(HELP) SSRI's and tripping.

[Blanch]

A friend of mine is on Zoloft and he wants to take some mushrooms this weekend. How long will he have to stop taking Zoloft for before he can take the mushrooms and get the full effect?

Thanks BL,

-Blanch

 

[Mjäll]

From my experience (on 100 mg of sertraline a day) an SSRI regimen will attenuate and dull the psychedelic experience. An approximate doubling of the dosage will produce equivalent, but clearly different, effects. The continuity and beauty of thought patterns will not reach the same heights, and visuals will be very bland and colourless. Instead there will be a great confusion, apathy and insecurity, with potential for actual delusions and hallucinations. These experiences have been with 4-HO-MET, which is quite similar to mushrooms. I should note that I was quite drunk both times (otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to ingest a psychedelic during my SSRI treatment), which could account for the deviations described above. The second time I had a very uncomfortable experience with very little sensory psychedelia but plenty of manic and paranoid delusions that urged me to seek medical attention.

In short: I don't recommend tripping while on SSRI as it will be a waste of good material. However, I've also ingested alcohol simultaneosly which could account for some of the discrepancies.

Also, bleh123 is very sound in his advice to be even more cautious with the phenethylamines.

 

[RobotRipping]

I also found srri's kind of dulled my trips, the risk isn't with serotonin syndrome, mostly just that you will waste your money/time. You can still trip though; I'd usually get too paranoid of some unknown reaction to enjoy the trip. My experiences are with escilatopram and 2c-i/4-aco-dmt. MDMA releases quite a bit of serotonin, if you try MDMA while on SSRI's the worst that happens is that it won't feel very strong. Given that I think psychedelics produce similar reactions, but the trip isn't completely destroyed, just altered a bit.
There's a thread somewhere on bluelight about psychedelic interactions with SSRI's.