anyone ever taken serotonin?

I know that serotonin can be admistered to a person but does anyone know what happens if your brain is flooded with excess serotonin? anyone ever tried it?

 

isn't that what happens when you take x?

 

Bingo...

I'm pretty sure that you don't just get serotonin injected into your body... There are plenty of drugs out there that effect your serotonin level... SSRI anti depressants (Prozac, lexapro, etc.) and ecstasy....

There's 5-htp which is a precursor to serotonin which stimualtes growth of it in your brain...

 

As far as medical science knows, in the brain/body tryptophan is converted into serotonin. Many foods contain tryptophan, such as turkey, brown rice, soy, tomatoes, bananas, walnuts, etc, so just eat some foods rich in it. Serotonin also occurs in many plants and mushrooms, it is just usually metabolized in the gut. As far as I can find in the medical lit, injecting pure serotonin, it produces pain, gasping, coughing, tingling and prickling, nausea, so doesn't sound vary interesting.

 

I think when you take E its not the same...E causes something different...it causes the neuron to reject the serotonin back into the synapse gap from the receptor. It doesn't just flood the area with it. There is something more complex going on and people don'tunderstand it yet--no funding, no fun!

But another thing that E does it seems is affect the dopomine receptors...so more than serotonin seems to be involved here.

 

You can't simply take serotonin because it is both to polar to cross the blood/brain barrier and very vunerable to metabolic destruction. Address these proplems by replacing that OH with say a methoxy, or move it to a more stable position, and then put something a tad bigger on that nitrogen and you could probably invent dozens of psychedelic drugs.

 

i think the effect is definately different to flooding serotonin - because higher serotonin levels will only be found in neurons that were signalling with serotonin in the first place. otherwise there is no serotonin in the synapse to be reuptaken at all, and the drug will have no effect. this also highlights that you can have very intense rolls with less mdma if you are using a greater variety of naturally serotonin - releasing neurons when you roll. i have no idea how to control this, but im sure there are certain people and situations that are particularly serotonin-arousing to individuals.

 

MDMA effects more than just serotonin. It effects dopamine mostly.

5-htp and tryptophan will increase serotonin.

One of the unsolved mysteries of psychedelics is why serotonin is so key to their activity. There are lysergamides which increase serotonin to the same extent as LSD, but have no psychoactive effect. However, if you take LSD and an SSRi (or another drug which blocks/inhibits serotonin) the LSD will have no effect. Likewise, LSD + a drug which increases serotonin makes it more potent.

Anyways, excess serotonin will not make you high, just like taking loads of anti-depressants won't make you high. It probably will make you feel like shit though.

 

The way all Drugs make you high is they open your Endorphins and make dopamine flow to receptors in your brain !!! As for serotonin I have no idea ? I can't see why just serotonin would have any efffects at all, A substance has to be able to make dopamine flow and I don't think Serotonin would do that ?

 

apparently LSD does not change the release of serotonin at all. from what i understand it makes your receptors more receptive. i recently downloaded a DVD called "from LSD to mind - recent advances in psychedelic research". it is basically a two hour lecture from leading professors in the field. it shows to great depth exactly what is believed to happen in the brain on tryptamines. alot of it is beyond me but i highly recommend it anyway.

 

not true.

Endorphins are associated with opiates.

Dopamine is associated with drugs like cocaine meth etc.

Serotonin is typically associated with psychedelics.

This is a MEGA generalization of course.

All drugs work differently, some cross over between the above three, some (like alcohol) don't do too much to any of those.

 

I don't know where you found this piece of information, but it's completely wrong. MDMA mainly acts on serotonin receptors and reuptake transporters, but also acts a little on dopamine receptors.

(http://www.dancesafe.org/slideshow/)

SSRI's don't completely mute the effects of LSD because SSRI's regulate the flow of serotonin through the brain, not prohibit it.

I suggest you check out this article.

 

I can't explain out every detail. Everything has an effect on your body. Most people that are on SSRis and take LSD will not feel the LSD at all. SSRi stands for serotonin something re uptake inhibitor... so it actually leaves more serotonin out there by preventing the re uptake of the serotonin in the synapse.

I actually felt a little guilty posting that MDMA effects are mostly due to dopamine. I guess what I meant was most of its unique effects are due to its action on dopamine. The MA stands for methamphetamine. The psychedelic effects are definitely due to the serotonin, but what makes MDMA so special are all the things that go on with dopamine etc. Dopamine is also responsible for the damaging effects of MDMA. Although I can't say for sure, I'm pretty sure that everything that happens with MDMA and serotonin also happens with LSD and serotonin. The fact that MDMA was mention and not psychedelics in general or a compound like LSD made me focus more on the specific qualities of MDMA (namely its effect on dopamine). But, I had no idea that serotonin was effected more than dopamine.

I'll check out the links later, thanks.

 

Uplink certain drugs release certain chemicals correct. I got a question after someone who is addicted to a drugs like Coke or Herion stops using they usally get very derpressed and its hard for anything to give them pleasure again with out the drug, Is this because without the drug your brain has trouble making Dopamine/Endorphins or what? bottom line is do drugs stop the flow of pleasure centers in the brain after one stops. and if it stops it or slows it down can those centers ever go back to normal and release the right amount of pleasure again. Does the human brain have the ability to repair itself or not ?

Also I know there are opiod recetors in the Brain. I know this because I read about the methadone I take. It works buy blocking the opiod recetors which makes it hard for me to get high off herion and other opiods. What other receptors are there in the brain ? lexample What receptor does a stimulant like coke or meth hit, and what about all the other classes of drugs is there different reseptors for all drugs or what??

 

Opiates and "stimulants" work in different ways.

Opiates work on the opiate receptors. Opiates are released when you work really hard etc. they are the numbing "runner's high". When your brain sees lots of opiate receptors being turned on it compensates by turning stuff off... so by the time the drug wears off, you're brain is still adjusted to the old levels of opiates. This is tolerance in a nut shell. I believe even when you aren't doing drugs, your body's tolerance builds naturally (from working out etc), although I could be wrong (there is certainly no natural long term tolerance).

Your body's natural opiates are called endorphins. Long term tolerance occurs when your body gets slowly starts to get rid of whatever process seemed to be creating so much "excess" dopamine/endorphins.

Dopamine is a little bit different. Dopamine is closely related to the opiate receptors, and is often associated with the anticipation of pleasure (whereas opiates are the actual pleasure). In general, when your body releases a bunch of dopamine (when your is working hard) you become "addicted" to whatever made you release that dopamine. Your brain always wants to maximize the amount of dopamine being released. When you take a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, or any compound that increases the amount of dopamine, your brain not only compensates by getting rid of those dopamine makers, and shutting down production, but your brain also longs to have that maximized amount of dopamine again.

Anyways, after permanent tolerance forms to either dopamine or endorphins/opiates, the total amount of dopamine/endorphins that your brain can produce (while tripping or not) is reduced. People who were addicted to opium or heroin have a hard time staying away from drugs because they have a harder time having fun naturally (with less endorphins). Same with cocaine and meth... except a lack of dopamine causes many other more severe side effects including psychosis.

Correct me if I'm wrong here... I wrote this all off the top of my head.

EDIT: anyways to directly answer your question, your brain can't full recover. However, I think you should try ibogaine to treat your addiction. It will prevent you from going through withdrawl, while making you trip... during your trip you should seriously think about your addiction and what made you use drugs in the first place. Aftewards, not only will you have no withdrawl, but maybe just maybe you will not crave drugs any longer after analyzing yourself from the psychedelic field.

Anyways look into it.

 

Serotonin or rather how serotonin works and is modulated by drugs is harder to understand than something like acetylcholine or GABA. Serotonin even when administered icv doesn't have the profound effects of many serotonergic drugs. We must keep in mind that there is more to it than just the receptor and other models may be helpful in understanding. Roger Penroses notion of quantum mechanical superpositioning induced by psychedelic drugs is an interesting theoretical model that doesn't require the existance of a receptor.

Excessive dopamine is more indicative of psychosis than low, in fact most antipsychotics work by antagonizing dopamine. but in reality it is more complicated than that, there exist a myriad of neurotransmitters, peptides, proteins involved in psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia.

To answer shocbombs question. Decreased brain production is one possibility but there is also receptor desensitization. Imagine that a neuron has its autoreceptor blocked by a drug, now there is neurotransmitter output into the synaptic cleft but there is no feedback signal to the neuron that says hey the extracellular concentration is high enough--stop the output. So the output continues until the drug is metabolized or the neurons storage becomes depleted. Something to keep in mind is that the cell is constantly sampling its environment. Anway, the postsynaptic neuron continues to integrate the signal through the 2nd messanger system and given a long enough time there will be nuclear regulation, that is altered transcription of DNA. The result is that the cell becomes less responsive to a given drug concentration, it does this to survive, to prevent damage from overwork and excessive activity. So tolerance tells us something. It tells us that the cell was stressed and did something to compensate. The brain can eventually get back to normal in many cases, but whenever there is tolerance there is likely at least some damage associated with it. Some of the damage isn't really damage because it is repairable (this seems to be the case more with serotonin neurons than dopamine). If a brain cell is wiped out you aren't getting it back. yet the brain is remarkable in its plasticity, its ability to maintain or regain function in spite of damage. I guess my point is that there are points of no return yet there is hope, and most often there is dysregulation not permanent damage.


There are theories that any drug that creates euphoria is a dopaminergic. There are drugs that act directly on the dopamine transporter or various dopamine receptors and there are drugs that effect dopaminergic neurons indirectly, through heteroreceptors for example.

 

They really have no idea. At first there was the serotonin hypothesis, now they often use the dopamine hypothesis. But I'm sure it is a complex disorder.

Anyways good post... it completely overshadows mine

 

I learned a hell of alot and found bolth uplinks post and astroneurologist post very interesting, Great post, Thanks Guys !!!

 

I have seen studies done with blood serum injections of pure endorphins, and while they were effective pain killers (some thousands of times stronger then morphine), none were reported to have any of the euphoric effects like morphine.

On another note of interest is that, in some recent studies, there is evidence that morphine appears be an endogenous chemical made in humans and mammal tissues. Link -

http://www.nel.edu/Press/NEL25_PR_Zhu-Mantione-Stefano.htm

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0405430101v1?view=abstract

 

no problem I needed to exercise my brain a little.

Interesting studies, thanks for the links.