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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

Stimulant Psychosis

Dedbeet

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 23, 2008
Messages
1,560
Posted this on a rather obscure thread, and wanted to give it its own in HR, in case anyone is interested. I may add further to it. Please consider this posting "enlightened personal experience" -- I'm not a medical professional.

Hi, I'd really appreciate anyone who can share their experience with having someone close (my partner in my case) to them having amphetamine psycosis. Any suggestions on ways to handle it would be fantastis!!! Thanks.
Certainly... relatively minor cases here and there myself with MDPV, but the worst I've ever had was in the summer of '07 with desoxypipradrol... probably because it's an extremely potent and long-acting stimulant (~24 hour)s. That was a full blown hospital-grade psychosis, albeit lasting only a couple weeks. MDPV doesn't produce any such nastiness long-term and the psychosis tends to clear completely within 24 hours.

It would be more accurate to call it "stimulant psychosis" or "dopamine psychosis", btw, as all dopaminergic stimulants can induce it.

Those who have had stim psychosis before will deal with it much better than those who haven't, IMO. Chronic stimulant users probably learn how to not let it get to their psyche/emotions (or not so much, at least) by remembering it's a brain chemical disturbance and life has not become dark, evil, nightmarish, depressing, twisted, worthless, etc.

The key is to try and keep emotions out of it altogether, IMO.. as stimulant psychosis is a sort of hyperactivity (dopamine & norepinephrine overload), and any emotional state will be blown out of proportion.

Sleep deprivation is also an issue, and it's very difficult to sleep during stim psychosis due to the dopamine and norepinephrine overload involved, despite sleep dep adding to the problem. Many/most peeps probably won't, even with sleep deprivation thrown in, at least without the help of strong medications.

IMO, outside of antipsychotics, there's no recommendable way to deal with it that will apply to everyone. Keep a person calm and assure them that the symptoms are due to a brain chemical disturbance and that they will pass, and advise them not to trust anything as being real. IME it's better to just assume everything is a hallucination prior to verification, so nothing unreal is taken for reality.

Try not to give them anything stimulating, and in fact watch what they take. For example, kratom is typically thought of as a relaxing "herbal opiate" but it has a stimulating component and can mess someone up who has overloaded dopamine receptors. Trust me -- personal experience.

Downers can be potential trouble too, as they're not good to take when someone is "too up" due to how unpredictably low one can drop if the upper wears off first. Be particularly careful with opiates -- people die regularly mixing stimulants with opiates.

P.S. someone very experienced who has had it before more than once may be able to deal with stimulant psychosis on their own, i.e. not need a doctor's care at all and keep a handle on the hallucinations until they pass. Newcomers will be much more likely to need help of some kind due to the accompanying fear and confusion.

Peace...
 
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