OCD & Psychedelics

[Chancie]

Hello everyone,

I suffer with OCD and am interested in exploring the possibility of treating it with psychedelic therapy after having read much positive anecdotal evidence as well as successful studies and trials that have been conducted on the subject. Particularly as in my case I fall under the sizeable category of being largely treatment-resistant to the 'conventional' SSRI and CBT approaches to OCD treatment/management.

I would be very interested to learn more about fellow OCD sufferers' experiences with psychedelics; what has helped and what hasn't etc.

Many thanks.

 

[zn13bt]

I have OCD and I've been tripping pretty regularly for the past 8-ish years. I haven't really noticed a reduction in the frequency or severity of my obsessive thoughts over that time. I have the pure-O variant of OCD so I don't have any compulsions to deal with, I do have lots of involuntary muscle tics and whatnot but I can stop them if they get too bothersome. I haven't noticed that getting any better or worse either. When I trip, sometimes the obsessions that come up are so obviously ridiculous at the time that they become easier to dismiss (like instead of imagining armed terrorists bursting into my house and shooting me, instead they're eight-foot tall radioactive alien terrorist puppy-rapers, stuff like that ). But there have been other times when the obsessions became a lot more frequent and persistent when I'm tripping, and it was harder to deal with them. But usually when I trip there doesn't seem to be much effect either way. So I can't really say that psychedelics have helped me in this regard, but they haven't made things worse either.

 

[Foreigner]

I have met several people who have used psychedelics to get to the root of their OCD. Those people mainly did ayahuasca, but I don't think that is necessarily the psychedelic you need to choose. I think mushrooms, LSD, MDMA or DMT could be useful in the right proportions.

If you do a psychedelic, you might not have control over what aspects of yourself it shows you. You may go in with the intention of seeing the root of your OCD but it may end up showing you completely different yet equally as important stuff. The general intention would be to treat it as a medicinal practice and not mere recreation.

I would highly recommend you have a competent trip sitter with you the entire time, maybe even someone who is also doing the same psychedelic as you (but at a lower dose), so that you can have someone to help ground you if anything intense comes up. This person would be your anchor so don't give the job to a total space cadet. You would also need to setup a safe space in advance so that there are no loose ends, intrusions, or bullshit to deal with while you are tripping. Have food, shelter, warmth, music (or quiet), taken care of before beginning. This is key to it being more therapeutic.

 

[etasu]

Psychedelics can induce anxiety. The result depends on what you do with it-- I have found useful insights about my anxieties from use of psychedelics, but sometimes this is a difficult experience. Often I think about difficult things that other people go through and during a trip, sympathy can cause a great deal of anxiety. I appreciate getting in touch with my emotions in this way using LSD.

My husband likes acid too, he has more insecurities than I do. I think acid is rougher for him than me. He prefers MXE. This might be a gentler psychedelic for anxiety. I have no real clue about OCD, though. I am just drawing from a different range of internal tension.

 

[Chancie]

I have OCD and I've been tripping pretty regularly for the past 8-ish years. I haven't really noticed a reduction in the frequency or severity of my obsessive thoughts over that time. I have the pure-O variant of OCD so I don't have any compulsions to deal with, I do have lots of involuntary muscle tics and whatnot but I can stop them if they get too bothersome. I haven't noticed that getting any better or worse either. When I trip, sometimes the obsessions that come up are so obviously ridiculous at the time that they become easier to dismiss (like instead of imagining armed terrorists bursting into my house and shooting me, instead they're eight-foot tall radioactive alien terrorist puppy-rapers, stuff like that ). But there have been other times when the obsessions became a lot more frequent and persistent when I'm tripping, and it was harder to deal with them. But usually when I trip there doesn't seem to be much effect either way. So I can't really say that psychedelics have helped me in this regard, but they haven't made things worse either.

Thank you zn13bt. I know exactly what youre going through. I wish you well with it.

I have met several people who have used psychedelics to get to the root of their OCD. Those people mainly did ayahuasca, but I don't think that is necessarily the psychedelic you need to choose. I think mushrooms, LSD, MDMA or DMT could be useful in the right proportions.

If you do a psychedelic, you might not have control over what aspects of yourself it shows you. You may go in with the intention of seeing the root of your OCD but it may end up showing you completely different yet equally as important stuff. The general intention would be to treat it as a medicinal practice and not mere recreation.

I would highly recommend you have a competent trip sitter with you the entire time, maybe even someone who is also doing the same psychedelic as you (but at a lower dose), so that you can have someone to help ground you if anything intense comes up. This person would be your anchor so don't give the job to a total space cadet. You would also need to setup a safe space in advance so that there are no loose ends, intrusions, or bullshit to deal with while you are tripping. Have food, shelter, warmth, music (or quiet), taken care of before beginning. This is key to it being more therapeutic.

Thanks for that Foreigner. Thats the 2nd time I've heard ayahuasca mentioned in regard to this subject, so I will look into that further, but I take your point that it isn't necessarily about WHICH psychedelic to try. The majority of the data I've so far sourced seems to mention psilocybin in relation to OCD though. And yes I agree the intention here is more for medicinal/therapeutic purposes as opposed to recreational. Your final para is very true too.

Psychedelics can induce anxiety. The result depends on what you do with it-- I have found useful insights about my anxieties from use of psychedelics, but sometimes this is a difficult experience. Often I think about difficult things that other people go through and during a trip, sympathy can cause a great deal of anxiety. I appreciate getting in touch with my emotions in this way using LSD.

My husband likes acid too, he has more insecurities than I do. I think acid is rougher for him than me. He prefers MXE. This might be a gentler psychedelic for anxiety. I have no real clue about OCD, though. I am just drawing from a different range of internal tension.

Thank you etasu. Thats some good food for thought. I'd like to read up more on things like MXE and DMT.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If anyone wishes to share experiences pertinent to this via PM or offer any further info please feel free to do so. I'm interested in learning much more on this subject.

 

[stillmind]

I started a thread on this several years ago: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/365072-Treating-OCD-with-psychedelics

And to follow up on my own case, I am now largely OCD-free. Or more precisely, I still have obsessive thoughts but rarely will they tie me up for hours or days like they used to. I would say psychedelics were necessary but not sufficient for this; other treatment modalities such as CBT were also essential.

I'd also emphasize that while psychedelics certainly catalyzed insight into my OCD and my life in general, understanding alone had very little impact on my OCD. Rather, they key was learning how to accept on a visceral level - a concept I'd been introduced to in CBT but was first able to put into practice on LSD (I'd tried many times while sober but could never quite do it). On LSD I was able to let the obsessive thoughts and the physical sensations of anxiety simply be there without fighting them on a both a mental and physical level. That ability persisted for several days after that trip before fading, but I was able to come back to it on subsequent trips and gradually integrate it into my daily life. I used primarily mushrooms, mescaline-containing cacti, 4-ACO-DMT, 2C-E, and LSD, and found the last the most helpful.

I still have a lot of anxiety and am highly obsessive (not always a bad thing) - the difference now is I have freedom. The OCD doesn't trap me for hours on end; I can go about my life with anxiety and obsessions instead of spending all my time futilely trying to get rid of them by more obsessing or engaging in compulsive behaviors.

I apologize if this seems abstract or confusing; it certainly would have seemed so to myself a few years ago. I guess the take away is that for me the key elements psychedelics brought to the party wasn't insight but the ability and willingness to accept fear. OCD is after all just an attempt to get rid of fear (that ironically just makes it worse), so when you accept the fear you undercut the incentive to engage in the OCD in the first place.

Oh and you mentioned SSRIs. Not sure if you're still medicated but I was unable to trip on SSRIs.

Hope this helps.

s/m

 

[Captain.Heroin]

I'd choose LSD.

Best of luck. I don't have any personal experience with OCD.

 

[Chancie]

I started a thread on this several years ago: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/365072-Treating-OCD-with-psychedelics

And to follow up on my own case, I am now largely OCD-free. Or more precisely, I still have obsessive thoughts but rarely will they tie me up for hours or days like they used to. I would say psychedelics were necessary but not sufficient for this; other treatment modalities such as CBT were also essential.

I'd also emphasize that while psychedelics certainly catalyzed insight into my OCD and my life in general, understanding alone had very little impact on my OCD. Rather, they key was learning how to accept on a visceral level - a concept I'd been introduced to in CBT but was first able to put into practice on LSD (I'd tried many times while sober but could never quite do it). On LSD I was able to let the obsessive thoughts and the physical sensations of anxiety simply be there without fighting them on a both a mental and physical level. That ability persisted for several days after that trip before fading, but I was able to come back to it on subsequent trips and gradually integrate it into my daily life. I used primarily mushrooms, mescaline-containing cacti, 4-ACO-DMT, 2C-E, and LSD, and found the last the most helpful.

I still have a lot of anxiety and am highly obsessive (not always a bad thing) - the difference now is I have freedom. The OCD doesn't trap me for hours on end; I can go about my life with anxiety and obsessions instead of spending all my time futilely trying to get rid of them by more obsessing or engaging in compulsive behaviors.

I apologize if this seems abstract or confusing; it certainly would have seemed so to myself a few years ago. I guess the take away is that for me the key elements psychedelics brought to the party wasn't insight but the ability and willingness to accept fear. OCD is after all just an attempt to get rid of fear (that ironically just makes it worse), so when you accept the fear you undercut the incentive to engage in the OCD in the first place.

Oh and you mentioned SSRIs. Not sure if you're still medicated but I was unable to trip on SSRIs.

Hope this helps.

s/m

Hi stillmind, many thanks for the reply. This is just the kind of helpful info I was hoping for, and no it does not seem abstract or confusing at all - you explain it well and I completely understand and relate to what you describe. Your original thread looks very interesting - I will have a closer read of it. I'm pleased and encouraged to hear that your OCD is better now. I think youre right that its important not to dismiss CBT out of hand; its fair to say I have had a degree of help from it but only up to a point.

In addition to what you describe I also find daily meditation and jogging a help too. And yes I'm completely off SSRIs now so feel ready to begin experimenting. I do see this more as a process of self-medicating and therapy as opposed to recreational use. Whether that would therefore entail using more regular but much lower than usual dosages I am still unsure of but would imagine thats just a matter of sensible and responsible experimentation. LSD perhaps might be a good starting point as I've heard others have success with that too for OCD. I found this quote over on another forum to be particularly insightful and helpful:

"I found that LSD temporarily completely got rid of the (OCD) thoughts for the duration of the trip. When it was starting to kick in I suddenly felt something change in my mind, like someone had flicked a switch and I was now in complete control of my mind and could not longer obsess.

Mushrooms on the other hand didn't stop the thoughts, but allowed me to "get inside" the thoughts and actually understand the mechanism of them and why I kept having them. This eventually lead to a "cure", although I still get what I would call intrusive thoughts from time to time, they just don't bother me any more and I laugh at them. That is the key right there."

I wish you continued success in overcoming these challenges.

 

[stillmind]

Glad it was helpful. There obviously aren't any guidelines here. You mention regular lower dose use; interestingly, the inspiration for Moreno's groundbreaking study on OCD and psilocybin was a patient who'd taken mushrooms daily for months and had persistent remission even after discontinuation, which seems like an entirely physiological response. For me, the key was as mentioned being able to practice certain behaviors (specifically acceptance/surrender) while tripping that was unable (or perhaps, at a deep level unwilling) to practice sober. And the example you cite above seems that understanding the process was instrumental.

Also I feel I should mention that I had some very bad trips that absolutely exacerbated the OCD - not directly perhaps, but they elevated my baseline level of anxiety which led to more obsessive thoughts and behaviors, in one case persisting for weeks or months. So be aware that there absolutely ARE risks in this path. They can be mitigated to some extent by generally acting sensibly and trusting your intuition (e.g., trip only when set and setting feel right, have abortives like benzos or perhaps antipsychotics on hand, and someone trusted you can call [or sit with you, though some people prefer not to have a sitter present] etc.) but they can't be eliminated. Proceed carefully, with full awareness of the gravity of your choices and the risks they entail. I consider myself lucky; there's little doubt in mind that things could have gone the other way for me.

And I'll go a step further and say that it's at precisely those moments when the terror is most overwhelming where trusting the path - and ultimately, yourself - is most crucial. I think part of the value of the whole journey for me was experiencing moments of profound terror and living to tell the tale. I'm less afraid of fear now, and fear is what fuels OCD.

 

[Chancie]

Thanks for the extra tips as well as words of caution, stillmind. I already have some quetiapine so I'll have that there if needed.

Do you think perhaps your bad trips were caused by too high a dosage? Or more to do with not being set or in the right setting at the time? Or a combination of the two?

I'm always reminded of the Jim Morrison quote describing his Peyote trips. The idea of the trip as a long ride on a seemingly dangerous creature, whom you must trust (ride) to the lake (that moment of relief).

"Its cool, relax. Ride the snake. We're all on the snake together, brothers. If you show fear, the snake will destroy you. But if you trust the snake, He'll take us to the lake. Ride the snake."

Yes, what you say about acceptance/surrender is so true. And if youre able to exercise that when sober then so much the better.

 

[zn13bt]

So be aware that there absolutely ARE risks in this path. They can be mitigated to some extent by generally acting sensibly and trusting your intuition (e.g., trip only when set and setting feel right, have abortives like benzos or perhaps antipsychotics on hand, and someone trusted you can call [or sit with you, though some people prefer not to have a sitter present] etc.) but they can't be eliminated. Proceed carefully, with full awareness of the gravity of your choices and the risks they entail.

I have trouble with this a lot of times, once I set up a ritual such as "I will drop every Saturday morning at exactly 10:33 am" then it becomes very hard to break the obsessive momentum of that, no matter how terrible I might be feeling on a particular morning. I'm gradually learning to trust my gut and skip the ordeal every now and then, and to ignore the voice saying "but what if I miss out on some major insight if I don't trip this weekend??".

And I'll go a step further and say that it's at precisely those moments when the terror is most overwhelming where trusting the path - and ultimately, yourself - is most crucial. I think part of the value of the whole journey for me was experiencing moments of profound terror and living to tell the tale. I'm less afraid of fear now, and fear is what fuels OCD.

Thank you for saying this. I also feel on an intuitive level that using psychedelics has helped me to accept the ongoing presence of my fears, but I find it hard to explain how it's done so to people who don't have problems with anxiety.

I'm going to go read your thread now.

 

[p-helix]

I suppose it is the mind that needs to be addressed. Just taking psychedelics is meaningless in itself - it's the users' response to them that is important. I regard OCD as a form of addiction.

Granting yourself a different perspective by having a psychedelic experience would hopefully lessen the severity of chronic OCD and even cure it :D, though I imagine in some cases it would get worse. If by experiencing you aim for improved understanding and insight, you may live better, by way of starting afresh and anew.