Stimulants Mephedrone, Fluoxetine and Serotonin syndrome

[howneyeteale]

I hope you are well and safe.

My friend wants to take Mephedrone but he is on Fluoxetine (20mg). He is planning to take around 500mg - 800mg in one night but he is a bit worry about Serotonin syndrome. He was on Sertraline(50mg- 100mg) in the past and he took Mephedrone 1g during one night and everything was fine.

What do you think? Do you think everything will be fine? Do you think he should not take Fluoxetine on the day of taking Mephedrone?

Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it!

 

[BlueBull]

I'm well and pretty safe yes, thank you. I hope the same goes for you?

Fluoxetine has been shown to be able to potentiate mephedrone in rats, though the effect is dose-dependent
Link
Furthermore there are one or two case reports where fluoxetine was the suspected cause for mephedrone-induced serotonin syndrome. This is only anecdotal of course. Case report in Link 1 and a summary of mephedrone health risks mentioning this case report and pointing to fluoxetine as the suspected cause in Link 2
Link 1
Link 2
From Link 2:

There is some evidence to suggest that mephedrone may interact in a dangerous way with SSRI antidepressants. One case report of serotonin syndrome (a potentially fatal drug reaction caused by serotonergic drugs) occurred in a person taking both mephedrone and fluoxetine, so it's likely that it’s the combination that was responsible

All in all I would not risk this. Not much is known about the combination but judging from what I could find there are dangers. Since not much is known, it could be that the dangers are exaggerated or misunderstood of course but that is a gamble I would not be willing to take

If this thread gets no more replies in a day or so, I'll send this to the Other Drugs section and see what they have to say about it. There are people there that are going to be more well-informed on mephedrone than me. I have no practical nor theoretical experience with it

 

[BlueBull]

Moving this to Other Drugs to see if someone has more input. Mephedrone is an entactogen so feel free to move it back to MED whenever, I just wanted to see if I could get the OP some more replies

 

[psynce of sound]

Hmm this is a curious one. I would suspect there is some risk (dose dependent) of serotonin syndrome owing to mephedrone being both somewhat an SRI and an SRA. Stacking SRIs with SSRIs tends to be a big one for causing this issue.

I would certainly be cautious about proceeding if you both choose to.
I don't feel there is enough information to say anything for certain in either direction.
Start low and go slow, be mindful and be prepared to act in the event of a worst case scenario.

 

[ageingpartyfiend]

I'd personally avoid the combo like the plague