Jabberwocky
Frumious Bandersnatch
The last month of my life has been a living nightmare...
About 10 weeks ago I started using ashwagandha. I found it to be surprisingly effective for stress relief and general anxiolysis, so I began taking it every day. I was using the recommended amount on the bottle which was 600mg of standardized 5% (KSM-66). The longer I used it, the more effective it became. Some of the alkaloids are fat soluble and take time to build up in the body.
It does quite a few things in the body, but namely in my case it raises serotonin levels. I typically do enough research before taking anything and I knew that it would do this, but sort of brushed it off because I'm quite confident with my ability to determine if a drug is having adverse consequences in my body. A whole month went by and I experienced no side effects or any negative things, only benefits, so at this point I mentally deemed it "Safe" or not very harmful. I also brushed off the warnings that it should be cycled and not taken for more than a few continuous weeks. I'm a drug nerd... I know what I'm doing... right?
After 4 weeks of use I started to notice myself becoming a little more stressed out than usual, minor agitation, but nothing alarming. My life isn't in a very good place right now and this is also very normal for me, so I brushed it off and also upped my dose from 600mg to 900mg. Over the next 2 weeks this stress and anxiety slowly got worse and worse. I started having some old schizophrenia symptoms (which I had mostly recovered from) starting to manifest again. This is also not unusual for me, stress brings out past symptoms, so I brushed it off and did not attempt to connect the symptoms to the ashwagandha.
After around 6 weeks of use I knew something was wrong. I was feeling oddly euphoric on top of stress, anxiety, fidgeting, and a very notable increase in hallucinations. This is where it gets fucked up... all of these symptoms I could easily explain as stress causing a resurgence in hallucinations and thus causing anxiety and agitation. It's not an out of the ballpark assessment, it would make sense as one possibility. However, it was the ashwagandha! It had built up so much serotonin in my system that I was actually entering SEROTONIN SYNDROME - which just happened to feel a lot like anxiety + schizophrenia. I had never had serotonin syndrome before so I was unfamiliar with it, and made the wrong assumption. My gut reaction was to up my dose even further to 1200mg! I could not see the obvious right in front of me that it was the supplement I was taking directly causing this, I had convinced myself that I was having another schiozphrenia episode... but I was dead wrong.
It got worse and worse over weeks 7 and 8. I then started entering a very dangerous level of serotonin syndrome. New symptoms appeared. Goosebumps, odd rushes of physical tingling, dizziness, increased heart rate, confusion, constantly sweating, more hallucinations, serious agitation, brain zaps, startling reactions to sound, etc... I was still very confused and now I wasn't thinking properly. I was so scared I tossed ALL substances I had in the trash, including the ashwagandha. It wasn't until the next day after I did not take the pills I made the correlation, but it was almost too late. At this point I was in pretty serious serotonin syndrome and it wasn't just casually high levels anymore.
I stopped the pills and started slowly getting better, but after 72 hours I went into WITHDRAWAL from these pills, after only taking them for 2 months. Nasty SSRI type withdrawal, complete crash, new symptoms, insomnia, totally fucked. I took 1 pill to level out and this threw me into another psychosis. I woke up in the middle of the night in complete psychosis. Scared shitless. AWFUL side effects.
The last 2 weeks has been a game of how much to take to stop withdrawals, but not too much to go back into serotonin syndrome and psychosis. Oddly just 15-20mg is enough to stop the withdrawal which is miniscule compared to my doses. It's likely an alkaloid built up in my system and it's taking FOREVER to get back to normal.
I am just now after a month of hell and careful tapering starting to feel somewhat normal again. I'm still having brain zaps and various symptoms, but I think I will be OK. I wonder how how much damage I've done to my brain. I am lost in a mental fog and my brain feels like it's recovering from a month long meth binge.
The awful part about this is I would have identified the ashwagandha as the problem immediately had I not experienced schizophrenia in the past. I kept misidentifying the symptoms as that.
I do still think this is a great supplement to take, but obviously in moderation. Do not take it for more than 2 weeks continuously, and do not take it if you are on an SSRI or other serotonin moderating drugs.
This just goes to show that even a drug nerd can make some very serious mistakes when using substances. I feel like an idiot that I let it get that bad, it could happen to anyone.
Stay safe BL
About 10 weeks ago I started using ashwagandha. I found it to be surprisingly effective for stress relief and general anxiolysis, so I began taking it every day. I was using the recommended amount on the bottle which was 600mg of standardized 5% (KSM-66). The longer I used it, the more effective it became. Some of the alkaloids are fat soluble and take time to build up in the body.
It does quite a few things in the body, but namely in my case it raises serotonin levels. I typically do enough research before taking anything and I knew that it would do this, but sort of brushed it off because I'm quite confident with my ability to determine if a drug is having adverse consequences in my body. A whole month went by and I experienced no side effects or any negative things, only benefits, so at this point I mentally deemed it "Safe" or not very harmful. I also brushed off the warnings that it should be cycled and not taken for more than a few continuous weeks. I'm a drug nerd... I know what I'm doing... right?
After 4 weeks of use I started to notice myself becoming a little more stressed out than usual, minor agitation, but nothing alarming. My life isn't in a very good place right now and this is also very normal for me, so I brushed it off and also upped my dose from 600mg to 900mg. Over the next 2 weeks this stress and anxiety slowly got worse and worse. I started having some old schizophrenia symptoms (which I had mostly recovered from) starting to manifest again. This is also not unusual for me, stress brings out past symptoms, so I brushed it off and did not attempt to connect the symptoms to the ashwagandha.
After around 6 weeks of use I knew something was wrong. I was feeling oddly euphoric on top of stress, anxiety, fidgeting, and a very notable increase in hallucinations. This is where it gets fucked up... all of these symptoms I could easily explain as stress causing a resurgence in hallucinations and thus causing anxiety and agitation. It's not an out of the ballpark assessment, it would make sense as one possibility. However, it was the ashwagandha! It had built up so much serotonin in my system that I was actually entering SEROTONIN SYNDROME - which just happened to feel a lot like anxiety + schizophrenia. I had never had serotonin syndrome before so I was unfamiliar with it, and made the wrong assumption. My gut reaction was to up my dose even further to 1200mg! I could not see the obvious right in front of me that it was the supplement I was taking directly causing this, I had convinced myself that I was having another schiozphrenia episode... but I was dead wrong.
It got worse and worse over weeks 7 and 8. I then started entering a very dangerous level of serotonin syndrome. New symptoms appeared. Goosebumps, odd rushes of physical tingling, dizziness, increased heart rate, confusion, constantly sweating, more hallucinations, serious agitation, brain zaps, startling reactions to sound, etc... I was still very confused and now I wasn't thinking properly. I was so scared I tossed ALL substances I had in the trash, including the ashwagandha. It wasn't until the next day after I did not take the pills I made the correlation, but it was almost too late. At this point I was in pretty serious serotonin syndrome and it wasn't just casually high levels anymore.
I stopped the pills and started slowly getting better, but after 72 hours I went into WITHDRAWAL from these pills, after only taking them for 2 months. Nasty SSRI type withdrawal, complete crash, new symptoms, insomnia, totally fucked. I took 1 pill to level out and this threw me into another psychosis. I woke up in the middle of the night in complete psychosis. Scared shitless. AWFUL side effects.
The last 2 weeks has been a game of how much to take to stop withdrawals, but not too much to go back into serotonin syndrome and psychosis. Oddly just 15-20mg is enough to stop the withdrawal which is miniscule compared to my doses. It's likely an alkaloid built up in my system and it's taking FOREVER to get back to normal.
I am just now after a month of hell and careful tapering starting to feel somewhat normal again. I'm still having brain zaps and various symptoms, but I think I will be OK. I wonder how how much damage I've done to my brain. I am lost in a mental fog and my brain feels like it's recovering from a month long meth binge.
The awful part about this is I would have identified the ashwagandha as the problem immediately had I not experienced schizophrenia in the past. I kept misidentifying the symptoms as that.
I do still think this is a great supplement to take, but obviously in moderation. Do not take it for more than 2 weeks continuously, and do not take it if you are on an SSRI or other serotonin moderating drugs.
This just goes to show that even a drug nerd can make some very serious mistakes when using substances. I feel like an idiot that I let it get that bad, it could happen to anyone.
Stay safe BL
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