Health Psychedelic Interactions - Black Seed Oil (Nigella sativa)

[Pfafffed]

tl;dr Possibly potentiated 5-MeO-MiPT

I took three grams of black seed oil each day for the last two days. I had intended to take some 5-MeO-DMT at the end of day two, but had since concerns about BSO's murky pharmacology. It seems like it's all over the place, but there's a fair bit of indication that it may have serotonergic activity. I postponed.

Fast forward to today. I had some some heavier holiday drinking on Saturday, so I've been taking some acetylcysteine and silymarin to try to reduce the damage. It'd been 30hrs+ since I took the BSO, so I thought that I should be good to take 5-MeO-MiPT. I took my usual ~6.25mg dose. It came on strong and fast, and while it was for the most part an enjoyable experience, it felt like a 12mg experience. Weirdly, it didn't feel like the same experience. It was actually somewhat visual, not at all empathogenic, and had a fair bit of headspace. It had fewer side effects, as well.

Then the second phase kicked in, and it reminded me of the tail end of miprocin. For some reason, the tail end of that drug doesn't sit well with me. I get creepy internal voices from it and a general feeling of minor key tonality. Actually, more like the sound of reality is going flat. It's not enjoyable and it's unique to that drug. The only thing close is bufotenin. Well, that started happening with 5-MeO-MiPT, something it's never done before in my probably fifty prior experiences. CBD didn't touch it, so after about a half an hour of that, I took 1mg of etizolam. I was still telling hard afterwards, but the tenor of the trip evened out.

So I'm guessing my liver function was already not great. On top of that, it looks like the primary constituent ingredient inhibits CYP2D6. 5-MeOs metabolize into 5-HOs via CYP2D6, but there was quite a window between my using them and this experience. I know BSO is known for potentiating opioids, but I assume that's when taken concurrently. So at this point, I'm really not sure what to take away from this. There are a lot of variables and this could just have been a fluke as happens every now and again. I thought I'd share just in case someone else takes BSO just as a heads up.

 

[G_Chem]

All this talk of Black Seed Oil has got me really wanting to try this.. Has anyone figured out the mechanism for how it potentiates opioids? Maybe it’s the same for certain psychedelic drugs as well.

-GC

 

[Pfafffed]

Well, enzyme inhibition would decrease the rate at which some drugs are metabolized. Iirc, that's actually the case with the antiviral Paxlovid used to treat COVID. The antiviral has an incredibly short half life, so they combined with with ritonavir for its CYP450 / CYP3A inhibiting properties to prolong it. Unfortunately, that means that you have to adjust your dosage of many other medications, including oxycodone by 75% or risk overdose.

I haven't looked into which liver enzymes metabolize opiods yet. Still tripping, in fact. Even if thymoquinone does suppress the enzymes responsible, it likely doesn't explain why it eases opioid withdrawal. That could be its (somewhat pharmacologically murky) benzo-like activity. Dunno.

I was taking it mostly out of curiosity and the hope that it might do something for my sleep and memory and all that, but as far as I could tell (so far) it mostly just killed my appetite like nobody's business.