Issues after 4g psilocybin preceding benzo withdrawal

[Chziime]

Hi! I used to use psilocybin fairly often in my early/mid-20s. I have OCD, depression, and am on the spectrum. I'm now 33, and figured I'd try it again with a facilitator, especially given a difficult past couple years.

The first time, about 7 weeks ago, I had 4g psilocybin tea and, being a bit sleep deprived, dozed off into the experience. When I left, I felt much more social, connected, and honestly, the calmest I've felt in years. Even though I was sleep deprived, I had the social energy to see several friends after and even had an excellent first date that evening.

That feeling didn't last, and I gradually started to close up again. 3 weeks later (and 4 weeks ago), I had another experience, and it was a far more difficult experience with my going in with a bit more anxiety. I'm in the middle of a very slow "low-dose" Clonazepam taper (down to .125mg/day), and I was using kratom in those days, which is very destabilizing for me. I can't speak for the experience, but immediately afterwards, I felt very oversensitive. Going outside on a walk with my facilitator, all of the visuals and sounds around me in the quiet suburbs were too much, and my mind was loud (a common symptom for me, a "loud mind").

The rest of the day, I had a close friend stay with me, and I felt incredibly emotionally drained, closed off, even depressed. That feeling has shifted since then, but it hasn't gone away. Four weeks later, my OCD is stronger, I'm having worse anxiety than I've had in months (even taking extra Clonazepam a couple times, which I've never done during my taper), I'm in a foul, bitter mood, and I feel incredibly closed off to the world, as if the experience was so stressful that my mind retreated further into itself.

At this point, I am scared that I damaged myself, nonsense like that, but it sure feels like it. I keep compulsively going over the timeline of the past to "figure out" if the mushrooms did this or if I've felt like this before. What I've typed out here is what lingers in my mind.

Does anyone have any encouraging words, advice, or similar experiences? Thank you for any.

 

[negrogesic]

It sounds more benzo withdrawal related than anything.

I've found that psychedelic experiences can be very difficult to integrate during benzo withdrawal, and can exacerbate the associated dissociation/derealization.

Taking additional doses of benzos during a taper of course has a price tag and will produce a rebound effect as well.

Psilocybin is relatively gentle and is not associated with lasting damage. On occasion it can precipitate a latent disorder but this is quite rare and seems to occur in younger individuals with emergent psychiatric disorders.

Just give it some time, and wait until you get off benzos before taking psychedelics. The two don't mix well. The only psychedelic I found tolerable during benzo withdrawal was nitrous oxide, but I don't recommend this either due to it's toxicity and it's potential to downregulate GABA-A receptors.

 

[washingtonbound]

Hi! I used to use psilocybin fairly often in my early/mid-20s. I have OCD, depression, and am on the spectrum. I'm now 33, and figured I'd try it again with a facilitator, especially given a difficult past couple years.

The first time, about 7 weeks ago, I had 4g psilocybin tea and, being a bit sleep deprived, dozed off into the experience. When I left, I felt much more social, connected, and honestly, the calmest I've felt in years. Even though I was sleep deprived, I had the social energy to see several friends after and even had an excellent first date that evening.

That feeling didn't last, and I gradually started to close up again. 3 weeks later (and 4 weeks ago), I had another experience, and it was a far more difficult experience with my going in with a bit more anxiety. I'm in the middle of a very slow "low-dose" Clonazepam taper (down to .125mg/day), and I was using kratom in those days, which is very destabilizing for me. I can't speak for the experience, but immediately afterwards, I felt very oversensitive. Going outside on a walk with my facilitator, all of the visuals and sounds around me in the quiet suburbs were too much, and my mind was loud (a common symptom for me, a "loud mind").

The rest of the day, I had a close friend stay with me, and I felt incredibly emotionally drained, closed off, even depressed. That feeling has shifted since then, but it hasn't gone away. Four weeks later, my OCD is stronger, I'm having worse anxiety than I've had in months (even taking extra Clonazepam a couple times, which I've never done during my taper), I'm in a foul, bitter mood, and I feel incredibly closed off to the world, as if the experience was so stressful that my mind retreated further into itself.

At this point, I am scared that I damaged myself, nonsense like that, but it sure feels like it. I keep compulsively going over the timeline of the past to "figure out" if the mushrooms did this or if I've felt like this before. What I've typed out here is what lingers in my mind.

Does anyone have any encouraging words, advice, or similar experiences? Thank you for any.

I’m also on the spectrum and have OCD tendencies, and I’ve had a difficult time with psychedelics over the years. Although they help some people, my use became problematic for me. I had a similar experience where I took an eighth of shrooms and felt this intense afterglow that was kind of like a hypo manic state (I also have bipolar). This lasted a couple weeks but when I came back down to reality, symptoms were magnified, and I was in my head again. The benzo withdrawal might have had something to do with it in your case, but I’ve had trouble just with psychedelics by themselves. Those with mental disorders are much more susceptible to issues with it.

 

[lonelyDude]

hmmmm.

im not really sure how responsible it is to put the studies up for people to read from maps.

I know they need backing but psychs are just not for everyone.

I agree washingtonbound totally those with mental disorders are MUCH more susceptible to issues with it.

I had a very good friend who I went to primary school with (thats when I started on shrooms)

he had one trip flipped out tied a bunch of cats to light posts set them on fire then got committed.

his parents moved so he could not hurt them and he was alone.

fast forward 25 or so years and I find him at a food van.

I ask how he is going so he tells me about the vampires that are hunting him.

nothing I could say would change his mind.

I then asked to exchange numbers.

in tears he told me that I was the only one who had cared for him to even ask in 20 sum years but he was to scared he

would flip out again and hurt me.

dormant schizophrenia.

I will not give shrooms or acid or DMT to anyone unless they have already had it before and I know this as fact (which is really no one I know.)

 

[imo_incolae]

The drugs could be a factor.
You want to be taking psychedelics on their own so nothing can interact with them.

You're fine, man.
The content of your mind is was disturbs you. Nothing else.
OCD is learned behaviour. It's not alien to you. It belongs to you and because you struggle to accept this, you have a dysfunctional relationship with yourself, which then creates what psychiatry calls a disorder. Your relationship with your behaviour is what causes the distress, not the disorder itself. The disorder doesn't actually exist. We just use the term disorder to create a layer of reality that attempts to define and understand specific things, but it is the entirety of reality. Psychiatry is but one very tiny window into looking at our experience, but it's not the only window. If we see ourselves merely from a psychiatric perspective, we are prisoners. If we see ourselves as being able to utilize the psychiatric window, among other windows, to see ourselves, we have much more freedom. I think one of the biggest flaws in modern psychiatry is how people assume what psychiatry preaches is CONCRETE, much like religion. Funny really because psychiatry has replaced religion in many ways (and was spurred off the back of the gradual decline of religion in the 19th century) but that's another topic altogether.

Whatever you are going through, it's not something that is simply happening to you. You are happening to it. And when you can see this, you can choose to investigate, because you are the captain of the ship, not simply a stowaway in a lifejacket cupboard.

Psychedelics have the capacity to help us in this way because we realize we are at the center of everything. Everything comes from within us. Everything is connected.
Make those connections. Don't simply see what you are experiencing as something alien to you and something out of your control. Everything will have it's place and the connections will be there to guide you towards insight into your experience, should you want to open to it. That's why we take psychedelics, if we are using them for their therapeutic benefits anyway.

The changes in your behaviour have their place. Being conscious of the fact that while tripping you are very malleable and able to change yourself is key because how you change yourself is what will often resonate with you after the trip. This is where most people get over their shit because they realize they CAN change. If this opportunity isn't recognized, it can sometimes be confused for a bad thing. Consquently, the 'badness' then forms the behaviour change. Say, for example, you get paranoid during a trip. If you confuse your capacity to see things differently with paranoia, you associate change with paranoia and then miss out on the valuable transformational experience. Maybe you've opened a can of worms while you were tripping that you haven't yet sought to integrate into your experience. Maybe you were exposed to your disorders in a way where they were able to be magnified. This is possible. Whatever you experience in everyday reality IS what you will experience when tripping heavily. This is where the work happens. If this experience during the trip is misinterpreted, that magnification can become even more exaggerated. Obsessive traits become worse, paranoid thoughts become worse, anxiety becomes worse, everything you experience normally becomes worse. This is a common theme with psychedelics and it's why most people have 'bad' trips. It's not that the trip is 'bad', it's that they forget they are simply experiencing the deep recesses of their mind and then take that to mean something is inherently wrong. They then seek to control the trip as opposed to letting go and surrendering.

Seek to understand what is going on. I find that whenever I have difficulty after a trip, it's always because the remnants of the trip are floating around in my present experience. I relate my sensitivity and vulnerability during my trip to my present felt experience and because I want to protect myself (and my ego) I seek to become defensive. While this is natural, because we do need to insulate ourselves from the winds of life, we also can forget to let go and just embrace how we are feeling accepting that we are fundamentally okay.

If I had a difficult trip, it's easy to associate that difficulty with now. The two can be confused. When you seek to investigate why you associate that difficulty with now, you can perhaps see that what you were having difficulty with in the trip was your own thoughts, just like you are having difficulty now with them. If that is so, it's nothing new. It's just your complex relationship with yourself, which has existed since forever because you're a complicated human being, and that is perfectly normal and acceptable.
Why are you having difficulty? What is difficult? What can you understand more? What can you go on an journey to seek to understand and transform? If you are anxious, what exists in your mind to form the anxiety? If you feel like things are worse, why? What IS worse? What is better? What are the rules, beliefs, expectations for your experience? Why does these exist? And should they exist? Do they serve you?

A loud mind. Maybe the psychedelic experience unlocked your mind to the degree that you can experience things in a much deeper way? Psychedelics can and do do this. That's why people take them. Is that a bad thing? Depends whether you can live with the depth. The depth is where you will find the answers to your questions. The depth is the real nature of the mind. Maybe the glimpses you had into the depths of your mind are still lingering. Utilize these opportunities not to be a victim and passive to what you experience, but to experiment, investigate, challenge things. If you are more open, which is what it sounds like to me, that is a good thing. The opposite of that is being closed off, restricted, limited. Why would you want that? Isn't your freedom to be found in the potential of the open, and not in being closed? I guess it all depends how you look at things.

And how you look at things determines your reality. And after all, isn't this what we are talking about?
We are talking about your inner reality. And understanding what we understand now, it's a reality that you make go round.
Your story, your life, your beliefs, your inner world - it's all there because you made it so.

You can explore all this, if you want to
Nothing can hurt you. Wherever you are, it's home. Because home is where you are, and where you are in your mind.
Taking psychedelics can facilitate this, but we have to do it safely and mindfully in order to achieve the maximum therapeutic benefit.

 

[cdin]

benzo withdrawal is horrible, and psychedelics in benzo withdrawal is kind of a miserable state. I would conclude the clonazepam taper, and try psylocibin again after the PAWS cleared up