On Low Dose Naltrexone
Thank you for the many kind words in response to my op-ed in the Los Angeles Times about my problem of recovering from long-term opiate/opioid use. Thank you to the LA Times for publishing it.
I was so pleased to be able to mention Dr. Brian Johnson. It was his article about the use of naltrexone at low doses that got me opioid-battered brains to heal. I am very grateful.
Here is the PubMed abstract of Dr. Johnson’s research.
For those of you who are not PubMed junkies, I’ll translate it into English.
Opioids do a whole lot in the human body, so let’s call them a hormone.
People on opioids become autistic-like, that is cold and distant in human interactions.
Fibromyalgia sufferers become this way also.
Low dose naltrexone improved pain tolerance and interpersonal relations in opioid users and fibromyalgia patients.
Perhaps autism is a disorder of the internal opiate system.
Perhaps increased use of opioids during childbirth is causing an increase in autism.
High doses of naltrexone help autistics relate to others better. That’s not in the abstract, that’s in the actual paper Fibromyalgia, Autism, and Opioid Addiction as Natural and Induced Disorders of the Endogenous Opioid Hormonal System.
Low Dose Naltrexone
Low dose naltrexone is an amaaaaaaaazing drug, for so many conditions. I guess that internal opiate system goes wrong in many illnesses. You can learn more about what diseases LDN is known to improve at LDNScience.
For myself, in addition to recovery from long-term opiate use, I would say naltrexone has healed my brain from a lifetime of pain, brain fog and fatigue due to Ehlers-Danlos. I love this drug.
Naltrexone blocks the opiate receptors. Drugs like heroin and morphine act on the opiate receptors. So do sugar, alcohol, cannabis, ketamine and your own endorphins, which make you feel pleasure.
Gently stimulating the internal opiate system by blocking it briefly with a small dose of naltrexone causes a cascade of healing. Kinda like how doing a push-up makes your arms stronger.
I started on a very tiny dose of naltrexone, which I got compounded at McGuff Pharmacy because it is not commercially available in low milligrams. McGuff is also the manufacturer of Ascor, the drug that made me a very high-functioning person with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which is why I no longer needed pain medication. Walgreens will compound naltrexone into low dose pills, too.
Upon taking my first 0.2 mg of naltrexone, I immediately went into opiate withdrawal, even though I had been off of them for years. I was shaking and shivering. I had a rough night. So it seems my opiate receptors had not healed after all that Vicodin and morphine. No surprise. I had been in a very bad mood since detoxification, which means getting drugs metabolized out of the body.
The morning after my first tiny naltrexone dose, I limped around the Chicago Museum of Art with my injured foot. F*ck! F*ck! F*ck!
I could barely walk.
The guards tolerated me lying on a bench with my foot elevated.
But wait . . . I felt unusual rushes of endorphins from the pain. Waves of
R-E-L-I-E-F
This was new. This had not been happening from acute pain.
I attributed this fantastic phenomenon to the 0.2 mg naltrexone the night before.
This made me very optimistic, as I hobbled from Chicago Chinatown to a White Sox game to Second City.
In Chinatown, a message in a chocolate fortune cookie (it took cracking open many) confirmed I was on the right track.
Your present plans are going to succeed.
Good news.
Then I swam a mile in Lake Michigan. Not the ocean, but it will do.
Tiny Is The Point
Don’t be fooled by the tiny dose of naltrexone.
For those of us with auto-immune disease, pain or opiate use, our internal opiate system is deranged. Naltrexone is verrrrrrrrry powerful.
You want that tiny perturbation to shake things up, get the ship to right itself, encourage your brain to re-regulate properly.
I stayed on tiny doses before bed for months, until I no longer reacted strongly. Get ready for some weird dreams on naltrexone.
Then I tried higher doses. The dose of 4.5 mg has been studied for auto-immune conditions. Dr. Pradeep Chopra recommended 4.5 mg for EDS patients at the 2019 Ehlers-Danlos Learning Conference in Nashville. I heard him say it myself.
Some people take it in the morning, as it gives them less trouble then.
Some people take it twice per day, and experience more benefit that way.
I like taking a tiny dose before exercise. That way, I get a bigger endorphin rush. Endorphin means morphine from the inside. I like to feel good.
These days I make my own low dose naltrexone.
I get 50 mg prescription pills which my health insurance covers, rather than pay for compounding myself, so I have more money to spend on accessories.
I dissolve a 50 mg pill in 50 ml of water, so 1 ml is 1 mg. Easy-peasy.
Shake well. Measure with a dropper. Supplies purchased on Amazon.
This dose is not as accurate as the formula McGuff prepared. It might be wise to get it compounded and stick with a very accurate dose until your body has healed and tolerates it better, and you figure out what works for you.
Store naltrexone in refrigerator and protect from light to maintain potency.
More on naltrexone and why I use it at high doses in addition to low doses in the next post.
Happy healing. ❤️