Is there a huge seizure risk to psychedelics

[michael_1992]

I have tripped on shrooms several times before. However, during my last trip i was unfortunate enough to stumble upon a post at another forum about shrooms causing seizures.....right before i started tripping. Luckily i didnt have a bad trip, but then again i only took 2-2.5 grams that time. Since then i have found numerous posts about people having seizures. And reading some of the replies make it seem like everyone has either had a seizure on shrooms or seen someone who has. It makes sense why it would cause seizures given that it excites neurons and intensifies sensory experience. Some of these people dont even have epilepsy. Im really concerned, because I am going to eat an eighth rather soon.

My first trip was 5.5 grams dried. And that was the only time that i ate an eighth or more at once. The rest of my trips were only 1.5-2 grams. But im going to eat 3.5 g soon, im concerned about seizures though. do people often have true seizures on shrooms? On one hand, i read about this happening a lot,even to people who have tripped before, but on the other hand a lot of people may think they had a seizure when really their legs were just shaking or twitching slightly.

 

[IamMe90]

The risk is not large, I've never heard of anyone in real life having a seizure on mushrooms, let alone any 5ht2a psychedelic. These are probably rare, isolated cases and the overwhelming minority.

 

[<SpaceHead>]

I've never seen anyone have seizures but one of my friends gets a strange effect where she starts getting really dizzy and passing out from shrooms, but not any other psychedelics. I've taken shrooms many times with many people and this is the only sortof side effect like that I've ever seen. Shrooms seem to be a physically safe drug compared to many other substances, I wouldn't worry yourself about it just enjoy your trip!

 

[Ismene]

I've never heard of anyone having a seizure other than stories on the internet. A lot of it will be "a mate of a mate says his mate had a seizure".

Usually the reality is that it was someone who had a panic attack and broke wind and told everyone he'd just "had a seizure dude".

 

[OTGee]

If you a very prone to seizures I think it might be an issue but, otherwise I think it is just people having panic attacks while the trip and claiming it to be a seizure. They are very very very different things.

 

[psood0nym]

As others have said the risk is definitely not huge. There is some (to my knowledge) inconclusive evidence that LSD may lower the seizure threshold. The evidence I've seen is in the form of a few cases studies of non-epileptics suffering seizures after LSD ingestion, and in EEG readings of seizure-like activity in the brains of animals given LSD. There are certainly other drugs with far less profound mental effects that do more to lower the threshold than LSD. Seizures are correlated with emotionally traumatic events, so I suppose psychedelics may also indirectly raise your risk in that they raise your risk of experiencing mental trauma in the form of a bad trip. In my judgment this all amounts to about nothing in terms of rationale risk assessment of increased seizure likelihood for non-epileptics.

I did have what I believe from symptoms to be a left-hemisphere partial seizure (accompanied be an extremely fascinating and terrifying vision) in reaction to 4-ho-DPT, liquor, diphenhydramine, and 1,4 BDO. The latter three were all taken in an attempt to sleep that I should've never attempted because it was clear my mind wasn't done with what it was up to with the 4-ho even at 8 hours after ingestion [far past the drug's normal duration]). Afterward it seemed like this strange activity so late in the trip was an instrument of fate, pushing me to induce what followed. It was the only time I've ever had a seizure of any sort that I'm aware of. I was exhausted and unable to sleep after hours of trying. Despite being at what usually would have been hours after I coming down from 4-ho-DPT I was getting tons of closed eye visuals and psychedelic thoughts. I took the other drugs in frustration because being so exhausted and seeing this stuff was making me want to crawl out of my skin.

The following is an excerpt from a rough draft of a trip report about it from a couple years ago that I've never been able to finish. The full context of the seizure vision also involves a 35g mimosa hostilis/40g P. Torch combo horror trip overdose the weekend before. I've never been able to make the narrative structure work in a way I felt got my meaning across coherently because how can I write a report that's tied into the experience of two other drugs a week before (I don't even know how to make a thread about it, so I'm doing it here)? But it was perhaps the most intense and profound few minutes of my life. The seizure occurred only on the right half of my body, making my right eye squint, right arm tense and jerk, and right leg wobble and tense over and over again every second or so with a feeling of almost painful electrical shock. With each shock the vision-concept flooded my mind. Here's the excerpt:

NSFW:

... At 6:30 a.m. the sun spills in from the overhead windows, insulting me with its brazen light. That’s it. Sorry 4-ho-DPT, but you’ll have to wait because now is lights out for me. Fuck it, I’m dosing 1,4 BDO and forcing sleep.

Three mL? No, four. Yeah, that’ll do it. On top of all the liquor and sleeping pills sleep is inevitable.

Within 15 minutes I’m essentially drunk. I stumble into bed and wait for unconsciousness to wash over me. I get more and more inebriated but the visuals persist. The 4-ho-DPT is adamant in its determination to keep me awake. I’m so exhausted it literally aches but I can’t fall asleep.

What, I wonder, will be the result of staying awake when the physiological pillars of consciousness are crumbling all around me even as that consciousness continues to balloon from the force of the psychedelic? What happens when an irresistible force meets and immovable object?

I grow increasingly delirious from the 1,4 BDO as the maelstrom of luminous ideographs from 4-ho-DPT whirl around me. The visuals are actually increasing! My ego groans under the pressure of the two colliding forces and cries out in strange melodies. These auditory hallucinations give me the impression of a singing saw being played in total darkness or the music of champagne glasses in a vast silent hall. It’s fascinating how clearly defined the ego becomes under the pain of pressure. “I create this” I think portentously, “I am the wellspring of my own being”.

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! I’m seized by a series of electrical shocks that make my right arm tense and spasm, and I’m thrust into a world of visions.

In front of me an unwavering ocean extends like a mirror beyond all horizons, reflecting the endless blue brilliance of a cloudless sky. It is the womb of my creation, and it holds a single object: a miniature sailboat, with a photograph of my father propped up against the mast.[the photo is from an old album, taken when my parents were still sailing competitively, around the time I was born]. It is the vessel containing the essence of my father and it’s floating in the waters of provenance. This is the moment of my conception. This is death. Where can a life go after it’s extinguished but back to the primordial waters of its origin to be born again to the same life?

I come back to a body twisted in the sheets of my bed. I’m laughing manically at the sky glaring down at me from the windows overhead. Again and again I’m bombarded by partial seizures and the same vision and understanding. During the span of about ten spastic minutes I vacillate between existential dread and a ravaging sort of bliss. I am drowning in the wellspring of my own being. It is a spiritual torture at once satisfying and mad.

After perhaps a dozen bombardments of the seizure vision over ten minutes I finally break. My submission takes the form of an admission: I am not the “well-spring of my own being” but an egoless fragment of a larger life of God’s witnessing its own cosmology...

 

[ravemau5]

this female i know has had a seizure twice from ingesting boomers. she is prone to them and has had seizures prior to pscyh use... yet, she says it was from lack of H2O. gobblers..