Cold Blooded Skeptical Atheist. 4 Grams. First Time.

I want to, but give me a week, please. There's no rush. I'll share when it is sound.

 

I bet you're right, whatever it is. Psylocibin is a partial agonist at the serotonin receptors, basically acting as serotonin.

Taken as an antidepressant just for the chemical effect (ignoring the psychological effect, which last a lot longer), you could take psylocibin once or twice a week instead of an SSRI. Any more often and you'd probably have to increase the dose because of tolerance, but you could do it. There are experiments with ketamine being used that way right now. You take it once, your depression lifts within hours, and it works for a week.

 

Yup. I extend this quite a bit.

I was really curious as to how often I should use shrooms as an anti-depressant. Thanks for answering. What about dose?

I never even knew I was depressed because I had accepted my anxiety as simply part of who I was. There is no way a doctor would prescribe me with an SSRI because I couldn't be diagnosed with depression, and I was managing my anxiety in a way which I didn't think was a problem. I felt always quite content, but never really happy. Now that it's gone it's such a tremendous weight off my shoulders and I think I can enjoy life.

 

That's amazing.

SSRIs and anxiety meds aren't the best anyway. I've taken both, they're just meh.

As far as using psylocibin that way... if I were to do it, and had the means to, I probably wouldn't take it more than once a week. And I'd take an effective, challenging dose. It's the medication and the therapy combined into one thing, and it works better than either.

I think it comes down to realizing that there is an underlying chaotic magic to existence, and figuring out what you're going to do about it. I think that most of our problems come from not having a grasp on one of those two things.

 

lets say someone was on SSRIs, do you think it would effect the experience?

 

Maybe.
I know that SSRIs tend to make LSD less effective, but psylocibin, maybe and maybe not.

 

it will make the experience weaker, but possibly not by much, depending on how much ssri you're taking, quality of shrooms, and personal chemistry.

i was on ssris a few years ago and enjoyed fantastic highs from marijuana while my friend on ssris almost couldn't get high.

give it a shot but prepare for nothing happening.

Oh and grats discfour on enjoying of our little brown panacea i'm always so happy when another person has their life rearranged positively after such an event!

 

*serotonin crash*

Ah, finally. Drowsiness, lack of empathy or sympathy, headache, a little dizziness. Now I gotta wait until I return to baseline before I medicate myself. Before I do mushrooms again I'm going to try this 5-HTP stuff out to see if I get a similar long-term effect. If I do, then I won't use shrooms for anything other than seeking introspective thought.

 

Ah, I think my 5-HT receptor activity is returning to pre-shroom trip levels. What a wild week that was. All of the things that I learned have stuck, as far as I can tell, but I don't have the emotional connection to everything and everyone that I had prior to the serotonin crash, and learning new things would be just as difficult as it used to be. My brain grew, but now it's stopped growing.

During the crash I went grocery shopping. Everything seemed like a brick wall. No empathy, no sympathy to anything. The crash was just as informative as the high. It really showed me just how influenced I am by simple neurochemistry.

 

Definetely. Another thing you will learn, in more intense trips, is that you are not your brain. Your brain is sensitive to chemical conditions, but there is something other than mind, it is that which is experiencing the thoughts and the feelings.

That thing is quite mysterious and very difficult to get naked. I have learned very little of it other than that it exists.

 

Oh, I realized that on Tuesday. I read through a whole bunch of existential wikipedia articles and I get it. I also get a lot of psychology:

Freud divided our Psyche into the Id, Ego and Super-Ego. Magic Mushrooms creates a disassociative effect between the Ego and the Super-Ego, and then eventually shrinks your Ego down such that the Super-Ego exists alone. The 'Id' and 'Ego' being heavily tied our brain, while the 'Super-Ego' is external.

 

!!!

 

weird. Me when I'm mentally exhausted now is the me before the 23rd. Maybe my brain was in mental exhaustion mode? Stuck in 2nd gear? Refusing to grow. Maintained low neuralplasticity.

I reflect now and recall that I 'peaked' in Grade 4. I was winning all the academic awards, would correct all the other kids' spelling and grammar, and read all the time. It went downhill from there, to the point in college where I could barely recall any information that I had learned or read about. I barely passed my classes.

But now I am taking in so much information and remembering it. Everything has improved.

Serotonin and the 5-HT receptor is barely understood by science. There is too much objectivity and pseudo-intellectualism.

Also: Fuck academics. Not all of them, but most. Just because you say blah blah blah blah blah and have PhD beside your name doesn't make it true, you idiot.

Oh and my sleep cycle's changed. I sleep for 4 hours, am up for 12ish, and sleep another 4. It's neat.

We are so deep into this thread that only a few people are paying attention to me now. Let's keep it that way. No need to yell from a mountain top if no one's on the plain planes.

 

Oh and I forgot to add. As we age our Serotonin system breaks down. This is why we don't appreciate or learn many new things as we age. The 5-HT receptor allows us to take processed sensory input and learn from it. Low 5-HT activity means low neuroplasticity. Old folks just need a little mushroom tea or maybe some 5-HTP.

just fyi

 

keep it like a secret

 

it's interesting to record your trip.

but to really get fucking out of this place dont even think about it.

 

I have also developed a rather marked disdain/distrust/disinterest in intellectual works. I have realized I was never the scholar, I was always the artist

 

Wow, so this is what was going on all last week:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin_syndrome

All those symptoms were happening to me. Mania for an entire week is maddening, and doubting whether you're being rational is terrifying.

 

Are you saying that all those shifts in perspective were due to that?

 

Timothy Leary suggests in his Tibetan Book of the Dead influenced manual that you should refrain from studying psychology and reading about disorders for a few weeks after tripping.

I agree with him. Psychology seems to be all about limitation. All science, everything to do with language, is like that, it's just breaking what's real up into categories so you can rationalize it. And what has rationality really given us of worth? It's sometime helpful on an individual level in dealing with problems, but I think in a cultural sense, we're too scientific. Dogma is everywhere, and too often it's doing the thinking for us. Science is the new Catholic Church.

My advice for you is to take your next dose out in the wilderness. Forget the computer, leave behind everything civilization has handed you. Let Nature give you an education. Then if you still feel like it, a few weeks later after integrating the experience minus any feedback, you can compare notes with others.