Mental Health Depression/anxiety problems with psychedelics!!!

[ovenbakedskittles]

Hi bluelight!

I have a problem and im pretty sure it has something to do with my drug use. Im not sure what section this should go in but the majority of this thread has to do with psychedelics.

First let me start off by saying i use to be the type of person to never do drugs but i have always been interested in psychedelics and just all drugs in general and how they feel and how they affect people. Im a very curious person. i would read trip reports and just watch videos on youtube about people talking about their experiences with different drugs. I wanted to find out for myself how they feel.

Back in January i tried mdma for the first time and it was great! i tried it several times after that and it was awesome and very interesting to me. But i was still VERY curious about psychedelics and always wanted to try them but they just werent around in my area at the time. Until finally some shrooms came up and i took the oppurtunity right away. i was eager to try them. i consumed about 3 grams. but when i finally did it was not a good experience. I had a terrible time.

About a week after that experience i had to leave home to another state for a few weeks and while i was over there i had tried dxm for the first time but it was a small dose about 180mg or so. Also a bad experience and not all that interesting. Just felt uncomfortable the whole time. Anyways, during the time i was away from home i noticed i would get these weird moments of depression and sadness and i would think about death and religion and how we will all die eventually and how theres no point in living and stuff like that. since i was away from home i thought the depression had to do with homesickness or something...

When i returned home i had tried shrooms again thinking i would have a better experience this time seeing as how the first time i tried em i had taken too much for someones first time and havent eaten anything all day and i was by myself at night outside the rec center across the street from my house because i could not go home without my mom knowing somethings up. Anyways, when i tried them a second time i consumed about half an eighth and i had a better time.

About a week after that second shroom trip i noticed those weird moments again. Only this time they were somewhat worse and i would not only think about death and religion but also the fact that everything in the universe is made up of smaller things like atoms and cells and stuff. And this thought made me depressed as well.

It has been 4 weeks and 2 days since that second shroom trip and i have gotten over that "everythings made up of smaller things" thought. BUT those weird moments of depression still occur! They happen everyday around the same time (around sunset either right before or right after sun goes down). And throughout the night i still feel kinda anxious and someone depressed which never happened before. I used to enjoy night. i prefered the nights rather than day. Now i just feel like the night triggers some type of anxiety for me. i still think about death and how theres no point in living and religion and stuff like that. Those thoughts have never been a big deal to me in the past. This just started happening a week or two after the first shroom trip so i suspect the shrooms has something to do with it but i also think that small dose of dxm kinda made it worse possibly? i also think my mdma use plays a part in it too. Even though i have not taken any mdma since June. What do you guys think??? If it is the drugs, will i get better??? Will i return to the way i was before i started doing drugs if i just stay clean for a while???

I must add that i am aware of some psychological problems that i already had before taking drugs. Nothing severe but i do have problems. I am aware that this is an obvious factor in my difficulty with psychedelics and the situation i am in now. But it wasnt like this before. I feel that the drugs made it worse but i wanna hear what you guys think and i wanna know if i will return to my normal self and if these thoughts about death and stuff will seem less significant??? or if these realizations will continue to affect me like this for the rest of my life???

I should also add that these "thoughts" seem to affect me most during that certain part of the day when the sun goes down but throughout the day they still pop in my head. I would get weird moments of depression before i did drugs but they were waaay less severe and they wouldnt bother me as much.

I just wanna know if i will return to that time because i dont wanna be like this the rest of my life. Its not fun! but if you guys feel like thats the situation im in then just be straight out about it and tell me and i will have to deal with that. I know that there is people on this website that have no problem being brutally honest with me and telling me that i will not get better and that these are the consequences i have to deal with. I regret taking drugs in the first place and am thinking about just quitting all drugs!

Thanks for your help and i apologize if this thread is too long.

 

[Greyhounder]

Sorry to hear that you are having a bad time of it right now.
In my opinion, for what it's worth, I would strongly doubt that the shrooms are responsible, at worst it is a temporal association where you became aware of the thoughts at roughly the same time as you took the shrroms and the two became associated in your mind. It is a classical behavioural conditioning, think Pavlov ringing his bell and feeding the dogs until they salivated at the bell alone. A touch of anxiety can magnify that association until the whole thing is overvalued. Now you can almost start looking for the feelings as you have become so sensitive to the whole situation and may end up interpreting other feelings through the same prism and confusing the two. The more worried you become the worse this loop gets.
You don't say how old you are but late teens and early twenties are one of those periods of life when most people experience some of those existential thoughts about worthlessness and futility, there is nothing wrong with them, most things are worthless and futile but it doesn't help to spend too long staring at your belly button thinking of such things.
I think you will be just fine once you stop worrying about it, so go and be kind to yourself and have some fun!

 

[phatass]

it's seems that your set and setting weren't ideal (alone, outside...) shrooms are definately more fun to do with someone close, in a confortable setting ie. couch, music, conversation...

That being said, you might need some time to integrate the eperience, and since it wasn't a positive one, you musn't battle the thoughts you had on your trip, but accept them... (will elaborate later)

good luck

 

[ovenbakedskittles]

Thank you for your guys' responses. Greyhounder I am 18 years old so i do think that its just me growing up and realizing those things but i also think that the drugs made it worse for me than with people who didnt use drugs and i also think they make it harder for me to handle these thoughts. i feel that it made it harder to not worry about em as much because of how psychedelics affect you psychologically. Am i wrong? or is that what you were saying??... Even though i did not take much i think adding psychedelics with the psychological problems i had already has something to do with the anxiety and depression being worse than i remember it to be before i took drugs. i also suspect that its some seretonin thing because of my mdma use back in june where i had taken three pills one after another and i had done mdma several times before that. But i should have recovered from that by now right?

 

[afer]

It really is difficult to find a person without some kind of psychiatric ailment. Prevalence of anxiety, major depression etc is much higher in the general population than you would imagine. What I am trying to say - you are definitely not alone, and there is nothing major to worry about.

Psychedelics can worsen OR improve preexisting psychological issues. In my experience, I have never yet felt emotionally worse after the trip than I had before the trip, i.e. psychedelic experience has not triggered a depression in my case. On the contrary, tripping generally improves my mood long-term.

However, your mileage may vary, and it very well may be that the knowledge you obtained via your experiences began to bother you and interfere with belief systems you were previously accustomed to. Hence the anxious and depressive thoughts. On the other hand, these might be totally unrelated to psychedelic use as well; coincidences do happen, after all.

One important note - if you really wish to "return to your normal self", as you mentioned, psychedelics might not be for you.

Speaking of symptomatic treatment, 25 mg of Quietiapine could successfully relieve these disturbing thoughts you get in the evenings. Perhaps try to ask your GP for a prescription. Aripiprazole is even better, but costs too much.

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

If you have depression and/or anxiety, taking drugs like psychedelics or MDMA is not a good thing to do.

 

[VitamaN]

I had my first panic attack at age 4. Second one at age 10.
Did acid a lot at 15 and it made it...WORSE...
I have those exact thoughts you have. I'm 31 now and it has not gotten better. I learned to live in the darkness.
Just being real with you. You may have to accept that you are chronically going to be this way but I can tell you that you are not alone. You can't see me but I'm in the darkness with you man. It could be worse. We could be vegetables . You don't seem like a stupid person and THAT is a huge plus.
I used opiates to sooth the discomfort of my existence and I do not recommend that to anyone going through what you and I have been through.

 

[Shimmerchasm]

If you have depression and/or anxiety, taking drugs like psychedelics or MDMA is not a good thing to do.

But there are studies showing that psychedelics and MDMA can treat those particular disorders. I was under the impression that people who are schizophrenic or bipolar should stay away from psychs but not people with depression/anxiety.

 

[VitamaN]

MDMA was prescribed for depression and marriage counseling "back in the day" with great results. Sigh...
all the best drugs are so illegal. bs.

 

[Jesusgreen]

Psychedelics can bring to light issues you've tried to keep hidden from yourself. I suffered from pretty severe social anxiety most of my life, I always thought people were judging me, I was very insecure about my appearance, the way I talked, walked, dressed, everything. To leave the house was a mission and a half, and I would often have severe panic attacks thinking I was going to have a heart attack and not even make it home, over little things like someone laughing near me when I was walking outside (which I'd of course assume must be them laughing about me).

After moving to Poland when I'd lived in England my whole life, my anxiety multiplied one hundred fold. I couldn't leave the house any more. I had no friends here. I could speak the language but was very insecure about not having learnt the grammar rules and essentially sounding a tad stupid the whole time. I only left the house a handful of times and they were just to go to the shops essentially, when there I experienced severe dissociation from my surroundings as I used to have anxiety attacks and breakdown over the intensity of everything around me.

It was then here in Poland that I discovered my first psychedelic: 4-AcO-DMT. It's the perfect example, since you mention Psilocybin mushrooms in your post, and 4-AcO-DMT, is the acetate ester of Psilocin, the main active ingredient in mushrooms. Humans contain acetylase esterase enzymes that can break down an ester like 4-AcO-DMT, into 4-HO-DMT, Psilocin, so the effects are similar, though being mostly (or entirely) a pro-drug it takes longer to hit, is a bit smoother, and lasts longer.

My first handful of experiences with 4-AcO-DMT were simply beautiful, I had not a single moment of worry, doubt, sadness, or any other negative emotion for that matter. However, after I had several trips under my belt, one of my trips turned quite dark, I began to think about my life, how I had no face to face friends here in Poland, spent all my time at my computer, and couldn't leave the house. I began to wonder how long this would last, if I'd die this way with no friends. How I'd ever get out of the house again. I quickly realised how I'd been lying to myself lately and telling myself I wasn't anxious, just an extreme introvert that didn't need *any* people, not even one.

I kept tripping again and again, hoping for those wonderful blissful trips I experienced to begin with, but instead I was greeted with the same harsh reality check - reminding me time and time again that I had a major issue that I was refusing to deal with and running away from, and that at least for the duration of the trip, I was not going to get away from that issue, and would have to face it.

After so many trips it was firmly set in stone in my mind that I had to find some way of ridding myself of the anxiety. While I had great ideas while tripping for doing so, as soon as I came down I would convince myself that "It was just a drug, all those thoughts were stupid, there's no way you can beat the anxiety, you're screwed", and wallow in my own helpless self-pity for days on end, not bothering to take any action and make any changes.

Towards the end of 2012, I was so sick of not seeing anyone, that I took a flight back to England, to stay with one of my best friends, who I'd known before I moved and my anxiety had reached its worst. I got over there, and we planned to try out AMT together, it's a psychedelic that's been around since the 1960's, when it originally came into use as an anti-depressant in the USSR. It's both an empathogen like MDMA, and a psychedelic tryptamine like LSD or Psilocin.

I had never tried AMT before, and my friend had never tripped before (aside from dissociatives like Ketamine and Methoxetamine). So we figured it would be a great fun time, and the perfect psychedelic for us to give a first try.

Soon after the trip had gotten into full swing, we got into some really deep talks about life, and soon the direction of the conversation veered towards the subject of the anxiety that had been troubling me for so long. We touched on all the ideas I'd had for ridding myself of it, and to my surprise, my friend was very much agreeing with these ideas, and I started to realise they were very correct, and not the fabrication of my "drug-addled mind". So for the entire trip we talked more and more about my anxiety, and by the end, I was so confident that I knew what to do to be anxiety free, that I actually said there and then, that I *know* that I'm anxiety free from that moment onwards.

That was the 29th of December 2011. It's now the 19th of September 2014. I've spent that time anxiety free. Made many friends since. Had a wonderful time, a real blast. Arguably the best two years of my life. I went from nearing the end of my tether, to being free of my greatest problem, and now I absolutely love my life, warts and all.

Psychedelics bring to light the problems you haven't been dealing with. Take heed of it, take notes, come up with a strategy for dealing with these anxieties and depressions - and deal with them! Psychedelics are an absolutely astonishing tool for therapy when applied correctly. You don't even need to trip again, just work with the messages from your recent trips. They're showing you how to get free from those issues, but they can't do it for you, you have to take those last steps and do the legwork.

Psychedelics very much require an integration period post trip. While some drugs are just a come up, a peak, and a comedown, psychedelics give you so much information and things to think on in such a short space of time - the length of the trip itself simply isn't enough time to process it all and act on it all. You have to try and remember as much as you can from the trips, why you felt anxious and depressed, and what needs to change to get rid of those thoughts - and put it into action. Once you've done that, made changes, and gotten closure on the lessons of the trip, future trips will be positive and bright, and so will your life as a whole.

Trust me on this, it's better to acknowledge and face those problems, and to come out a stronger person, than to live ignoring and denying them and worsening the situation for year to come.

If you take that leap of faith and make those steps yourself, you'll be looking back in almost 3 years like me, with a big grin, grateful for the changes you were able to make, and free from all those past worries. :D

 

[Solipsis]

Moved from PD >> MH