Sertraline (Zoloft) and MDMA

[LeChuck]

Hey everyone. I have been taking 50mg of sertraline for anxiety recently, but I'm going to a festival soon and would like to take MDMA. Is it safe to stop taking sertraline a few days before and resume afterwards? I have been on it for about a month. I have been reading about the half life and apparently that's about 8 days...so I'm not entirely sure what to do. Obviously I wouldn't take any in an ideal situation, but after a few drinks I know it'll happen so would like to plan ahead! Thanks.

 

[St3ve]

It's not recommended to stop your prescription medications in order to get high. Even if you stop taking the sertraline for 8 days, 50% of it will still be in your system and after a month I'd expect it'd already have caused some changes in your serotonin receptors. It's likely that you won't get full effects from the MDMA even if you stop a full week before the festival.

 

[BlueBull]

he is right. It's almost certainly going to be a waste of MDMA. It usually takes much longer (often months, depending on how long you've been on them) for the residual effects of an SSRI to clear up. Also I agree it isn't advised to stop your medication to be able to roll. Rolling now will probably make your anxiety much worse afterwards for a while, and this can cause issues. I would just wait until you have completed the treatment, much safer and much more fun. Also because MDMA hasn't yet been properly researched, it isn't 100% that this combo doesn't cause harm. It normally shouldn't, but that isn't sure

We don't use SWIM on bluelight. I have edited your post to take out the swimming and added the (untested) prefix. If you did test, let me now. By the way, if you decide against advice to go through with this, it is absolutely necessary to test your drugs, there is no way around it. I say this because some drugs sold as MDMA are deadly on their own, but become absolutely lethal when combined with an SSRI. Examples of this are PMA and DXM