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Help! Supportive medicines for psychedelics

S

scabbard

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 2, 2024
Messages
60
I've been working with psychedelics like 5MeO-DMT, MDMA, 2C-B, and mescaline for therapeutic purposes. I see tremendous potential with these substances, but my body is in such a state of trauma that it's difficult to really reap the rewards that they have to offer. My nervous system is predominantly stuck in a freeze state, and I have a tremendous amount of tension that I hold in my gut. I wake up in the mornings and feel a tingling start in my lower back where my kidneys/adrenals are, and then it trickles up my back and I get a tremendous amount of activation in the base of my brain, where it meets my neck, and that experience basically shuts my body down and makes me feel numb - I literally can't experience the internal sensations within my body. So I'm stuck in this freeze mode, and while I do believe that psychedelics could really help me work through my trauma, my body is in such a state of unbalance that I can't even get to square one in my healing process.

My question is, are there other medicines, such as some kind of supplement or adaptogen, that could assist my body in finding some level of balance so that I could progress with my therapeutic work?

I'm certainly not interested in something like SSRI's - I've tried plenty of those and they just perpetuate the numbness and don't assist in helping me work through anything. However, I'm not aware of what's available beyond that, so I'm open to hearing any suggestions.

Thanks!
 
scabbard said:
I've been working with psychedelics like 5MeO-DMT, MDMA, 2C-B, and mescaline for therapeutic purposes. I see tremendous potential with these substances, but my body is in such a state of trauma that it's difficult to really reap the rewards that they have to offer. My nervous system is predominantly stuck in a freeze state, and I have a tremendous amount of tension that I hold in my gut. I wake up in the mornings and feel a tingling start in my lower back where my kidneys/adrenals are, and then it trickles up my back and I get a tremendous amount of activation in the base of my brain, where it meets my neck, and that experience basically shuts my body down and makes me feel numb - I literally can't experience the internal sensations within my body. So I'm stuck in this freeze mode, and while I do believe that psychedelics could really help me work through my trauma, my body is in such a state of unbalance that I can't even get to square one in my healing process.

My question is, are there other medicines, such as some kind of supplement or adaptogen, that could assist my body in finding some level of balance so that I could progress with my therapeutic work?

I'm certainly not interested in something like SSRI's - I've tried plenty of those and they just perpetuate the numbness and don't assist in helping me work through anything. However, I'm not aware of what's available beyond that, so I'm open to hearing any suggestions.

Thanks!
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Have you tried ashwaghanda yet? It is an adaptogen that I find helpful during periods of intense stress. It is worth a try if you would like to be natural about it. Pregabalin or gabapentin may be of use too if you want to go a pharmaceutical route. Or even low dose benzodiazepines very short term perhaps depending on how bad things are for you.
 
I haven't tried Ashwaganda, but I will look into that. Thank you for the recommendation. I personally am not interested in alleviation of symptoms through palliative measures, which is what it sounds like Pregabalin and Gabapentin might do. The symptoms suck, don't get me wrong, but I know that they are manifestations of unprocessed emotional experiences, and when I connect into and process those experiences that haven't been fully digested, my symptoms dissolve. So, I'm really just looking for something to aid in providing some level of balance in my nervous system so that I'm able to use these psychedelic medicines and derive benefit from them therapeutically.
 
@scabbard Many people look to medical solutions to problems that are not exactly medical.
this includes drugs and surgery
I do not know what kind of situation you are in but physical and emotional issues can be either a debilitating nightmare of medical treatments, or a different kind of journey altogether.

One way to re-integrate body and mind is through the practice of Tai Chi.
No medicine required.
The psychedelics you listed will just add to your struggle with tension for now, but may be a reward for you later. After healing.
 
pupnik said:
@scabbard Many people look to medical solutions to problems that are not exactly medical.
this includes drugs and surgery
I do not know what kind of situation you are in but physical and emotional issues can be either a debilitating nightmare of medical treatments, or a different kind of journey altogether.

One way to re-integrate body and mind is through the practice of Tai Chi.
No medicine required.
The psychedelics you listed will just add to your struggle with tension for now, but may be a reward for you later. After healing.
Click to expand...
For some the only way to heal is through the use of psychedelics. For example, with myself, I was unable to even begin my healing journey at what OP refers to as "square one" until I had a breakthrough experience on mushrooms in 2020 which led me to uncover repressed emotional trauma from childhood that was continually exacerbated as an adult. Now, I am learning how to challenge these negative emotions that come up when they do as best I can. But, before, I was not aware of what caused them so there was no way I could proceed even though I really wanted to do so. Just my experience which sounds similar to OP's, but I will add that phenethylamines (specifically stimulating ones like mescaline, MDMA, or 2C-B) may be the wrong move. The best method is tryptamines as they are much more forgiving to a person's nervous system (especially ones like psilocin, or... well honestly I suggest sticking with just psilocin tbh, but I am sure there are other less well known candidates out there that I haven't had the opportunity to try that fit the bill; LSD is a bit too stimulating, but maybe LSA would be okay? Not sure, I mean LSA definitely has a sleepy feel to it for me so it should be okay, but its effects aren't too pronounced except in higher doses so its self-limiting...)

Just my thoughts on this matter...
 
My experience has been that I've been so disconnected from my body for most of my life, so psychedelics have helped me get back into states of feeling, and through that channel I've connected with unconscious material that has needed to be processed. I used to do Qi-gong every day, but I felt like I was beating against the wall of my defenses and so I found it to be exhausting. I think when the doors are open internally, things like Qi-gong and somatic practices can be incredibly beneficial, but the practices in and of themselves are not helpful unless there's some connection to feeling. That's been my experience. It's interesting ShulginsReincarnation that you feel that phenethylamines would be detrimental - others have felt that they would be more helpful in connecting me to my body than something like ayahuasca or 5MeO-DMT. I like the idea of 5MeO-DMT because it holds the potential to entirely remove the trauma structure which can allow stuck energies to move and re-balance. I don't find it helpful to "process" my trauma through the lens of my trauma - that's reliving, not releasing.
 
scabbard said:
... I don't find it helpful to "process" my trauma through the lens of my trauma - that's reliving, not releasing.
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from my point of view first you have to achieve some calmness and some trust of your own integrity,
then you can look at the trauma through the lens of tranquility. not through the lens of trauma which just adds more trauma to the pattern in memory.

everything you can be aware of becomes part of memory and links with what was in your mind at that moment.

healing requires calmness being gently connected to the rough spots, so that when any part of the memory arises so does the calmness.

that is the nature of associative mind which is the only kind of mind we have.
 
@scabbard In my opinion 5-MeO-DMT is not the right tool for the job, but who knows maybe a low-medium dose *could* be helpful. I've done 5-MeO-DMT a bunch of times now, and the experience really benefits from having all those blockages, restrictions, hesitations, worked out in advance of the trip. I could see 5-MeO-DMT being traumatizing if you took a large dose and were not in a good place going into it.

However, I will mention that I had one light trip on about 10mg up the nose that triggered and energetic catharsis for me. It opened up my heart chakra and caused "light" to pour out of my chest, and then unblock something in that area post-trip. I know that sounds flaky as hell to a lot of people, myself included, but that was the trip. I do think 5-MeO-DMT has strong potential for this kind of mind-body work, but it also has potential to not go well (and it does seem to have some physical risks at higher dosages). All in all it's not really something to reach to at the beginning of your journey, if that's where you're at.

I'd concur with @pupnik that ideally you can work this out outside of psychedelics, but if you feel like you've come up on a wall, sometimes it could be worth rolling the dice a little by using psychedelics carefully. Also in agreement with @ShulginsReincarnation that mushrooms/psilocin are probably a go-to for this kind of usage, erring on the light side dose-wise if you do go this route. 4-AcO-DMT has a similar flavour but I find it a little less chaotic and more settled, so it could be a good candidate as well.
 
perpetualdawn said:
@scabbard In my opinion 5-MeO-DMT is not the right tool for the job, but who knows maybe a low-medium dose *could* be helpful. I've done 5-MeO-DMT a bunch of times now, and the experience really benefits from having all those blockages, restrictions, hesitations, worked out in advance of the trip. I could see 5-MeO-DMT being traumatizing if you took a large dose and were not in a good place going into it.

However, I will mention that I had one light trip on about 10mg up the nose that triggered and energetic catharsis for me. It opened up my heart chakra and caused "light" to pour out of my chest, and then unblock something in that area post-trip. I know that sounds flaky as hell to a lot of people, myself included, but that was the trip. I do think 5-MeO-DMT has strong potential for this kind of mind-body work, but it also has potential to not go well (and it does seem to have some physical risks at higher dosages). All in all it's not really something to reach to at the beginning of your journey, if that's where you're at.

I'd concur with @pupnik that ideally you can work this out outside of psychedelics, but if you feel like you've come up on a wall, sometimes it could be worth rolling the dice a little by using psychedelics carefully. Also in agreement with @ShulginsReincarnation that mushrooms/psilocin are probably a go-to for this kind of usage, erring on the light side dose-wise if you do go this route. 4-AcO-DMT has a similar flavour but I find it a little less chaotic and more settled, so it could be a good candidate as well.
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I am kind of shocked you felt the 4-AcO-DMT was less chaotic and more settled. My first experience with it was uhhh hmm... 15mg? Or did I decide 20mg? Idk... Doesn't matter, but I dosed it then waited 15 minutes, did a nitrous balloon and suddenly my head spun around 720 degrees and I went from my bedroom to the living room where I sat for the next hour or two while the entire room melted while I struggled to figure out where I was or what was going on exactly. Thereafter the experience mainly involved (quite predictably) some of the most beautiful visuals I have seen for about an hour then it would fade. I love the colors... I love them... It almost felt like they loved me which is why they appear every time to remind me of their existence; sounds quite odd, but that's my experience of it. Much more chaotic and bright colored compared to psilocin itself which is a darker and more soul searching type trip.
 
scabbard said:
I've been working with psychedelics like 5MeO-DMT, MDMA, 2C-B, and mescaline for therapeutic purposes. I see tremendous potential with these substances, but my body is in such a state of trauma that it's difficult to really reap the rewards that they have to offer. My nervous system is predominantly stuck in a freeze state, and I have a tremendous amount of tension that I hold in my gut. I wake up in the mornings and feel a tingling start in my lower back where my kidneys/adrenals are, and then it trickles up my back and I get a tremendous amount of activation in the base of my brain, where it meets my neck, and that experience basically shuts my body down and makes me feel numb - I literally can't experience the internal sensations within my body. So I'm stuck in this freeze mode, and while I do believe that psychedelics could really help me work through my trauma, my body is in such a state of unbalance that I can't even get to square one in my healing process.

My question is, are there other medicines, such as some kind of supplement or adaptogen, that could assist my body in finding some level of balance so that I could progress with my therapeutic work?

I'm certainly not interested in something like SSRI's - I've tried plenty of those and they just perpetuate the numbness and don't assist in helping me work through anything. However, I'm not aware of what's available beyond that, so I'm open to hearing any suggestions.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

As @pupnik has suggested, a regime of physical activity could help you.
I have nothing against Tai Chi, but even just doing a bit of cardio and a bit of weight training would most likely help you get out of this situation.
Weight training has been shown to increase BDNF, a hormone that repairs/rejuvenates the brain and the nervous system and that is thought of helping with depression.

A similar effect (increasing BDNF) can be had by microdosing psychedelic mushrooms.
100mg to 200mg 3x a week for 3 weeks is a good first microdose cycle, followed by a minimum 2 weeks break before starting another one if needed.
 
Phobos said:
As @pupnik has suggested, a regime of physical activity could help you.
I have nothing against Tai Chi, but even just doing a bit of cardio and a bit of weight training would most likely help you get out of this situation.
Weight training has been shown to increase BDNF, a hormone that repairs/rejuvenates the brain and the nervous system and that is thought of helping with depression.

A similar effect (increasing BDNF) can be had by microdosing psychedelic mushrooms.
100mg to 200mg 3x a week for 3 weeks is a good first microdose cycle, followed by a minimum 2 weeks break before starting another one if needed.
Click to expand...
2.4 grams of psilocybe cubensis and a 20-25km bicycle ride is probably one of the best feelings in the world (just for the record lol)
 
ShulginsReincarnation said:
2.4 grams of psilocybe cubensis and a 20-25km bicycle ride is probably one of the best feelings in the world (just for the record lol)
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I'm sure it's a great feeling and an amazing trip!
I love how doing a steady pace form of exercise combines with psychedelics!

But from a therapeutic standpoint, I think taking a microdose and always riding your bike (or exercising in general) right after, would be what I would recommend.
 
@perpetualdawn - Yes, believe me, I would love to have my blockages cleared out before doing a 5MeO-DMT session, that would be amazing. But unfortunately I'm using the medicine to assist with that process. Honestly if I could get my blocks cleared out without it, I probably wouldn't be seeking it out. This is always the issue I face, the chicken or the egg.
I like your trip description by the way. It doesn't sound flaky. The way I hear something like that is a mental description of a physical process taking place of getting unblocked. Whether or not there was "really" light pouring out of your chest or not is irrelevant. What matters is what you experienced. The mind can be a beautiful complement, creating a pictorial vision for what is occurring on a physical level.
I do unfortunately feel like I've hit a wall, or I've basically lived my entire life up against a wall. I've tried many other therapeutic modalities, but there's such a blockage that nothing else is remotely effective because there's so little feeling present to work with. Like I do the Qi-gong routines, but the Qi is still stuck.

@Ismene2 - combining harmala alkaloids with vaping DMT - isn't that basically like vaporizing ayahuasca? I'm curious to hear why you think this would be effective. I know very little about the MAOI side of aya, but I do know that it alone has an effect other than its primary purpose to inhibit the breakdown of the DMT in the gut. I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts on this.

@Phobos - I actually am quite active physically, I ride my bike daily and do calisthenics daily as well. And it's helpful in the moment, typically, but afterward my body always returns to its shutdown state, because I believe that at the core of that shutdown programming is a past emotional blockage - getting overwhelmed by fear as a child and then going into the freeze response. So without connecting with the emotional underpinnings, that physical shutdown programming is omnipresent and makes it difficult to benefit from basic physical activity because it's like an internal battle - part of my body is driven to shut down by unprocessed emotional circuits, and then the higher level part of my brain that's riding my bike is saying "Go" when I need to pedal harder when I get to a hill. Not fun.
 
MDMA has a quite hard recover 2, 3 days after taking it. 5-ht psychedelics are way more forgiving and usable in microdosing continuous fashion.

Also 5-meo-dmt is one of the most delicate/complicated ones. Better try medium duration psychs as the 4-aco ones
 
Hexagon Sun said:
MDMA has a quite hard recover 2, 3 days after taking it. 5-ht psychedelics are way more forgiving and usable in microdosing continuous fashion.

Also 5-meo-dmt is one of the most delicate/complicated ones. Better try medium duration psychs as the 4-aco ones
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I am drawn to 5MeO-DMT because of its touted ability to more reliably produce an experience of ego dissolution, compared to using other psychedelics. The ego can be a wonderful navigational beacon for interpreting the world, but when its programming is faulty, or rooted in unprocessed traumatic experiences, it's difficult to fix it when you're operating through the lens of that faulty narrative. Hence, getting past it, temporarily I think has the potential to be extremely therapeutic for effective healthy rewiring.
 
perpetualdawn said:
I'd concur with @pupnik that ideally you can work this out outside of psychedelics, but if you feel like you've come up on a wall, sometimes it could be worth rolling the dice a little by using psychedelics carefully.
Click to expand...
agree.

gabapentinoids dull the psychedelia a bit but I think it is worth trying 75 mg lyrica with shrooms or LSD. It makes the experience easier but a bit spaced out and casual feeling.

It is rather strong medicine so I recommend trying it solo first. It might not agree with you.
 
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