I microdose magic mushrooms for my mental health AMA

[BodyKeepingScore]

I have a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder and CPTSD (diagnosed approx 18 years ago). Following an especially bad depressive episode last year for which I was hospitalised involuntarily I struggled with recovery at home and after many years of being compliant with conventional medications and therapy I decided to try microdosing psilocybin in an effort to try and improve my mental health. I am not a medical professional but have been interested in mycology and psychedelic therapies for years and spent a long (desperate!) time researching before I decided to proceed. AMA!

Do you look like a steriotypical mushroom user? Young/raver/tie-dye/dreads/student/yoga teacher type?

So your GP and psychiatrist were on board with you microdosing? Did you get any pushback from them?

I would strongly advise caution when speaking to any medical professional about treatments that are not legal. Some regard themselves as moral guardians and will quite happily contact the DVLA on your behalf and you will find yourself having to pass a clean drugs test or lose your licence.

Obviously not telling your doctors heightens the risk of interactions or inappropriate treatments. But that's how the system works.

Apologies if this seems like a derail, but folk deserve to be fully informed around these things.

How much would it cost once set up? Like a monthly average spend to maintain?

I really agree with this. I'd love to try microdosing, but I have a well-documented history of alcoholism. I'm absolutely certain that any medical professional I consulted about microdosing would immediately "have concerns".

I'm so heartened to see that microdosing is making such a difference to so many though!

No, I look like a perfectly normal almost 40 year old woman 🤣 I don't imagine if you passed me on the street there'd be anything noteworthy in my appearance to suggest I take mushrooms.In my experience the stereotypical look isn't all that stereotypical ... I've seen people with all sorts of looks/professions/clothing styles who use mushrooms

About £50 to buy everything you need, maybe slightly less, as a one off and then no other costs. They just keep growing.

You wouldn't believe the people that grow and use their own cannabis.

Not OP but I look like a stereotypical middle class mum. You would never guess that I do drugs!

Occasionally I like to have edibles, and because it's legal where I live I consume them in the form of a pretty little cake made by a Michelin-starred chef. I share one with DH, same effect as a bottle of wine but no hangover.

I am too much of a wuss to try anything stronger.

There are plenty of long term side effects of antidepressants / anti anxiety drugs!

OnHerSolidFoundations
yes but they’re watched and managed, and things are changed, upped, decreased or just dropped according to what works and what doesn’t. It’s regulated basically. And this is long term, not just a short term thing

My experience with medications is that despite being regulated very few medical professionals were able to give concrete advice on the long term effects of taking any of them. Not one of them could give me any reassurance that my long term cognitive health wouldn't be impacted.

BodyKeepingScore
but they’ll be watching and see if there’s things that need to be changed. How does anyone know the long term use of a drug that’s illegal and how can side effects really be noted/ seen if a medical professional isn’t involved?

Mushrooms have been used safely for centuries. It's a common fallacy that something is only safe if it's being regulated or is legal (read as profitable for someone).

Most of the medications that are on the market now have been in existence for less than 50 years. There's absolutely no way to know what the long term safety is.

One medication I was previously happily prescribed by my psych as a mood stabiliser is now widely known to cause significant birth defects and is no longer prescribed to women unless they're already on birth control.

15 years ago when I was prescribed it and fell pregnant, this was not widely known and the birth control aspect has only come into force fairly recently. My son stood a very high chance of being profoundly disabled as a result of a supposedly safe and regulated medication. Yet no one told me the risks at the time, nor the thousands of other women who were on it. So I guess I lend less credence than some people to something being safer because it's legal or regulated.

@stayathomer also worth noting that mushrooms were only made illegal in the 1960s or thereabouts. Prior to that they'd been safely used all over the world and were a big part of religious and indigenous ceremonies

I once ate a load of magic mushrooms when I was about 17 and people I looked at turned into characatures and their clothes kept changing colour and lights shot from their fingers when I looked at them. Can this really be good for you?

How does anyone know the long term use of a drug that’s illegal

Mushrooms have been used safely for centuries.

I think like cannabis we are talking millennia. Probably when farming was developing - Neolithic probably.

also worth noting that mushrooms were only made illegal in the 1960s or thereabouts.

Actually it was nuLabour - early 2000s. For no reason whatsoever. It's not like there was a spate of anyone using them anyway, let alone any reports of harm.

I did my bit at the time to protest, because I know very well what it's like when governments pretend to worry about it's citizens and the power grabs it allows. Just look at the smoking situation.

It sounds like you were taking large enough doses to trip. Microdosing is nowhere near those doses and doesn't induce any of the same kind of hallucinations or trippy feelings. But to answer your questions, yes. It can be good for you and much of the science backs that up. It's being used to improve the quality of life in terminally ill cancer patients in America currently and has also shown benefits for a variety of mental health conditions and addictions. There are a lot of very credible studies out there on Google.

People don't bat an eyelid at someone drinking alcohol because it's legal. Despite the fact that alcohol is a toxin and essentially poisons us. Yet there's so much stigma attached to magic mushrooms or weed, both of which have many medicinal benefits when used correctly. As with all substances there will be people abusing them. But is that abuse worse than either nicotine or alcohol use?

You're entirely correct, my mistake. I assumed the UK would have jumped on the bandwagon around the same time America did.

For anyone interested in reading more I've attached a couple of interesting articles here

www.scientificamerican.com/article/restrictions-on-psilocybin-magic-mushrooms-are-easing-as-research-ramps-up/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8901083/

On a side note, have you heard of Stan Grof and holotropic breathwork? It's all related to the work that he started in the 1960s with therapy assisted LSD, mushrooms etc etc. He figured out a way to combine assisted therapeutic psychedelic sessions with sitters (who stayed "sober" to support the person taking the doses) with huge success at curing all sorts of mental health issues. Fascinating stuff.

When psychedelics were banned he moved onto the holotropic breathwork instead which is a less intensive breathing exercises way to access these out of body states and induce the healing.

Obviously as someone with bipolar disorder I'm not recommending you do any of this, but if you watch the documentary the Way of the Psychonaut on Amazon video it's all about his work and you might find it interesting as it relates mental health issues to unprocessed trauma from each individual's perinatal (birth) experiences. These experiences are relived via clinically supervised out of body experiences, psychedelic experiences and breathwork, and processed and released, to eventually cure the issues.

Fascinating. Just thought it might be of interest! They are currently retrialling lots of psychedelic drugs on low doses (microdosing) as well as assisted larger doese psychedelic therapy again at certain universities and trials are available to sign up to. Hopefully in due course the trials will lead to medical legalisation of these drugs if they find them helpful enough.

(Edit I just saw your last post, sorry I missed the article earlier, the later part of this post repeats essentially what you mention).

This sounds absolutely fascinating! I must look into this once I chase all my offspring to bed later! Thank you!

@BodyKeepingScore no worries, here is a link to the documentary (it's also on youtube etc I think for a fee)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Way-Psychonaut-Susan-Hess-Logeais/dp/B08K94VV83

But for my friend, the legal things just aren’t working and the medical profession has basically washed their hands of him. So he is in a hellish limbo of depression with no clear way of getting out.

@MagpiePi that's exactly the limbo I was left in. I was no longer suicidal but I had no motivation, my cognitive functioning was massively impaired, I was disengaged from life and from the people I love but because I was past the "can't get out of bed/wash etc stage they considered me cured and that was enough. It wasn't enough for me. I couldn't live like that.

Not a question but I work in clinical research and was involved in a psilocybin trial a few years ago. It seems to really help people who have had severe depression and standard antidepressants haven't worked. I'm glad more research is being done on psychedelics. Hopefully it will help people drop the stigma there is towards drugs.