Alkaloids and menstruation

[Morphing Interstices]

i read recently that syrian rue has been used traditionally in a few cultures to induce menstruation and to produce miscarriage, and i was reminded of my first mushroom trip.
I took a very large dose of fresh azurescens tea. I wish i could say how much but i didn't note it at the time, part of the reason why i took such a heavy dose without even realising i was. (needless to say i was pretty naive and gung ho about such things in those days...)
effects began suddenly and intensely about 10 minutes after drinking the tea, and last 5-6 hours, peaking at about 30 minutes and dwindling around the 3 hour mark.

the striking thing was that it induced immediate heavy menstruation, which was not due for another week in an otherwise very regular cycle.
The trip was one of the most intense experiences of my life, cascading waves of massive emotion and bodily sensation ranging from agonising pain, sorrow, grief and sadness, to ecstatic bliss, orgasm and joy.
when i went to the loo and saw the blood, i had no idea what it meant, couldn't remember what the deal was with that. pretty funny! i knew it was nothing to be worried about but for the life of me i couldn't remember what it meant to have blood coming out of my vagina. I went back in the loungeroom and asked my boyfriend at the time if he knew what it meant and he looked very nervous, like it was some kind of trick question. :lol:

But so what i am wondering about is what kind of pharmalogical explanation there might for this kind of reaction to the mushrooms.
i remember reading years ago in a Castaneda book that one of the female shamans told him that the womb was some kind of portal to other worlds....

 

[soulfood]

I do know of some pharmaceutical chemicals based on tryptamine structures that used to treat some of the discomfort caused by menstruation and I've heard of some folk having uterine contractions provoked by LSD but I haven't heard of that happening before.

Maybe folk just aren't talking about it

 

[Virola78]

i remember reading years ago in a Castaneda book that one of the female shamans told him that the womb was some kind of portal to other worlds....

Yes I remember reading about that in one (or perhaps more) of his books.
If I remember correctly an individual (being) was described as bubble of awarness/energy (i read the dutch translation, dunno what it is called in english) in the form of an egg. And this bubble of awarness/energy has a focuspoint in the middle somewhere, which would be our belly area. And (somehow) because women have a womb, they are better suited for becoming curandero or sorcerer (brujo?). They have more direct and clear contact with the spiritworld (if you like).

To me it was the first time someone was talking about (writing about) idividuals as being abstract forms of awarness/energy.
And so I was hooked and became a psychenaut..

 

[Origami Existence]

Oh wow... weird, this happened to me the other day, except I was on Pharma. I was just coming down from my trip, and was using the bathroom, and when I saw I was bleeding, it was the most jarring, and bewildering experience. Especially after coming down, I found it difficult to fully comprehend what was happening to me. I was scared that my IUD had puncutured myself...

The bleeding ceased the next day, but it did slightly mar my experience, if only because it frightened me. My trip sounded very similar to your mushroom trip... it certainly was a mix of bodily sensations and emotions from pain, tiredness, and utter agony, to pleasure, joy and love.

 

[Morphing Interstices]

Wow, Origami, that sounds intense. Maybe it would be a good idea to get your IUD checked...? There certainly does appear to be a strong action on the uterus of certain alkaloids, though I would really love to hear from someone with pharmocological knowledge as to why that may be so.
I am surprised at the how few people have responded to this thread - it makes me wonder how many women are actually part of this forum - I get the impression not many at all.
Not to worry, the guys here on the whole appear friendly and open, if a little unused to the possibility that someone they are talking to might be female!

 

[Infundibulum]

Oh wow... weird, this happened to me the other day, except I was on Pharma. I was just coming down from my trip, and was using the bathroom, and when I saw I was bleeding, it was the most jarring, and bewildering experience. Especially after coming down, I found it difficult to fully comprehend what was happening to me. I was scared that my IUD had puncutured myself...

The bleeding ceased the next day, but it did slightly mar my experience, if only because it frightened me. My trip sounded very similar to your mushroom trip... it certainly was a mix of bodily sensations and emotions from pain, tiredness, and utter agony, to pleasure, joy and love.

Wow, Origami, that sounds intense. Maybe it would be a good idea to get your IUD checked...? There certainly does appear to be a strong action on the uterus of certain alkaloids, though I would really love to hear from someone with pharmocological knowledge as to why that may be so.
I am surprised at the how few people have responded to this thread - it makes me wonder how many women are actually part of this forum - I get the impression not many at all.
Not to worry, the guys here on the whole appear friendly and open, if a little unused to the possibility that someone they are talking to might be female!

Not a female but the closest you can get to an obstetrics-professioned person here

Will need to know more about both cases, e.g. which IUD was used, if any OC were taken (in case of morphine interstices), which stage of the cycle were the mushroom/pharma was taken, etc. Also whether the contraceptives you may use are supposed to abolish spotting and whether you take any other medications regularly.

 

[Origami Existence]

Well, in my case, I believe I have a copper IUD and I've had it for about 2.5 years. No problems thus far.... the bleeding that day only lasted the evening, and I noticed it had stopped by the next day. I was, at that moment, about 15 days into my cycle when I did the pharma, and it's not unusual for me to experience my period twice in a month. Also, I'm on no medication/hormones at all. I noticed bleeding immediately after intercourse.

It seems odd posting this in a public forum, but if there are other females out there in the same situation, I hope this will help them.

 

[ms_manic_minxx]

Is your cycle synched with the moon?

My passionflower on blooms on the full moon, and communion with that plant under the full moon is incredible.

It definitely opens up a special energy on that time, and I'm willing to bet the alkaloid profile changes at that time (don't Daturas change by the hour?).

In any case, all the visions that followed last time with Ms. Passionflower was totally womb-centric... very awesome... it's a very powerful place in the body that needs to be respected!

I've never had menstruation triggered by Ayahuasca, but my journeys are always very wet/slimy/birth-like/guttural if I drink on those times. No doubt about the womb being a portal between worlds: I've had extensive ceremonies that explored the same idea. It's an awesome source of creative energy...

Aya has actually lessened the intensity of my flow by a huge degree (I used to just roll around in bed and scratch at the walls in pain). But, part of the problem had to do with accepting my female identity, I really feel there was a psychological aspect to the suffering.

Also, do you drink regularly? It is possible, if it were an out-of-the-ordinary thing, to have a profound experience trigger a physical reaction (stress and traveling will do it, too). I've never had Aya trigger a period (I have been drinking bi-weekly/weekly for years), but there are lots of chemical differences between Aya and Rue. Not sure where Pharma fits in...

Definitely interesting...

 

[Morphing Interstices]

Interesting! Yes, I guess at the time of my mushroom menstruation experience I was inclined to think that the sudden early onset of my period was due to the emotional intensity of the trip. But then I have no pattern of that in general, being one of those people whose periods are generally completely predictable.
I was not on any other medications or using any kind of contraception.
The bleeding was really huge too. i continued to have the rest of my period after the mushroom trip, but the amount of blood thereafter was negligible. it really seemed like the mushrooms has caused some kind of uterine purge.
Frankly I was delighted by the whole business!

 

[transitory]

Morphing Interstices wrote:

I took a very large dose of fresh azurescens tea ... effects began suddenly and intensely about 10 minutes after drinking the tea ... it induced immediate heavy menstruation

Don't know if this could be relevant but 69ron recently posted the following in a thread entitled High mushroom dosage - (emphasis is my own)

SWIM once took about 25 grams of home grown Psilocybe cubensis thinking they were inactive (they were boiled for a while).

Folks, boiling does NOT inactivate them. Maybe boiling for many hours might, but they were as strong as non-boiled mushrooms. SWIM ate them all and tripped harder than he ever tripped on anything in his life within 5 minutes, and that was just the beginning of the trip. It was a life shaking experience, and it caused minor internal bleeding. Psilocybin is an anti-coagulant at high doses.

I don't recommend taking super large doses of any psilocybin containing mushrooms. Waking up the next morning with bruise spots all over from broken blood vessels is not at all healthy.

 

[Morphing Interstices]

Warning - veering into mushroom thread territory....

aha, that is interesting. But there is no pattern across psilocybin fungi in terms of blood from what I can gather.
A friend of mine took a massive dose of subcubensis when he was camping and said that he broke out in cold-sores all over his mouth and around it and generally looked very sickly. So I am inclined to be careful with those little buggers. Cubes I have grown also tended to makes me feel a bit fatigued and hung-over afterwards on even moderate doses.

I have to say though that the cyanescens I found in paddocks and tripped heavily on were absolutely sublime at high doses, very clean and gave me only a mild diarrhoea as the sole physical side-effect. And I tripped off my head on them, hurrah! Not unlike DMT, pretty colours, lots of brilliant blues, the world appearing as a matrix of laser light lines.

So maybe the anti-coagulant effects are peculiar to certain mushrooms and not others, rather than being an effect of the psilocybin per se.

I forgot to ask Origami - what maoi was in the pharma that made you bleed? Was it different to other recipes you have used?

 

[Origami Existence]

The MAOI was harmine and harmaline extracted from syrian rue (my bf tells me... he's the one that extracts). The bleeding only lasted that evening, and was unlike my normal period in that the blood was bright red and fresh (rather than dark)

 

[Fernape]

Origami, that just means it came out faster, I think. It also means it lacked the tissues that the uterus has to help the egg attach, so basically instead of being MENSTRUAL blood per say, it was just blood that came from the uterus.

Just my input.

 

[nadir]

i read recently that syrian rue has been used traditionally in a few cultures to induce menstruation and to produce miscarriage, and i was reminded of my first mushroom trip.
I took a very large dose of fresh azurescens tea. I wish i could say how much but i didn't note it at the time, part of the reason why i took such a heavy dose without even realising i was. (needless to say i was pretty naive and gung ho about such things in those days...)
effects began suddenly and intensely about 10 minutes after drinking the tea, and last 5-6 hours, peaking at about 30 minutes and dwindling around the 3 hour mark.

the striking thing was that it induced immediate heavy menstruation, which was not due for another week in an otherwise very regular cycle.
The trip was one of the most intense experiences of my life, cascading waves of massive emotion and bodily sensation ranging from agonising pain, sorrow, grief and sadness, to ecstatic bliss, orgasm and joy.
when i went to the loo and saw the blood, i had no idea what it meant, couldn't remember what the deal was with that. pretty funny! i knew it was nothing to be worried about but for the life of me i couldn't remember what it meant to have blood coming out of my vagina. I went back in the loungeroom and asked my boyfriend at the time if he knew what it meant and he looked very nervous, like it was some kind of trick question. :lol:

But so what i am wondering about is what kind of pharmalogical explanation there might for this kind of reaction to the mushrooms.
i remember reading years ago in a Castaneda book that one of the female shamans told him that the womb was some kind of portal to other worlds....

Maybe that happened because of psilocin's anticoagulant properties 69ron mentioned? Psilocin possibly affects small blood vessels that are in the womb?

I know Damiana is great for normalizing menstrual cycle and reducing hormonal disbalance.