Pramipexole, Cabergoline and Bromocriptine

[Bizygomatic]

What do you guys think of these drugs?
Anyone that has experience with them?
@PharmaPhaggot @kdev

 

[Bipolar2Cel]

I tried prami, caber and ropinirole, mostly for depression. Helps a bit but not super useful unless I took very high dosages, then the nausea was too brutal and I stopped those high dosages. As for prolactin and libido I found pramipexole much more effective and cleaner than cabergoline, also caber gave more headaches and feeling hot, but I would say overall cabergoline and pramipexole feels 80-90% the same. You can get very high libido at first but after some weeks or months on them it often goes back to normal or mostly normal, cabergoline's dirty 5HT2 receptor effects felt like they were counteracting its D2/D3 receptor libido increasing effects. As far as muscle gains or improved recovery on pramipexole from its effects on HGH like some bros can try to hype I noticed jack shit, some think it can make a difference but I noticed zero difference. I do feel like it increased stamina a bit when doing cardio weirdly but that was it, MAYBE.

Also yeah you can get a weird mix of feeling tired during the day but also wired and having a hard time to fall asleep. Weird mix of fatigue and sleepy but also being too wired to sleep and like your brain can't turn off. Went away after a while though.

If I were to recommend any dopamine agonist it would be pramipexole, felt cleanest of them all. Cabergoline you can dose only a few times a week which is convenient, but long half-life also means you can suffer from nasty side-effects for longer if you overdose or are not used to the dose increase etc you made, whatever. Anyway you can just split the pills with a knife, take pieces/crumbs lol, or dissolve into alcohol or make a suspension and use a pipette(if you are scared or sensitive to side-effects).

Oh and yeah I have been on and off dopamine agonists for many months to years because I still found them helpful. Stuff like DAWS is pure cope and only applies to people who are already neurologically very dysfunctional and have Parkinson's Disease, young healthy people don't get DAWS from withdrawing from dopamine agonists. Worst case scenario just taper off. These drugs are nowhere near "dangerous" lol, your brain can handle withdrawing from those fine without freaky symptoms unless you are old and have PD or some other serious dopaminergic deficits. Again I forgot dosages, cold-turkeyed after months to years of use and didn't notice anything or maybe felt bit more depressed than usual(even this is hard to say when you are chronically depressed to varying levels lol).


Edit: And ropinirole just felt like a shittier shorter half-life version of pramipexole. But yeah for many purposes these D2-D3 agonists are like 80-90+% interchangeable. Obviously stuff like bromocriptine is even way more dirty, worse long-term for heart etc. Cabergoline has a slight increased risk but requires very high dosages over long periods of time. Also even though cabergoline is described as a D2 agonist it still binds almost as strongly to D3, pramipexole is a D3 agonist but still binds strongly to D2. So they are both strong D2/D3 agonists overall.

 

[Bizygomatic]

I tried prami, caber and ropinirole, mostly for depression. Helps a bit but not super useful unless I took very high dosages, then the nausea was too brutal and I stopped those high dosages. As for prolactin and libido I found pramipexole much more effective and cleaner than cabergoline, also caber gave more headaches and feeling hot, but I would say overall cabergoline and pramipexole feels 80-90% the same. You can get very high libido at first but after some weeks or months on them it often goes back to normal or mostly normal, cabergoline's dirty 5HT2 receptor effects felt like they were counteracting its D2/D3 receptor libido increasing effects. As far as muscle gains or improved recovery on pramipexole from its effects on HGH like some bros can try to hype I noticed jack shit, some think it can make a difference but I noticed zero difference. I do feel like it increased stamina a bit when doing cardio weirdly but that was it, MAYBE.

Also yeah you can get a weird mix of feeling tired during the day but also wired and having a hard time to fall asleep. Weird mix of fatigue and sleepy but also being too wired to sleep and like your brain can't turn off. Went away after a while though.

If I were to recommend any dopamine agonist it would be pramipexole, felt cleanest of them all. Cabergoline you can dose only a few times a week which is convenient, but long half-life also means you can suffer from nasty side-effects for longer if you overdose or are not used to the dose increase etc you made, whatever. Anyway you can just split the pills with a knife, take pieces/crumbs lol, or dissolve into alcohol or make a suspension and use a pipette(if you are scared or sensitive to side-effects).

Oh and yeah I have been on and off dopamine agonists for many months to years because I still found them helpful. Stuff like DAWS is pure cope and only applies to people who are already neurologically very dysfunctional and have Parkinson's Disease, young healthy people don't get DAWS from withdrawing from dopamine agonists. Worst case scenario just taper off. These drugs are nowhere near "dangerous" lol, your brain can handle withdrawing from those fine without freaky symptoms unless you are old and have PD or some other serious dopaminergic deficits. Again I forgot dosages, cold-turkeyed after months to years of use and didn't notice anything or maybe felt bit more depressed than usual(even this is hard to say when you are chronically depressed to varying levels lol).


Edit: And ropinirole just felt like a shittier shorter half-life version of pramipexole. But yeah for many purposes these D2-D3 agonists are like 80-90+% interchangeable. Obviously stuff like bromocriptine is even way more dirty, worse long-term for heart etc. Cabergoline has a slight increased risk but requires very high dosages over long periods of time. Also even though cabergoline is described as a D2 agonist it still binds almost as strongly to D3, pramipexole is a D3 agonist but still binds strongly to D2. So they are both strong D2/D3 agonists overall.

Love the detailed response! Did taking them help you feel more motivated?

 

[socio]

I typed a whole paragraph about this, but I remember you told me to kms in discord so I had to erase it all.

 

[Bizygomatic]

I typed a whole paragraph about this, but I remember you told me to kms in discord so I had to erase it all.

I WAS JOKING

 

[Bipolar2Cel]

Love the detailed response! Did taking them help you feel more motivated?

Yeah they did for a long while, later still helped but my depression is hell-bent on getting worse every year lol, not the drug's fault just my brain programmed to default to extreme depression no matter what. It still helped at high dosages like 1.4+ mg but then the nausea became sooooo terrible I had to stop, I only keep it as a back-up option now for the future if my other regimen stops working. Also the nausea you can get from dopamine agonists is not like feeling sick in your stomach it is at higher dosages like you want to vomit deep inside your head lol.

That said you can get used to the initial nausea at lower dosages it is just when you get to like 1-1.5+ mg it can start getting nasty and bit "too hard" to suffer through before(if) your body adjusts to it. Had nausea at lower dosages first and when increasing them but then nothing later on. If you are at lower dosages then yeah you can often get over it just by giving it time and titrating carefully.

Lol bit long response but thing is these drugs often need high dosages to start working for anhedonia, depression, motivation etc. You often need a certain level of D2/D3 receptor occupancy inside the actual brain for the drug to really work but this also tends to leave the chemoreceptor zone D2 receptors saturated which can trigger brutal unforgiving nausea. Really depends on your biochemistry and brain personally. Often you can get used to it but again once you reach higher dosages the "adjustment period" and the nausea often becomes too insufferable.

Anyway I realize it is probably good I write about this because there aren't many user reviews or guys with years long experiences with dopamine agonists online like myself I guess lol. But yeah for a long time I was using like 0.35-0.7 mg pramipexole for ex both on and off for months to year plus and it was overall helpful for quite a while. I also had periods of using low dose cabergoline but pramipexole was just better and cleaner and caber would also make me itch. But yeah past couple of years actually I have been on some form of dopamine agonist almost uninterrupted and been fine, then before that many months on and off periods too.

And yeah pramipexole's short half-life at least makes it leave your system pretty fast so if you have side-effects at a dose or want to go off the drug it clears out of your system pretty quick. Anyway these drugs aren't really as scary as some guys seem to think like "I will get DAWS if I go on these???!!!" like that only happens if you are already old and very extra dopaminergically deficient or have Parkinson's Disease.


Edit: I've also tried aripiprazole, brexpiprazole and now cariprazine too, sort of microdosing them. Brexpiprazole is the weakest and sucks ass at D3, but cariprazine has merit with its extremely strong D3 binding and lower binding and intrinsic activity at D2 so nausea etc can be more tolerable and you can get higher D2+D3 occupancies throughout the brain without as much side-effects, I know some anhedonia and nootropics guys that microdose these for these purposes so not as crazy as it might sound, just worth looking into potentially too. Can tell more about my experiences later on once I am done experimenting with and adjusting my current regimen.

 

[Bipolar2Cel]

Lamotrigine + low-dose cariprazine (3 mg 3-4x a week) is working amazing so far for bipolar depression. Feeling and of course looking total stud as fuck. I microdose selegiline and take methylphenidate also.(36+18+10 mg daily)