30 mg at first, to try to get it in my system, and it caused some very slight trippy feelings. It wasn't much, but I got some decent sleep for the first time since coming off the morphine. The next day I dropped my dose to 20 mg, and I still felt kind of weird, but not incapacitated. After a few days of 20 mg I started taking 10 mg a day, at night, just like one would an antidepressant. By about the second week of this I could really feel a difference -- I wasn't cycling from crippling sadness and a maniacal frustration. I still had cravings for opioids, and so the first chance I got I swiped a 7.5 mg hydrocodone from my aunt's purse. The sad thing is, as an addict, I KNEW that dose would do nothing to me, I usually have to take at least 40-60 mg of hydrocodone to feel anything at all. But the strangest thing happened, I felt the 7.5 mg hydrocodone. I mean, it didn't blow me out of the water, but it kinda felt like what 20 mg of hydrocodone would feel like ordinarily. It's been 6 years since I could feel a 7.5 mg hydrocodone. I am pretty sure it was the Nemanda. I also started noticing that my Vyvanse seemed to work a little bit better when I was on the Nemanda.

All in all, I took the Nemanda for a month, just 10 mg a day, and my opioid tolerance took a nose dive, and my amphetamine tolerance fell as well. I felt much more like myself while I was taking the Nemanda, less drug-addled. Unfortunately, when I ran out of the Nemanda, my opioid and amphetamine tolerance went back up after about a month. I definately think Nemanda has a place in treating opioid addiction, or perhaps preventing tolerance in people that really need opioid drugs for pain (for example, cancer patients), or people like me that have taken amphetamine based medications for so long that they don't work very well anymore.

Exp Year: 2013	ExpID: 103402
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Nov 19, 2024	Views: 28
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Pharms - Memantine (309), Opioids (407) : Combinations (3), Retrospective / Summary (11), Addiction & Habituation (10), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Alone (16)