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anti anxiety supplements

fernsal1

fernsal1

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 12, 2010
Messages
146
i have mdma induced anxiety/panic attacks and wanted to know of any supplements that could help for that. its been a little over 4 months and i feel alot better than 2 months ago when it comes to anxiety/panic attacks. the only time i get them is when i smoke weed but they have started to become more controllable but smoking is still not as enjoyable as i know it could be.
i was thinking of maybe trying L-Theanine and Taurine? has anyone ever tried these and were they useful?
 
I suffered an anxiety attack for the first time last year, brought on by what-other-than? stress. The best way to confront your anxiety issues is to discover the root cause of these feelings, and rid yourself of them.

I went out and bought L-Theanine, and it works to make you calm, but do yourself a favor and work on your mental before depending on a physical quick-fix.

(might I suggest using the Search button, too...)
 
I'm not going to ask your age, but many people with anxiety find it really comes out around their early 20's. If that's you, smoking pot may not ever be enjoyable again.

And Changed is spot-on in regards to working on your mental, but I'll add that it could be a lifelong process. I'd only recommend starting a chemical-fix, whether theanine or xanax, after you've worked with the anxiety a bit. I'm speaking from personal experience, both my own, my family's, and many of my friends. Anyone who I've seen use pills as a crutch for anxiety is still on them, without exception. Further, after a while, their anxiety is essentially back, only now, they need their meds or the anxiety gets worse than it ever was before.

And re theanine, remember it's the amino acid found in green tea. I'd suggest drinking the green tea for health benefits, and because, at least in the US, most theanine is (IMO) over-priced, as they seem to exclusively buy their l-theanine from some company, and it's labelled as 'Suntheanine'. GNC's brand-name theanine is "suntheanine" if you read the label.

Good luck, post more q's if you have them, I know where you are in a way because I used mdma pretty heavily at the "anxiety-onset" years of my life, and while I'll never know conclusively, I'm pretty damn sure it made it much worse. And I can tell you from experience that, while benzo's help while I'm using them, the second they wear off the anxiety comes back so fast that it feels worse than the original anxiety, so absolutely be aware of that.
 
OH- another thing that I've personally found helps me is magnesium (not manganese). It's a basic mineral that many people don't get enough of. Hell, most multivitamins don't have much/enough of this mineral. It does not help everything, but it helps muscular-tension and I find that one of the worst parts of anxiety.

As a matter of fact, I'd say that, after years of working towards 'fixing' my anxiety, I've found that it's more a matter of trying to alleviate the symptoms of the anxiety, and less of an ability to reduce the actual gut feeling of anxiety. For myself, a sibling, and my mother, the anxiety started between 21 and 22 years old, all 3 of us. And we all stopped smoking pot at that point, it went from fun to panic-inducing.
 
^this is very common... I've met and read about so many people who quit pot due to anxiety ...or they just compounded their problems by getting hooked on benzos or alcohol to counter it.

Of course the best advice is to drop the anxiogenic agent and find healthier ways to enjoy yourself but this is BL!

Kava kava, valerian and mulungu may be worth checking out. Much of the readily available preparations of the former 2 are BS so you'll need to investigate to find good quality products. I don't have experience with mulungu but I hear its wonderful for anxiety.

Above everything though, Changed gave THE BEST advice. None of these are sustainable and the issues will continue to plague you unless you address it at the root of the problems. A lot of people are resistant and I'm admittedly biased because I'm going in to the field, but talking to a counselor or other professional to help you get to the bottom of what's going on can be quite beneficial.
 
Never heard of mulungu, gg check it out right now.

Re.Valerian: smells like complete asshole, you don't even want to touch the capsule with your fingers, just put 250-500mg's worth of it into the cap of the bottle and swallow with juice fast! And Cane2theLeft, why is valerian BS? I've found it to be quite useful, although I'll admit I've only used extracts that were standardized for a specific% of valerenic(sp?) acid.

Re.KavaKava: good luck finding a decent version, if you can find any, for sale in the US. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, rather there was some issue - contamination of a huge batch I believe - some years back, and it practically removed kavakava from the US. There's no restrictions I know of, but even GNC hasn't carried it since that issue happened (walmart doesn't, vitamin shoppe doesn't - it's a hard product to find, actually tbh I've never even seen kava kava IRL)

OH- and Cane's 100% right on using alcohol/benzos (extremely similar action in the brain, both affect GABA, benzo's are just more of a 'scalpel' compared to the 'axe' of alcohol). With anxiety, they help, but only while on them. That creates more anxiety once off and, thus, addictions are born. Further, since inhibitions are lower on either of them, people tend to do stupid stuff, or abuse the drugs further, etc, leading to even more anxiety once the blood-levels are back at baseline.
Therapy absolutely helps, but maybe cane2theleft can elaborate/clarify this. I've found therapy (admittedly, I've only had informal 'therapy', ie friends/online, never true psychiatry) to be useful, but in the end there's absolutely a neuronal "imbalance" that causes this, and you cannot change that. The anxiety may not have a "root/bottom/issue", it may be purely physiological. For instance, my anxiety is all but a combination of symptoms at this point, and I can manage them well enough, but the instinctive feeling is still there, I just work to "turn it off" by acknowledging it, realizing it's irrational/not a proper feeling in most situations, and get around it that way.
 
SangerRainsford said:
[...]the instinctive feeling is still there, I just work to "turn it off" by acknowledging it, realizing it's irrational/not a proper feeling in most situations, and get around it that way.
Click to expand...

This is more what I meant, than going to see a mental health professional.

Personally, I was trapped in a situation that I didn't want to be in. It took an anxiety attack, severe depersonalization, and a lingering feeling that I was schizophrenic to make me realize: something is wrong with my life! I got out of the situation as best I could, and those feelings of anxiety completely dissipated. I haven't felt anxious once since I eliminated the root cause-- once you convince yourself that the feelings of anxiety are irrational and un-called for, you are taking your first step towards an anxiety-free life.
 
i may never really recover from these attacks but at least im not alone. im going to try to face my problems and beat the anxiety. as for the supplements i hope they can help me in any way.
would you recommend buying from gnc or their products not that good?
i bought some magnesium oxide from gnc but read that it has bad biovailability so will look for some magnesium citrate.
 
I bought the most generic, cheapest brand of Theanine from Vitamin World-- it didn't cost but $11 I believe...
 
Changed said:
This is more what I meant, than going to see a mental health professional.

Personally, I was trapped in a situation that I didn't want to be in. It took an anxiety attack, severe depersonalization, and a lingering feeling that I was schizophrenic to make me realize: something is wrong with my life! I got out of the situation as best I could, and those feelings of anxiety completely dissipated. I haven't felt anxious once since I eliminated the root cause-- once you convince yourself that the feelings of anxiety are irrational and un-called for, you are taking your first step towards an anxiety-free life.
Click to expand...
That's mostly what I meant, but with me the anxiety is still there. In the beginning though, I didn't know what it was, which made it even worse. Then, I knew what it was and figured I'd have to deal with it forever. Now, it's absolutely still there, but I 'manage' it by making sure to never turn down social situations where I have irrational fears - I'll go, and when my heart pounds, I'll just tell myself it's irrational, and I have to deal with a physical symptom, and that I'm not actually scared, it's just my body overreacting. But I've never had any relief in frequency/intensity of how it comes on, I've just learned to live with it, like "symptom management" only :/

fernsal1 said:
i may never really recover from these attacks but at least im not alone. im going to try to face my problems and beat the anxiety. as for the supplements i hope they can help me in any way.
would you recommend buying from gnc or their products not that good?
i bought some magnesium oxide from gnc but read that it has bad biovailability so will look for some magnesium citrate.
Click to expand...
GNC is good for herbs if you buy the "standardized" ones, not the "nature's fingerprint" ones. As with all herbs (even pot!) it's not just how much actual herb is there, but how potent that particular piece of herb is, if that makes sense. Buying "500mg valerian" may be weaker than a standardized 250mg valerian.

Changed said:
I bought the most generic, cheapest brand of Theanine from Vitamin World-- it didn't cost but $11 I believe...
Click to expand...
Was it l-theanine or suntheanine? At GNC, iirc, 60 or 90 pills of standard strength (suntheanine) was $19.99 - LAME!!
 
They are Vitamin Shop branded, 60 pills, 100mg, 'Theanine' with a 'Suntheanine' logo below it. I don't know what the difference between the two is, but these pills help me relax. Now that I don't have anxiety, I mostly use them for falling asleep every once in a while when I'm amped up before bed...
 
Yeah, they say the l-theanine is the amino acid that kinda negates caffeine in green tea, which is why it's sometimes considered relaxing despite containing a stimulant.
Suntheanine is a product of some company, and they supply it to most every other company, kinda like how Mallinckrodt sells bulk pharmaceuticals to others only to have them stamped differently.
 
SangerRainsford said:
And Cane2theLeft, why is valerian BS? I've found it to be quite useful, although I'll admit I've only used extracts that were standardized for a specific% of valerenic(sp?) acid.
Click to expand...

If you notice, I didn't at all say valerian was BS but just many readily available commercial products are (e.g. those sold in grocery stores). Its just poor quality compared to better, standardized products. It can be quite effective.

Regarding kava, its largely the same... if you have a good product its very effective but a lot of the commercially available ones (such as NOW brand pills as one example) are very weak and ineffective.

Regarding certain kava products being pulled (and kava itself being banned in many European countries) it was because pharmaceutical companies were extracting kavalactones from parts of the plant other than the root (what indigenous throughout the south pacific have successfully been doing for years) and this turned out to be hepatotoxic. Most products on the shelves these days clearly indicate they are root only.
 
Oh my bad/misreading!! I'll admit I've always been in a pretty lucky place in regards to herbs - no, I'm not implying pot or anything - I know several people who make their own tinctures (echinacea, valerian, etc), and ran a place that sold great standardized extracts, so always had high-quality herbs when needed. And I should mention, despite the fact I do endorse using herbs, you shouldn't expect much. The strongest herbs are basically caffeine containing ones (yerba, guarana, etc), yohimbe (bark/alkaloid), things of that nature, and valerian is weak even compared to yerba IMO..
 
Crazy how many people quit pot because of anxiety, i keep coming back to pot because it helps my anxiety.
 
kava kava works well, you can find it at most health shops, and organic places. theres diffrent kinds of kava, if you want fast acting kava i suggest trying the kava extract. theres the "good stuff" and the "not so good stuff". the good stuff runs a little bit more expensive then the cheap stuff..
the tazo kava tea isn't so bad.. it's weak but u gotta use more then 1 tea-bag, because theres other herbs n such in each tea bag. so the kava tea doesn't taste like shit.

kava can get expensive quick.. i was downing a bottle of kava extract a day.

theres stuff here at the local gas station called "purple stuff". some drink that mellows you out.
 
i just tried l-theanine today 200mg and i do feel more calm and relaxed. i will be trying it with weed sometime this week i hope it helps to prevent any anxiety/panic attacks while high.
 
fernsal1 said:
i just tried l-theanine today 200mg and i do feel more calm and relaxed. i will be trying it with weed sometime this week i hope it helps to prevent any anxiety/panic attacks while high.
Click to expand...

I'd advise against that-- I took 500mg's and then took one hit from a bong... I got super high and felt a good amount of anxiety.
 
vallerian herbal product maybe? are you not a fan off the benzos because im told they take the nip off the weed panic like.Its up 2 you really see your gp see what he says. I know longer smoke weed at the moment through my anxiety but you know what they say if you here the same thing of a lot off people theres got two be a ounce of truth in it somwhere and ive herd a lot of people mention that a small dose of a benzo takes the edge of the anxiety before a session.Or you could just google it or plenty reference books in the libary on it be good.
 
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