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Stimulant Recovery Protocol
🕑 Added 2022-08-22 05:43:36 +0000 UTC"EDIT: "Side notes: Bromantane (tyrosine hydroxylase/dopamine synthesis and GABA upregulation + resets DeltaFosB + HDAC inhibitor + upregulates BDNF, NGF, GDNF), Acetyl-l-Carnitine (D1 dopamine receptor upregulation + indirect HDAC inhibitor via Acetyl donor and cholinergic via same mechanism donating Acetyl group to choline for acetylcholine), Aspirin may be helpful to upregulate tyrosine hydroxylase expression (dopamine synthesis) and reduce systemic inflammation, careful with higher intake of Omega 3s and anything else with potential to thin blood.
Chronic stress and social isolation upregulates DeltaFosB and dynorphin expression directly which drives drug cravings/compulsions, so active stress management via minimizing stressors and factors like sunlight during daytime, darkness during nighttime, GABA support, adrenal support, etc, and community/spending time with friends and family will reset this factor in the whole equation.
When you finally make the jump after your taper or even better, when you start the taper, begin supporting your liver detox pathways. This is covered in past articles if you search liver or detox on the search bar on the top of my Patreon page. Aside from achieving biochemical homeostasis, much of drug withdrawal of all types of drugs is the elimination of numerous accumulated toxins that built up throughout your addiction all at once as your liver becomes no longer inhibited by the CYP enzyme pathways your drug intake either occupies or inhibits altogether. Liver detox will make a major difference in how you feel, but the three major pillars also support liver detox via optimizing redox status and mitochondrial function.
END NOTE: I do genuinely encourage seeking therapy if you are unable to delve into and process your trauma on your own, especially in your sensitive emotional/mental state, although I will say correcting GABA/glutamate imbalance, malnutrition, circadian dysregulation, and inflammation makes this process infinitely more simple without breaking down, lashing out, relapsing, etc. I’ve heard excellent reviews on CBT and EMDR specifically. Psychedelics and ketamine helped me through this process on my own personally, as I had never responded well to one-on-one therapy in the past, but I do understand this will not apply to everyone. Among malnutrition, circadian dysregulation, inflammation, and GABA/glutamate imbalance, one factor we all share is trauma and lack of community/social support that drove us to our addictions in the first place.""
This same crucial factor will apply to every single one of these substance addiction/dependency protocols. To quote me from 2019, "Addiction recovery really comes down to the willpower and discipline of the individual and the extent that they've suffered during their addiction. I can give you the car, but you need to be able to turn the keys to the ignition on your own."
To put it simply, to overcome any addiction regardless of the substance, food, sex, gambling, etc. included, one must have suffered enough to decide on their own that there is no other choice but to get sober and off their drug(s) of choice. This applies across the board regardless of who you are. I can make the quitting and recovery process easier for you, but I can't decide to get sober for you. You must decide that for yourself after taking a serious and critical inventory of yourself and your life.
As with all substance addictions or dependencies, the severity of withdrawal will be dependent on three factors: duration of use, dosage, and how you treated your body and mind during your period of chronic/acute use.
With that said, stimulants are one of the easier drug classes to come off of as the withdrawal syndrome and related symptoms are much less severe than opiates/opioids, benzodiazepines, or alcohol, for example. If you've never been addicted to these substances, it may prove difficult for you, but the following should get your brain and receptor systems back up to par with time and discipline. The tricky part is if you have induced neurotoxicity and/or cardiotoxicity, which will take time to repair but it is absolutely possible.
This protocol will be covering amphetamine (dopamine/DA and norepinephrine/NE releasers), methylphenidate (dopamine norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors), cocaine/crack (SNDRI), methamphetamine and MDMA (DA, NE, serotonin releaser), caffeine (adenosine antagonist with DA/NE activity), and all stimulant research chemicals that fit into the categories outlined in parentheses. Nicotine and tobacco will be covered in a separate article, as their pharmacology really encompasses all major neurotransmitter systems involved in addiction and the recovery process slightly differs for this reason.
The same general ideas will apply across the board, but I'll be separating each mechanism of action subclass and including nuance in each.
As you may know, with all stimulants, the primary three lifestyle factors I constantly recommend are typically inhibited: diet (anorexigenic activity), sleep (stimulant activity), and usually exercise as well (hypertension/cardiovascular stress). ESPECIALLY if you've been binging, consuming excessively high dosages, and generally not using these substances responsibly, including without harm reduction practices. The Restoring Mitochondrial Function Overview article covers the practices necessary to restore a healthy circadian rhythm and neurotransmitter systems function regarding the negative impact of chronic sleep deprivation via sunlit bright days and total darkness nights, including meal timing, exercise timing, and general dietary advice. This is one of the main keys to the entire recovery protocol, as it not only fixes insomnia/hypersomnolence issues, but is also essential to restarting the brain and body repair processes and specifically dopamine, cortisol, melatonin, hormone, thyroid, and the rest of the neurotransmitters involved. It is ESSENTIAL. You may have a period where you're extremely exhausted and can do nothing but sleep, but drag your ass outside for sunrise, sunset, and sunset, optimally barefoot, regardless and I promise you will feel much better.
If you've lost significant weight, or just all around haven't been nourishing yourself properly, review the Healthy Bulk Protocol article for advice in this regard. In general, your main focus should be lots of protein and fats to supply the amino acids and fats to restart neurotransmitter and hormone production, as well as rebuilding/repairing the body from the ground up. The zero-tolerance dietary framework is important here to restore dopamine function via multiple pathways, mitigate cravings, as well as eliminating inflammation that inhibits dopamine function, but eat whatever whole food, and non-isolated carbohydrates you can within reason (metabolic health and weight in mind, applies especially with severe weight loss). As a general guideline, you should incorporate seafood/fish, shellfish, crustaceans, organ meats of all types, red/game meats, poultry, eggs, dairy, kefir, yogurt, leafy green/cruciferous/Lacto-fermented vegetables, seasonal fruits, tubers and rice, coconut water, raw honey. I'm sure I'm missing something, but this will give a baseline idea of what you need to be consuming to replenish and repair your body. For example, the combination of seafood/shellfish/crustaceans, pasture-raised eggs, and goat dairy/kefir are dietary sources of Mr. Happy Stack which include DHA/EPA, choline, and uridine in bioavailable forms (will discuss more this below).
Install a micronutrient tracking app such as Cronometer to begin logging your food intake, and ensure you are hitting all your micronutrient bases and 1-2g protein/lb of body weight. Caloric intake of 20-30% healthy fats is sufficient for most people, a high fat/moderate protein ketogenic diet may speed up the brain and CNS recovery process in the majority of people, but rarely helps in restoring a healthy weight. A ketogenic diet isn't absolutely necessary, but I've been seeing more and more anecdotes and animal studies on it positively influencing addiction recovery and cravings as well as being directly neuroprotective via ketone production and GABA biochemistry shift. The rest of your caloric intake can be carbohydrates, as long as it's not refined sucrose/fructose based on the zero-tolerance dietary framework. As a general guideline regarding micronutrients, the commonly depleted ones with heavy stimulant use are as follows: magnesium (of course), potassium, sodium, calcium, zinc, inositol, taurine, DHA/EPA, thiamine/B1, riboflavin/B2, niacin/B3, pantothenic acid/B5, pyridoxine/B6, biotin/B7, folate/B9, cobalamin/B12, and vitamin C. Midday sunlight exposure and diet should be covering vitamin D3 status, as it is also crucial to restoring dopamine and hormone function, but if you end up reading this in the future and it's winter in a low UVB environment, supplement to bring your levels up acutely (around 40-60ng/mL should be optimal for this purpose), then immediately begin regular solar practice come spring and summer at your latitude. Vitamin A should be sufficiently covered by diet, additional helpful nutrients might be full spectrum vitamin E, CoQ10/Ubiquinol, and NAC (cysteine, glycine, and glutamic acid should also be covered by diet, but it does have additional glutamate regulation properties).
As for exercise, when I was recovering from stimulant addiction myself, the combination of both resistance and endurance exercise was most optimal for getting me back on track in terms of DA/NE, hormones, and weight. However, as I've just started consistently exercising last year, I don't yet feel comfortable advising any specific protocols to anyone. I insist you follow @BowTiedOx on Twitter and/or sign up for his Substack. I've been learning from him personally myself. Even when I was lifting inconsistently and focusing moreso on walks and hikes, it still benefited my recovery significantly, so do what you can until you feel your body is functional and able again, but do keep in mind that exercise in itself will help that process massively.
Amphetamine, methylphenidate, cocaine/crack, related research chemicals:
The factors we will be targeting here to cover all negatively affected biological systems will be:
- dopamine/norepinephrine. (ADHD/ADD Protocol reviews this),
- serotonin (methamphetamine, MDMA, several research chemical analogs/derivatives). (SSRI Recovery Protocol reviews this),
- GABA/glutamate balance (stimulants create downregulation of GABA receptor system via hyper calcium-glutamate activation). Restoring GABA/glutamate balance is explained in the original GABA support article and the Revitalization article,
- beta-endorphin/dynorphin balance (stimulants create hyper dynorphin after chronic D2r activation resulting in activation and downregulation of MOPr, while also elevating dopamine to supraphysiological levels where dynorphin is increased to inhibit neurotoxicity). Reviewed extensively in this Twitter thread, but including midday sun exposure for UVB-POMC-Beta-Endorphin and sex/intimacy in romantic relationship or spending time with family=magnesium-Oxytocin to downregulate dynorphin expression,
- neuroinflammation, possibly gut inflammation (Gut Repair Protocol and Addition To articles),
- oxidative stress,
- damage to dopamine neurons and receptor system/neurotoxicity,
- neurogenesis (BDNF, GDNF, NGF, c-FOS (DeltaFOSb downregulation), and HDAC inhibition (fear extinction and positively altering epigenetics longterm).
Proper nutrition and caloric intake based on your weight, resistance/endurance training, community/relationships with spouse, family, or friends, regular sunlight exposure, minimizing artificial blue light and nnEMF/5G on eyes and skin, grounding, quality water intake, and total darkness at night to support sleep where all detox and repair primarily occurs is the foundation for all addiction recovery protocols, stimulant recovery is no different.
Personally, I prefered going cold turkey off of stimulants and either sleeping it off or pushing through the short-term fatigue and dopamine dysregulation with sheer will and herbal/supplement/diet/lifestyle support, but you can also taper your dosage down to say 10mg amphetamine/methylphenidate/etc. You don't want to get into the microdose range as it can result in severe dopamine sensitization and neurotoxicity, lending to mania, psychosis, and brain damage. Not recommended, jump off when you get to a low dose. What I did personally was swap the stimulant drug out for as much coffee as I needed to get through the day with additional herbal support covered in many of the protocols linked above.
You can also replace the substance you plan to quit with coffee or green tea to fill in the gaps, and it's a much easier process to come off of caffeine than more powerful stimulants for most people. For quitting caffeine, switch to green tea with lower caffeine content and taper the number of cups you drink. Anti-inflammatories like black seed oil and others listed, thiamine/riboflavin/niacin/biotin to replenish B vitamins, and Mg, K, Na, Ca, P (inositol phosphates) to replenish electrolytes. Potentially throw in seafood/shellfish for DHA and taurine. This should help to offset the dreaded "caffeine headache".
A general stack would look something like seafood/shellfish (DHA, try to avoid fish/algae/krill oil unless allergic to these foods), eggs (phosphatidylcholine), and lots of goat milk (uridine). A supplement stack would look something like uridine monophosphate/triacetyluridine (higher bioavailability and brain penetration), fish/algae/krill oil with high DHA, and a choline source, typically CDP-Choline or Alpha-GPC. Including lots of magnesium in multiple forms (GABA, glutamate modulation, pro-beta-endorphin/anti-dynorphin via oxytocin positive allosteric modulation, anti-inflammatory, mitigates oxidative stress while improving mitochondrial function, helps to restart neurogenic factors, cofactor for production of all neurotransmitters), inositol and IP6, l-theanine, taurine/glycine, possibly NAC if you respond well and agmatine sulfate (both restore dopamine/glutamate function to a baseline therein improving baseline state/NAC increases glutathione to offset oxidative stress which is best paired with glycine), niacin in the form of nicotinic acid/niacinamide better for mood regulation, sodium or calcium-magnesium butyrate which can be increased in gut microbiome via eating starchy fiber and dairy products high in butyric acid (niacin and butyrate both HDAC inhibitors which downregulate DeltaFOSb), black seed oil (thymoquinone is powerful HDAC inhibitor, pro-beta-endorphin/anti-dynorphin, anti-inflammatory, regulates oxidative stress, helps to restart neurogenic factors, GABA/glutamate balance, dopamine/serotonin regulation), potentially a psychedelic microdose like psilocybin, ayahuasca, mescaline containing cacti (upregulates C-FOS expression downregulating DeltaFOSb, powerful anti-inflammatory for brain). thiamine typically doesn't hurt to jumpstart the Krebs cycle but starts low and supply cofactors, DLPA, l-tyrosine, or N-acetyl-l-tyrosine (dopamine amino acid building blocks, best paired with UV light from the sun), l-tryptophan or 5-HTP if low serotonin typical after heavy dopamine activity and/or methamphetamine/MDMA, shilajit may prove useful as well, Sabroxy is an herbal extract high in Oroxylin A which functions as a dopamine reuptake inhibitor.
As for herbs, Astragalus, Blue lotus, Bacopa, Banisteriopsis caapi microdose, Cacao, Catuaba bark, Cistanche, Cordyceps, Dulse, Fo-ti, Gotu kola, Kanna, Kelp, Lion's mane, Muira puama, Oat straw, Panax ginseng, Peganum harmala microdose, Polygala tenuifolia, Rehmannia, Rhodiola rosea should cover all bases.
Curcumin in turmeric, skullcap, and carnitine also function as HDAC inhibitors.
Bromantane is a useful nootropic that increases dopamine synthesis and GDNF/BDNF expression to repair the dopamine receptor system over time.
UV light exposure from sunlight also increases C-FOS expression, offsetting high DeltaFOSb activity.
Iboga or ibogaine can be useful, but try this protocol first and use it as a last resort as there can be cardiovascular risks involved.
Make sure you are doing the self/shadow work or therapy involved to keep yourself sober. Process your traumas and reasons for addiction in the first place. This is non-negotiable.
Just remember, you're going to feel tired. You're going to feel foggy. You're going to feel like you're dragging ass. This is the beginning of your brain and body beginning to repair themselves, to achieve homeostasis once again. Keep faith in yourself and the beauty of the human body and you will feel much better once you're no longer actively harming yourself and beginning the healing process. If I could do it, I know you can too.
