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Harm Reduction Dangerous and potentially lethal drug combinations

Tryptamine*Dreamer

Ex-Bluelighter
Joined
Mar 12, 2004
Messages
5,262
Location
Hellscape Earth, trapped in the belly of a horribl
I could not find any open threads on this topic, and I think maybe it deserves more discussion in the name of harm reduction. I opened this thread so anyone who has experienced life threatening side effects from a drug combo or knows someone who has (especially if the person died from it) can post about it.

Looking for ANY dangerous combos of drugs, including reactions between psychoactive and non psychoactive drugs.

Since my post is long, I will put the names of combos in bold so you can easily skip what you don't want to read.


I have done two combos before that I think had me near death - DXM+Ephedra (most people know not to mix DXM and stims. I did too but I ended up completely out of my head and OD'd on ephedra) and HBWR seeds+MDMA (I don't think this one is a well known bad combo). I'll describe the effects of both. Edit: Thought I'd add another bad experience, this one a combo of MDPV, bupropion, and selegiline(a MAO-B inhibitor) Also adding a warning on fluoxetine's and its active metabolites extremely long half lives/how long it could be till you can use MAOIs after you quit. The normal two week wait seems very insufficient. Fluoxetine/Prozac is a very common medication and many psychedelic users use MAOIs. Seeing how dangerous a SSRI+MAOI combo is I thought it was worth including.

DXM+Ephedra - About 8 years ago - This was my first time ending up in any kind of serious medical trouble due to drugs, or better put, doing something really stupid with drugs. I had been wanting to experience a 4th plateau DXM trip. I initially took 1.5g of DXM powder, which was about the minimum I calculated it would take to get what I wanted. About 3 hours pass and I am feeling like I might fall asleep but I'm not tripping. I go take like a couple of 25mg ephedra pills and add about 250mg more of DXM. Maybe an hour later, I am very intoxicated but still not really tripping. I am afraid I'll fall asleep and miss the trip or else that the DXM just won't work as usual. I take some more ephedra pills. Some more time passes. By now, I am tripping with good visuals with eyes closed and I am losing touch with reality with everything seeming like a dream. I no longer realize that taking more drugs could be extremely dangerous. I go take more ephedra and decide to add a small amount - probably 50-75mg at most - of DXM because I still think it is not going to get me to the 4th plateau which maybe you can understand seeing as it had been like five hours since initial dose. Some more time passes. Now I am completely out of my mind and it seems like my body is doing things without any control from my brain. It also seems like I am partly out of body just watching a movie or something. At this point I start popping a lot of ephedra pills, taking more every few minutes. I really did not know what I was doing. Soon I am on the way to the ER and I try to get out of the car on the way while it is moving but someone stopped me. My mom told me later that my blood pressure was about 300/200 when I arrived at the ER. I was apparently having trouble breathing also. Small blood vessels bursted in my retinas. I was given sodium nitroprusside to quickly lower my blood pressure. I was taken to the ICU and asked if I wanted a priest to give last rights, this was the first time I knew I was in the hospital. I looked up at the blood pressure monitor and saw a number well above 200 and thought it was my heart rate. Few people survive blood pressures that high. Those who have severe hypertension though can withstand higher blood pressures than most and when I went to the doctor a week later with nothing but benzos and I think an opiate in my system and my blood pressure was above 190/120. If this happened to someone with a more normal BP it would probably kill.

HBWR+MDMA - About 3 years ago - I decided I'd like to mix a modest dose of MDMA with a lower end (for me) dose of HBWR seeds. Exact number of seeds I don't remember but it was probably 10-12. I would normally take 16-20 of them. I took the HBWR seeds first. I had just under 75mg of MDMA which I was going to snort when the HBWR kicked in fully. By that time my sinuses were really clogged and my face was hurting but not too bad. I thought about saving the MDMA for later but ended up plugging it. Within 10 minutes, my face was in lots of pain from the sinuses. Then things really went downhill. Another 5 minutes or so and I was starting to feel really hot and my heart started beating harder and faster. A few more minutes and I was pouring sweat to the point that my clothes were pretty soaked. My heart was now beating harder and faster than ever before. I felt like I was not getting enough oxygen. I am sure my blood pressure was extremely elevated as I could feel blood pumping through parts of my body that I had never felt it in before. My head started hurting bad. It was a severe pulsing pain and I felt pressure in my head with each pulse of pain. I think the pulses of pain were caused by the blood pumping through my head much harder than it is supposed to. I felt really lightheaded and dizzy. I was sure I would die. Thank god MDMA wears off pretty fast. As it started to wear off significantly, I felt I had cheated death. My eyes feel really strange, my throat and penis hurt, and it is hard to swallow. I go to the bathroom mirror and am shocked by the extreme swelling of my upper eyelids. Only a small slit of my eyes are visible and I can't come close to opening them halfway even when I open them as wide as possible. Much of my face is swollen slightly-moderately depending on the part. I check my throat and it is really red and the hole going down to the esophagus and trachea at the back of my throat is constricted. My tongue looks kind of reddened and appears slightly swollen. The head of my penis is a bit swollen and my foreskin looks like twice as thick as normal. I assume my blood pressure may have got so high that blood vessels leaked or burst and caused all that swelling. I think I may have had serotonin syndrome.


MAOI dangers and a note on the extremely long half life of the SSRI fluoxetine/Prozac (4-6 days) and its active SSRI metabolite norfluoxetine (4-16 days)

I should not have to point this out, but there are SO many things that interact very severely with MAOIs, so make sure if you do ayahuasca or anything else with MAOIs that you make sure you have nothing in your system that will interact with them. Be sure you know the half life of any recently used meds. Some meds have very long half lives exceeding two weeks.

Potential danger of MAOI interaction with fluoxetine/Prozac - this SSRI could remain in your system in significant amounts for far longer than two weeks
I've never done this, it is just an example. You are supposed to wait at least two weeks after using an SSRI before using an MAOI but the SSRI fluoxetine (Prozac) has an average half life of 4-6 days with long term use and I am not sure two weeks would be enough for it to clear your system completely, especially if you are on a high dose and/or you metabolize it more slowly than normal. Even worse, it has an active SSRI metabolite, norfluoxetine, which was being developed as another SSRI antidepressant but never reached the market. Norfluoxetine has a highly variable half life of 4-16 days. So you could have high levels of this active metabolite for far longer than two weeks. With its half life being as long as 16 days, it could easily take well over a month after stopping fluoxetine before an MAOI could safely be used. Also, I read an article that said it takes 25 days for 90% of fluoxetine/Prozac to be eliminated from the body. If that is right, doing an MAOI two weeks after quitting that drug could probably kill. I am pretty sure this does not apply to selective inhibitors of MAO-B such as selegiline since MAO-A is responsible for serotonin metabolism. Unfortunately, inhibitors of MAO-A are required for psychedelic potentiation.

MDPV+bupropion+selegiline - Another dangerous combo I tried
I did mix selegiline with MDPV and bupropion/Wellbutrin maybe two years ago and it caused my blood pressure to exceed 200/130 at its highest. This was a lot higher than it has ever been from MDPV with or without bupropion. MAO-B metabolizes dopamine. Bupropion is both a reuptake inhibitor and a releaser of dopamine. I'm not completely sure about MDPV but with its similarity to methylphenidate, MDPV probably shares its dopamine reuptake inhibitor and dopamine releasing properties. The highest my BP has been on stimulants without selegiline is about 180/114 and I was extremely anxious when it was measured (that was the last time I had an MDPV analog a few months ago). A blood pressure of 200/130 is getting into the danger level. I knew better than to take an MAOI with those things but unfortunately did not realize selegiline was an MAOI at the time. I read somewhere about its use as a nootropic and nowhere did it mention that it was an MAOI. From this experience, I would say mixing any MAOI with reuptake inhibitors and/or releasers of dopamine is dangerous. This goes for those selective for MAO-A as well because it also metabolizes dopamine as well as norepinephrine and serotonin which makes them even worse.


If anyone has experienced life threatening effects from bad combos, especially unusual combos or ones not widely known to be or regarded as dangerous, please post.
 
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Great thread but I don't have much to add, other than cocaine and tramadol.
Someone died a while ago from blowing both in the same line.
 
^
That's good for folks to know. With cocaine, you can't tell if the tramadol played a role or not since coke can randomly cause fatal heart arrhythmias, but I would not want to push my luck by trying that combo nor would I mix tramadol with anything with similar pharmacology to cocaine after reading that.


If this thread gets long enough, I'll just list all the bad combos with a couple of lines describing the most dangerous effects so that the most vital info is all in one post.

I added info to my original post on another dangerous combo I tried along with info about fluoxetine's and it's active metabolite's extreme half lives - 4-6 days and 4-16 days respectively - and what that means for anyone on fluoxetine who might want to take a break from it to use a MAOI+Psychedelic combo.
 
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^
I wish I had read your post before I took that tramadol.


I guess I should not be on a high dose of phentermine and 400mg tramadol. I did not know tramadol+stimulants were a dangerous combo. I assume you mean any mid or high strength stimulants, not weak ones like caffeine, nicotine, OTC decongestants, or 1,3-dimethylamylamine/DMAA/Geranamine.

I feel like I am going to die but it is probably a panic attack, though my BP is quite high now, 178/107. Strangely, my pulse is only 56 and my BP is still really high.

I am also getting weird feelings in my head which was making me think I might have a seizure before I read your post. Now I am worried. This is unpleasant. I felt fine until an hour or two after taking the tramadol.
 
I've never taken phentermine and dont know much about it. But if it's a cns stimulant its really a bad idea to take with tramadol. Both will lower your seizure threshold. Do you have any Benzos laying Around? If so might be an idea to pop one, some diazepam would be very handy right now. Dont panic because you'll make yourself feel worse. 400mg although the max daily dose isn't a dangerous dose. But in combo with phentermine, i dunno. Can anyone else shed any light on this?
 
^
Thanks for that FAQ link. Just wish it was longer. It would be nice if we could combine all available info on dangerous, permanently damaging, and fatal combos into a single thread at some point. Since this is the only open thread on the subject, maybe we'll get more good responses.

Phentermine is much stronger than I expected it to be. At the dose I took, it was pretty similar to a large dose of MDPV though with a somewhat different feel. I do have benzos and I took 6mg alprazolam a short time ago. I had a really weird experience of realistic hallucinations, whispering voices, sound distortion, and strange visual changes in two brief episodes after that post. The alprazolam/Xanax is kicking in and I feel much better, BP near normal now and the weird symptoms have subsided. I kind of freaked out when I started seeing and hearing shit because I thought I could feel my brain bleeding. I also had this irrational fear that the layer of tissue covering my eyeballs was disintegrating and would start bleeding and leave me blind (blindness=my greatest fear). I was barely able to keep it under control but I did manage to remind myself that I had been through it all before and I always came out fine in the past. Last time I thought I was going blind I believed worms were in my eyes and was sure I saw two of them in one eye but at the ER they said it was psychiatric and they shot me up with olanzapine (Atypical antipsychotic) and two shots of lorazepam.

Anyway, I've posted enough about this. Nothing that happened to me was really dangerous and the whole purpose of this thread is discussion of dangerous and fatal drug combinations. Simply being highly unpleasant does not mean there was danger to life or health.

God knows (if he exists) that this type of information would probably have saved me lots of misery if info on certain possibly dangerous combos was available when I searched in vain for information on them. I've had a few other horrible experiences that might have been dangerous but I am too unsure of how much danger I was in to post those here since I meant this thread to be about life threatening, permanently damaging (physical, serious psychiatric, and brain injury) and/or fatal combinations.
 
Hi TD, thank you very much for creating this thread. I think it could be a very valuable resource. I'm going to move it over to Other Drugs as they tend to host longer / more in depth threads, even though BDD usually covers drug combos - hope that's okay!

BDD > OD
 
It was probably 2 years ago or so and i decided I would experiment with my xanax script. Ibhad just started taking benzos for my anxiety and my body knew nothing about them so to speak. I was taking 1mg 3 times a day and decided to take 8mgs all together(not that highbof a dose now but having no tolerance it fairly was at the time) after about 20 mins ibwas hyper as fuck ended up staying up all night and popped a couple 7.5s about 30 mins in ( 2 worst mistake I could of made having already took to many benzos) within the hour ( about 1.5 to 2.20 hours in afterbfirstbtaking the xanax) i started to experience ataxia and slurred speech and couldn't understand the world around me at all. All i saw was people around me freaking out. I remember passing out while standing and then waking up in a chair. Then i was awoken once again to be moved to my bed. I woke up in the hospital 2 days later with almost no recollection of what had happened. Over the next couple weeks sober i started to remember what happend(as much as i could) but to this day i still dont remember it all.

Lesson of the story: KNOW YOUR LIMITS . Mixing cns depressants is very dangerous at the least bit.
 
Ohh lortab 7.5s

Andbi apologize ibdodnt read the part Bout ot not being necessary to post about respiratory issues.
 
from personal experience, i'd like to add excessive alcohol consumption + mdma. didn't happen to me, but a friend of mine guzzzled about half a bottle of pernod straight, while we were waiting for our connection. i had a few glasses of pernod mixed with water and we also had a lot of bong hits, so once our pills arrived, we all took two. they were pretty strong, and a lot of ecstasy is cut with methamphetamine around here. i don't know if there was any in those, but i had three different batches of pills analysed and all of them contained a good amount of methamphetamine. anyway, after popping two pills each (there were three other people around) he continued to drink more pernod, i'd say all in all, he went through 3/4 of a bottle in less than two hours, and with the bong hits, he was only semi-conscious when the pills arrived and we urged him to just sleep it off, but he insisted on taking some in already slurred tones. well once the pills kicked in he went from near comatose to what looked like he would die any second. he turned ghastly pale, vomiting for what seemed like a long time, then falling down three times on the 10 meters or so from the toilet to the lviing room. by this time he looked like death itself. he was profusely sweating, unable to keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds and ghastly pale. i checked his pulse and it *seemed* irregular. we wanted to go for a walk, and urged him to stay here and instructed his girlfriend to watch over him but he insisted on coming. he walked in s-lines if he walked at all. we walked for maybe fifty meters until he collapsed again, and we had to carry him back home. he kept stressing that he felt great, but at this point we were close to calling an ambulance. back at home he was conscious, but would lapse from time to time into what seemed like catatonia. every time we were close to calling an ambulance he snapped out of it. now i don't know if he was in actual danger, but it sure seemed like it. the whole night we continually checked on him. once the pills stopped working he vomited a few more times, had a bong hit and fell into a deep sleep almost instantly. now i don't know how much danger he was in, but from the way he looked and acted it seemed like there was a distinct possibility that he would be in for an ER visit.

also: a combo of too much beer and GBL once landed me in the hospital. that should also be avoided
 
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Ohh lortab 7.5s

Andbi apologize ibdodnt read the part Bout ot not being necessary to post about respiratory issues.

That is okay, it's best that we have a post or maybe a few like that one for the new or uneducated drug users who don't realize how risky mixing downers can be. Respiratory depression from mixing downers is the greatest cause of death from drug use after tobacco and alcohol use after all. I failed to take those things into consideration when I wrote that because nearly all Bluelighters have educated themselves at least enough to know the dangers of mixing downers. I completely forgot about the people who are new to the world of drugs and have not had the time to learn and all those who aren't new but still do stupid things all the time. Some in the latter group do eventually grow a brain and educate themselves on the drugs they mix together or use alone before they end up in ER or the morgue.

Moderators: - If you think posts about respiratory depression could be helpful to readers, feel free to edit that out of the original post or ask me to do it if you like.

I forgot about the three times I mixed lots downers together and lay unconscious for 20 hours, 1.5 days, and over 2 days. All 3 of those incidents were 7 years or more ago. The 1.5 days out was before I found Bluelight and I didn't know very much about drugs. It involved a large dose of nortriptyline which was probably the main cause of my long snooze and it probably wasn't really dangerous.

Below is the story of my most severe overdose from mixing downers:

The over 2 days unconscious resulted from my reckless decision to mix a bunch of poppies with a big dose of phenazepam (60 hour half life), some phenobarbital pills (53-118 hour half-life), a lot of gabapentin/Neurontin (5-7 hour half-life), and 2 89ml bottles of DXM polistirex (half life possibly 12 hours, no reliable source for info and DXM metabolism varies widely between people). I knew I was pushing it and that what I was doing was risky, but I was really depressed and did not give a fuck what happened. I started feeling it faster than usual. I took just enough to get out of my head and lose every shred of common sense. I could no longer see that it would be dangerous to take more and I was so high that I could not see that I was about as high as you can get. I had 4 more bottles of DXM and I drank them all. I ground some more poppies, soaked them in water, mixed an eyeballed dose of phenazepam that I thought was small but was likely significantly more than I thought going by the size of the powder clump (I was thinking 3-4mg but it was probably 3 or 4 times that much. Also, I know it is impossible to make a good estimate of an eyeballed dose of something so potent), popped 3 more phenobarbital pills, then choked the poppy grinds down with a big glass of water. I then went to the TV room to pop a music CD into the DVD player, barely able to walk without crashing into something. Thank God I left my bedroom so that I would not take more drugs. I remember hearing the first 3 songs and the next thing I know, I wake up extremely high. I think it is still the same day. I am dizzy, extremely thirsty, and feel like my bladder will burst. My mom is next to my bed and tells me how long I was out for. I try to talk but can't form words. I try to get up to go pee and immediately go down in the floor. I am helped back up and given a bottle to pee in and then a drink. I was probably asleep 10 minutes later. I wake up and the sun is still shining. I try to get up and fall. My parents help me back on the bed. I find out that it is a new day. I can speak, but am very hard to understand. I finally eat but sleep most of the time until the next morning. My speech is clearer, but still slurred. I can barely walk with assistance now. I am told about my algebra test tomorrow. I spend maybe half the day awake and have improved more by night time. I am woke up early the next morning. My mom does not think I'll be able to take my test because I fall a couple of times on my way to the kitchen and can't walk straight. My speech is still noticeably slurred. I insist on going and drink some coffee. The coffee helps some. Soon I get to college. I fell twice while walking to the building. As I was pulling out a chair in the classroom, I fell again - flat on my ass this time. I had my book bag in my hand and I did not put my hands out or anything to soften my landing, so I hit the floor hard. I fell again as I stepped of the curb on the way to my mom's car. I did manage to make a grade of 100 on the test though. It was another 5 or 6 days before I was back to normal.

What I did was obviously dangerous to anyone who gives a fuck at all about their survival and has any sense at all. The first of those applied to me at the start. I then lost all sense and really fucked up. Anything that leaves you unconscious for over two days and high for ten days can't be good or safe for you.
 
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I have some questions in the name of harm reduction and saving lives.

Are there any noticeable symptoms of, say, liver failure? Or will something like this just come on with rapid onset without warning.


Bupropion + Venlafaxine: Combining these two in large doses of one or the other poses risks of cardiovascular problems, high blood pressure, hallucinations, and possibly liver damage.
 
I have some questions in the name of harm reduction and saving lives.

Are there any noticeable symptoms of, say, liver failure? Or will something like this just come on with rapid onset without warning.


Bupropion + Venlafaxine: Combining these two in large doses of one or the other poses risks of cardiovascular problems, high blood pressure, hallucinations, and possibly liver damage.


Liver failure does produce symptoms, but the damage could be severe enough to result in death or require a transplant by the time symptoms are apparent. In chronic liver failure, the liver slowly deteriorates and you would probably experience significant symptoms before the damage becomes an immediate threat to life. Liver failure caused by drugs is very often acute. That would definitely be the case with large paracetamol overdose, for example.

The symptoms you experience as a result of liver failure are largely caused by build up of toxins in the body that the liver can no longer remove and by a reduction in the blood's ability to clot. The onset of symptoms is often delayed by up to several days after the damage has occurred.

Some symptoms of acute liver failure:

A yellowing of your skin and eyeballs (jaundice)
Pain in the upper right area of your abdomen
Nausea
Vomiting
A general sense of not feeling well
Difficulty concentrating
Disorientation or confusion
Sleepiness


Some symptoms of chronic liver failure

Progressive destruction of the liver
May be asymptomatic in early or mild cases
Build-up of fluid in abdomen - ascites
Enlarged breasts in men
Coughing blood
Vomiting blood
Impaired nerve functions
Itching
Gallstones
Involuntary curving of fingers
Hair loss
Jaundice
Yellowing of skin
Yellowing of whites of eyes
Loss of muscle tissue
Reduced appetite
Kidney failure
Portal hypertension
Red palms
Clubbing
Shrunken liver
Anemia
Distended veins in abdomen
Shrunken testicles
Development of spider-veins in skin
Weakness
Weight loss
Unusual breath odour- sweet, pungent
Asterixis
Hypogonadism
Reduced libido
Reduced fertility



Note that some of the symptoms of chronic liver failure can probably occur with acute liver failure as well since the symptoms of both result from death of liver tissue. Many of the chronic symptoms would not occur with acute failure because they involve bodily changes that take time.

I intentionally ate some Amanita virosa mushrooms (also known as destroying angel and death angel mushrooms) in a suicide attempt when I was 14 years old. It was the sickest I have ever been. I was unable to eat at all for over two weeks. I went a similar amount of time without urinating a single drop. I had severe diarrhea for about a month. For the first 3 weeks or so, the diarrhea looked like clear, clean water. I was still quite ill a month later, still vomiting several times per day. It took at least 3 months before I felt I was more or less back to normal. I do not know how bad the liver failure was because I never saw a doctor. My mom described my symptoms over the phone and the doctor said it was a bad case of gastroenteritis and prescribed meds to treat it, IIRC.

Fortunately, the liver has an amazing capacity for regeneration. My liver functions completely normally. People who survive poisoning by that kind of mushroom or severe paracetamol toxicity most often eventually recover fully, including their liver function. If encephalopathy develops and results in brain damage. that will be permanent.
 
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