Are psychedelics suitable for me?

Recently, psychedelic therapies have generated a stir around the media, with the near legalization of the first MDMA treatment for PTSD by Lykos Therapeutics and various other companies trying to legalize several compounds, esketamine being prescribed quite frequently as a nasal spray under the name Spravato, different companies selling their micro-dosing droplets of psilocybin and chocolate and DMT gummies!

This new way of seeing psychedelics as a business brought new eyes to the scene, some seeing this as a simple opportunity of business, and others who have studied these compounds and are willing to educate and help people.

With the popularization of people who want to sell their products, we can witness a massive backlash on social media of people glorifying compounds by saying that they are perfect and suitable for everyone, that everyone should try their psilocybin chocolate bar, or that everyone who’s currently facing an issue should try LSD.

But are psychedelics miracle drugs and suitable for everyone?

That’s the unfortunate news. Psychedelics may not be suitable for you. For someone who’s now entering the psychedelic realm or sees it as a potential alternative compound to escape the failure of prescription drugs, I’d advise you to study thoroughly and expect various outcomes.

If we see it from a business perspective, let’s say you own a coffee shop: you’d say, or you’d like to think that everyone enjoys coffee in the world and people would benefit from drinking coffee. So why not simply say that you have the best coffee from your country, and everyone living in your city should go to your coffee shop and get themselves a cup of coffee that will help them wake up, be more productive, improve ADHD-related symptoms, and help you to reduce inflammation, help with headaches, and goes great as a breakfast brew, so why not company it with a bagel and a journal?

Even if every statement depicted above has factual scientific evidence, what would happen if someone had a hyper sensibility to caffeine, a heart condition, sleep disorders, was pregnant or breastfeeding, someone who is prone to panic attacks, or has severe anxiety, or even a kid, hears these claims, stops by your coffee shop, and asks for a cup of this miracle brew you’ve been speaking about?

In certain situations, you might be able to evaluate the situation and maybe decide not to sell the cup of coffee to a child, someone pregnant, or who is breastfeeding. Or you do decide to sell it for your profit. However, there are certain situations, such as someone with sleep disorders, heart conditions, et cetera, which you cannot predict by just looking at someone.

Now, serving a cup of coffee to someone in these situations may end up causing a load of health issues for your customers by simply selling them a cup of coffee meant to benefit and help others.

Putting ourselves away from this comparison, the same is currently happening in the psychedelic world. We have thousands of new companies and independent sellers making their advertising over social media, sharing their products, telegram and discord links, and trying to make a living selling this miracle product that will help you treat anxiety, PTSD, and depression and can help you figure out who you are spiritually, and guess what, sometimes you only need one dosage!

Of course, everyone who’s currently in this mental space and has been on medication for years and years will want this mystical herb, fungi, or synthetic molecule that will cure them from fighting depression over decades or fight their night traumas caused by PTSD, or even finally meet their purpose in life while being guided by Ganesha.

And even if we are against the general concept of psychedelics fed to us by the general media, these compounds, unfortunately, have their fate sealed for disgrace if this reckless, uninformed, and sale-induced behavior continues.

Just like when you go to a pharmacy to get a prescribed medication, the pharmacy assistant or the pharmacist will often meet you with a couple of questions to make sure your doctor didn’t miss any crucial data when prescribing you the medication or even if you are compatible with the medication.

Hence, you get asked, are you on any other medications?

Do you have any preexisting pathology?

Do you have any heart condition?

Have you ever taken this medication? And, do you understand how to take this medication?

In between many others.

Sometimes, we aren’t aware if we have some of these conditions, resistance, or hyper-sensibility with a medically prescribed compound. Even being the most careful sometimes is not enough.

The same happens with psychedelics.

By reading this, you might be asking yourself, how do I even know if I have a hyper sensibility to a psychedelic?

Well, you can know this via two answers.

The most common being trial and error, for example, having a bad experience in the past.

The second part of the answer would be studies made on the psychological/personality profiles of various people who have consumed psychedelics.

According to brain imaging studies, sensory processing sensitivity (SPS)* is related to differences in brain activity when processing information. Highly Sensitive Persons (HPS) scores are associated with heightened activation of brain regions involved in empathy, awareness, and action planning. There is also evidence that high SPS is associated with genes that affect the activity of neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine , and norepinephrine.

* SPS is not a disorder. However, it increases an individual’s risk of experiencing stress, being easily overwhelmed, sleep problems, depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses. Individuals with SPS respond more strongly to both negative and positive stimuli.

Another personality trait that predicts sensitivity to psychedelics is individuals who become absorbed in mental imagery, particularly fantasy. You can measure these traits using the Tellegen Absorption Scale, which includes nine subscales:

Responsiveness to engaging stimuli
Responsiveness to inductive stimuli
Imagistic thought
Ability to summon vivid and suggestive images
Cross-modal experiences (ex: synesthesia)
Absorption in thoughts and imaginings
Vivid memories of the past
Episodes of expanded awareness
Altered states of consciousness

And unfortunately, this is what we have for now.

In the future, with the legalization of various compounds, there is a chance that we have a version of the Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) test, which is both done clinically and epidemiologically.

There are two types of reactions.

Type A reactions are common and predictable reactions that are predominantly dependent on the dose of the drug. These reactions are based on the pharmacological properties of the compound and are often preventable or reversible.

Type B adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are mainly immunologically mediated. Recently, many drug-hypersensitivity reactions have been linked to genetic variability within the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC).

How these tests are done:

Cutaneous testing usually uses a combination of both skin prick testing (SPT) and intradermal testing (IDT) using dilutions of the drug. Generally, SPT is performed first, as this carries a low risk of adverse reaction and, if needed, then followed by IDT, which carries a slightly higher risk of adverse reactions.

Hyper sensibility tests are around $500 to $1,500, depending on your State and country.

The fact that we only have personality profiles as data in regards to whether someone is hyper-sensible to a psychedelic or not makes trial and error the most prevalent method among psychonauts and therapeutics.

However, even if this sounds simple, there is one quintessential step that we must clear up. As mentioned previously, allergies to certain compounds can happen, and it’s a reaction that we simply cannot predict. We can control it in a clinical space with the right tools, which isn’t the case in most situations, especially if you’ve just bought a psilocybin chocolate bar from an Instagram seller. For this reason, our advice is to take Paracelsus’s advice and follow the same steps as Alexander Shulgin when experimenting with over 230 compounds. Take the smallest amount of the compound or product and scale it up. Taking the psilocybin chocolate as an example, if the box says to take one square of chocolate, bite off the corner, wait for approximately 1 to 3 hours, check how you are feeling, scale it up to a quarter of the square the next day, and keep augmenting up to one square until you find your dosage. If we are talking about a synthetic version of a compound, for example, MDMA, the best option is always to start with a micro dose (under 30mg) and scale it up gradually to a common dose (75 mg).

Note that when searching for dosing in psychedelics, what you see on the internet is typically a number based on one or various experiences of people who dosed with the compound. However, this number can be very interchangeable and subjective. Plenty of people have followed the exact dosages found online and later on found the experience to be too intense.

The opposite can also happen. You may find that the common dose on a website might not work for you, and you’d need to scale it up until you find the sweet spot.

(Learn more about harm-reduction and compound testing here!)

Going back to our miracle brew that only takes one dosage.

In some cases, one use of psychedelics has been enough to treat mental illnesses such as anxiety, PTSD, or depression, but I’m sorry to break it down to you. It’s unlikely to happen.

Psychedelics alone are solemnly a tool for healing. The very own healing comes within yourself (a bit of cliché, I know), but that’s what you are paying for when entering psychedelic therapy, for example.

You know that these compounds are indeed cheap, so why are you paying thousands of dollars to eat a small capsule containing powder psilocybin that you could probably make using dried Psilocybe mushrooms for 20$ in a corner of a street?

Even if it seems like a possibility, the reality is that you are paying for the integration, medical attention, and therapy done in the background, which is what gives psychedelics their healing power, the guidance into finding the roots of the problem and understanding how to deal with it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it is also possible for someone who knows themselves or understands various tools used in psychology to achieve the same results by themselves. However, there’s a risk.

When taking psychedelics to treat, let’s say, PTSD or depression, we have no control over what sort of visuals or mental place we will be in. Hence, it’s hard to control ourselves to the point of understanding that this is merely a hallucination, often leading to people augmenting their trauma or entering frantic psychotic modes that can lead to more serious mental illnesses.

(Learn more about psychedelic therapy here!)

So, how will I know if psychedelics are suitable for me? Should I consider psychedelic therapy?

The use of psychedelics is a very subjective topic with variants that are still unknown to science. However, there are certain situations in which I would advise avoiding taking these compounds or taking them very carefully, preferably in a clinical setting while being supervised by health professionals. Those situations would be:

- If you are uneducated about these compounds- One of the keys to psychedelics is to be educated about their effects and what to expect. Otherwise, the experience can become overwhelming, and the effects can be more unexpected than positive. We advise a thorough reading about various experiences and clinical data, connecting with people, and being open-minded during your experience. Remember that not every experience is the same. Your experience may vary from those you’ve read, heard, or previous experiences.

- If you have certain Pre-existing Mental Health Conditions- Despite sounding contradictory, individuals currently suffering from mental illnesses or who have previously experienced psychotic episodes are at risk of having another psychotic or manic episode, which can lead to increased trauma.

- If you are pregnant or breastfeeding- Currently, there is still insufficient research on how psychedelics may impact pregnant women and their unborn fetuses. It’s unclear whether these substances are safe for pregnant individuals at any dosage. However, it’s important to note that certain psychedelics, such as psilocybin, have been studied for their potential in treating postpartum depression, and ketamine has been successfully used to treat depression and anxiety after childbirth.

- If you are taking medications/other substances such as SSRIs, MAOIs, Alcohol, or any other medication/drug that can interact pharmacologically with psychedelics- When taking compounds that interact pharmacologically with psychedelics, it can increase the potency of these compounds, in the case of taking MAOIs. When taking SSRIs, for example, it may cause serotonin toxicity. Therefore, we suggest consulting a doctor to check if there is an interaction between the medication you are taking and psychedelics before you engage in psychedelic therapy.

- Immunocompromised individuals- Besides the effects on the mind, psychedelics also have physiological side effects like increased blood pressure, nausea, and vomiting. If you have pre-existing conditions such as cardiovascular diseases or are immunocompromised, these effects may be concerning or life-threatening to a degree.

- Individuals Experiencing Substance Abuse- Another contradictory take, psychedelics such as Psilocybin and Ibogaine have been shown to increase BDNF signaling (Brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which appears to be involved in multiple facets of addiction. However, there is always a chance for compounds such as the dissociative ketamine or the methamphetamine compound MDMA (3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) to be prone to misuse and cause addiction. (Read more about drug classes and their interactions here!

- People under 25– Considering our brain is still in development and maturing until the mid-to-late 20s, some neuroscientists believe that consuming psychedelics before the full development of the brain may cause more risk of developing mental illnesses linked to our genes, such as schizophrenia. It is impossible to know whether this information is accurate or simply a belief. However, we would stick to the information of at least not dosing children with psychedelics until scientific evidence proves something profitable. Even if, in some cultures, such as a few tribes in the Amazon Rainforest and the Bwiti tribes, giving Ayahuasca and Iboga to children is acceptable and considered a rite of passage.

We hope this article has helped you figure out whether psychedelics are the right tool for you and to bring you awareness of the importance of education in the field. As well as letting you know that plenty of the data you will see on social media claiming that these are miracle compounds that will instantly heal you are solemnly marketing tools made to increase the sales of a compound or personal profit.

Stay safe, do your research!

Are psychedelics suitable for me?

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