MDMA after antipsychotics

[Malachi4ever]

Hello good people,

About 6 months ago I started taking 2mg aripiprazole (ability) to combat bipolar disorder. My doctor had made the call to start me on this med based on a questionaire that I filled out.

About 4 months later I had realized I was misdiagnosed and went off the medication. I soon found that a combination of exercise and 5-htp was all that I needed.

My question is.. will I ever be able to experience stimulants the same way I did before the abilify? I had tried MDMA a couple times while on abilify and experienced no euphoria. I assumed I hadn't taken enough and both times I took twice what my friends had taken. My friends all rolled as normal and all I felt was a slight body high and Dilated pupils. I now know how bad that was for me and I have been avoiding recreational drugs ever since.

I am hoping to hear from someone who has been in a similar situation. I am also hoping someone might know a thing or two about aripiprazole. I don't want to jump right back in but I am definitely missing the MDMA experience.

I never was a frequent user but I am definitely missing the occasional cocaine or mdma night out

Basically, how long do I need to wait?

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

It sounds like you've been off the Abilify for 2 months now? This is indeed long enough for you to be able to roll as normal. The way Abilify works is by shutting down some serotonin brain cells, MDMA works through releasing serotonin and hence you couldn't roll, as soon as it's out of your system (couple weeks since last dose) you should be able to roll again.

But I would go VERY lightly on the dosage at first, when you take a drug that shuts down serotonin like Abilify your serotonin brain cells are sensitized to serotonin because the brain cells think "we're not getting enough serotonin, so we will be really sensitive to whatever serotonin comes our way". Thus when you take MDMA and flood your brain with serotonin you will get really high because your brain cells are still sensitized. The technical term for this is receptor up-regulation.

Receptor down-regulation on the other hand is essentially what tolerance is, your brain says "I have too much of this so I'm not going to be as sensitive to it", but you likely have to opposite of this right now so I would go really low on the dosage at first.

I would stop the 5-HTP 2 days before rolling but then definitely resume it the day after rolling just to be safe, there is such a thing as too much serotonin :D please take some vitamins, most especially vitamin E every day for a week leading up to the roll and take a vitamin C or two the day of the roll, it will help your brain down the road

I highly approve of the exercise by the way. Goodluck, feel free to message me with any questions. Toodles!

 

[nightElf]

But I would go VERY lightly on the dosage at first, when you take a drug that shuts down serotonin like Abilify your serotonin brain cells are sensitized to serotonin because the brain cells think "we're not getting enough serotonin, so we will be really sensitive to whatever serotonin comes our way". Thus when you take MDMA and flood your brain with serotonin you will get really high because your brain cells are still sensitized. The technical term for this is receptor up-regulation.

What happens if someone takes this to improve the lost of magic? does it make sense? Now that I'm going to try it, just asking and being curious

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

I think specifically loss is magic is still something of a mystery, this concept of taking a drug that up regulates your receptors (an antagonist) would likely work well for normal tolerance but loss of magic could be different me thinks.

If I had to guess it might be something to do with a kind of serotonin that you need for MDMA to be able to work called 5-HT2B, so potentially a 2B antagonist might help with fixing loss of magic faster than normal sobriety by up regulating (sensitizing) the 2B receptors so there's more of them for the MDMA to bind to. MDMA binds to 2B so I could see it down regulating the 2B receptors and desensitizing them (hence causing loss of magic), but the 5-HT2B receptors are really strange so idk.

Most classic for psychedelics is a receptor called 5-HT2A and I bet sensitizing this receptor with an antagonist would likely be more straightforward than the strange 5-HT2B receptors.

Abilify happens to be a 5-HT2A and 5-HT2B antagonist so that's where most of my concern was coming from, that his 5-HT2B might have been sensitized by the Abilify and since MDMA is a primarily 5-HT2B agonist he could get a lot of serotonin.

 

[ZombieMode]

Subscribed.

I've done LSD 3 times whilst on Abilify with a diminished effect as time went on (and more of the abilify was pumped into my system). The antipsychotics, I have noticed, block the effects of recreational drugs to a large extent.

Was a long time fan of MDMA prior to getting forced to take abilify, really hope that this enjoyment hasn't been taken from us.

Interested to see what others have to say.

Best wishes,
Zombie