Magic Mushroom trip when I was younger

Non-Pharmacological Treatment Diet
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*** This turns into a bit of a ramble… apologies for that but I like to get my thoughts down for future reference :slight_smile: ***

This will sound quote odd to some, but I attribute this event to many of my psychological and anxiety related issues I have even today.

When I was 18 I went on a trip to Amsterdam with a group of school friends to celebrate finishing school. I thought I would be the man and try a large dose of fairly strong mushrooms for my first try. The night started well, I was enjoying all the lights and sights of the crazy Amsterdam streets. We started seeing things like jellyfish in the waterways (which I am pretty sure now were plastic bags) and there was also a 6 legged cat sitting in a window… :roll:

After an hour my vision went blurry, very typical of the Aura i normally get before a migraine and at that point I started to panic. I couldn’t see anything and asked my friends to take me back to the hotel. I lay on the hotel bed feeling extremely nauseous, vision completely gone and I had intense feelings of falling through the bed and suddenly hitting the bed making me jolt each time it happened. At one point I was pretty sure I was going to end up in A&E… it was a horrific experience…

From what I understand now I had 2 typical migraine symptoms during that trip… the blurred vision and the falling feeling.

For about 1 1/2 years after that I didn’t feel quite right. I spent many many months cooped up in my bedroom, scared to go outside, scared to face any social gatherings, pretty much locking myself away. My parents were extremely worried at the time and didn’t know what I was going to do in life. My main symptoms were feeling like things were further away or closer than they seemed. I felt extremely anxious and the whole world just didn’t look like the same place it was before. Reading up on my medical records at the time, doctors attributed the symptoms to Migraine and were very reluctant to prescribe any type of SSRI at the time, which I was really craving.

After around 6 months of locking myself away my dad finally started pushing me to get on with life. I never thought I could do it, but he really pushed and I eventually got a job and over time the feelings got lesser and lesser.

Its obvious that I have the migraine gene and am going to have these weird episodes throughout my life. I just hope this dizzy one doesn’t last too much longer.

I wonder if my life would have been different though, if it wasn’t for that bad trip on mushrooms. I wonder if it somehow rewired my already fragile migraine brain to be more susceptible to any time of migraine affliction.

I also wonder if this is another episode that will last as long as I feel uncomfortable in my current surroundings and will only dissipate once I feel secure in myself again. I read a book by a famous sports psychologist (who worked with the GB olympics team) Dr Steve Peters, author of the “the chimp paradox”. He basically says that we are all very similar to our earlier primate selves (If you are a Darwinian :wink: , sorry for those believers of intelligent design) and we all have an inner chimp. This chimp needs the following things to feel whole:

• structure, familiarity, reassurance, however if there is a strong troop it becomes confident, adventurous, inquisitive and less concerned about the environment
• If you live in an unfriendly part of the jungle then the chimp may become anxious, unhappy and uneasy.
• Realising that your lifestyle is not matching your chimps needs, and doing something about it, is one of the keys to being at peace witty yourself
• Emotions need time out and repair time. Emotional rest is important.
• The human need social stimulation and intellectual challenges to a greater extent than the chimp
• Define purpose for each day – important for the human

Currently I am living in a part of the jungle that is not familiar and I do not have a strong troop around me, I am sure this contributes to MAV. It makes sense that 3 years of having a secure strong troop around me I felt well the whole time and then suddenly it hits when I dont have that.

Long read, but just wanted to get it down, hope I haven’t bored you to much :slight_smile:

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Richy, I have read an article in The Guardian about people who use magic mushrooms to treat migraine would you believe!

I think it’s possible that just as meds can treat migraine they can also trigger it as well. Many people seem to wonder if certain meds they have taken have triggered their VM, whether it be the contraceptive pill, antidepressants, painkiller rebound. I guess all of us here have the migraine gene to start with but we all wonder what was the trigger that pushed us into chronic migraine sufferers or what caused our ‘big bang’. Try not beat yourself up thinking what if I hadn’t done this or that etc. I have been through that myself but none of us can predict the future, we can’t weigh up all the potential consequences of everything we do and even if you had not taken the mgaic mushrooms, chances are your migraine symptoms would have been triggered in another way.

Sometimes I have found it helps me to think that everything happens for a reason. That helps me to feel that this was my intended path in life and despite all the bad things about it, maybe there are other things to come from it too. I’m not really a religious person but seeing it that way, like part of some overall masterplan for my life, does help me to deal with it a bit mentally x

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I have never taken any drugs, never smoked and never been drunk (boring!) but i still have MAV.
Don’t beat yourself up and keep trying to find the reason, migraine probably just passed down in your family unfortunately.

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How many people with the migraine gene drink or do drugs and never get MAV? I think you would have been triggered some way or another- don’t blame yourself for the mushrooms. I am kind of amazed though that your drs. early on recognized that your symptoms were migraine related (most drs would say you were nuts)- but why wouldn’t they prescribe you any meds at all??? I don’t get that part. Was this a neuro who diagnosed you?

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Screw “because” and “if only.”

You had a miserable experience back then. Sure enough.

What we’re dealing with is often not easy; other times it’s quite manageable. Focus on the more miserable parts of either history or present and we end up worse. I’m not saying ignore the bad. But having shared this piece, i hope you take the opportunity to say okay, enough monkeying around, and go after those bits that give you the feeling of support, here and at home.

So there!

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Having had more than a little experience with drugs…they were a lot of fun for years, but then the experience was no longer fun and the MAV symptoms afterward were not worth it…they may be the trigger, but I don’t think the cause.

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Richy,

There’s not much I haven’t tried. I was rock solid in those days and never had anything remotely resembling migraine despite the ermmm … experimentation. These days just standing in a loud pub finishes me off before I even have a drink. :lol:

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— Begin quote from “david shapiro”

Screw “because” and “if only.”

You had a miserable experience back then. Sure enough.

What we’re dealing with is often not easy; other times it’s quite manageable. Focus on the more miserable parts of either history or present and we end up worse. I’m not saying ignore the bad. But having shared this piece, i hope you take the opportunity to say okay, enough monkeying around, and go after those bits that give you the feeling of support, here and at home.

So there!

— End quote

Ah, David. I love your posts. Sometimes you are like a glorious mix of Tony Robbins and Yoda :smiley:

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@Jem - good points. They probably would have kicked off anyway but it all seems a bit coincidental my migraine symptoms started after the drug use. I know I would have done the things I have done anyway but its so easy to question things when you feel like this.

@Dee - maybe if you drink and take drugs that could be your cure? :smiley:

@Sarah - I am also amazed that they linked it to migraine. The Neuro’s letter says “the perceptual difficulties and perceived heightened sounds in busy situations are akin to migraine”. At the time I couldn’t comfortable sit in a room full of people. The noise of everyone chattering overwhelmed me so much I would nearly pass out. They wouldn’t prescribe meds because they felt I could overcome it naturally, and I did.

@David - thankyou - great input :slight_smile:

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1 month before I got hit with the big bang, I had a functional MRI as part of a study into Epilepsy. (I was the ‘normal’ participant). Well, I lasted 15mins. I had a funny turn and they couldn’t carry on.

I still think, if I hadn’t have had that scan, I wouldn’t have got hit with this.

But I think you can torture yourself with links that could easily have been coincidences.

At the end of the day, you can’t go back and re write history so we just have to continue as much as it is annoying.

I wonder if anxiety surrounded that mushroom trip after and never really left you… Migraine feeds on anxiety as we know. It sounds bloody horrific.

Love the chimp analergy. Makes a lot of sense.

And I do love picking people’s spots and scabs like monkeys do.

Oh no, am I sharing too much?

Oh well :smiley:

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Hi

I had a very similar experience when I was 25. I was in India and thought I was having some pot in what they called a magic lassi but I now think it may have been laced with mushrooms. I had a horrid trip and a headache to end all heahaches. Ended up in hospital over there which was really scary. I think for many years I scared myslef that I had permanently damaged my brain chemistry as I started having constant anxiety/balance prolbems etc. I think that the experience was so bad that I may have had post traumatic stress from it? Having said that I had been a migraine (with aura) suffer since I was a teenager. I had also had two eposiodes which may have been small panic attacks prior to all this happening.

I too regret the day I had that drink as it changed my life forever. But the migraines were already a part of my life and I believe are what are really causing my symptoms. Just for your Info. there is a Dr called Dr Harold Levinson who has written a book called “Phobia Free”. He doesn’t speak about migraine but thinks that most anxiety/phobias are caused by a problem with the inner ear/balance mechansim. In this book there is a story by a young man who also had his problems triggered after smoking pot. It seems to be the reason why he developed anxiety issues but Dr Levinson says the drug made his unstable inner ear system very stressed and by fixing the problem with the inner ear he became well. There are numerous stroies and a web site. I found his book in a library. It may be the clue and reassurance that you are looking for? I wish I had the money to go and see him just in case he could help.

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What makes the magic mushroom magic? Is there any risk taking them? Apparently, psychotherapeutic narcotics could be expensive to produce and rather unpredictable. One study, however, has found that the normal narcotic in العاب شطرنج might be used to treat some psychological problems. The study found that religious participants that took psilocybin, the active narcotic in magic mushrooms, reported mystical experiences and better life satisfaction 14 months later.

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Found this old (2013!!!) thread via the search function, felt compelled to reanimate it.

Your mushroom story is uncannily familiar (I’d actually forgotten this detail when I wrote my introductory post). When I was 20 I went with friends to Amsterdam, and we took mushrooms in Vondelpark. The trip itself was fun but afterwards I got terrible head pains and pressure, and had to lie in the dark in the hotel room for a few hours, while my mates went out to get high. In the weeks after that trip I felt something had changed in my brain, mainly positively: music sounded slightly more nuanced and complex, I “noticed” the sky and cloud-formations in a way I’d never done before etc. All the usual stuff that hallucinogens can unlock. But also those head pains were unusual for me, since I had no history of migraine or serious headache.

I didn’t touch drugs for a month after that, then celebrated end of uni exams by smoking pot, doing other drugs etc. After just two weeks of that, “the monster” suddenly woke up! - severe dizziness, headache, head pressure, confusion, eye symptoms and everything else, and that was the start of five years of chronic suffering.

Like you, I wonder if mushrooms “rewired my already fragile migraine brain.” Though the symptoms flared up two months later, I intuitively feel that mushrooms played their part. They changed something in my brain, gave me a vulnerability.

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Victoria, my sweetie just told me that you have me spot on.