Health - Opiate addiction for weight loss

[Master_Khan]

Has anyone ever heard of someone intentionally taking on a (mild) opiate addiction for the purpose of weight loss? Not necessarily talking about H or hard core use, but steady continuous use of opiods for weight loss.

Now it is expected that some will react in horror to the mere mention of this as opiate addiction is routinely described here as hell on earth, but consider that they cut people open and remove part of their stomach or tie a belt around their stomach.....by comparison opiate addiction seems like a less invasive and possibly a smaller price to pay.

OK fire away. Got the idea from a study by Nyswander and Dole who described addiction as a 'metabolic' disorder. Also seems some people do experience loss of appetite as a side effect of opiate use.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Interesting idea... Never thought of this before.

[sweettea]

There's some evidence suggesting that the opioid receptor subtypes are involved in the short-term regulation of an individual's energy balance and subsequent establishment of a healthy weight. But, there is much inconsistency in weight loss studies making it difficult to say how much of this or that is optimum to achieve the best results.

Obviously, a balanced diet combined with exercise is the healthiest option. Then if swiyou wants to dabble with an opiate addiction, at least swiyou will start off with a healthy body, and have the diet/exercise routine established to hopefully maintain a healthy lifestyle.

[Master_Khan]

Thanks Dr. Sweettea. Certainly there are other folks who have stories about opiates and weight loss, eh?

[smartypants2300]

swim is a drinker of poppy tea. It helps suppress his hunger and craving for little debbies and hes noticed over the past week he's dropped a few pounds. He hasnt changed any of his habits except using more PPT and thus eating slightly less. So, our opioid receptors help regualte metabolism swim assumes?

[Stevepmd]

Hello,
That is %100 not true!!! and thats not a good trade off you will get addicted from them. The money you would spend on this its way cheaper to join a gym $35 per week and it will help your health. If you do get addicted your looking at hundred of dollars to kick the drug.

William

[Alias: V]

I just drink coffee or take caffeine pills to kill an unnecessary appetite and there are a number of easy things you can do to increase your metabolism, such as stop drinking diet soda (or anything containing artificial sweetener), doing 15 minutes of light cardio or weights, taking the stairs, and I think I've even heard that the warmth from a cup of tea, coffee, or hot chocolate can bring up metabolism. If you're going to get addicted to anything for weightloss, try coffee first. Opiates seem a little on the extreme side.

[Master_Khan]

Originally Posted by Stevepmd

If you do get addicted your looking at hundred of dollars to kick the drug.

William

That is a very interesting statement. I've heard of a lot of reasons to avoid and dread addiction, but the monetary cost hasn't come up til now.

[missparkles]

Cost depends on location. In swis experience she found she had a lot more energy and motivation when she was using opiates. This in turn meant she did more (used more energy) felt better (mood wise) and didn't feel the need to eat as much.
This could have been a combination of "feel good" factor, more calories burned or just less concerned about food so she didn't obsess as much about her weight.
Swim certainly lost weight on opiates. But she wouldn't recommend it, far too risky.

[morphed]

When SWIM started taking low, regular doses of oxycodone(for the high, not weight loss), her appetite did disappear for the first few months and did drop about 30-40lbs. But, the loss leveled off and she now has to work to keep the weight off. Appetite is back and she is addicted.

SWIM would never take opiates for weight loss nor would she recommend anyone else try it.

Reputation Comments on this post:

good post with valuable experiential info!

[Master_Khan]

A hypothetical situation:

Fat Freddy has a bad knee, and is prescribed hydrocodone for pain as needed. Fat Freddy takes them occasionally after work to ease the strain of a strenuous day in the tar pits. FF starts to notice that when he strings a few days in a row together, he starts eating about half as much as he used to. So FF starts intentionally dosing daily in order to keep his food abstinence going. After about ten weeks, Fat Freddy is 25 pounds lighter. FF was willing to risk building up a small dependance in order to attack his obesity. FF is not unhappy about this development.

Fat Freddy is starting to notice as one of the earlier posters mentioned, that his weight loss is starting to plateau, and his appetite is creeping back.

[missparkles]

FF would have to up the dose to get the same energy/motivational effects. Swim would assume that once his system (and metabolism) got used to a certain dose he would need more to get the same effect.
But swim wouldn't swear to this, but it does make sense. Swim has never seen any obese addicts. Addiction to opiates is still a risk though.

[caltrain208]

Fat Freddy may have better luck losing weight with an amphetamine addiction instead.

[Master_Khan]

Sparkles thanks for the note.

Fat Freddy doesn't get turned on by the idea of amphetamines at all. Also he is not prescribed them. To dose with hydrocodone Freddy didn't have to go out of his way one bit.

Fat Freddy is determined to stay at around 15 mg a day of hydro; he sees that the reason the appettite suppression is waning is tolerance. Thanks for that Sparkles.

BTW, what's it take to get a thread rated around here? How bout a reacharound people. Never gonna git that palladium if ya don't start rating threads.

[ex-junkie]

the only reason swim was so small on heroin, was because she couldnt afford to eat properly, combined with sleeping all the time.

some people get a sweet tooth on opiates, and can put on weight. swim put on weight on methadone from the sweet tooth, but should be said that her methadone detox, resulted in approx 10kgs melting off her within 2 weeks.

detoxing from heroin has a very amphetamine effect, in the sense of increased heart rate, blood pressure, inability to sleep, only with all the horrid bullshit like restlessness, "electric spiders", hot/cold sweats and the likes.

[missparkles]

Swim has always had loads of energy and felt more motivated on all opiates. But swim has always had a life long addiction to donuts.

[Master_Khan]

The donuts swim can kick.......however General Tso ain't goin anywhere!