Safe MDMA usage frequency

[scabbard]

I've had some very therapeutic experiences recently combining MDMA with shrooms. For me it's an excellent combo and really helps me to safely feel energy moving through my body, which is the main reason I'm using these medicines (somatic therapy). The past two times I took 130mg MDMA with 2.5g shrooms - these two journeys were spaced 3 months apart.

Can anyone provide any recommendations on how much time I need to wait between MDMA doses so I don't have any long-term detrimental effects? I know the MAPS protocol was spaced 1 month apart. Anecdotally that's what I've heard to be a safe minimum time between doses - 1 month. I'd like to hear others' experiences, as well as any factual research. I'm thinking too that I might try a smaller MDMA dose next time, since once the journey kicks off in the right direction, any additional boost from the MDMA is probably not necessary, at least that's kind of what I'm guessing based on the way I've experienced it.

 

[Phobos]

While it's not entirely unsafe to take MDMA a bit more often than that, I would recommend you try taking the shrooms more often, even in the form of microdoses, rather than taking MDMA more often.

Something about 150mg and 300mg of cracker dry shrooms is the ballpark for a microdose, and I have had only positives and no ill effects from taking microdoses EOD for 8 days, ie a total of 4 microdoses in the span of 8 days.

In regards to taking less MDMA, be aware that MDMA has a threshold under which the effects are not a milder version of a higher dosage, but something a bit different.
So by taking less than your threshold dose could potentially not get you were you want to be mentally at the start of the experience.
Threshold dose is usually not much less than 130mg, but depending on your bodyweight you may be able to successfully reduce the amount needed a little bit.

One last thing in regards to the MDMA, I would recommend an anhydrous acetone wash, here's a nice guide:
https://www.bluelight.org/community...an-filter-acetone-wash-crystalization.642313/

Some of it won't apply as you already have crystals rather than pills.

 

[notsmokeymcpot42088]

Safe and "Will get full effect" are different questions. (Which is a fairly obvious statement you are probably aware of)

I am not a microdoser but I would not do mdma or psychedlics more than twice a year (each so you can squeeze 4x a year) if I wanted 'full effects'.....and safety I suppose. (Why is that secondary)

 

[scabbard]

I actually do the mushrooms weekly, that's been my therapeutic protocol for the last 6 months and I've derived much benefit from doing so. In addition, the weekly sessions subsequent to the ones combining the mushrooms with MDMA also seem to have residual MDMA-esque support in them which has been great; they've had that same flavor of feeling very safe, albeit to a lesser degree. Didn't happen so much after the first MDMA/shroom session but I've noticed it in the two weeks after the last MDMA/shroom session.

I didn't consider the fact that doing a lower dose might change the MDMA experience entirely and not give me what I'm looking for. I am surprised though that you consider 130mg to be a threshold dose, I thought that was fairly standard. Looking at psychonautwiki it shows 80-120 as common and 120-150 to be strong. That being said I know people who've taken 500+mg.

For me microdosing hasn't been super effective at being incredibly therapeutic in a deep way, though I do take about 25mg of acid probably once a week and I have actually noticed that to sometimes reactivate the therapeutic benefits of the larger trips.

I certainly don't want to take MDMA often, and honestly I've avoided using it for a long time simply because I know it's hard on the body, unlike other psychedelics. However, with these recent two MDMA/shroom trips, it was like a supercharger and allowed to go much deeper in a healthy way.

The MDMA I have is already in crystal form, and I actually had it tested with ecstasydata.org years ago when they were still in business and it came back clean, no adulterants.

I'm not sure if I derive more benefit from the MDMA's serotonin dump or from the amphetamine effects. If the latter, I'm wondering if there's something else I could take that would offer that aspect of it without depleting my serotonin reserves.

 

[Rabbit]

For MDMA I find the one month between rolls thing to be far too often. Everyone I know that was doing the 2-4 week between rolls regime eventually lost all the magic. I know many people that did it every weekend for years that can't take it anymore at all. No amount will provide any positive effects. I had one friend (dead now) that could take 200+mg in a dose that would feel nothing. All it'd make him do is barf it back up within a half hour. You don't want to end up like him.

I have personally spaced my MDMA experiences 6 months apart at minimum and I only did that maybe 3 times in my life. I felt the positive effects were greatly reduced if I only waited that long. For the last 10 years I've been spacing my rolls in 1-3 year gaps. That way it's very effective even at 90-100mg doses. But keep in mind MDA/MDMA dosing is based upon weight and I'm on the smaller size weight wise. I can get a full blown strong roll from 80-ish% MDMA from as little as 90mg although I usually take 100-120mg with a 50-60mg booster dose at the 2-3 hour mark. I would suggest taking MDMA no more than twice yearly and only once yearly if possible. Save it for special days. I also highly suggest doing it either in mid-summer during cool nights (or near sunset/sunrise) or if you do it in winter wait for days when there will be a nice snow (no sleet/freezing rain).

You probably don't want to hear this but I'd also suggest that you cut back on your intake of mushrooms and LSD. I'd space those out to at least 6-12 months in between if possible. I avoid microdosing all together now I don't find it to give much benefit anymore. Again, try to save for special days. I had a time in my early-mid 20s where I was taking LSD, mushrooms and a variety of other substances (5-meo-mipt, 4-aco-DMT, DMT, 2C-G, 2C-E, 2C-T-7, MXE, K and others) sometimes every week. This ended up leading to a lot of problems. Like HPPD and very increased anxiety while sober. Got to the point where I couldn't smoke pot anymore because it would give me slight panic attacks, bring on HPPD heavily and was just a waste of time. I was no longer getting the effects you are seeking at all. Instead I was just having a bad time and it was making me depressed about how my life was going. Although at the time I was suffering from an active addiction to benzos and opioids. I wasn't in a good place in life.

I don't know if you believe in demons/spirits and things of that nature but....whatever those things are the frequent use of the above substances seemed to be inviting them into my life. I started having some strange things happening upon falling asleep and spooky things would start visiting me in the night and attacking me. People call it sleep paralysis but I assure you it was more than simply that. Awful things were happening I'd prefer not to go into right now. Suffice to say when I cut back on the frequent intake of those substances they eventually stopped. Showing up after some time. The last time they came it spooked me enough that I stopped sleeping in my bedroom and I haven't slept in my bed for going on 10 years now because of it. Whatever came that last time threw me out of my bed to my bedroom floor and raped me. I know I wasn't sleeping/dreaming it really happened. Perhaps I'll write about it in full sometime.

The above problem aside the HPPD was really awful. Couldn't take my hat off without seeing tracers behind it. Bad vision issues. Upon waking I couldn't see clearly for 5-10 minutes. Stars, tracers, melting and all the stuff people call HPPD. Took nearly a year for that to go away. I know you're getting positive benefits now but maybe consider cutting back for awhile. As they say: Once you get the message it's time to hang up the phone. I promise if you keep pushing your luck eventually negative things will start to happen. There is no point in pushing your luck.

Maybe take a 3-6 month break then once summer is in full swing plan a nice weekend where you hippy/candy flip. I promise the positive effects will be much better than whatever benefits you feel you're getting at the moment.

But back to MDMA: If you can consider sourcing some MDA. MDA is much more fun and I think you'd enjoy it more than MDMA. MDA is great by itself and it's great in combination with MDMA. I prefer MDA to MDMA. Given the choice I'd take it over MDMA every time. MDE is also great but I haven't attempted taking it by itself yet. When I had more access to chemicals 10-15 years ago my preferred roll stack was: 60mg MDA+60mg MDMA+20-40mg MDEA with no re-dose. MDA is more visual (why is everyone wearing sunglasses!?!) than MDMA and for me it lasts a little longer. It is a little more taxing on the brain though so you have to be more careful with it and I don't suggest using it in a booster does. Whenever I took MDA I never re-dosed with it. I always used MDMA only if I decided to use a booster dose.

Concerning boosters: I only do a booster dose if I'm in a social enviroment and want to keep things going for another 1-2 hours at peak. It took me a long time to learn this but a booster is kind of a waste if you're taking MD(M)A alone.

Most of my expereinces with MD(M)A have been solo affairs. I've still yet to have a 1-on-1 expereince with this substance with female company. Which is something I'd really love to try but I've never dated a girl that was cool with using drugs outside of boring one likes pot, alcohol and opioids.

You can't get it anymore but MXE on the MDMA come-down was something really special. I wish I would have bought a kilogram of MXE when it was still around. K on the MDMA comedown is great too of course but there was just something magical about MXE that nothing else I've tried could ever replicate. I also suggest avoiding benzos for MD(M)A come downs. They ruin the afterglow. Opioids are alright for this purpose but I'd say MXE/K are the way to go.

As I've gotten older MD(M)A has started giving me the Tuesday blues more strongly no matter how much I prepare, supplement and use substances to help with the come down. I feel like it gets a little worse every time I take MD(M)A. Which is why I've started spacing my doses with more and more years between them as I've aged. Well that and the fact that I think I'm down to two total doses of it left out of the batch I've been dipping into for the last 12 years. I'm really not sure where I'll be able to source it again now that my old connect died. I know it's avaiable on the darknet but I'm really paranoid about trying some from a new source. Plus getting cash into bitcoin is such a pain in the ass these days and the prices of everything have gone up so much. I wouldn't even know which markets are legit anymore and all my friends IRL I used to partake with have all died now. So I've been saving my last dose for a really speical day. My 40th birthday is coming up I'm considering taking my last of it on that day. I really wish I had enough to share and someone to share it with (preferably female company).

I'll leave you with this: treasure the magic because once it's gone you'll never get it back. I'm trying to ensure I'll still be able to feel the magic when I'm on my death bed. I want to be able to roll one last time whenever I know I'm done for if I get cancer or something like that. I would suck not to be able to do it.

Wish we knew each other IRL. I'd love to roll with someone from BL again. Only got to do that once. Best of luck with your endeavors.

 

[Observer01]

When considering the MAPS trials, it's important to remember that the assumption is that the subjects are going to do their sessions 1 month apart, but also that they aren't going to continue regular use beyond those sessions. A month break if you have never done MDMA, or haven't done it in years, is probably fine.

In my experience over 20 years, if it's something you want to enjoy throughout your life, less often is better. I'm down to no more than twice a year (sometimes only 1), and it has felt like a good, safe, balance. Could I get away with more often? Probably, but also perhaps not without some diminished returns.

What doesn't get talked about enough in terms of frequency of use, is how you live your life in between experiences. If you eat well, exercise, and generally live a balanced life, you can probably get away with more. If you party constantly, and don't take care of yourself, it's going to have more of a negative effect. I'd say the 3 month rule is a good rough benchmark, but in my opinion, is too often for lifetime usage.

 

[finitelifeform]

You can't take MDMA regularly. Even if you do take it regularly you are burning the candle at both ends because you're not giving yourself enough time to recover. I don't think MAPS guidelines is the best to follow here because it's short term and you sound like you're looking to take it as often as you're taking the shrooms. That's probably not a great idea. You could probably get away with taking it once a month but you'd be running a risk doing so. From what I know it takes a decent amount of time for your brain to "rebalance" after the serotonin splurge, several months. A month is the bare minimum but it depends on how heavy your sessions are. Therapeutic applications are short term (probably could call it brief/intensive) where there is optimum exposure (both to the medicine and extinction responses in the conditions of the trial related to PTSD to improve symptoms) and because therapy has to be somewhat continuous to have the best effect, regularity is likely necessary here. What you are doing sounds therapeutic but it's not the same. PTSD related therapy is about changing how the person responds to certain stimulus that provoke physiological changes in the body involuntarily. Extinction implies there are conditioned responses to be corrected and this means integration of the painful memories and also internalized emotional states that keep the person "locked" into a traumatized way of interacting with the world. I am pretty sure that's the basis for the therapy anyway!

The MDMA essentially lowers their guard so they can access their emotions in a way that won't create that physiological chain reaction that leads to "typical" PTSD behavioural symptoms and reinforces negative learned patterns. It's very specific although it might not seem like that. It's like exposure therapy but turned to a thousand. That cannot be done regularly although it can be done intensively over a short period of time. It's like mastering public speaking by attending 10,000 person events every weekend. After a while you're not learning anything and just spiking stress responses which don't result in the changes you want. A personal speaking event once every few months though? You have time to integrate your previous experiences and master your baseline physiological arousal. In the former you're aroused more than you are not which is one of the ways stress turns into trauma in the first place.

Recreational doses (weekend rave, festival etc) and you're probably looking at months before you're recharged. It's likely individual differences play a factor too as everyone will likely have slightly different biological variance, as well as recovery methods used.

I aim for once a year but even that isn't set in stone. Maybe once every few years. Less is better with MDMA. Homeostasis is key. The more you mess with your chemistry, the more can go wrong. Shrooms don't deplete serotonin in the way MDMA does. I'm sure with shrooms you're just working with the serotonin that is present whereas with MDMA you're superficially making more at the expense of your natural levels and capacity to make it which is a HUGE difference. In some ways they don't go together, long-term anyway.

A good rule of thumb I would use is to see MDMA is taking from your natural chemical balance whereas shrooms are neutral. Every experience you have with both, one is inevitably deleterious to your overall chemical balance. Even with the therapeutic progress you make you're hinging that on a drug that produces net deficit returns, at least biologically and therefore you have risks baked into the therapy program you have created.

MDMA is one of those drugs that become so easy to take often and feels so good but has huge body load that needs time to recover from. If you're doing therapy the caveats you're looking to identify should factor this in in my opinion otherwise the drug itself is overpowering the goals of the therapy and this is why, to my knowledge, it became such a controversial drug in the first place. If you know you're taking it and you're actively seeking the "MDMA-like" effects, its no longer therapy.

Post MDMA is important. Make sure your drinking enough during. Make sure you're eating well before and afterwards and for some time too, perhaps several months in each direction. Healthy meals that are rich in protein (which contains tryptophan, a natural precursor to serotonin) as well as adequate carbs to keep fuelled up. Fats are necessary too. Healthy lifestyle choices will help a lot also. Good sleep, good relationships, minimizing stress as best as possible, having meaningful goals, stimulating your body and mind in your everyday.

After an MDMA experience I go straight for a decent protein weight gainer shake. The balanced combination of all your macros replenishes your body and also considering most serotonin is created in the gut you're accelerating recovery from the beginning. I also take vitamin C and zinc for oxidative stress and I begin a 5-HTP protocol but only after I have fully come down to avoid any negative interactions. I take that for several weeks as necessary to naturally aid serotonin rebalancing. I take a few days off heavy exercising but then go right back into my usual strength training and cardio workouts. A sauna I find also works wonders after MDMA for cleansing.

Generally the goal is to continue therapy and aim for as complete integration and immersion of the MDMA experience into my everyday experience. I think it's easy to compartmentalize drug experiences but if they are truly therapeutic you should be able to carry the torch into your everyday life. The work doesn't stop after you come down, it's only just beginning. The 6 mile run you do afterwards can be turned into narrative play where you are feeling the body be exposed to the running stimulus as a continuation of the body sensations from the MDMA. The sauna can be narrative for cleansing after taking it. Usually I tend to find my hair gets oily and icky from sweating out byproducts so it feels like self care to spend time letting the body sweat and release the toxins. Again, the theme is continuation. To me the sauna and the MDMA session are not distant experiences. The effort expended in the weeks that follow are likewise the same. Also, having someone to share your experiences with increases social connection and can release feel good chemicals which is protective. It makes little sense to feel "loved up" and connected to everyone/everything when you're high but when you're down you're averse to important human connection. Even a pet can help (if you can hug them).

You are making connections and from a psychological point of view these connections form patterns that result in improved consolidation of experience which can result in improvements across the board. These improvements can foster breakthroughs, even when you're not high!

 

[Phobos]

Safe and "Will get full effect" are different questions. (Which is a fairly obvious statement you are probably aware of)

I am not a microdoser but I would not do mdma or psychedlics more than twice a year (each so you can squeeze 4x a year) if I wanted 'full effects'.....and safety I suppose. (Why is that secondary)

I think it's pretty much universal that you get full effect from shrooms taken on their own after a few days, maybe 2 weeks tops.

Of course, you may not have the same experience every time, and you may eventually get somewhat bored of, or used to the effects.

 

[Phobos]

You can't take MDMA regularly. Even if you do take it regularly you are burning the candle at both ends because you're not giving yourself enough time to recover. I don't think MAPS guidelines is the best to follow here because it's short term and you sound like you're looking to take it as often as you're taking the shrooms. That's probably not a great idea. You could probably get away with taking it once a month but you'd be running a risk doing so. From what I know it takes a decent amount of time for your brain to "rebalance" after the serotonin splurge, several months. A month is the bare minimum but it depends on how heavy your sessions are. Therapeutic applications are short term (probably could call it brief/intensive) where there is optimum exposure (both to the medicine and extinction responses in the conditions of the trial related to PTSD to improve symptoms) and because therapy has to be somewhat continuous to have the best effect, regularity is likely necessary here. What you are doing sounds therapeutic but it's not the same. PTSD related therapy is about changing how the person responds to certain stimulus that provoke physiological changes in the body involuntarily. Extinction implies there are conditioned responses to be corrected and this means integration of the painful memories and also internalized emotional states that keep the person "locked" into a traumatized way of interacting with the world. I am pretty sure that's the basis for the therapy anyway!

The MDMA essentially lowers their guard so they can access their emotions in a way that won't create that physiological chain reaction that leads to "typical" PTSD behavioural symptoms and reinforces negative learned patterns. It's very specific although it might not seem like that. It's like exposure therapy but turned to a thousand. That cannot be done regularly although it can be done intensively over a short period of time. It's like mastering public speaking by attending 10,000 person events every weekend. After a while you're not learning anything and just spiking stress responses which don't result in the changes you want. A personal speaking event once every few months though? You have time to integrate your previous experiences and master your baseline physiological arousal. In the former you're aroused more than you are not which is one of the ways stress turns into trauma in the first place.

Recreational doses (weekend rave, festival etc) and you're probably looking at months before you're recharged. It's likely individual differences play a factor too as everyone will likely have slightly different biological variance, as well as recovery methods used.

I aim for once a year but even that isn't set in stone. Maybe once every few years. Less is better with MDMA. Homeostasis is key. The more you mess with your chemistry, the more can go wrong. Shrooms don't deplete serotonin in the way MDMA does. I'm sure with shrooms you're just working with the serotonin that is present whereas with MDMA you're superficially making more at the expense of your natural levels and capacity to make it which is a HUGE difference. In some ways they don't go together, long-term anyway.

A good rule of thumb I would use is to see MDMA is taking from your natural chemical balance whereas shrooms are neutral. Every experience you have with both, one is inevitably deleterious to your overall chemical balance. Even with the therapeutic progress you make you're hinging that on a drug that produces net deficit returns, at least biologically and therefore you have risks baked into the therapy program you have created.

MDMA is one of those drugs that become so easy to take often and feels so good but has huge body load that needs time to recover from. If you're doing therapy the caveats you're looking to identify should factor this in in my opinion otherwise the drug itself is overpowering the goals of the therapy and this is why, to my knowledge, it became such a controversial drug in the first place. If you know you're taking it and you're actively seeking the "MDMA-like" effects, its no longer therapy.

Post MDMA is important. Make sure your drinking enough during. Make sure you're eating well before and afterwards and for some time too, perhaps several months in each direction. Healthy meals that are rich in protein (which contains tryptophan, a natural precursor to serotonin) as well as adequate carbs to keep fuelled up. Fats are necessary too. Healthy lifestyle choices will help a lot also. Good sleep, good relationships, minimizing stress as best as possible, having meaningful goals, stimulating your body and mind in your everyday.

After an MDMA experience I go straight for a decent protein weight gainer shake. The balanced combination of all your macros replenishes your body and also considering most serotonin is created in the gut you're accelerating recovery from the beginning. I also take vitamin C and zinc for oxidative stress and I begin a 5-HTP protocol but only after I have fully come down to avoid any negative interactions. I take that for several weeks as necessary to naturally aid serotonin rebalancing. I take a few days off heavy exercising but then go right back into my usual strength training and cardio workouts. A sauna I find also works wonders after MDMA for cleansing.

Generally the goal is to continue therapy and aim for as complete integration and immersion of the MDMA experience into my everyday experience. I think it's easy to compartmentalize drug experiences but if they are truly therapeutic you should be able to carry the torch into your everyday life. The work doesn't stop after you come down, it's only just beginning. The 6 mile run you do afterwards can be turned into narrative play where you are feeling the body be exposed to the running stimulus as a continuation of the body sensations from the MDMA. The sauna can be narrative for cleansing after taking it. Usually I tend to find my hair gets oily and icky from sweating out byproducts so it feels like self care to spend time letting the body sweat and release the toxins. Again, the theme is continuation. To me the sauna and the MDMA session are not distant experiences. The effort expended in the weeks that follow are likewise the same. Also, having someone to share your experiences with increases social connection and can release feel good chemicals which is protective. It makes little sense to feel "loved up" and connected to everyone/everything when you're high but when you're down you're averse to important human connection. Even a pet can help (if you can hug them).

You are making connections and from a psychological point of view these connections form patterns that result in improved consolidation of experience which can result in improvements across the board. These improvements can foster breakthroughs, even when you're not high!

MDMA has a metabolite that blocks the enzyme that produces serotonin for days, supplementing will have no effect until the enzyme is restored.

 

[scabbard]

Thanks for all of the detailed answers. For me personally, I am not seeking out MDMA for the high of it. In fact, I've never just blissed out on MDMA at all. I've only used it in therapeutic contexts and I have no desire or craving for it other than from the rational standpoint of it helping me heal my trauma. I wouldn't even characterize the experience as euphoric. Not to say that it isn't, but my attention is more captured by its ability to allow me to feel more, feel whatever needs to be felt, and allow it to move through me. For someone who's been disconnected from feeling for much of my life, the experience of feeling in and of itself is euphoric.

I'm glad I posted this thread because I was not thinking that it was as detrimental to one's health as these responses everyone has posted seem to indicate. For me personally, I don't even usually have a hangover afterward, either that or the therapeutic benefits from the session take a front seat to whatever depletion might be present the following day.

Since I take mushrooms weekly, I certainly wasn't planning on using MDMA that often, since I know that weekly usage would be a disaster after doing that for a few sessions. However, I didn't realize that you'd need to potentially wait 6 months for the full neurological rebalancing to occur. Man that seems like a really long time.

What you are doing sounds therapeutic but it's not the same. PTSD related therapy is about changing how the person responds to certain stimulus that provoke physiological changes in the body involuntarily. Extinction implies there are conditioned responses to be corrected and this means integration of the painful memories and also internalized emotional states that keep the person "locked" into a traumatized way of interacting with the world. I am pretty sure that's the basis for the therapy anyway!

I think for most people, PTSD conjures up the notion of someone getting blown up in battle, or some "Big T" trauma. The reality is that trauma is basically some maladaptive script that's running, or some form of old programming that was potentially adaptive at one time but is no longer necessary but it's stuck in the on position. So my therapy, despite not having any objective big T traumas, is still the treatment of PTSD. I'm using the mushrooms to learn a healthier was of being for my nervous system, learning how to feel, learning how to let energy move through my body and ground out without interrupting that process. At the deepest level, trauma is a fixity in the nervous system, and then all of the other symptoms arise from that. If the energy can be processed out then the rest of the symptoms dissolve - that's always been my experience, that something has to move through the body and process out to completion.

I definitely agree that integration is just as important as the actual session itself. If the session is therapeutically successful, then integration to me means continually honing the new healthier neural/visceral pathways in every part of your life. It's akin to a gutter being flushed out. If the gutter has been clogged for years with muck and sediment, you have to really get in there and spend a day digging all of that gunk out. That's the session itself. Then afterward, to avoid having to do another deep clean a year later, you just make sure to regularly flush water through there so stuff doesn't accumulate. That's how I see it, and experiences in daily life are continual opportunities to carry out that regular flushing procedure.

You probably don't want to hear this but I'd also suggest that you cut back on your intake of mushrooms and LSD. I'd space those out to at least 6-12 months in between if possible. I avoid microdosing all together now I don't find it to give much benefit anymore.

Personally I don't feel this is necessary. If I were taking mushrooms every day then yes I'd probably build up a tolerance, but I've never experienced that with my weekly sessions. Every session is somewhat different, but the nervous system exercising that I get from the mushrooms as well as the processing of unconscious material has not faded when doing weekly sessions for me.