Xyrem vs Baclofen

I personally recommend Xyrem, but I've heard of people having success with Baclofen. Xyrem treats all of our symptoms and can be life changing. It's given me my life back and I'm thankful for Xyrem

They're both very different. I've never tried xyrem as it's not an option for me for a few reasons right now. But from what I've read, that would be the far preferred treatment. Baclofen seems to be a distant second fallback option if xyrem doesn't work for you or isn't an option for whatever reason. I'm on it and have had improvement. It's notlife altering, and took several weeks before I noticed a difference, but it does help.

I think Baclofen is one dose... I take Xyrem, but I think I asked a friend who takes Baclofen that very question once out of curiosity.

I would think the alcohol precautions would be similar since alcohol is a central nervous system depressant and then you're taking a muscle relaxer on top of that. But again, I don't know for sure. Maybe Baclofen doesn't have as strong of a sedative effect and therefore alcohol isn't as risky.

You can drink on Xyrem, though. You just don't want them in your system at the same time. I don't worry about a glass of wine at dinner if I'm not taking my Xyrem until at least a few hours later. That's plenty of time for me to metabolize that. If you want to drink later or heavier, you can just skip the first dose of Xyrem. I know some people do that. I hardly ever drink because I don't care about it that much, so if I'm forced to choose (like on New Year's), I would rather skip the alcohol and take both doses of Xyrem.

As for the effectiveness, again, not speaking from personal experience, there are many others on reddit, but I do think Baclofen is only preferred if you can't tolerate Xyrem. People don't seem to get extreme results as often, when comparing before and after. I've also seen a few people who have tried both, and I think the consensus was that the effect on nighttime sleep and EDS was similar, but Xyrem was better for cataplexy reduction. I'm not sure why that is if it does provide the same quality of sleep...

I've also seen people switch back to Xyrem after trying Baclofen because Xyrem gave them unbearable side effects, such as anxiety. They didn't like Baclofen as much for whatever reason (can't remember if it was the cataplexy or something else), so they went back to Xyrem and added in an anxiety medication instead.