Comment · Sun, January 31, 2021 · ND Owner
Herbal GABAergics and dependency
Original post in this thread
bejaq · 20 points
It seems that it's generally assumed that herbal supplements that work on GABA like gotu kola, skullcap, lemon balm, magnolia are not prone to causing dependency and withdrawal.
However there have been (relatively rare) claims to the contrary.
To be honest I am a bit concerned with the lack of information on this subject, and my intuition is that in the absence of contrary evidence, it should be assumed that substances that have similarities in receptor-action to benzodiazepines, alcohol, phenibut (if only by working on gaba) might be prone to inducing dependency and withdrawal.
Personally I like the feeling of benzos a lot and if there is safe alternative I certainly would like to take it more than occasionally.
It would be awesome to have a substance that helps the GABA system regulate itself better, and the complex pharmacology of herbs might be better suited to that?
But I feel it might be a little bit naive to believe that unless there is actual evidence for that.
It should be noted that when it comes to benzos and opiates, it took a long time and many people using them for the understanding of their true addictive potential to become clear, so that also seems good t…
What they were answering
chutney1 · 2 points
Thanks a lot for the in depth reply. Appreciate your time. And thank you for the links. The one about the persistence of cognitive dysfunction post benzo use I am already intimately familiar with, the others you linked I will check out. Let me give you an idea of my story and how I got here, as I think it might provide you with some context.
The substance from which I underwent withdrawal was phenibut. I used a 1g (gram) dose on five separate occasions over the course of 10 days. The withdrawal symptoms had started on 2/26/2016 which was about 32hrs after my last dose of phenibut. So this was coming up on five years ago. I had no idea at the time but that was enough to induce a rather nasty withdrawal syndrome (at least for me). It is sometimes hard wrap my head around the fact that this much damage was done from a mere five doses of this chemical (I have used no benzos or excessively potent GABAergics since then). I accept full responsibility for using it in a 1gram dose, it is more than recommended and I was aware of that. But wow. Had you asked me 5 years ago, I would never have believed it possible that five doses of a chemical could cause this sort of lasting IQ damage and general cognitive dysfunction. I would have told you that save for neurotoxins, drugs just don't work like that. So this has been a very, very tragic and unfortunate lesson for me. I lost an amazing jo…
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
Okay, so you are talking about GABA-B, then. GABA-B and GABA-A are two totally different beasts. I was more discussing GABA-A, and the benzodiazepine receptor specifically. How the GABA-B receptor complex acts is quite different than A. I actually even talked about it above. There is evidence that that GABA-B receptor complex can be locked into the active state by two cysteines that combine to form a disulfide bridge.
Locking the Dimeric GABAB G-Protein-Coupled Receptor in Its Active State
There is a lot more data and studies on long-term issues from GABA-A than there are for GABA-B, due to the prevalence of benzos.
Have you ever tried fasoracetam? That's up-regulates GABA-B by modulating the metabotropic glutamate receptors. You might be wasting your time trying the "common" things for GABA recovery, since most are targeting GABA-A. I would focus on GABA-B, since that is what phenibut acts on.