by Jeff F.
Some years ago when I was a patient on a methadone maintenance program at a daily dose of 70 mg. of methadone. I used clonidine to potentiate my dose and also as a sedative at night. Clonidine was easy for me to get since I suffered from mild hypertension at the time. My experience was this:
A dose of four 0.3 mg. tabs seemed to about double the effects of my daily 70 mg. dose of methadone and the same dose, for me, was a fast acting and powerful sleep aid. At that dose, however, the side effects were considerable. I would regularly experience positional hypotension (I would pass out sometimes if I stood up quickly) and I had extremely vivid visual hallucinations those times when I would awaken during the night.
Also, after taking clonidine at the dose described above for a couple of months, I ran out of the stuff and thought nothing of it until mid afternoon of the first day when I began to experience classic opioid withdrawal symptomology - even though I had had my usual methadone dose at about 10:AM that day. After a couple of hours feeling the symptoms getting worse and worse, I figured that my discomfort might have something to do with a lack of clonidine and ran to the pharmacy to get a refill. Taking the clonidine again relieved the withdrawal symptoms in about 20 minutes.
Today, I am drug free for the last 20 years and work as a chemical dependency counselor in a behavioral health treatment center where the psychiatrists sometimes use clonidine in off-label ways. One of them told me that he has prescribed cloindine (I don't know at what dose) for nightmares associated with PTSD. I think it is also sometimes used to treat the symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in some patients.
