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psychedelics and hypertension harm reduction please

al-laddin

al-laddin

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 10, 2014
Messages
500
Recently I have decided to make mushrooms and mescaline my psychedelics of choice. Mushrooms because theres now some valid science behind their positive effects on the mind. I find mushrooms to be slightly uncomfortable for them to be something I do whenever I have the urge to trip, so I will be using mescaline for more "recreational" purposes as I love the clearheadedness and the intense visuals.

Awhile back I was dignosed with hypertension and Im in great shape and have an OK diet. However i was drinking like a fish at the time. So in recent times I quit drinking and it seems to have greatly improved my blood presssure. Unfortunatly I understand that psychedelics can greatly increase BP even to dangerous levels. I read about one account where an indiviuals BP went soaring while tripping on LSD. A few days later he died of a heart attack. We can come up with all kinds of ideas as to how it probably wasnt related to the acid but it is a fact that these drugs do increase BP. So lets just focus on preventative measures in this thread. I know mescaline is a phenethylamine so risk may increase much more using it due to its stimulating properties.

So I iwould like to hear from people who have hypertension but still indulge in psychedelics. What I want to know is how do you protect yourself from your BP shooting up. I know vasoconstriction can increase the risk so preventing that would be conducive as well.

Some of the natural medicines that I would like to mention as a means of possible protection are beet juice, hibiscus tea, nopal cactus fruit and the supplement l-arginine. I have used beet juice and to a lesser degree hibiscus without psychedelics and the beet juice seem to help greatly but I would like to hear if they have helped while using psychedelics. For vasoconstriction the natural medicines Ive heard help are cayanne pepper and ginger. So please help me get a good recource thread on cardiovascular health and psychedelics as it seems to be the riskiest side effect of these compounds. Thanks
 
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Were you not prescribed any medication when diagnosed with hypertension?

I'd say disregard natural medicines and stick to drugs that do work.

If you are not on your antihypertensive medication (you really should take it regularly if you have high BP IMO), then I guess a beta-blocker will work nicely. Good ol' propranolol will also reduce anxiety as a bonus.
 
Thanks, yes I was prescribed amplodipine....made me feel sick and didnt seem to work...my doctor was a piece of shit... I then quit drinking and started working out more.....blood pressure dropped significantly. Also if you arent aware beet juice is a very POWERFUL BP reducer recognized by science. A quick google search will yield plenty of results....in fact beet juice has been known to be superior to many perscription meds. Hibiscus has been known to be very powerful but I have not tried it extensivley myself..beet juice I have.
 
I cant believe no one with hypertension takes psychedelics and has any insight on harm reduction. :(
 
My advice would be to normalize your BP before taking psychedelics so that it is in normal range (less than 140/90) for quite some time. You can try natural remedies if they work for you, but I'd warmly suggest to visit another doc and get a proper antihypertensive prescribed. Just tell him/her that amlodipine sucked assd, then the doc will likely prescribe a drug from another class. Some of these might take up to 2 weeks to really start working, so keep that in mind if anything.
Regular exercise, abstinence from smoking, weight reduction, omega-3 supplementation, and dietary salt limitation are also important, but if all these measures fail to achieve the goal of <140/90 mm Hg in a 6 month period, then a medication is in order, IMO. My views might be biased, though :)
 
I have hypertension and took 5mg of Ramipril daily over several months. The Ramipril didn't decrease my hypertension observably. I discontinued the medication for breaking occurring in my voice. I think ace inhibitors also have the side effect of influencing renal function.

My resting blood pressure is ~130/80 - 145/95mm/hg. During exercise my blood pressure drops significantly. In the evening after psychedelic use my blood pressure sometimes elevates to ~160/100mm/hg, this symptom resolves overnight. Sometimes I stay awake all night after psychedelic use. Are these symptoms correlated? Possibly.

I journal and record my blood pressure an hour after my first meal and at night. I recommend journaling. My goal is resolution through continuing exercise and lifestyle modification. For this type of hypertension the consequence is eventually premature death.
 
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Thank you so much for the insight. I have called and asked around my group of friends for some more insight and was reminded of a little story. This happened a few years back and I had completely forgot about it but thought Id share.

A local LSD "dealer" whom I have known around town has stopped distributing it after a personal health emergency. He is a bigger guy, tall and a bit overweight but he went to parties pretty consant;y and was always dosing LSD ....or very often anyway. He is young maybe early thirties but more likely early twenties. On a particularly heavy dose recently he had a heart attack and ended up in the ER. needless to say he quit the LSD altogether.

So psychedelics should be reserved as a treat for those of us who take care of our health, it seems.
 
FunctionalOlfactio said:
I have hypertension and took 5mg of Ramipril daily over several months. The Ramipril didn't decrease my hypertension observably. I discontinued the medication for breaking occurring in my voice. I think ace inhibitors also have the side effect of influencing renal function.

My resting blood pressure is ~130/80 - 145/95mm/hg. During exercise my blood pressure drops significantly. In the evening after psychedelic use my blood pressure sometimes elevates to ~160/100mm/hg, this symptom resolves overnight. Sometimes I stay awake all night after psychedelic use. Are these symptoms correlated? Possibly.

I journal and record my blood pressure an hour after my first meal and at night. I recommend journaling. My goal is resolution through continuing exercise and lifestyle modification. For this type of hypertension the consequence is eventually premature death.
Click to expand...

Which psychedelics do you indulge in. That is quite an increase in BP and the level of increase may vary from substance to substance.
 
BP increases and decreases throughout the trip. No more or less damage than alcohol or weed.
And with psychedelics it is primarily the anxiety that does that.

However, I believe that no person should be using psychoactive substances with a clinically major bodily disorder.
 
You will want to stay away from for example DMT and 5-MeO tryptamines, DMT can deliver a pretty strong jolt to the body and considering the monoaminergic activities and subjective stimulation of 5-MeO's it is not hard to make assumptions.

Mescaline and 2C-B are phenethylamines but I don't know that this means they are more stimulant like just because a lot of stimulants happen to be PEA's. Then again, they may fit better in catecholamine receptors because there is more structural resemblance. Approaching this intentionally naieve here.
So let's investigate that... Better seems to be to take a close look at certain receptor affinities like the adrenergic ones (alpha1 antagonists are used for hypertension, hint) and I guess also dopamine. NET and DAT as well (and SERT can't hurt), and while we're at it even unselectivity for serotonin receptors other than the 2A subtype although I honestly don't really know which ones can be ugly in the current context.
Dopamine agonists apparently don't increase blood pressure but can even lower it, so I won't be checking that.

- 2C-B does affect alpha adrenoceptors in some results I have in front of me but not NET, DAT and SERT (monoamine transporters blocking of which constitutes reuptake inhibition). By the way those values are not affinities, pretty sure they used information to normalize into a value to neatly compare compounds. Higher value is more effect, unlike how affinities are expressed.
- DPT apparently acts considerably on alpha adrenoceptors, SERT and DAT. I warned about DMT, so it doesn't really come as a shock that DPT is iffy as well.
- DOB does act on alpha2C explaining vasoconstriction and also beta2 which may up HR (vasocontriction can be mediated by all alpha's), but... for alpha1A the value is zero. Unfortunately vasocontriction indirectly also leads to high blood pressure so unsurprisingly DOB is not a good idea as you might have suspected. And I would assume something similar for other psychedelic amphetamines.
- LSD affects a lot of different receptors but certainly not all that heavily, values seem to be quite low for relevant receptors like alpha1.
- Now psilocin affects SERT somewhat and alpha2 a bit, but other than that it seems to be relatively light. And that is also how I would generalize 4-HO tryptamines: to be pretty clean. Although granted, there is a short comeup phase with pure psilocin for me that does feel a bit like a launch. And obviously come-up anxiety can increase your BP.

So some are definitely safer than others (also reflected in countless reports and subjective experiences / anecdotes), still taking drugs carries risk and if you don't want to run any risk you should not take drugs.

Or perhaps take Salvinorin which is very atypical and technically safe on the body.

And then super ironically die from severe discombobulation.

Maybe an alpha blocker helps with blood pressure, but like I said via vasoconstriction and really a lot of other indirect ways blood pressure can get increased as well. You can't take alpha and beta blockers together, that can be dangerous.
I'm not sure how much of an option downers are, but they would kinda dull a trip - tho if effective it should work on a basic / pervasive / fundamental enough level to take into account all direct and indirect causes (because the GABA-glutamate system is like a master on&off switch, although a gradual one).
 
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Awesome solipsis, thank you for all your time and effort. Now if Im not mistaken you are saying that mescaline would basically have the safety margin of 2c-b? Either way I plan on using a 500ml + of beetjuice preload regimen when using any psychedelics. It is a natural calcium channel blocker and works for 24 hours.

I believe that most of my hypertension was a result of anxiety and excessive alcohol use which ofcourse resulted in rebound hypertension/anxiety on most mornings. Most of my drinking was done in the evening before bed. It seems that most of my hypertension has resolved after my absitinence of alcohol.

I didnt only start this thread for myself, I did so because cardiovascular disease is a huge killer and taking psychedelics for anyone with compromised cardiovascular health could be just enough to push one over the edge. I have noticed that with psychedleics this seems to be the only serious physical danger (excluding various RC's ofcourse). Perhaps a big and dandy cardiovascular health and psychedelics thread for an easy to find resource ? Just a thought?
 
Mescaline is a bit different than 2C-B, actually it acts different than other psychedelics... the effect on 'worrisome' receptors seems 'limited', just like it is semi-limited with 2C-B but then again the dose required is quite high for mescaline.
Subjectively it does feel like the side-effects get more noticeable towards the end which are slightly stimulant-like but not severely.

I don't think mescaline is the worst by a long shot, but 4-HO tryptamines may still be a little better.

You have a BP cuff of your own? Maybe it is best if you check your BP before and after doing or eating things (not sure what) that are known to relatively safely increase BP for a short while. That should give you a clear picture of how well you tolerate external factors getting your blood pressure up.
Then if you are confident that your values don't get too crazy even if you exert or push yourself a bit more in several ways, then it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that taking a psychedelic would so something similar which should be similarly tolerable.

Maybe people with relevant disease do need a proper place for discussing and researching whether taking psychedelics is okay for them (the crew should probably talk about if we will create a platform for this).
I think that people with say an organic brain condition also should take extra special care before taking psychedelics, and also people with liver or kidney impairment, etc... do you get my point? It seems more accurate to have a psychedelics and health condition precautions thread or something more aptly named but in that "vein".
Thanks for contributing :)
 
Speaking of cardiovascular health, chronic stimulation of 5HT2c receptors is known to result in heart valve abnormalities, e.g. tricuspidal regurgitation. So it is perhaps a sound idea to undergo echocardiography to check out how your valves fare (because hypertension itself predisposes to valvular disease).

Dopamine directly increases blood pressure at high enough concentrations, and indirectly at medium concentrations (by increasing cardiac contractilitity), so activity at dopamine receptors is probably not that desirable.

It should also be kept in mind that serotonin receptor stimulation results in a multitude of downstream effects, e.g. release of glutamate in brain cortex...so it might be that 5HT receptor activation causes delayed, secondary release of adrenaline for instance, thus indirectly contributing to hypertension? This, plus the fact that not much is known about metabolites of psychedelics (which might have different binding profiles and thus a direct vasoconstrictive effect?) makes it difficult to judge whether or not a certain compound will cause hypertension based solely on its primary affinities.

Personally I would be more concerned about propensity of psychedelics to cause cardiac arrhythmias. This is something to consider, especially if one is concurrently taking medications that also increase the risk of arrhytmias (many commonly prescribed antibiotics, for instance, do so, as well as an infinite number of other drugs).
 
Scary stuff...I always assumed psychedelics as so benign due to their lack of direct toxicity but obviously one should also take into consideration the biochemical processes of psychedelics in the body. Also we hear anecdotally how shamans and shamanic cultures use psychedelics in enourmous quantities throughout their lives but never much mention of any ill effects, possibly due to a lack of research but also because severe health problems are probably rare.

Yes I knew that the activation the 5ht2x (I thought it was 5ht2b) receptors in the heart could pose a threat, but all info I have read about this suggest that it isn't a problem unless one is using psychedelics to an abnormal degree. I know that Shulgin had undergone a heart valve replacement and realistically that man probably had enough trips for everyone on bluelight (haha). On the other hand that's quite a coincidence aint it?

I must add that I don't feel the need to trip more than once every few months , if that. Even at this rate I see myself "losing the magic" pretty quickly so I feel that soon enough I shall only partake a few time annually and probably find myself abstaining for several years here and there. I love psychedelics but my mind really cant handle tripping too often. I feel for most people psychedelics sort of have a built in anti-abuse mechanism be it from "losing the magic" or from "things getting too weird". I still feel that its necessary to practice safe use regardless of frequency of indulgence.
 
al-laddin said:
Which psychedelics do you indulge in. That is quite an increase in BP and the level of increase may vary from substance to substance.
Click to expand...

I haven't recorded the data from every experience. This has happened on both phenethylamines and tryptamines.
 
Yes Ive alwasys wondered about shulgin and the activation of the receptors in the heart valve causing his need of valve replacement. But he probably had enough trips for everone on bluelight three times over. Overindulgence in powerful compounds of any class to that degree are bound to cause some side effects eventually. Further psychedelics seem to have a built in anti-dependace mechanism by being slightly uncomfortable and not a place you want to constanty revisit.

However 25c-nbome was definitely more-ish in my experience and I don't have too much experience with phenethylamines but the "easier" headspace (mostly allegedly but my experience with them is not dissimilar) may have the propensity to cause one to
 
Exactly how high is your bp anyway? Is this with medication or without?

I'd think that if it's only slightly elevated, you stick to the non stimulating ones (for me that would be 4-ho/4-aco trypts, lysergamides, 2c-c) and have some benzos on hand if you get too anxious (anxiety raises bp and all), you should be ok. Of course this isn't medical advice and all that....
 
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