Forums

This is for those that have taken baclofen (and found indifference) while also taking an SSRI.  I'd like to know if the SSRI had any effect on your level of indifference. I've been indifferent for well over a year at this point. I recently tried going on zoloft because I'm still an asshole and I started having drinking thoughts within about a week. I'd like to know if this is true for all SSRIs. Zoloft and paxil are cited in the literature as causing the most spontaneous increases in alcohol consumption. I really need something to take my edges off.  Thanks.

Baclofen takes the place of alcohol so stopping taking it is a really bad idea. You go into delerium tremens which can put you in hospital. Whoever put you on baclofen should have told you about this and overseen your dosage and treatment. You have to keep taking it and if you don’t get a result you have to go higher until you do because it works at different doses for different people.  If you decide not to continue with it you have to come off it very slowly.     You need to see whatever professional got you onto baclofen and get them to treat you properly.   You should also see a lawyer because what you have described is rank negligence. There is enough information in the public domain that any doctor should be able to tell you the way to take baclofen and the risks of coming off it and the need for constant supervision of the daily dose      Good luck   Hope things work out.    

Today I'm stuck in a parking lot feeling like I'm going to throw up, sweating profusely, and so much anxiety I can barely move. This had been an ongoing nightmare that doesnt end. I took 5mg of Baclofen in the morning about 10am, and 5 more mg around 4pm. I am feeling a tiny bit better, but fearing the next battle. I wish I had never taken this medication. I'm sure it may have its benefits, but right now all I see is hell. 

Yes it’s a shame that there isn’t any data on how people have done on baclofen.    I don’t know who the 12 Steppers were or how serious their problems were.  I always felt that if someone was on a forum then they couldn’t be very seriously alcoholic.  I mean, it’s embarrassing how horrible my wife’s condition was. I can’t describe it.   Typically she would wake up in middle of the night having some kind of night terror, screaming like she was possessed by the devil.   That would go on for half an hour and she would pass out and then wake up at 6 am and start screaming  and shouting abuse. I’d have to get ready for work and get our son dressed make breakfast and feed and walk the dog. Then make sure she was  ok to be left in bed for the day and wouldn’t leave the house for booze. Then I would go off to work as a prosecutor.      I would phone at 10 to see if she was awake and I’d come home after picking our son up and hope she wasn’t hanging from a window screaming abuse at the neighbours.  I would put our son somewhere safe and make dinner and then settle in for the night. She would sometimes get up and start a drunken rampage around the house shouting abuse maybe looking for more booze because she had run out.     Sometimes  it got so bad I’d hide somewhere just to get some peace.     That was a good day when she didn’t throw a kitchen drawer through a closed window, set fire to the house, get arrested DUI or assault someone parking outside out house.  She was picked up by the police wandering down the middle of roads, abandoned our son in a car and wandered off not remembering where she left him. She took a knife to herself more times than I could count and carved her name into her left forearm. She tried to kill herself by throwing herself out of the car on the highway at 70 mph on a routine basis.     That is just what I can remember but it went on for ten years.   But the answer was that she had brain damag. She has a big black spot on her brain scans right  where Ameisen said the anxiety disorder underlying alcoholism stems from and the fact that she benefitted immediately from he first baclofen pill was some kind of miracle      The thing is that alcohol damages this part of the brain in everyone eventually but she had a stroke so it was worse.     The hardest part of the recovery was coping with no help from anyone and the attitude of people made it even worse.  Work colleagues knew about it and asked how I could cope.   I guess I was younger and I had no choice but I would say that it could be worse   Who wasn’t to complain when people had survived concentration camps and Gulags.     Today she went out shopping with her daughter just like an ordinary mum.      So, yes there is a cure for alcoholism.      

Hello Hoping for some help from a desperate alcoholic and addict! I was recently in a treatment center for alcohol and drugs (was successfully detoxed off of Xanax), and they put me on Baclofen, 10mg 3x day for the benzo Wds. I really didnt think anything of it, as I had no knowledge of Baclofen except that it was a .muscle relaxer. After being on the 30mg for about 6 weeks, I stopped taking it, again, not thinking too much of it. That night I was hit with the most crippling ANXIETY I have ever had!!! Even worse than benzo wds anxiety!! And that's BAD! I also felt really out of it, couldn't sleep, and crazy racing thoughts! Immediately I knew it was Baclofen as that had been the only thing that changed. I went back on to 20mg/day for about a week, then back to 30mg/day. I've been on it for a total of about 8 weeks now. Last night I didnt take my nighttime dose, took a dose this morning, then went out of the house and didnt take any of my daytime doses. I got the WORST withdrawals again!! This time they came with a rapid heart rate and palpitations!! I am so scared now that all my hard work getting clean will be derailed by baclofen. I have 14 10mg pills left and I want off!! The only think that scares me after reading this forum a little, is what if the great feeling I've had since quitting xanax and alcohol have not been bc I am clean but bc of the baclofen? I hadn't realized ppl use it for long term anxiety and that is one of my biggest issues. What if I get off the baclofen (if I can get off) and feel terrible all the time? I'm very worried. My plan is to break all the 10mg pills in half, giving me 28 5 mg doses. I will take 3/day, 15mg, for the first 5 days (15 doses), then 2/day, 10mg, for 5 days (10 doses), then 1 day, 5mg, for 3 days (3 doses for a total of 28 doses). Does that sound like a reasonable plan? Should I go into even smaller doses? Baclofen is very strong even 5mg it has noticeable effects for me. I never knew the nightmare I was setting myself up for. I need help please, I know this forum seems dead but if anyone is around pls help me, I'm really messed up over this and I dont know what to do. Thank you, Thank you. Please help me.   Ps. I also have a large supply of Gabapentin, can this help alleviate the Baclofen wds? I think they work on the same receptor so I'm thinking possibly they can help. Thanks!

Hi Otter, I recognize you from WAY back. Wonderful to hear that you are doing so well. Your explanation makes a lot of sense and assuages a lot of my cynicism. I am a true alcoholic (I believe). However, most of the older men in my family were very hard drinkers; Harder women, harder times, and old age made them moderate drinkers eventually. I'm probably a bit more of a lazy drama queen than those iron bastards, and I also didn't want to "figure it out" after screwing my kids up. I already destroyed a perfectly good marriage.  It's unfortunate that the 12Sers are so territorial because that's where you find the true gutter drunks - The guys who have been institutionalized or lived long stretches in half-way houses. Those are the people where baclofen could really shine. And I, like Amneisen, have found a lot of relief in AA. I'm not as low-bottom as the average AA. But, I'm a person who even after curtailing my alcoholism with bac still needed some sort of program or framework to help me to be a good person.  I'm glad that you responded to this. It sounds like you struggled a bit to "carry the message" to an unwilling audience. I was ruminating over the same sense of responsibility. I think I may just need to be grateful that I found it and it saved my life - because for me, drinking was only getting worse. 

I think that interest in the forum has declined because now any doctor dealing with alcoholism knows about baclofen.  The issue I had from day one on MWO is that we should not have to be giving out advice because we aren’t doctors.   MWO is mainly for 12 Steppers who never accepted baclofen treatment.  Nal is now approved for use in a lot of countries.     Also, the success of baclofen for us has meant that we can lead a normal life now so there’s no need to come here.  I can’t come here and try to help people because I am not qualified.  I am not an alcoholic and never was. But I take baclofen because I came to understand that it is the key to dealing with anxiety because of the neuro-receptors it works on. I take it most days and it makes me feel great because I feel normal without stress. But how do you tell people about a drug which makes you feel like life is just fine?  Most people who turn to drugs want a buzz or to relieve pain. I take baclofen because I get anxious and I worry about lots of things and end up just sitting around all day stewing about things.  With 10 mg of baclofen my worries go away.  It’s not treating depression or maybe anxiety leads to depression.     I think a lot of members are in the same situation as us in that they are recovered and have moved on.    I have other sites I still work on and a legal paper I try to keep up to date because the law changes. It’s been picked up by some lawyers and doctors and out on a couple of sites.    The movement has stalled because the direction needs to move from getting the drug into the public arena to other issues such as how a cure for the disease for some should impact on other problems the disease has caused and that is still hard because the public still have an antipathy towards alcoholics.    I started doing some YouTube videos a few weeks ago as well but I am pretty crap at it.    Getting out from underneath a family alcohol problem is also a great relief and allows you to get busy on other things and not spend your life mired in despair  you want to forget and move on  When you do you don’t want to be dragged back down again by rehashing bad memories   The other issue I have is that there is so much  argument about the success of baclofen and it just gets to me having to explain how and why it works and being called names and picked apart