Baclofen dosage increase-- does it have to be SO SLOW!!!

[Mom21961]

Hello all,

I am ramping up on my baclofen dose at the rate prescribed, but it is SOOO slow. I'm at 60 mg to date, and am also taking the l-glutamine, kudzu, vitamins, and hypnosis CDs recommended on this site. Is there anyone out there that has ramped up more quickly than recommended? I am overweight due to my alcohol consumption (3 or 4 bottles of wine a day) so I'm anticipating over 300mg for my switch. I've read the research. I understand that slower is best, but what I want to know is if there are those out there that were successful increasing more quickly. The only side effect I've had was some sleepiness. Please PM me if you'd prefer.

Thanks,

Mom

[kronkcarr]

Hey Mom,

There were people on the old site that ramped up quicker so I'll bet you'll hear from someone. I went up 10 mgs every 3 days. My feeling is ramp up as you like and change it up if the SEs become too much.

[Diver]

Mom,

All of us react differently to Baclofen so it is hard to tell exactly how you will react if you try to titrate at a faster rate. I bumped my intake by 10 mgs every three or four days or so until I got up over 200 mgs., then I went up by as much as 10 mgs a day for several days. This is not recommended I had some pretty serious side effects including some mild hallucinations! The only way I was able to do this was because I was working from home and my work was not too demanding at that time. I also ended up in ER after I double dosed myself with an extra 80mgs. Try to remember that it no doubt took you years to get to the point that you are at with your alcohol consumption, so in the grand scheme of things a couple more months is not a huge deal. I understand that you are anxious to hit the switch but try to be patient.

Diver

[Lostinspace]

Hey Mom,

Welcome to our community Listen to others. Please do not think that just because you’re overweight, that your tolerance for going up is different! No. No! Weight has nothing to do with how baclofen affects people. Take it slowly . . . Please! We’re all very different. Please take it easy.

[Stevo]

Hi Mom,
It is up to you but the general concensus is that slow titrating up saves a lot of potential negative side effects.

I went up very slowly,much slower than is possible with nearly no SE's or atleast very minor versions of what I have seen described by others in here.

I can understand that hitting the switch may seem of some urgency to you but as others have stated in the scheme of things a few months is not really very much compared to the possible years of destruction that AL can cause.

I wish you all the best and will finish with slow and steady wins the race.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Yes.

Sorry.

It will work better in the long run, and in fact, it may prevent it from working at all if you rush it. For all the reasons given above.

[Mom21961]

Thank you all. I will strive to be patient. :thanks:

[neophyte]

Welcome to the board mate. How fast are you going up? I don't want to dissuade you to go against medical advice received but here is my anecdotal experience. I'll provide you with my log, I found sides from 0-100 almost nothing. 100-200, insomnia, day time sleepyness, 200-300 all of that but worse. my brief jump to 320 i was seeing red dots and some other bad stuff i dont remember. Hope you find it useful.

If you are like me, this will get you to 300 in about 4 months. Then another month or two for side effects go away completely. Be patient. 6 months is well worth to avoid the horrors of alcoholism

http://www.filedropper.com/baclofenlog

[Mom21961]

Hello all,

So, after whining about 'why can't I titrate rate up faster!' I have been stuck at 180 for more than a month due to severe side effects. I have developed obstructive sleep apnea, shortness of breath, severe somnolence during the day, insomnia at night, and edema in my ankles and calves. So why haven't I just quit? Because it has curtailed my drinking significantly, and that is my primary objective. I now uses a cpap machine to sleep, compression stockings for the edema, and nootropics to try to keep me functional at work. I use melatonin and calms forte for the insomnia, to a less than stellar effect. Sooo.. Thanks for reading this far. Has anyone eXperianced a bounce back effect on Baclofen? I was on vacation last week and had two days that I only had one glass of wine!! What?? That has never happened for me. Over the last decade, I have only strung together one group of AF days last year. But since I've been back to work, I'm back to a 2 bottle of wine per day consumption ( less than my original 4 bottles, but still...). Is this part of the journey? Can anyone give me insight as to what's going on?
Thanks in advance,
Mom

[neophyte]

hi Mom

Even with Baclofen I think its still easy to fall back into drinking, I struggled with this for a long time. even on high doses of baclofen, i found that if i kept drinking I could get a buzz happening, it's a strange phenomenon because it seems like you have to fight against the baclofen to do it i.e. you have to keep drinking day after day and the cravings start coming back. So what I did was use antabuse as an additional mental "no" factor. Baclofen makes it a lot easier to stay sober but its still a battle.

It also is much MUCH easier to not drink the longer you dont drink, its hard to rack up those weeks and months sober but if you do, you will find yourself thinking about alcohol less and less.

I have problems with snoring still, my partner thinks it might be sleep apnea. I think you might be stuck with the sleep apnea as baclofen is a muscle relaxer and would be responsible for snoring and closing of the airways during sleep. again though, ask your doc about this, its just my hunch...

[Molly78]

I second Neo's comment - it is MUCH easier to not drink, the longer you don't drink.

Baclofen didn't really work for me when I took it while drinking, though I know others have done it this way. I had to stop drinking, that way you can increase the baclofen faster with fewer SE. 180mg + 2 bottles of wine.........now that would definitely give me SE! I am on 100 - 120mg daily, I drink 3-4 units (half a bottle of wine) 2 or 3 times a week, & don't have any SE.

[Molly78]

I second Neo's comment - it is MUCH easier to not drink, the longer you don't drink.

Baclofen didn't really work for me when I took it while drinking, though I know others have done it this way. I had to stop drinking, that way you can increase the baclofen faster with fewer SE. 180mg + 2 bottles of wine.........now that would definitely give me SE! I am on 100 - 120mg daily, I drink 3-4 units (half a bottle of wine) 2 or 3 times a week, & don't have any SE.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

When you were on vacation you were presumably relaxed. Less of the daily grind, the anxiety, the ingrained habit, and you drank less... (Congratulations!)

I definitely had times when I didn't drink, or drank a lot less, and then would drink more again. It helped me to work on the mental side. I'm not talking about abstaining, though of course that's a good idea. I never did it. I'm talking about dealing with stress through meditation or a gratitude journal or something. (You pick.)

Also, I hate to beat the dead horse, but exercise. Even just walking, if you can.

[Molly78]

Also, don't forget to eat as soon as you get home from work. This was always the danger time for me - walk into the house, open a bottle of wine, sit down to relax before supper..........3 hours later the bottle is empty, no longer hungry but looking for another bottle to open.

Now I prepare my meal as soon as I get home, before I sit down & once I've eaten the urge to drink is so much less. Those AA danger signals, hungry, tired etc make sense at the end of a working day, especially if it's been a difficult one - add angry, & if you live alone, with no one to offload to, add lonely as well.

A bit like Fred says, constructing good habits to replace bad ones.

[Spiritfree]

This is a really good thread -in my opinion. I happen to believe that many of us get confused about Baclofen and what it actually does and does not do.
For me, Baclofen eventually relieved of my mental cyclical process of always thinking about drinking. Baclofen never did take away the reasons that I drank in the first place; I would drink to change the way I thought or felt about -just about anything. Baclofen did allow my brain to better rationalize whether to drink or not -but Baclofen does not remove the underlying issues that causes one to drink in the first place.

I had to stop drinking in order to continue living. Baclofen made this experience so much easier -with the reduction and elimination in my cyclical thoughts of drinking, I was much better able to make better choices -choices not to drink and choices to pursue more productive and joyful activities.

I just don't think that science has yet to discover a medication that will make you not want to drink to change the way that you feel or think. I can not imagine how difficult it must be to stop drinking, even if one is taking Baclofen and not committed to not drinking anymore.

Side Note: One thing that Baclofen really can do for true diagnosed alcoholics is to initially offer them the hope that they can start back drinking some once they stop for awhile using Baclofen. Most brains of most alcoholics fight and resist -to the bitter end, when they are initially told that they can never drink again. However, after time away from alcohol and the ability to think more rationally, one who is taking Baclofen has a much greater chance of not drinking again -in my opinion of course.

--sf--