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MDMA Recovery (Stories & Support - 5)

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Cotcha Yankinov said:
I personally bet that curcumin's effects on monoamine oxidase and tryptophan metabolism (and then the neural fallout) could be the culprit of someone's adverse effects.

I think you can feel some monoamine resembling effects from higher doses, but I've only seen this with Longvida formulation. The subjective effects kind of reminded me of SNRIs.
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Yeah but when our brains are in such a sensitive state after an OD, even low doses of it could have an effect. Many of us get weird reactions to substances that normally would be no problem. I know it was the curcumin because as soon as I stopped taking it my brain zaps went way down and I started to improve....then a month later I took it again and had a bad increase in symptoms for a week or so.
 
Keep getting horrible headaches which just make me want to be unconscious. If something doesn't change then I'm gonna end up giving up. I know I'm being impatient but this is just torture.
 
You should see a headache doctor if you can find one, neurologists also treat migraines with medications but some headaches there can be physical causes of. Point is, they can either be treated with physical therapy/physical interventions (injections), medicines, or both.

Incidentally some of the meds used in migraine are mood stabilizers (lamotrigine) and migraine visuals/auras have some commonality with HPPD
 
I think neuroendocrine wise CRH has a role to play in this LTC non HPPD symptoms. Not necessarily cortisol directly. But when CRH gets out of whack, everything bad happens.

I think thats why despite having low cortisol issues, benzos are helping me since they are effective at quelling the CRH in the brain and thus improve depression. CRH also apparantly can wreak havoc on T levels.

https://selfhacked.com/2015/10/29/why-your-health-problems-worsen-after-stress-the-role-of-crh/

He says and has references to how with low cortisol, its difficult to shut off the excessive CRH production.
 
Hey guys, I've recently experienced a huge spike in symptoms the last three days. I'm not sure what the deal is? Could it be the SSRI? I wrote an email to my doctor this morning. I'm not sure what to do.
 
fnono33 said:
Hey guys, I've recently experienced a huge spike in symptoms the last three days. I'm not sure what the deal is? Could it be the SSRI? I wrote an email to my doctor this morning. I'm not sure what to do.
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Could be....seems like sometimes SSRIs make things worse before they get better. If your mood is better though, you'd have to weigh that against a symptom increase.
 
Often times there are different phases of response to medications. There can be a lot of symptoms that get better with enough time on SSRIs, depending on the symptoms it can take a few weeks or a few months.
 
fnono33 said:
Hey guys, I've recently experienced a huge spike in symptoms the last three days. I'm not sure what the deal is? Could it be the SSRI? I wrote an email to my doctor this morning. I'm not sure what to do.
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What symptoms have spiked exactly? I thought you said earlier you were feeling better?
 
socrilus said:
What symptoms have spiked exactly? I thought you said earlier you were feeling better?
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all symptoms spiked. What is weird is that I was feeling sooo much better and then this happens. I recently went up from 12.5 to 25mg so that might have done it. I went back to 12.5 this morning. I felt like that was a good middle ground. Fuck, I'm just so confused about what to do. I'm going to to tough it out for now.
 
Typically patients are tapered up slowly because there are homeostatic mechanisms that need time to desensitize. If you straight up give an animal a high enough dose of an SSRI, the firing rate of the serotonin neurons will actually drop because the homeostatic mechanisms haven't had time to desensitize.
 
Cotcha Yankinov said:
Typically patients are tapered up slowly because there are homeostatic mechanisms that need time to desensitize. If you straight up give an animal a high enough dose of an SSRI, the firing rate of the serotonin neurons will actually drop because the homeostatic mechanisms haven't had time to desensitize.
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Im too lazy to find and post it again but wasn't there that article about a low dose SSRI acting as a brain neurosteroid stimulants of allopregnanalone even at doses that are not high enough to inhibit serotonin reuptake?
 
I wouldn't necessarily say the lower doses aren't having any effect on the serotonin transporters but I recall a study showing that an SSRI can increase allopregnanolone in one region without an increase in serotonin.
 
I"ve decided to tough it out. I'm going to stick with the 25mg for a while until its totally unbearable.
 
Im in need of some support.

I am still struggling with the "off" feeling since the ketamine treatment. Pretty annoyed that my doctors were confident that the dissociation is only transient but for me as an LTC sufferer this has triggered mild DR that is subsiding at such a slow rate. I realize this may not be as bad as I make it but almost any small change in my mental state elicits anxiety. The dissociation is worse so than the low mood cause I never had dp/dr in my LTC.

I hope that shit goes away but how can this happen if its a treatment for anxiety+depression??? Increased anxiety??

My perception has been altered and im gettinf strange thoughts like if am connected to my past and my friends etc.
 
If we draw upon the stories of ketamine/dissociative abuse and the literature of recreational ketamine/disso use then magical thoughts after recently using dissos would certainly not be unheard of, but your doctors probably just suspected there wouldn't be any problems with only a few low doses.

But there are people out there for whom a few sips of coffee will trigger mania for a week, so sensitivities vary widely I suppose.

I would definitely tell the docs about any magical type thinking and seek treatment for them if they persist (it may be hinting at underlying issues, or it might also just be a sign that your brain is rebooting and attempting to reorganize).


"almost any small change in my mental state elicits anxiety."

This is certainly something I would keep in mind, if only as a compounding effect to be aware of.
 
fnono33 said:
I"ve decided to tough it out. I'm going to stick with the 25mg for a while until its totally unbearable.
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Not to disagree with "medical professionals" but I would just like to say that I've never understood why doctors often insist their patients do jumps like going from 12.5mg to 25mg without an intermediate. Same for tapering.
 
Cotcha, with Zoloft 12.5 is half of the 25mg pill so it's not so big a jump right?
 
fnono33 said:
Cotcha, with Zoloft 12.5 is half of the 25mg pill so it's not so big a jump right?
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In my personal opinion, it's a jump to do it suddenly - especially if you haven't been on the 12.5mg dose that long.

Ideally dose titration should be slow and gradual to decrease the risk of initiation related side effects (often times people will quit the SSRI just because they are titrated too fast and can't wait out the side effects), but prescribing practices just don't always reflect that.

Idk if you're familiar with psychedelics, but in terms of doubling a dose being significant, think about the difference between an 1/8th of an oz of mushrooms and 1/4 oz of mushrooms, or one tab of LSD and two tabs.
 
fnono33 said:
Socrilus, you have dp/dr now and you didnt have it before?
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Yes essentially. The first week after the ketamine infusion I had DP and DR. Then the DP subsided and I could recognize myself in the mirror.

So I only have DR. And I have it to the point where I am connected to ny surroundings but I just get the strange thoughts of whether I accomplished all that I accomplished and whether my friends are my friends (absolutely NOT in the "depressive" negative sense but in the dissociative sense in that if we share our past memories etc)

So of course I know they are my friends but just in the sense that something feels off and I cannot put my finger on it.

I just feel hyperaware as hell of my thinking. That was not a major issue before except when I got obsessed with tinnitus but id still consider that obsession nowhere near as bad as this. Bc that somatic hyperawareness is still within my "LTC normal realm" if you know what I mean.

Derealization was not part of my LTC at all so im completely thrown off by it

One thing I must emphasize is that I did NOT panic at all during the actual ketamine infusion drug trip at the doctor. I just "went with it" knowing in my head that this is just temporary. The problem is it sort of just persisted kind of. The next day i woke up early with tons of energy and restless anxiety.

That tells me that there is definitely at the very least some kind of physiological sensitivity I have which probably caused the LTC in the first place.

The issue is that I dont have any control over physiologic sensitivities and then it becomes physiological+psychological.

However, upon neuroendocrine blood tests my doctor performed he found that ketamine decreased my cortisol levels. And then prescribed me a short course of hydrocortisone. The hydrocortisone helps with the derealization a bit but not completely.

Theres some really complex hormonal shit going on.
 
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