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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

Ethnobotanicals a warning against Ashwagandha and serotonin syndrome

Ashawaghane was the first effective i ever counterend.

But does it cause SS? I even took it with Kratom with no problem.
 
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My apologies, I read the op wrong and thought severe tummy upset was a part, I've not been reading very effectively recently.
 
emkee_reinvented said:
Ashawaghane was the first effective i ever counterend.

But does it cause SS? I even took it with Kratom with no problem.
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It created some neurological situation in me which then caused me to develop SS from other things.

It also had withdrawal symptoms in itself which mimicked SSRI withdrawal. I believe they have similar actions on serotonin.

I took it two months without issue then increased my doses even further and thats when the shit hit the fan.

Specifically taking more than 1200mg is when it fucked me up, even though the internet says it is generally safe up to 4g. The fat soluble alkaloids build up in your system, I believe I reached some critical level.

I would advise against daily use in general. Cycle it.
 
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Negentropic said:
Yes. Definitely. It did for me
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That must have been tough with ZERO comforting things to take. It soothed me no end.
I still don't know exactly why but I now know I was in hypertensive crisis, they finally found someone to take my bp and I could have been dead already, I've still dangerously high bp now and where I live there is still nowhere to go in an emergency, we relied on neighbouring countries for specialists even before the pandemic. Every scarce health resource is still dancing around covid, then the law changed this month and we can't be subsidised to seek help any more in our nearest neighbour country and tbh I couldn't travel far anyway. Why do I live here? In fact why do I live at all?
I'm too fucked up for this world, I desperately need help and yet I have never been able to work out how to get it, apparantly severe childhood neglect will do that to you, isn't that just the icing on the fucking cake of life.
 
papercuts said:
That must have been tough with ZERO comforting things to take.
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It was awful. I've gone through many withdrawals before, but not being able to take anything, even loperamide, was torture. But I got through it.

Do you live in rural US?

Are your symptoms getting worse?
 
Negentropic said:
It was awful. I've gone through many withdrawals before, but not being able to take anything, even loperamide, was torture. But I got through it.

Do you live in rural US?

Are your symptoms getting worse?
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Not getting worse because I've upped my opiates to bring it down, but I'm trying not to undo all the work of tapering down, so I'm still miserable.
 
Negentropic said:
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
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I feel for your suffering. I take an SSRI (a fairly large dose at the moment due to break-through depression and anxiety). I so badly want to believe in plant medicine and so badly want to reduce my use of the SSRI that I've done the same thing--not with Ashawagandha (altho' I was taking a fairly low dosage at night because by then I'd reached beyond the 1/2 life of my SSRI dosage for 24 hr; I stopped when my doc upped my dosage, which I also now take at night). When you're in a crappy place in your life--for ex., let's say your hubby is being a royal jerk because of his own refuse-treatment depression and stress, and you're very empathic so you absorb all his negative stuff--you just want relief, as in if a little works well, a lot will work even better (of course, now I'm thinking I should have slipped the natural MAOI to him in his coffee, but I would never do that). Yes, I was dropped on my head as a baby, but that's beside the point. I also take kratom for pain control and energy, but when I was first trying to find my magical effective dose, I went through all kinds of side effects. I also was taking skullcap and all sorts of other herbs to reduce my anxiety which was severe at the time. Luckily, I'm not schizophrenic, but when I started experiencing extreme paranoia, thought I could actually read my husband's mind, and started questioning reality, I immediately stopped taking the handful of herbs I was taking--while still taking kratom because I didn't want to go thru withdrawal. And miraculously, returned to almost normal over a couple of days. Since, I've gone back to using Valerian and skullcap (small dose) when my anxiety symptoms gets ramped up, and also writing--relieves lots of stress and puts it and whatever else I'm struggling with into perspective. There are so many other herbs that aren't MAOIs or serotonin boosters, but DO relieve anxiety and stress. Can you take mushroom supplements? I responded to them immediately, but I know that's not everyone's experience. I'm so glad you figured out what was causing your symptoms. Anyway, you might consider other things to help with stress (e.g., holy basil, valerian, etc.). I know with mental illness, it's a tricky thing, especially with bipolar disorder or psychosis. It's amazing the things our brains are capable of making us believe. God bless.
 
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