Painful physical DMT experience (serotonin toxicity?)

[Tonyho]

Hi everybody,

I wanted to tell you a story that hapened to me few month later.
I discoverd DMT more than 1 year ago and had a lot of great experience with it at low and very high dose. I've alway felt very good after the experience, phisically and mentally.

At one point I also discoverded Hapeh (its an amazonian snuff made by different tribes, and containing tabbaco and several other plant and substances)

Afetr one month of intensive use of Hapeh, and I was also smoking a lot of weed mixed with tobaco, I tried several time to take vaped and smoked DMT, the effet was ok, but I started to experience a left arm pain and even left leg pain also, like a high blood pressure.

One night I took a low dose of vape DMT and I had my first very bad experience.
I felt a very high pressure in my head, it was painful, my temperature rised a lot, I felt like paralised in my bed for maybe 10 minutes, and the body load was very unpleasant. It was actually pretty schoking.

But I passed trough this and the day after, felt pretty good.

1 week after this I tried again a very low dose of DMT, I kept taking Hapeh and weed during this week.
The dose was very low but the effect was also very bad, worst than the first time.
Same effect but worst, I felt a very painful tension in the back of my brain, my heart was beating very iregularly, also a lot of sweating, and this impression of being paralyzed, and I realy though I was going to die.
And after that I felt in very bad mood for several month.

Since then I quit everything, went back into sport and have a very healthy way of life.
Good eating, good sleep, meditation and my good mood came back to normal after sometime.

So do you think I experienced serotonine toxicity, maybe the hapeh I was using at high dose intereact badly with DMT, or maybe the tobacco made my blood pressure rise a lot and the mix with DMT was bad also...

I tried to think at all the possibilties about what happened to me, and think it's probably a mix of several factor that causes that very bad effet on me, but I still haven't a clear vew on this.

Now one year after this I'm feeling ready to go back into DMT again. I have a lot of fear to experience the same bad effect again, so I'm not sur I will do it.

So if someone have an advice or an analysis on what happened to me, or can bring me some info on this it would be great.

Thank you if I you had the courage to read all this,
perhaps I'm now ovethinking about this and everything will be fine, but just thinking about experiencing this high blood pressure in my body and my brain make me think twice about taking DMT again.

 

[King Tryptamine]

Welcome to the forum Tonyho,

First of all I think you did the right thing by stopping the use of these drugs when the signs of potentially serious side effects occurred, rather than continuing and doing further damage.

I think you're right in suggesting that there were probably over several factors leading to these side effects experienced. The way I see it rapé can be quite a toxic mixture of plants containing nicotine, cocaine, atropine and scopalamine whereby the ingredients used are highly variable. All these drugs in their own right can put quite an enormous stress on the cardiovascular system which can put you at risk of things like heart attacks, arrhythmias, high blood pressure and sudden cardiac death. These effects only compound with chronic use such as what you were doing.

DMT although generally recognized as safe like with most classical psychedelics (e.g. LSD, psilocybin and mescaline) still cause elevated blood pressure and tachycardia. To be taking these drugs along side rapé concoctions only amplifies the effects of one or the other.

I doubt there was any serious serotonin toxicity from the DMT alone since its a safe compound to use with MAOI's like harmine and harmaline but I don't think its impossible, just unlikely. I believe most of the side effects you encountered are due to the chronic use of rapé and the DMT might have compounded like I mentioned in the two paragraphs above.

I'd recommend staying away from all these drugs for some time and talk about all the problems you just mentioned here with a doctor. Make sure you tell him / her about all the drugs you were using and the side effects you encountered so you can have a proper checkup done to make sure you're all fine because some of the symptoms you described above do seem very worrying. Best of luck.

 

[Tonyho]

Welcome to the forum Tonyho,

First of all I think you did the right thing by stopping the use of these drugs when the signs of potentially serious side effects occurred, rather than continuing and doing further damage.

I think you're right in suggesting that there were probably over several factors leading to these side effects experienced. The way I see it rapé can be quite a toxic mixture of plants containing nicotine, cocaine, atropine and scopalamine whereby the ingredients used are highly variable. All these drugs in their own right can put quite an enormous stress on the cardiovascular system which can put you at risk of things like heart attacks, arrhythmias, high blood pressure and sudden cardiac death. These effects only compound with chronic use such as what you were doing.

DMT although generally recognized as safe like with most classical psychedelics (e.g. LSD, psilocybin and mescaline) still cause elevated blood pressure and tachycardia. To be taking these drugs along side rapé concoctions only amplifies the effects of one or the other.

I doubt there was any serious serotonin toxicity from the DMT alone since its a safe compound to use with MAOI's like harmine and harmaline but I don't think its impossible, just unlikely. I believe most of the side effects you encountered are due to the chronic use of rapé and the DMT might have compounded like I mentioned in the two paragraphs above.

I'd recommend staying away from all these drugs for some time and talk about all the problems you just mentioned here with a doctor. Make sure you tell him / her about all the drugs you were using and the side effects you encountered so you can have a proper checkup done to make sure you're all fine because some of the symptoms you described above do seem very worrying. Best of luck.

thanks for your answer King Tryptamine,
I did see a doctor one week after the second accident and did several test, like ECG, blood pressure monitoring and complete blood analysis.
Everything was very fine except a slightly high blood pressure which came back to normal one month after I quit everything.

I will probably do DMT again in several month, but will quit Rapé for good, or maybe will choose my provider with more wisdom next time. I remember that this Rapé effect was very very strong compare to those I used to take, and was wondering wether they had mix it with cocaine or something else creating craving because I felt very addicted to it.

Anyway I will now be very precout about all the drug I ingest.

 

[Voidmatrix]

I'll second what KT stated.

I also don't think it was the DMT relative to serotonin toxicity. While it is serotonergic acting on the serotonin receptors and system, DMT doesn't actually cause an increase in serotonin production.

Did you have your healthy habits during the time these issues initially manifested.

Also, for most people, DMT precipitates fear, and it could be that your mind is picking a target to attach the fear to. Start low and work your way up when you choose to journey again.

One love

 

[Tonyho]

I'll second what KT stated.

I also don't think it was the DMT relative to serotonin toxicity. While it is serotonergic acting on the serotonin receptors and system, DMT doesn't actually cause an increase in serotonin production.

Did you have your healthy habits during the time these issues initially manifested.

Also, for most people, DMT precipitates fear, and it could be that your mind is picking a target to attach the fear to. Start low and work your way up when you choose to journey again.

One love

Thanks for your answer Voidmatrix

My habits at these time were not that good, due to the exess of Rapé I was sleeping a very small amount of hours per night because I wasn't able to sleep early, probably because of the high blood pressure and I was smoking way to much cigarets.

And you also probably right to say that DMT precipitates fear, so having a physical issue while you are tripping on DMT will make it worse.
The fear is fadind now that's why I'm thinking about going back into DMT.
I will probably start to smoke a small amount of changa in several weeks, see how it goes, and I hope I will be able to vape it as I use to before this accident.

I'm also wondering asking my doctor to give me a brain MRI prescription to see if everything's fine, but concidering those accidents arrived 8 month later and nothing bad came and that I'm felling prefectly well, it's probably not necessary
I guess if I had a brain injury or blood leaking in my brain, something would have happened earlier.
I'm probably overthinking this issue...

DMT brought me so much peace of mind and a different point of view on everything that it would be a shame not to be able to smoke some again.
I have so much respect for this molecule.

 

[Voidmatrix]

And you also probably right to say that DMT precipitates fear, so having a physical issue while you are tripping on DMT will make it worse.
The fear is fadind now that's why I'm thinking about going back into DMT.
I will probably start to smoke a small amount of changa in several weeks, see how it goes, and I hope I will be able to vape it as I use to before this accident.

I've been interacting with DMT for years, pretty regularly and have built a very healthy, beneficial, and reciprocal relationship with the molecule, yet am fearful each and everytime (sometimes more so than others). For me it's an exercise in will power, addressing poor thought patterns and habits, and becoming indifferent to my own anxiety and fear.

One love

 

[PolarisZ]

From what I've seen online, getting headaches and migraines on DMT isn't terribly uncommon.

I recall seeing a study that showed people who suffer migraines had higher variance in serotonin related genes, and since psyches bind with serotonin receptors, them affecting headaches makes sense.

Plenty of horrible headaches like cluster and severe migraines are completely harmless, but others can be the sign of something bad. For something like DMT, where the trip is so short, even a harmless brief headache is enough to ruin the experience. Add in psyches ability to exaggerate your feelings and it gets worse. So I'd agree to stay away for a while, and if you do come back, to start low.

 

[Voidmatrix]

From what I've seen online, getting headaches and migraines on DMT isn't terribly uncommon.

I recall seeing a study that showed people who suffer migraines had higher variance in serotonin related genes, and since psyches bind with serotonin receptors, them affecting headaches makes sense.

Plenty of horrible headaches like cluster and severe migraines are completely harmless, but others can be the sign of something bad. For something like DMT, where the trip is so short, even a harmless brief headache is enough to ruin the experience. Add in psyches ability to exaggerate your feelings and it gets worse. So I'd agree to stay away for a while, and if you do come back, to start low.

Thanks for sharing this. Anecdotally, it explains a lot, because I used to get migraines and have always gotten intermittent headaches with mushrooms and occasional headaches with DMT/changa.

One love

 

[PolarisZ]

For me, psyches and headaches feel all over the place. My last DMT trip, at lower dosage, gave me a headache that was trip ruining, though this was in a month that has been full of migraines for me.

Shrooms have been very good at stopping headaches, to the point where when the headache returns, I know the trip is over. I just realized that it seems to follow the same course as anxiety. If I start a trip when I have a headache, the headache sticks around during the rise, for the portion where I normally feel the initial anxiety. But when the anxiety goes away, so does the headache.

LSD eventually started giving me migraines, to the point where it ruined it for me. Its a migraine that gives me pain over my left eye, and for some reason gives me the sensation that that pain is blotting out the experience.

 

[PolarisZ]

My last trip on Aya made me think of this thread, so I thought I'd share the experience.

PRE-CONDITIONS
(mind)Set: Calm
(physical condition) Set: Previous month had plenty of migraines and asthma flairups
Setting (location): my bedroom floor
time of day: A little afternoon
recent drug use: none
last meal: empty stomache

PARTICIPANT
Gender: m
body weight: 145 lbs
known sensitivities:


BIOASSAY
Substance(s): Ayauasca
Dose(s): 4g root bark
Method of administration: smoothie



REPORT

As I usually do, shortly after taking my dose of Aya, I attempted meditation to help calm the mind until I felt ready to start the trip "proper"

The visuals slowly built up, as is normally the case, until I felt ready to transition to music. It was at this time that I realized the "Watch Later" list I had setup on Youtube wasn't quite setup correctly. The calm instead became one of mild annoyance, as I fiddled with youtubes interface and tried to rebuild the list, followed by a series of irl tasks to try and make sure everything around me was just right. This in total was only about five minutes, and soon was able to sit down, put on my headphones and music, and let the Aya take me.

But the visuals were different now. In front of me I began to see hideous, deformed faces, almost a wall of them in front of me, even felt a bit demonic. But they weren't moving, it was just a still wall that seemed to be between me and the normal Aya visuals. I wasn't afraid, in fact I was still quite calm, and treated it as something to observe. But I was feeling a migraine coming on, and was beginning to wonder if I was gonna be able to get back the typical Aya experience.

The first song ended, and I decided to return to meditation, in the hopes of clearing my mind as I had done originally. It seemed to work, the visuals slowly returned, but the migraine lingered. I moved back to music, with present but still limited visuals. The lyrics of the song kept repeating, "take a look, take a look, take a look" which almost felt like a sign to me, to return to meditation.

So I did just that, I turned off the music, and just sat on the floor, and cleared my mind. But the migraine was strengthening, and the visuals further diminishing, leaving me worried that the entire trip would be a wash. Then something came over me, I decided I would stand my ground against the migraine.

The migraine pain was hovering over my left eye, but also spread through the front of my head. I calmly put my focus on my eye, and the pain vanished from that area, but still existed elsewhere. When I stopped focusing the pain would return, and when I started again, it would it would recede.

Over time I gave into the urge to slouch, but a part of me told me to sit up straight with good posture, so I did. My attention moved to my asthma symptoms that had been flaring up throughout this month. As I moved my attention to my chest and lungs, the same thing would happen, as I focused the symptoms would subside, as I stopped they would return. As all this was happening, my hands were rested on my legs, but in my mind, it felt like I was mimicking some Buddhist and Hindu art of one hand being held up, palm out. Plus, I had the sense of several arms extended outwards.

At this point I was getting tired of focusing, but something inside of me said, "focusing may be tiring, but so are migraines" With time my legs were starting to get stiff from all the sitting still, so I opened my eyes and moved around a bit. I felt like stretching and without really thinking about it, I started doing a series of stretches.

 

[ricardo420]

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