[EXPERIMENTAL] What are your hidden gem medications/drugs/substances and what makes them ideal for your usecase [**Bolded Substance Name (Brand/Street Name)** + New Paragraph folks]
Generic name (Brand/street name)
Discussion paragraphs/submission
*If you are curious about a specific substance but can’t answer, please follow this format—
Helps relieve anxiety and eases social contact. For me personally its just a mood enhancer and makes listening to music so good. About 500-1500mg is a normal dose, lasts for up to 24h and should not be taken more often than once a week.
Heads up to anyone with cardiac issues, especially long QT syndrome or other meds that prolong the QT internal: Ondansetron is so notorious for QT prolongation and cardiac arrhythmia problems that we have to perform an EKG before we’re allowed to give you a second dose on our cardiac unit.
I have scary anecdotes that bias me against it lol
Yeah, long QT syndrome is estimated around 1/2000 people. Relatively rare. I fully confess that I’m just traumatized by my personal experiences with patients taking the drug lol
Thats why I’m doing this thread, its a labor of love and curiosity but I’m intrigued to hear everyone dish freely about such a mundanely “taboo” subject
Allowed for a sense of peace with my own mortality.
Is it necessary to leave empty replies like this though? I would like to have more replies to read too but I think it’s better to just let people come up with them.
(speaking as a user, not as a mod. Forgot lemmy always shows the icon)
What was your particular orientation with that previously, like we’re all sort of shifty about death but I don’t think much about it (like before I was born, that doesn’t scare me so I kinda dont get the inverse of that)
do you have a condition that makes this all the more prescient or timely
any articulable messages you can share that encapsulate the experience we can try to glean from?
I will start with naltrexone, which can help people who have difficulty regulating their drinking have a more natural and sustainable relationship with alcohol should they choose to not cut it out of their lives entirely.
I consider this the closest thing to a “cure” for drinking problems but it required discipline and it doesn’t prevent actual impairment, only the buzz and liking/compulsion to keep overdoing it that day/session
I want to more rigorously experiment with it and other compulsive things I have challenges with, it seems the opioidergic system mediates liking and the compulsive attachment that flows from that so I’m curious to what extent its effect is extensible to other problematic habits, chemical or otherwise
As a user of this whose primary problem is frequent waking at night rather than falling asleep, I don't find it that helpful. It does help falling asleep, but it doesn't help one stay asleep.
I've spoken with my sleep doctor about this and apparently basically the only thing that's good for helping somebody stay asleep as opposed to fall asleep is a common date rape drug so it's not commonly prescribed.
It really is too bad people misuse it like that. I’ve heard the sleep is insanely deep and refreshing and its a damn shame you’re automatically sketch if you want that for your own benefit
I wish I could get diagnosed with narcolepsy so I could have it for that purpose, but it also sounds like an enormous bureaucratic headache and I also wouldn’t want someone to be able to take advantage of that knowledge/the rarity with which its prescribed to get you sucked into some bullshit sitch.
Fascinating medication that I have found to annihilate anxiety (excellent anxiolytic) and promote social cohesion/sociabillity/oversharing beware. Takes the edge of stimulants as well
Almost like a pharmaceutical slightly sedative-leaning version of ecstasy but obviously quite distinct pharmacologically and not a replacement for same.
Derived from chamomile flowers (and other plant sources), I’ve found this to be more successful in treating my chronic insomnia than any of the pharmaceutical options. (And believe me, I’ve tried them all.)
It’s really safe even in absolutely large doses. (There are studies performed using doses in the multiple GRAM range.) I highly recommend trying it. Personally I take 400mg/night, which is twice the dosage you’ll see advertised. I only mention because I think the standard advertised range is probably too low for people like me.
Would you recommend it for other seniors particularly? My grandmother might like something like this? She liked Calm Magnesium Sleep except for the GI effect of magnesium citrate and I wonder it this might be easier on the system to the extent she’d be into it
I actually WOULD recommend this for seniors. It does not have any anticholinergic side effects like a lot of pharmaceutical sedatives do, and it doesn’t interact with the most common blood pressure or cardiac meds that older folks often take.
I have the same problem with magnesium supplements. Mag glycinate has less of that laxative effect than mag citrate, so she could try that as well.
The only two caveats I would add are: she should definitely tell her doctors she’s taking it, as with any OTC supplement. And if she’s specifically on a drug called warfarin (Coumadin), she should be very cautious. (Even Tylenol can cause warfarin to build up in the body. Warfarin sucks, so we don’t use it as much anymore, but it’s not unheard of.)
Hope that helps! (I’m a cardiac nurse. I work with older folks a lot.)
Literally the only thing that gives me refreshing sleep. (See also: mitochondrial dysfunction that I mentioned in my other comment about CQ10.) Apigenin seems to improve what’s called “sleep architecture” in a way that none of the pharmaceuticals I’ve ever tried do.
I gotta sleep soon aha but I’ll leave you with a last question for tonight: what do you think mediates Apigenin’s efficacy for sleep? Like what is the mechanism behind its efficacy, what systems does it modulate?
Thanks and no rush, I’ll listen to that article tomorrow :)
So, it’s interesting, because it’s well-known to have effects on the same GABA receptors as benzodiazepines (like Xanax), but none of the addictive, physical dependence problems, and apigenin doesn’t respond consistently to the drug we use to reverse benzos (called flumazenil).
So… we’re not entirely sure? It could still be the GABA effects that help with sleep. But there’s also a host of antiinflammatory neurological effects that probably better explain its efficacy against Alzheimer’s, for example.
Now, if you really want to put yourself to sleep, feel free to crawl through this alphabet soup of a research article lol:
I just had to look that shit up haha. I’ve never thought to check into it beyond just “you’re not breathing, so I’m about to make you very angry by reversing your high, sorry bro” lol
It seems as if _B ligands are both way less ubiquitous and also variably less-reinforcing than traditional alcohol-type sedatives like benzos/barbs/sleeps, although I say that very conjecturally (is that a word? Aha). And less likely to be overdone to the point the therapeutic window is being dangerously exceeded or a polypharmacy situation that leads to medical emergency like that
From my own experience with baclofen which I used to wean off drinking and help with the induced anxiety, I didn’t really find it super pleasent or enjoyable and there were enough annoying sides like tearing up and a crappy fuzziness that was super offputting. Alcohol and sedatives (especially sleeping pills), totes different story (I find them as a class GABA_A way more dangerous and mindlessly compulsive.
Ok you and I both have to go to sleep, but now you’ve got me wondering about the eternal debate amongst our medical residents about benzos vs. barbiturates for acute alcohol withdrawal. I’ll have to read up on this some more
Yeah, ask about baclofen, its famously advocated by a French dr who struggled to find a proper treatment for his alcoholism until he arrived on baclofen. End of My Addiction is the title.
I used it as an adjuvant treatment along with naltrexone and careful timing in terms of the actual drinking that was required to make the naltrexone effective in addressing the neurochemical basis for much of the compulsion from alcohol.
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