Due to my personal situation, I'm cautious with frequency of full dose trips in general.
Reading through recent research regarding induced neuro-plasticity and functional connectivity (in my understanding a part of the fast anti-depressant effect of especially DMT) and the threads on jesters, annoying entities
and trip quality changed I wonder (Q1) if the chance for such experiences may be related to summing-up of (underestimated) slowly decaying (*1) or even permanent (*2) effects?
*1 i.e. decaying but slowly, seems plausible because many report it helps to take some time off
*2 a) from integration work (e.g. more recent Axala, earlier: Grof, ...) one might conclude that failing in integration might manifest in long term side-effects of tripping
b) a more 'mechanistic view' could lead to the induced (and decaying) neuro-plasticity may induce long-term alterations in the 'signal processing'
I'm not trying to rate / talk down frequent use (see my story, I'm a frequent user also, however not of DMT). I'm just curious.
So could it be that the notion 'DMT it is safe', also in recent research, focused on the immediate effects (e.g. overdosing) is misleading?
(Q2) Is anybody aware of research in this regard, i.e., long term (side-) effects?
The only hint I found was some old studies on LSD in Passie's book
(Schizophrenic and autistic children have been treated with daily doses of 100-250µg [crazy shit, daily!] for up to 35 months without any obvious damage, Bender & Sankar 1968 [1]).
However this was focused on chromosome damage, and well before discovering neuroplasticity.
The long lasting effects might as well be rated positive:
Reading through recent research regarding induced neuro-plasticity and functional connectivity (in my understanding a part of the fast anti-depressant effect of especially DMT) and the threads on jesters, annoying entities
and trip quality changed I wonder (Q1) if the chance for such experiences may be related to summing-up of (underestimated) slowly decaying (*1) or even permanent (*2) effects?
*1 i.e. decaying but slowly, seems plausible because many report it helps to take some time off
*2 a) from integration work (e.g. more recent Axala, earlier: Grof, ...) one might conclude that failing in integration might manifest in long term side-effects of tripping
b) a more 'mechanistic view' could lead to the induced (and decaying) neuro-plasticity may induce long-term alterations in the 'signal processing'
I'm not trying to rate / talk down frequent use (see my story, I'm a frequent user also, however not of DMT). I'm just curious.
So could it be that the notion 'DMT it is safe', also in recent research, focused on the immediate effects (e.g. overdosing) is misleading?
(Q2) Is anybody aware of research in this regard, i.e., long term (side-) effects?
The only hint I found was some old studies on LSD in Passie's book
(Schizophrenic and autistic children have been treated with daily doses of 100-250µg [crazy shit, daily!] for up to 35 months without any obvious damage, Bender & Sankar 1968 [1]).
However this was focused on chromosome damage, and well before discovering neuroplasticity.
The long lasting effects might as well be rated positive:
- the alien hand thread indicates that this route might lead to a different type of experiences, and it is unclear if it leads to the bulls-eye (in case something like this exists), is just interesting or should be avoided
- from studies on meditation [2] it is known that the pineal gland undergoes measurable change
I would be garteful for any hints on Q1 and Q2
[1] Bender, Lauretta, and DV Siva Sankar. "Chromosome damage not found in leukocytes of children treated with LSD-25." Science 159.3816 (1968): 749-749.
[2] Plini, Emanuele RG, Michael C. Melnychuk, and Paul M. Dockree. "Meditation Experience is Associated with Increased Structural Integrity of the Pineal Gland and greater total Grey Matter maintenance." medRxiv (2024).
