Health - Self medicating with GHB for PTSD treatment (experiences)

[Alfa]

Please post experiences with using GHB as self medication / treatment for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) or trauma here.

[Pondlife]

I know someone who has used GHB in a manner similar to this. It's not PTSD, but I hope that there are some parallels in this experience. This is my friend's story, but I'll write it in the first person to make it more readable and natural. At the time this experience occurred GHB was legal in the UK.

Many of us have times in our lives when we need some help. For me the main one was when I split up with my business partner, which involved lots of stress, over a year of litigation, and the associated costs.

I've generally used alcohol in the form of one or two beers in the evening to relax since my days at Uni in the 1980s. I find alcohol is a nice drug for me at low levels, but I don't like it at high levels and I find it especially unsuitable if I'm feeling a bit down as it can easily make me morose. Hence the search was on for a suitable alternative. I rejected benzos because of the potential for addiction, and eventually ended up using GHB (sold as "sodium oxybate" and used by bodybuilders), which was legal in the UK at the time.

I found GHB to be very useful for me, and have used it during similar problem periods since. It's key advantages over other substances for me were:

1. It lifts the mood, unlike alcohol.
A small amount of GHB in the evening let me talk things over with the family rather than sulking as I would if I had taken nothing, or becoming maudlin as I would be on alcohol.

2. Short acting
After about two hours, the effects are rapidly declining, and if taken in the evening, I always felt fully alert in the morning, unlike alcohol which takes many hours to clear, especially in large quantities.

3. No hangover

4. Low calorie
This sounds like a joke, but it's not. If you drink a lot of alcohol, you end up taking in a lot of calories; by contrast GHB is very light in this respect.

The main downside for me was the steep dose/response relationship, which meant that I had to be careful to measure the doses accurately. I found that dissolving a known weight of GHB in a measured volume of water and then using an oral syringe to measure the dosage worked well.

I felt that the GHB use was a major factor in helping me cope with the stress. It lifted my mood, and more importantly allowed me to think about other things without continually dwelling on the problem. Before I started using it, there were many times when my mind would become totally fixated on the problem and I could get stuck in that state for hours with my thoughts going round and round. It was both pointless, because there was nothing that I could actually do about it, and also I suspect damaging because I would get worked up and angry. The GHB allowed me to leave the problem alone when I wanted too. I found that even a light dose gave me control of what I thought about. In a way it seemed as if GHB gave me a better control of my own mind, especially in the evening where the lack of work pressure allows the mind to wander. Without GHB I just could not relax without the problem rearing its head.

I found myself to be very productive on GHB, and it certainly kept the old black dog away. At the end of the evening I could go to bed, say "sod the lot of them", and go to sleep. In the morning I felt refreshed and was able to do a full day’s work without any problems. Before I started to use it, I would often feel very groggy in the mornings through lack of sleep. I know that had I used alcohol instead, I would often have a hangover in the morning, and sometimes would not be in a fit state to drive myself to work.

Over the eighteen months that the issue took to resolve, I probably used GHB three or four times a week, always in the evening, with total intake over the evening of between 1 and 3 grammes.

I wouldn't say it was totally harmless - no drug is - but I think it was a lot less harmful than alcohol would have been. When the problem was over, I stopped using it for over a year, and have never felt an urge to use it, or to take more than I should. Nowadays I only use it very occasionally, but I wouldn’t hesitate to go back to self-medicating with it if I had problems with stress in the future.

It's a shame that such a potentially useful drug was scheduled as a Class C drug in the UK shortly after this experience. I think I would have found it much more difficult to cope if I had not had it, and would likely have turned to alcohol with all its associated problems.

[Alfa]

Please expand on stress reduction and coping with stressful situations with GHB.