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Comment by phenthrowAway | Hacker News Reader

To anyone curious about phenibut:

Don't. Just don't. Please.

Just a few weeks of usage can cause dependence. It is notorious for causing compulsive redosing. Withdrawal can make you unable to sleep for days, with lingering effects like panic attacks and anhedonia for weeks and weeks. Withdrawal from larger quantities can cause auditory and visual hallucinations and seizures and can even KILL you. Avoiding serious symptoms requires an excruciating taper that can take months. The effects of long term abuse are poorly understood.

"But it's totally legal, and with responsible dosing can be a potent nootropic. I'm not a drug addict, I'm a biohacker. I'm not after a high."

Yeah, That was my thinking too, and in hindsight that was immensely stupid. Please just look at r/quittingphenibut before doing anything.

Be kind to your GABA receptors.

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I take phenibut about 1x/week, I have been for about 2 years now. I think it's generally pretty OK for me, though I've started to worry that it impacts my memory a touch, at the edges.

Do not take drugs every day. For real. I don't want to victim-blame but it is wild that you expected to be able to be able to take drugs daily for weeks without withdrawals. As a rule of thumb, unless you intend to be on it forever (e.g. caffeine), you should never take anything more than maybe 2 days out of 7 in the week. Psychoactive drugs are not like aspirin, where you dabble a bit as necessary.

Phenibut is serious stuff. Nobody would say "I had only been drinking a pint of vodka every day for a few weeks before I realized I might have to deal with withdrawals."

> I take phenibut about 1x/week, I have been for about 2 years now. I think it's generally pretty OK for me, though I've started to worry that it impacts my memory a touch, at the edges.

You're addicted, you just don't know it.

> it is wild that you expected to be able to be able to take drugs daily for weeks without withdrawals

If you're referring to benzos, the doctor said it would be fine. If you're referring to phenibut, I wasn't taking it every day. Maybe every few days or maybe once a week.

> You're addicted, you just don't know it.

I smoked cigarettes for ~10 years and I went to rehab for cocaine as a teenager, I am pretty familiar with addiction. I have never exceeded 1x/weekly phenibut and I've taken weeks off for travel, studying, etc, with no problems. I use some other substances recreationally with various cadences, set according to my understanding of how the body reacts to them (e.g. LSD never more often than every 2 weeks).

It's shocking to me that some people can smoke the occasional cigarette without getting hooked, but the fact of the matter is that the psychological impact of drug use varies quite a lot according to the (person + substance) in question. Nicotine is something that happens to appeal to me a lot more than it seems to appeal to other people.

> If you're referring to phenibut, I wasn't taking it every day

I'm replying to phenthrowAway, who said he used phenibut for "just a few weeks" before getting dependent.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I'm sorry, but you fucked up, with the focus being on "you". Phenibut is notorious for building tolerance fast, and having bad withdrawal.

I really really dislike it when people try dangerous things in obviously wrong ways, then act like it's society's fault that they were available. No, it's not. I've tried a lot of things over the years, and I've been properly paranoid with most of them. I'm extremely creative with treating my insomnia but guess what: I have two doctors I check with. I don't care when they laugh at me (like when I told them I'm taking 1/60 mirtazapine pill), or when they shrug. I keep checking for the moments when they say "no, that's a really bad idea", and I keep doing that even if they keep saying nothing for 10 years at a time. Because even one "no, that's stupid" makes it worth it.

Well that's frightening. I tried it out recently and didn't really feel anything that would get me hooked on it but maybe that's naive.

My advice: Don't underestimate the substance, but also don't give too much importance to stories of people that overdid it and had a terrible time. People have been using Phenibut for long periods of time without getting dependent -- provided they space out the "Phenibut days" enough. Of course that requires some self-knowledge: If you are the kind of person who would have trouble keeping it to "not more than twice a week maximum (ideally not more than once a week) at reasonable dosages", then Phenibut can easily turn into a slippery slope to physical dependence, with horrible withdrawals.

If you know yourself enough not to overdo it, it's not _that_ terrible a thing; though your individual response to it will of course vary, which is where the "self-knowledge" comes in again.

If you have "Phenibut days", you're addicted. You may space it out, but your body is adjusting to it being in your system. It is that absolutely powerful. I was like you before things got bad.

That is just not true. Do you think that everyone who has ever taken a vicodin is addicted? They have "opiate days," after all.

Phenibut is horrific and should be banned. I thought I could control it, but I couldn't.

I tried it once years ago.

Amazingly potent. I considered finding applications for it, but alas, I had no use for it.

Seems like a WW2 drug like amphetamines: Sure works wonders if you’re patching up people, going through horrors like a breeze. But it ain’t a peace-time nootropic with minimal downside.

Never more than two non consecutive days in a week — this isn’t a mystery.

Because you have no self control a substance should be banned.

Cool world that would be to live in.

These drugs chemically change the brain, so your brain might fall into a state where you lose control.

Drugs often get pulled decades after being approved, usually because the safety studies were not expansive enough to give a complete picture of the danger. For example: Varenicline.

Just like all drugs, but the downsides of criminalization have been obvious for decades. I don't see a solution that isn't all drugs being cheap and legal.

I've heard of people going through withdrawals after just a single week of use. Nuts that it's sold as a supplement at all.

Interestingly enough, a suspected GABA prodrug that supposedly passes the blood-brain barrier called picamilon has been banned by the FDA, yet phenibut is still on shelves.

picamilon is banned? That's dumb, soon they will ban l-theanine and taurine? I really don't think you can get addicted to picamillon like phen or benz

Some supplements are basically unregulated medications.

I found out the hard way that L-Theanine does not mix well with bipolar disorder. I suspect it inactivated the mood stabilizer I was on.

Maybe dont mix shit if you already have fucking BIPOLAR!

Let us that are normal and know what we are doing keep our drugs.

Yes, caffeine and l-theamine are drugs.

that is surprising to hear. ltheanine action of GABA should calm/stabilize you. it's action of dopamine might trigger anxiety/anger/mania but the effect is so mild vs caffeine/nicotine/amphetamine that I find it surprising/weird. To be clear we are talking about theanine and not theine.

Both Lamotrigine (anticonvulsant) and L-Theanine act on glutamate.

Mixing them was a bad, bad idea. I don’t think I slept more than 2 hours a day most of March. (My psychiatrist was not happy.)

The FDA's argument is that it isn't a naturally occurring substance like an amino acid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picamilon#Regulation

insane hypocrisy from the Federal Death Agency, a prodrug is functionally the exact same thing as the endogenously occuring substance

I agree. I tried picamilon in the past, it's a very benign substance. Never experienced withdrawals or dependence. It's not like it's an exogenous GABA ligand or modulator, either. I'd venture to say that if any GABA actually makes it to the brain, it's just recycled via reuptake into pre/post-synaptic clefts, whereas phenibut and benzodiazepines cause increased binding of existing GABA, and in their absence, can cause dependence when GABA receptors return to their natural binding states.

edit: apparently phenibut directly binds to GABA receptors, which is different than how benzodiazepines work. It also acts like gabapentin.

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