Paraphernalia - Breakthrough: potentially cheap potentiation method.

[paranoid_android]

SwiPA is terribly addicted to caffeine. He's fairly broke and will do anything to get it in his body. It's usually coffee, but even now he is chewing a piece of caffeinated gum. If he goes without caffeine of any kind for several hours (4+) he gets very tired, but unable to actually sleep.

SwiPA has found that even though he must have caffeine to even be "normal", it tends to disrupt the nodding effect of opiates. So, he has decided to not ingest caffeine for several hours prior to his opiate dose. His opiate of choice (read: only thing available) is hydrocodone, to the tune of 10/325 Norcos.

SwiPA is fairly convinced that caffeine withdrawal is the most potent potentiator of hydrocodone he has ever experienced. It increases both the intensity and duration of the main nodding/dream-state effect. For the record, he hasn't used the Tagamet method.

SwiPA thought, as many of you readers here may, that something else must be at work here. Perhaps metabolism is reduced to the point that the drug stays in the system longer, and the nodding is just caffeine withdrawal. Or perhaps he underestimates the length of the opiate experience. However, SwiPA is confident in his conclusion that caffeine withdrawal potentiates opiate experiences.

The smoking gun is simple: the biggest difference between opiation and caffeine withdrawal is that opiates create an uncontrollable itching. To make a long story ever so slightly shorter, the itching is still present well past the expected 6 hours of opiate experience. Hours later, it's still working.

SwiPA believes his brain has been fooled by thinking that the caffeine withdrawal is the opiate experience. Essentially, it seems to be a grand and bastardized application of the placebo principal. Let us all remember that the placebo effect is not psychological, but chemical.

Now, SwiPA is acutely aware that the actual neurotransmitter sites and whatnot involved in both drugs are very different.

SwiPA is having trouble telling me this information to type: he dosed at 9:00 p.m. and is nodding hard at 3:00 in the morning.

SwiPA is ecstatic that he found a way to turn the most unpleasant aspect of drug use (withdrawal) into a positive experience.

So. I ask that before any negative criticism is directed my way (or SwiPA's way), please try it out first.

Chemistry comments are welcome, but I already suspect that there is no real connection here.

As an aside: SwiPA is thankful for the analgesic properties of hydrocodone... the quickest method of snapping out of the nod is to slap himself in the face. Honestly I think it's hilarious.