St. Johns's Wort and Music? [:

[MMMMKAY?!]

Now I know people say St John's Wort works simmilar to an SSRI. SSRI's greatly decrease music appreciation (at least for me and many other people).
Now this may be a placebo, since I have had LOTS of caffeine recently, but I took some St. John's Wort and I really do believe it increased my music appreciation..more than just caffeine.

Has anyone noticed any change in music appreciation while on St. John's Wort? [: please please share!

 

[DementiaSavantPlus]

This hits close to home because I have recently started a St. John's Wort regimen and I am a musician.

I noticed a sort of free-floating anxiety for the first two days especially, then on the third or fourth day, I awoke in the morning with a lifted mood. It is early on in its accumulation in my system, but I liken this to the anxiety that builds up after a psilocybin dosing and that is later "released" as euphoria or a "love" sensation. The difference is that this seems to be happening over a long period, and will not be accompanied by the visuals or insights and perspectives that are associated with mushrooms.

I am responding to say that so far I have not noticed any specific increase in an appreciation of music, but my mood has been given a buffer or foundation that holds it above negative thoughts: the ones that would otherwise be uncontrollably invasive. This helps with a musical flow as much as it does with life in general.

I have no experience with SSRIs. However, St. John's Wort is supposed to be a reuptake inhibitor of serotonin, GABA, noradrenalin, and dopamine. So I suppose, in theory, it is a "well-rounded" mood lifter that is not so selective.

I am interested in what others have to say about this. If I ever sense the slightest amount of detachment from an artistic muse as a result of St. John's Wort, I will drop it as an option immediately.

 

[rpm]

Unfortunately I have never taken St. John's Wort and listened to music intently. Since you mention coffee, and St. John's Wort isn't strong in it's SSRI effect AFAIK I'd say it's a placebo.

If you really want to find out do some blind tests on yourself - take another tablet the same shape as your st johns wart (vitamin c? - if this is two difficult put something inert in a parachute skin and open the st johns cap another of into the same) , put them both in envelopes, write inside the envelope which is which. Mix them about so you don't know which is which and take one out. Pop it and a bit later listen to some music (the same tracks each time - make a big playlist so you don't get stupid bored of the tracks by the end and have it onshuffle), rating your appreciation on a scale of 1-10 - at the end of the day look inside the envelope to see which was which. Repeat this say 10-20 times. If you find that your st johns appreciation average is better (you could run significance tests for correctness) then it works for you!

On the other hand, this is quite a task!!!

 

[pasha]

It seems that you accidentally made two identical threads

I went ahead and merged them for you.

Good luck!

 

[electrodevo]

This would be a surprising result in some ways, because I think the consensus is that prescription SSRIs *decrease* music appreciation. (Of course, the mechanism of St. John's Wort is not 100% understood, so who knows with that.)

 

[MMMMKAY?!]

@Chromophobia, sorry bout that [x ha. Don't know how that happened.


And I'm starting to get really hopeful because today, A Hydrocodone hangover day, I took some St. John's Wort, BUT i also took about 4 excedrin pills (65mg x4 caffeine) and found music appreciation to be greatly increased. Could be the caffeine though but who knows [:

Someone PLEASE do the test that someone above suggested. Listen to a song you really like one day without any St. Johns, then do it another day on St. Johns. [:
I must say I am convinced this drug has the potential to greatly increase music appreciation and am very eager for anybody elses opinion!

whoever does the test that rpm suggested is officially badass d: