LAAM/Orlaam

[blutuesday]

I know this doesnt belong here, but I looked all over trying to find somewhere to post this and couldnt find a suitable location. I decided here, since LAAM is most like methadone than any other drugs here.

I am looking to hear from anyone who ever was on LAAM. I find a little info on it, but not any patient experiences. I know it is a discontinued med, but I was curious if anyone that was on LAAM when it was discontinued and they had to transfer to an alt. treatment are out there. Anyone??

[Chicago]

YEA THEY PUT YOU BACK ON METH.
B/C IT STARTED AT MMT CLINICS AS EXPERAMENTS. SO THEY SWITCHED THESE PPLE BACK TO METH,
BEST ANSWER I CLD GIVE

[DCBA]

I found LAAM to be somewhat more powerful than methadone. At the time i tried it, i tried when i was having a low tolerance, and a little made me nod for 3.5 days...
It was discontinued because like methadone it can cause damage to the heart but it appears than it caused a lot more possible damage than methadone.
Be safe. 3 days is a long time for a single dose. Go slow, after all you have 3 days of it...

[roxi*stardust]

I know this doesnt belong here, but I looked all over trying to find somewhere to post this and couldnt find a suitable location. I decided here, since LAAM is most like methadone than any other drugs here.

I am looking to hear from anyone who ever was on LAAM. I find a little info on it, but not any patient experiences. I know it is a discontinued med, but I was curious if anyone that was on LAAM when it was discontinued and they had to transfer to an alt. treatment are out there. Anyone??


We actually used to have a sub-forum here in the Methadone forum for it but they got rid of it since there was no posting activity so this is probably the best place for your thread.

Here is some info I found on dosing, followed by some links you might find of interest.


Proper Use of This Medicine

Most patients are given their dose of levomethadyl at the clinic. You may be able to take some doses of your levomethadyl at home if your health care professional feels you are responsible to do that. Most people will have to go to the clinic 3 times a week.

Dosing—The dose of levomethadyl will be different for different patients. The following information includes only the average doses of levomethadyl.

For oral dosage form (oral solution):

For treating narcotic addiction:

Adults—The first dose of levomethadyl for patients who have not started treatment with methadone is between 20 and 40 milligrams (mg). The first dose for patients who have been receiving methadone will be a little higher than the amount of methadone that was being taken every day, but not more than 120 mg. Your doctor will then adjust your dose, depending on whether you experience withdrawal symptoms or side effects after the first dose. More than one change in the dose may be needed, until the right dose for you has been found.
Most people will receive levomethadyl 3 times a week, either on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday or on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Some people need a larger dose on Friday or Saturday, so that the medicine will last until the next visit. In detoxification programs, the dose of levomethadyl will gradually be decreased until the patient is able to stop taking it. In maintenance programs, treatment may be continued as long as needed.
If you miss one treatment in your program, your health care professional will have to adjust your treatment schedule and dose; you may need to start a new program with a lower starting dose if you miss more than one treatment or have been off the treatment for more than one week.



http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab002210.html
http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=277014146&channel=27764926

[SHELLEY]

why do they call it laam?
i saw the drug name in above post but don't remember how to spell it
but i do remember that it only had 1 "a" whats up with that??
why not "lam"?

[Indy]

Nah, it has two "a"s, it's levo-α-acetylmethadol. I guess if you wanna get REALLY technical, it would be LαAM (no, that's not a lowercase "a", that's an alpha, but it's basically the same as "a"), but LAAM is more accurate than LAM, so that's it's "official" chemical name. Levomethadyl is another generic name, it's just as "correct" as LAAM, but it uses a different nomenclature.

LAAM is basically an acronym for the chemical name, whereas levomethadyl = levo - metha - dyl (i believe dyl is like dol but it indicates the acetyl group, but i'm just guessing).

It's like diacetylmorphine and diamorphine, they're both generic drug names for heroin, neither one is incorrect, but different regions happen to use one or the other more often.

[clinton]

how is laam superior to methadone?
or is it?
does it have the same long duration?
is it available in the us?

[Indy]

It WAS available in the US, but due to heart problems and stuff it was taken off the market. I think the general consensus was it was safe to take if you didn't have a history of heart problems, but some people died cause they had heart problems they didn't know about IIRC, so they figured it was better to just pull it altogether. Correct me if i'm wrong, but there were never really that many people on it anyway i think.

The perceived advantage was that it had an extremely long half life, so users only had to dose three times a week or every other day.

As for superior high/feeling, that's subjective and since i've never had it, i can only give you info that comes from the board and the drug monograph, plus of course wikipedia. Which is just that it lasts longer.

Maybe someone can chime in about the high. I'm sure some of it HAD to be diverted at some point, nothing stays 100% secure. It seems dangerous to me, though. If it lasts 2 days, imagine how long it must take to kick in (although half life doesn't indicate how fast something kicks in orally, it happens that the same mechanisms that cause a drug to have a long half life also happen to USUALLY cause it to kick in slower)!

Personally though i'm all about the high, not the rush: i love opiates that reach a plateau and just stay there for a really long time. I've never had LAAM or even methadone, but as long as it's a long lasting opioid i'm willing to bet i'd enjoy it.

[blutuesday]

wow. thanks for all these replies, this totally helps.

[Paregoric Kid]

LAAM is still schedule II and approved in the US. after the publicity from the heart problem stories Roxane stopped manufacturing ORLAAM. it was discontinued in the EU (or at least parts of europe) for the same reason and I don't think it was ever approved in Canada. is there anywhere in the world that still provides this treatment?

[Indy]

No clue, but (and this is NOT medical advice), I bet it was just a scare that caused them to ban it, and without a preexisting heart condition it isn't that bad for you. That's just a hunch though. It doesn't sound very good to me though, imagine if it didn't last the full 3 days or whatever, you'd be stuck in withdrawal like every third day for a long time. Not to mention that'd be a bitch of an overdose to treat, you'd have to hospitalize the person for like 3 days.

[Paregoric Kid]

it wasn't a ban, they just voluntarily stopped manufacturing it. apparently they were the only US suppliers.

[Indy]

I see, well either way, they probably didn't want to risk a media nightmare or something. Maybe i'm just cynical, i just don't think they did it cause they're really worried about some "filthy junky's bad heart".

[Morphus]

Stuff gets you high for 3 days, supposedly, so, you were only supposed to have to go to the clinic twice a week. Thats was the theory, anyways. When I looked into getting on methadone LAAM was still an option, and you could opt for that, or regular methadone. I've read that people who took LAAM in a clinical setting said it didn't really hold them the full 72 hours it was supposed to, perhaps their doses were insufficient. But imagine if you could get stabilized in this stuff, people say kicking methadone is the worst..................... can you imagine how bad this shit would be?

[Paregoric Kid]

a media scare would hurt sales but it wouldn't be as bad as a class action lawsuit if enough patients said their heart problems were caused by LAAM. or having to do further testing for the FDA which costs millions. in the end roxane labs did it to cover their ass but they did it because if they didn't discontinue it, it is likely it would have been discontinued by government mandate or they would have ended up putting too much investment into research on it.

[DCBA]

LAAM was more powerful in terms of euphoria than methadone, when i took it i had little or no tolerance and i took 20mgs, it make me more high then i take 20mgs of methadone without tolerance or little..

And the sedation was more intense but more opiate like in the feeling than methadone. i loved the stuff and it wasnt just me, many old timers says the same, LAAM was better than methadone, but none of them were in LAAM for that much time cause it was "banned" after some months.

[Paregoric Kid]

yeah rats trained to discriminate drugs like heroin thought LAAM was closer to heroin than methadone.