N&PD Moderators: Skorpio
How long before brain fully heals?
rickolasnice
Bluelighter
Is there a time period in which all ( or 99% ) of healable damage / change done by drugs / sleep deprivation / malnourishment to your brain will heal in? In particular I am talking about the dopaminergic and serotonergic systems but all input is welcome.
MurphyClox
Bluelighter
Good point! Some of the damage is irreversible and will never "heal"... This question can't be answered without providing more specific details.
- Murphy
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rickolasnice
Bluelighter
Well i'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to work out if / how much damage i have done but for the past 3 - 4 years almost every weekend i have gone 3 days no sleep + no food + amphetamine / mdma / pills / more recently mephedrone sometimes with alcohol and always with cannabis.. is there no rough estimate anyone can give me assuming the damage is minimal? Are we talking weeks? months? years? If it helps.. i don't nessaccarily feel any different.. mood is generally OK.. cognitive function is OK..
Have there been any studies into what kind of damage is done when combining amphetamine with sleep deprivation and malnourishment?
Is there a time limit on how long your brain will spend on healing itself after a specific "attack" before it becomes permanent?
I'm thinking mainly along the lines of upregulating receptor sites + returning to normal (before use) levels of neurotransmitters.
And yes i realise some damage may be permanent.. that's why i said healable damage 
Would taking an occasional dose of citalopram help with my serotonergic pathways?
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Just my .02 so feel free to disregard...
The brain is so complex and not even Neurologists or doctors in general totally understand it. So it would be impossible even for a brain doc with a good CAT scan to answer that question. Throw in that every person is different as far as how their brain reacts to different situations and I would say the only way to tell is to wait and see how you feel.
Obviously, taking a good long break would be the best way to get a gauge of how things are going.
Personally I wouldn't try any kind of remedy or healing technique until I went to a Doctor and had a talk with them. Every Dr. I've been to has been very non-judgmental as far as me telling them exactly what I've been ingesting, etc...
If you sit down with someone and give them a history of what you've done over the past couple of years, I'm sure they can give you a good educated guess as to the best method for you to follow if you feel you need some time for your brain to recuperate.
Good luck! Hope you feel better.
if you're not noticing any cognitive or mood issues, it may be likely that very little damage has been done.
maintain a high-nutrient diet, this will make sure you have everything your body needs to repair any damage that may be caused. i've found that eating raw foods while using amphetamines isn't repulsory(? but i like the word), in my opinion it feels great.
i don't think citalopram would help used only occasionally. no positive substantiation on this, but ssri's aren't considered working therapeutically until 2-6 months of daily use. daily 5-htp or tryptophan would probably be a better choice
i've known people who have suffered from e-tardation after years of use, and most of them are able to recover a good deal of their mental function after stopping.
vortex30
Bluelighter
My only input is that some damage is most certainly irreversible, especially whatever is responsible for HPPD in a lot of cases. If your vision isn't back to normal within a year, then you've pretty much got a life sentence of visual disturbances. Personally, my aunt has had HPPD since she was 19ish and she is now late 50s, so, 40 years, and she has not been using drugs since her late 20s, if not earlier. I don't know her whole history, I just know that she smoked a lot of Cannabis and did LSD several times in the 60s when she was in university and a hippie and she has HPPD that has not let up, she has just gotten used to it. I talk to her about mine now every so often, and she says it very well may last forever, but after 2-4 years it stops bothering you, or for her at least. Also, I'm getting an MRI soon, I can't wait to see what damage or lack of damage there is to my brain. I want copies of those scans for sure!
psychedelic food
Bluelighter
your brain will start to heal in about 2 weeks if you take substances that can stimulate brain cell growth.
creatine
acetyl l carnitine arginate
l theanine
fish oil
idebenone
exercise
all these will do this cannabis can also do this and you said that you smoke cannabis which might be why you feel ok
piracetam will help to get your brain back to normal 100 mg/kg is the optimal dose
take alot of other nootropics like vinpocetine pyritinol and idebenone and you wont even notice anything is wrong
avoid eating too much and drinking caffeine and get at least 8 hours of sleep each night and dont take neurochemical precursers like tyrosine and 5htp as they will make the problem worse unless you truly have a neurochemical deficiency which you probably dont
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daddysgone
Bluelighter
there is some good advice contained here, but the whole "it will only take 2 weeks to repair if you do X Y and Z" is a GROSS over-simplification.
psychedelic food
Bluelighter
What i meant was that it takes about two weeks for the brain cells to actually grow and work form the promotion of growth factors.
Not even docs can say for sure. Different factors and healing times apply for different people and brain chemistries. The best time to think about this is BEFORE the damage is done but it's not too late to start, as you are obviously doing. Some just want to know how much partying/abuse they can do before they become retarded, permanently. With Parkinson's Disease, the dopamine levels are non-existent and the people with this have to take medication to restore it. The same is true of anybody else whose dopamine levels are low. So some things (medications, supplements, etc..)can help restore the dopamine and serotonin levels faster than otherwise.
pofacedhoe
Bluelight Crew
using citalopram on and off will lead to comedowns as when it wears off it will feel the low serotonin effect (unstable mood swings, impulsiveness, aggression, anxiety, trouble sleeping, depression)
if you want to heal a brain eat loads of fish oils. the brain is made of fat and could do with some help
Every experience changes your brain, it doesn't heal it adapts. If you used some/lots of drugs and got your neurotransmitters out of wack they will probably come back closer to the original baseline given some time. The more drugs you did for longer periods of time the more pronounced the permanent effect on your brain.
rickolasnice
Bluelighter
Thanks for the replies.
When i suggested the use of infrequent citalopram doses i was going on the idea of it promoting cell growth in 5-HT pathways (or somethin like that) but i can't find where i read that now.. anyone know anythin about it?
theWorldWithin
Bluelighter
If you were a heavy user of MDMA and amphetamines (particularly if they were combined) you can at least expect some substantive 5-ht neuron damage. Likely some dopaminergic damage as well. I think you have figured this much out, but the more important issue is neuroplasticity. plasticity is likely responsible for HPPD, not actual physical damage such as apoptosis. It is difficult to say if the plasticity will every reverse itself fully, IMO it will not. But that is not to say you can not further adapt to you now post use state with further plasticity. But beware of supplements that encourage neural growth because if your problems are stemming from over active neural plasticity these compounds will likely only exacerbate the problem (and it is now becoming clear that the very potent ones are potentially carcinogenic).
My advice is to take it easy on the drugs, including the cannabis. I know how horribly difficult this can be but total abstinence is the only way you will get close to baseline. Plus as I am sure you know cannabis has a way of making many of us crave other drugs/altered states. The other thing is just don't worry about it too much, being paranoid of damage will make you notice little quirks of your intellect more, and interpret them as negative. Personally I have no doubt that I am a dumber person from a ~2 year period of heavy alcohol consumption, but I am still very functional, fit, and sharp. For that I am incredibly grateful. So please do not stress and just learn to live with the choices you have made.
vortex30
Bluelighter
Here's a question...I have an MRI coming up next Sunday. My doctor scheduled it when I told him about my HPPD along with an EEG which I had a while ago that didn't produce any results as far as I'm aware. Would damage to my Serotonin system show up on an MRI, or would the damage be so tiny that there wouldn't be a way to see? LSD caused my HPPD, so I'm fairly certain it is originating from the 5-HT system, of course I can't be certain. Think this is possible?
I also feel I have a good shot at being the first human case of Olney's Lesions. Would these show up and be obvious on the MRI, if I have them? I know that they've been kind of unproven and all that, but I dunno, I've used a lot of K, many days in a row for a long time in the past and how many heavy K users get MRIs anyways...This is somewhat of the joke part, but it would be sort of cool if I was the first human case of Olney's Lesions.
Finally, how obviously will my drug use be on the MRI? I have fairly extensive use of many, many drugs, but I've only really abused Cannabis and Ketamine and more recently Mephedrone. This isn't a concern, that they 'see' I've used lots of drugs, the comments on the MRI form already state 'drug user, concerns over visual perception' and some other stuff.
Also, I hope I can get a copy of the scans, think this is possible?
Enlitx
Bluelighter
Hasn't it been shown that simple neuron regeneration is not enough? For example, even though the brain might develop new serotonergic neurons after MDMA induced toxicity, it will not correctly implement the axon/dendrite connections that are required for a functioning emotional system?
theWorldWithin
Bluelighter
Vortex no one can be sure because the cause of HPPD is still a mystery but it is my opinion that damage to 5-ht neurons is not the primary cause of the disorder. I believe this because a variety of drugs can cause this conditions including many non-serotongenic psychedelics such as ketamine and even in a few reported cases cannabis. Further many people contract the condition after only a single use, so if it were physical damage to 5-ht systems then I do not see how anyone with hundreds of trips under their belt could possibly not have it.
I believe that neuroplastic rewiring is responsible for the condition, this would explain alot as peoples level of plasticity can vary considerably, some may just be more susceptible to negative adaptation in response to strong neuromodulators like psychedelics. Further I believe that it is no coincidence that the most promiscuous neuromodulators (meaning ones that hit the most receptor systems with a significant effect) tend to cause the most cases of HPPD, LSD is notorious in this respect. While the generally more specific drugs such as MDMA are much less likely to result in HPPD for the average user. This is all speculation of course, but it is my best guess. The most promising treatment so far for HPPD seems to be clonazepam. Sucks I know, but this benzo in particular has helped calm alot of sufferers symptoms, particularly severe visual disturbances and emotional distress.
As for olneys legions, I thought that the vacuoles were temporary in the rodent experiments, and they closed up shortly after the drug was fully metabolized. Legions or not, expect your brain to be pretty fucked up from heavy K abuse. I have no idea if it will show up on a scan. Best of luck and look into benzos.
vortex30
Bluelighter
Ahh, thanks for the reply man. Hopefully my MRI will reveal something or another, and not just be completely useless.
I have been on Clonazepam for the past 2 months. Started on 0.5mg and it worked for a while, then I needed 1mg and it REALLY worked wonders for my HPPD. But I don't want to be a slave, so I have been tapering down and I'm back to 0.5mg and want to get off it completely in 2-3 weeks. I will keep some around for really bad nights, but unfortunately I just hate being addicted and see my doses going up and up and stopping will be so hard in a few years time as compared to now.
It was LSD that caused my HPPD, though initial effects started to appear from a DOx that was sold as LSD, then my two LSD trips really flared it up bad. Could have been Ketamine too, it probably didn't help.
Oh well, I look forward to the results of the scans. Do you know if I will get a copy of the images? They probably take loads of images though, eh?
