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Drugs for healing trauma

Foreigner

Foreigner

Bluelighter
Joined
Mar 18, 2009
Messages
8,287
Has anyone here had direct experience with using drugs like psychedelics, or any drug really, to help with healing trauma? Whether self-dosing or doing it with a therapist?

Which drug worked best for you?

Recently I took a toke of weed, which is the first time I've gotten high in a really long time, and the backlog of traumatic memories started up. I had major, major anxiety and I needed alone time asap. I mostly cried a lot, to be honest. I don't find that cannabis is very useful for trauma resolution, but it did show me that I have a lot to work on from the past few years. Probably with the suppressed terror of almost dying multiple times. This little glimpse into my unresolved trauma is showing me that I've been on auto-pilot a lot in my life this past year, just trying to be normal, when really I am anything but normal.

I have past experience with ketamine for PTSD but I'm wondering if people here have found success with others? I am considering trying ketamine first, since I know it, I can psychologically handle small doses, and it's short acting. I might try mushrooms after that, and eventually upgrade to LSD... but I have to be very careful with LSD because it's so long lasting and I don't want to end up in a tailspin.

So yeah... have any drugs worked to help you uncover and integrate traumatic memory?

As a follow up question, have you ever felt really stuck in life and unable to creatively see your way through it, but figured it out after taking a psychedelic? I sometimes wonder if my problem lately is lack of neuroplasticity too.
 
4 aco dmt really helped me. My mother died when I was ten my dad when I was 24. All 4 of my grandparents by the time I was 27. I'm 29 now. But when I was 28 I had several intense experiences with psilacetin. Peak transcendent type experiences.
It helped me work through so much. And let go of so much anger and sadness.

I feel healed now. I used to be depressed and now I totally love every second of my life. I cherish existence. I take a now dose 4 aco dmt/psilocybin/ 4 ho met or a lysergamide like 1A LSD as an anti depressant treatment. It works for me very well.

I hope you feel better. I would say perhaps a low dose of mushroom's if u can find them. Like 1 and a half to 2 grams of cubensis. If u can't locate them I'd say look into 4 aco dmt which is legal in most places and easily found
 
If you're willing to wait for a while, MDMA is nearing the end of clinical trials for use with a therapist to treat trauma, in the US. Additionally, psilocybin is in clinical trials for therapy as well. The fact that these two are being studied and put on the track to hopeful integration into legitimate medicine speaks highly to their ability to treat mental/emotional conditions. Of course when used in a therapeutic setting, the environment is much more controlled and there is a professional guiding you through the experience which greatly minimizes the chances of something going wrong.

Personally, psychedelics (generally tryptamines like mushrooms or 4-AcO-DMT or the like, but also specifically 2C-T-2) have greatly helped me to get out of depressive episodes before. But actually by far the most influential substance for me in actually changing my life was ibogaine. I took it at the end of the 10-year opiate addiction with the intention of getting off opiates. By the time I was at the point where I decided to actually take it, I actively wished for death every day. I felt I had destroyed my ability to be happy forever. I basically hated myself and the world. Ibogaine worked on some deeply subconscious levels and over the course of a week (3 days of the acute experience from a flood dose of about 1200mg ibogaine equivalent using part pure HCl and part TA extract, and then some re-integration days that were dicey followed by a much smaller follow-up dose), not only was my opiate addiction gone, but it was as if I had woken from a dream and I felt like myself again. I was excited about life and felt strong motivation to get healthy. For the first time in my life, I started working out consistently and got in shape and that made a huge difference too. I started eating well, and I began pursuing passions I forgot were missing from my life. Basically I can divide my life into childhood, pre-iboga adulthood, and post-iboga adulthood. Post-iboga adulthood is more like childhood in terms of my mental freedom and happiness level than pre-iboga adulthood. It sort of seemed to provide a reset from all the negative mental patterns and behaviors I had developed, and I was able to start with a clean slate, for the most part.

Keep in mind a flood dose is a harrowing experience... I felt no fear but it was just overwhelming, for me it was like dreaming for 3 days straight whether I was awake or asleep and the dreams overlaid what I was really seeing while I was awake. Also something like 0.2% of flood dose takers die from heart complications. Some people also have good success in providing motivation to change from microdosing iboga for a while, for example taking 1 gram of rootbark powder daily.

A number of psychedelics have helped to change my life but other than my first ever trip, on mushrooms, which changed my entire mindset about what reality is, what we are, and so forth, ibogaine has been by far the most influential agent of change for me. I came out of it, after it resolved, with a different mindset entirely from when I went into it. It felt like I had woken from a bad dream, and the only sensible options I saw ahead of me were to live my life to the fullest and no longer take opiates or accept self-destructive thought patterns. I had to work on that change but I WANTED to work on that change. I went to therapy for a little while afterwards just to help solidify the changes, as well, and talk to a professional about it. That was 5 and a half years ago almost, and although I've had troubles since, my life is still infinitely better than it was before I took it. I feel purpose and am happy most of the time.

Honestly though, finding a good therapist who specializes in PTSD might be the first course of action for you. Your situation and mine are not the same, and a good trauma therapist can be a lifesaver, with or without drugs.
 
I've been curious about ibogaine. I also used a lot of morphine and dilaudid in the past 4 years during severe pain from my auto-immune disease. I never got addicted, but my memories of those times is blurry and I think the opiates did something to my brain. Even now I don't register pain the same way anymore. Maybe my fogginess is due to that.

MDMA isn't an option. Abusing that drug has fucked me up for life.
 
Here in the Uk, the MOD (Ministry of Defence) doctors have a license to treat PTSD that hasn’t responded to more traditional meds, with a programme of microdosing MDMA and/or psilocybin I believe. There are studies I have read which seem to show a really powerful response to bad memories, flashbacks and a very deep seated and connected anxiety, Have a look for some Uk studies online. Hope it helps!!
 
Ayahuasca is DMT with an MAOI. The B. caapi vine (traditionally, you can use other MAOIs too) inhibit monoamine oxidase from breaking down the DMT, so that you're able to get an oral DMT trip (normally MAO breaks down DMT before it can cross the blood brain barrier). DMT is a serotonin agonist, not an SRA or SRI/SSRI or releaser. It mimics serotonin. Ayahuasca isn't a single compound but a combination.
 
Kambo gave me a nice relief from depression, fatigue and anxiety for a few months. I plan on working deeper with that medecine soon.

I would love to try aya in a ceremonial setting at some point, but I would have to start slow with it, I know that I would be nervous because of some heavy experiences with 4-aco-dmt.

I explored ketamine several years ago. I was functional and positive for a few days, and then I started craving for more. Lucklily, during a binge, I listened to the message I was told: I had to stop or my life would stay stuck at the same place. Also, I had a tendandy to see conspirations everywhere. 9 years later, and I still crave ketamine.
 
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I took 5 ayahuasca healing journeys, starting at 50mg of DMT (with syrian rue) increasing each journey by 50mg of DMT and ending the healing at 250mg DMT. This lasted exactly 5 weeks, doing one healing session per week.

After the five weeks I completed my goals of personal (won't go into detail here) success and ended up not drinking for 360 days just to see if I could do it. I did it.
 
Ah right got ya!! Check out BBC3’s getting high for God and All4’s (Uk) pharmacopoeia, the latter being a great deep dive into all sorts of different compounds. Great watch!!
 
trogere said:
Kambo gave me a nice relief from depression, fatigue and anxiety for a few months. I plan on working deeper with that medecine soon.
Click to expand...

For real. I was pretty much reaching the end after 14-15 years of up/down suicidal ideation. I tried Kambo august 2018. Within about two months i had 6 sessions. After that I gave it to myself about once a week for 4 months or so.

I did it for the first time in about two months a few weeks ago. The experience was a lot less "heavy" than it had been. I barely vomited, and what came up was not really colored. The amount of emotional trauma I have healed in less than a year is astounding...

Before that I would say a combination of MDMA and a psychedelic were top experiences for me. MDMA was what I had my first kundalini/unity conciousness experience on about 14 years ago. I had another on mushrooms a few months after that. It showed me dark/machine world VS light/natural. I had really been struggling with "diagnosing" myself, wanting to take psych meds and "fit in" with society. The mushroom trip took away the desire to "fix" myself according to this world. Those two experiences really kept me from killing myself over the next 14 years. Without those memories I would have been soooooo lost.

I had a really awesome trip with DPT/MDMA a few years back. I meditated the whole time, and was floating around the lower astral realm looking with compassion on all the lost suicides and murders. It taught me a lot, most I can't really eloquate.


If you have had "peak" experiences with psychedelics, and still carry lots of baggage. I SERIOUSLY reccomend Kambo. I am not sure i would still be alive right now without it.
 
I like MDMA a lot, but I don't see how even microdosing is a sustainable practice. It's still an amphetamine.

Kambo... I almost got to try, but the person offering it wanted hundreds of dollars for one trip. I don't know how to try it, otherwise.

Ayahuasca... too heavy for me, and too dark.

I have been using ketamine again as I have in the past, we'll see of it helps. I feel like my neurology has reconfigured due to years of intense, traumatic physical pain and opiate use. I don't even get high the same way anymore, which is hard to describe.

I've been taking low dose naltrexone for auto-immune. Hopefully that will regulate my opiate receptors from all the opiates I had to take.

The candidates I'm looking at that I actually have access to are: ketamine, mushrooms, LSD. I'd love to try something more exotic like kambo, but it's not accessible to me.
 
First came the plants, then came the human brain which said plants plug right into. Next stop 20% cerebral capacity and beyond!!
 
For me it really depended. When I'd just left my childhood home (where I was pretty traumatised) to live independently and I was a mess, I took LSD and ketamine (separately) a bunch of times. The first few times it was fun, then towards the end it was hellish experience and made things worse for a while after the trips.

I took a break of a few years to be completely sober, where I did things like therapy and working with emotions, getting my sleep pattern sorted, taking my hypervigilince down, trying to develop social networks and trying to find some kind of personal meaning in all of the shit. I started taking shrooms, really carefully and occasionally, again, and they've been an absolutely wonderful positive experience, I think they've helped me out of a bit of a rut where trauma has played a role.

When I was in the midst of trauma hell psychedelics were hell too. Now that trauma is more woven into the fabric of who I am, psychedelics have treated me wonderfully. So I don't know, maybe it depends on where you are with everything. Psychedelics might assist the healing/surviving process for some during the worst of it though, my experience won't be everyone's.
 
I don't necessarily recommend anyone do this, as I don't think my mental health issues were that severe, but I self-treated for depression and self-esteem issues with MDMA and mushrooms when I was 19. Worked like magic.
Unfortunately I later undid most of the mental health progress with meth and alcohol and tried therapy. That helped a lot and I still used mushrooms here and there to keep grounded (proper MDMA is friggin hard to find these days. so I stopped bothering). It's been a good 11 years of decent mental health (with small fuckups due to binge drinking, here and there). Getting regular and proper sleep also helps immensely.

I reckon therapy with the aid of psychedelics would have been just brilliant for me.

That being said, I was only depressed with suicidal ideation and not at all suffering from any sort of trauma so it may have been easier for me to overcome my issue.

Hope you find the peace you're looking for, Foreigner.
 
Self aid is quite hard but if thats the path your going down Mushrooms and lsd is really good and if u can 5-meo dmt and aya. Have mdma on hand and dose it during mushrooms or acid when facing those traumatic memories
 
From a whopper of a mr peabody thread:

It is less controversial to pursue the use of ketamine derivatives to promote new “branching” of existing neurons [as opposed to neurogenesis]. But ketamine does not seem to be as effective at neuritogenesis [the growth of dendrites and synaptic buttons] as LSD, DMT, or psilocybin.
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https://www.bluelight.org/xf/threads/psychedelic-pharmacology.854293/

Curious little fact, isn't it? Not sure whether it's that relevant, but plenty of people swear by ayahuasca for healing.
Overall, it seems that exposing neural stem cells to harmine, THH, and harmaline encourages them to grow and change into new neurons more effectively than under control conditions.
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I'm personally not that keen on the whole idea behind the dark and heavy flood doses either. But I've heard of successful microdosing on this front as well.
 
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A friend of mine entirely stopped smoking after a mushroom trip; go for tryptamines, the 4-sub ones, or get your hands on some DPT (is less challenging than DMT, but still very profound). All of them are life changing.
 
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