[Help] Antipsychotic reaction?

[Wannabewizard]

I am trying to find info if antipsychotics and kratom are a bad mix?
Some sort of 'depot' injection.
I really don't think I need psych meds anymore but am cautious.
I have a Shaman willing to take a look at me but have to stop all psych meds first.
So keen to sensibly stop them soon as.

 

[Faria]

I really don't think I need psych meds anymore but am cautious.
I have a Shaman willing to take a look at me but have to stop all psych meds first.

Stopping psych meds is usually a bad idea. It's a much, much worse idea to get on them in the first place, but once you're on them, you're almost certainly going to stay on them. Withdrawals ("discontinuation syndrome") can cause side effects that range from flu-like symptoms to full psychotic meltdowns.

Most of the people I know who quit their meds went totally batshit crazy, took off their clothes and became violent toward strangers within a month. That's the majority. Some had shakes, other sickness type symptoms. Withdrawal period is anywhere from 9 months to 2 years. So rather than be a complete lunatic for two full years, most people end up back on some other drug.

If you try to taper your dosage, most of the meds have built-in features that makes tapering the dosage very difficult. Tapering your dosage might take several years, because if you go too fast with it, you will have the withdrawals and end up back on a higher dosage.

So maybe you never needed meds before, but once you start taking them, you probably do.

 

[FireBorn]

I am trying to find info if antipsychotics and kratom are a bad mix?
Some sort of 'depot' injection.
I really don't think I need psych meds anymore but am cautious.
I have a Shaman willing to take a look at me but have to stop all psych meds first.
So keen to sensibly stop them soon as.

If anyone on this site pretends to know, run! We aren't Drs. If you are prescribed antipsychotics, there is probably a medical reason for that. I am not saying Drs are always right. But they sure as hell know more than a stranger on the internet with zero context or backstory on your medical history. This isn't something to play around with. No offense, but you should really seek the guidance of your Dr and not strangers on the internet.

Outside of that, we can absolutely offer advice, knowledge, experience and guidance on MAGICK (maybe our favorite donuts and music as well) but thats it. even our most well intentioned opinions on your medical well being could be disasterous for your overall wellbeing.

Good luck.

 

[borbponderer]

Antipsychotics are heavy shit. If you are committed to withdrawing from them, take it slowly and cautiously. Obviously I don't know what's going on with you, or how you might react.

If they have you on a depot they are probably concerned about medication compliance. Not sure how you would work around that to be honest. People who work the in psych world tend to be masters of manipulation and control freakery.

 

[Morivelle Sabbatica]

I am trying to find info if antipsychotics and kratom are a bad mix?
Some sort of 'depot' injection.
I really don't think I need psych meds anymore but am cautious.
I have a Shaman willing to take a look at me but have to stop all psych meds first.
So keen to sensibly stop them soon as.

No side effects for me...when mixed.

 

[Tryp]

After the thread has been bumped...
@Morivelle, I'm glad that combining an antipsychotic with kratom hasn't caused any issues in your case. And thanks for sharing your experience. That said, it shouldnt be the bottomline for a thread like this.

Antipsychotics are strong drugs. Particularly the newer kinds are multimodal, which means they target multiple kinds of receptors in the body, not just dopamine.

Kratom, as it almost invariably happens with herbs, has a complex pharmacological profile. It is known as working in opioid pathways, but reality is not as clear cut. It contains dozens of alkaloids, most of which have not been studied by pharmacology, and there's evidence to suggest they may also target other receptors like norepinephrine or dopamine. This is without considering the fact that "kratom" does not even have a stable composition, as it highly depends on variety and form of preparation.

Due to these complexities, and other circumstantial factors, a question like "are antipsychotics and kratom a bad mix?" cannot be answered clearly. Not even by neurophysiologists. Interactions could be potentially dangerous, and the fact that someone, even several people, could report "I have mixed them with no side effects that I'm aware of" sadly does not answer the question either.

No combination of strong psychiatric medication and powerful psychoactive plants can be considered a safe mix - and as said above, this forum would not be the place to try to answer the question either.

 

[Morivelle Sabbatica]

Sorry,didnt mean to break any rules
I highly appreciate your post,its definitely more informative than mine I myslef had trouble finding more info on Kratom topic in the past.Personally I only have a tea with some kratom in it,it seems to boost my energy and it helps me with my backbone pain (and its radiations [pain]).So no heavy use here really and honestly i didnt even know its being used in shamanism
Thanks again for the truthful insight!

 

[Tryp]

Sorry,didnt mean to break any rules
I highly appreciate your post,its definitely more informative than mine I myslef had trouble finding more info on Kratom topic in the past.Personally I only have a tea with some kratom in it,it seems to boost my energy and it helps me with my backbone pain (and its radiations [pain]).So no heavy use here really and honestly i didnt even know its being used in shamanism
Thanks again for the truthful insight!

No worries, you did not break any rules at all

I also tried kratom a couple times years ago. I was lucky to not have any reason to resort to it other than just exploring it like other plants, and it is definitely a very interesting herb with some good applications.

Regardless it is always difficult and risky to relate psychoactive herbs to psychiatric drugs, particularly in broad categories like antipsychotics... and I've worked in harm reduction, so I just had to chime in. Glad it helped you in any case.

 

[Morivelle Sabbatica]

No worries, you did not break any rules at all

I also tried kratom a couple times years ago. I was lucky to not have any reason to resort to it other than just exploring it like other plants, and it is definitely a very interesting herb with some good applications.

Regardless it is always difficult and risky to relate psychoactive herbs to psychiatric drugs, particularly in broad categories like antipsychotics... and I've worked in harm reduction, so I just had to chime in. Glad it helped you in any case.

Honestly nowhere in the dutch online searches have i found an info that its psychoactive.No clue! :O Now i feel really stupid.It's important ENOUGH to know.
Out of curiosity - did you have any higher self revelations,or maybe higher being...related?What was your experience?I used it instead of coffee that I don't like ;D i had an idea that it was a better,natural form of energy booster,good it didnt boost anything else in the meantime maybe its because i drank it?like 1,5 tea spoon for a cup otherwise if the ammount of it was higher i was feeling sick on my stomach and dizzy untill the rest of the day,and definitely without any enlightenment...^^

 

[Tryp]

Honestly nowhere in the dutch online searches have i found an info that its psychoactive.No clue! :O Now i feel really stupid.It's important ENOUGH to know.
Out of curiosity - did you have any higher self revelations,or maybe higher being...related?What was your experience?I used it instead of coffee that I don't like ;D i had an idea that it was a better,natural form of energy booster,good it didnt boost anything else in the meantime maybe its because i drank it?like 1,5 tea spoon for a cup otherwise if the ammount of it was higher i was feeling sick on my stomach and dizzy untill the rest of the day,and definitely without any enlightenment...^^

With psychoactive I mean it has a clear effect in your psyche, in your consciousness. Not necessarily producing visions or a... psychedelic state of sorts. However, kratom can definitely take you to places.

What you describe makes sense. Opium itself, which works in similar pathways, can be energizing in low doses, and becomes progressively narcotic as you go higher. Opiate receptor agonists also tend to cause dizziness - which yes, can produce a stronger nausea in the stomach if it's a preparation you drink. But with kratom you can hardly do anything else.

The most interesting part of the experience for me was a change in the perception of time, while laying down there like a lizard partly to avoid nausea... but if I elaborate more we'll go wildly off topic, plus moderators might not appreciate experience reports related to opium-like drugs

 

[Digiquo]

The most interesting part of the experience for me was a change in the perception of time, while laying down there like a lizard partly to avoid nausea... but if I elaborate more we'll go wildly off topic, plus moderators might not appreciate experience reports related to opium-like drugs

It'd be off topic for this thread, but there are tons of similar threads for other drugs in the Astral/LucidDreaming/Psychedelics section of the forum.

 

[Morivelle Sabbatica]

With psychoactive I mean it has a clear effect in your psyche, in your consciousness. Not necessarily producing visions or a... psychedelic state of sorts. However, kratom can definitely take you to places.

What you describe makes sense. Opium itself, which works in similar pathways, can be energizing in low doses, and becomes progressively narcotic as you go higher. Opiate receptor agonists also tend to cause dizziness - which yes, can produce a stronger nausea in the stomach if it's a preparation you drink. But with kratom you can hardly do anything else.

The most interesting part of the experience for me was a change in the perception of time, while laying down there like a lizard partly to avoid nausea... but if I elaborate more we'll go wildly off topic, plus moderators might not appreciate experience reports related to opium-like drugs

Hahahahaha,now thhats a shame , I'm sure its a story worth hearing!!!

 

[keysandtorches]

I would avoid kratom whether by itself or mixed with anything else. The health effects can be devastating and sneak up on you when you least expect it. There have been instances of kratom causing psychosis as well.

 

[Tryp]

I would avoid kratom whether by itself or mixed with anything else. The health effects can be devastating and sneak up on you when you least expect it. There have been instances of kratom causing psychosis as well.

You are drawing from rare cases with heavy, long term use and addiction that, as it usually happens with psychoactive plants, become amplified over the internet and taken as a common case.
Saying that the health effects of kratom "can be devastating and sneak up on you when you least expect it" is like advising people to never have a couple glasses of wine because they are risking liver cancer, korsakov syndrome and delirium tremens.
It makes complete sense to advise against mixing kratom (or any plant drug, for that matter) with strong psychiatric medication, but what you wrote is plain fear-mongering that conflates casual use with extended addiction.

 

[keysandtorches]

You are drawing from rare cases with heavy, long term use and addiction that, as it usually happens with psychoactive plants, become amplified over the internet and taken as a common case.
Saying that the health effects of kratom "can be devastating and sneak up on you when you least expect it" is like advising people to never have a couple glasses of wine because they are risking liver cancer, korsakov syndrome and delirium tremens.
It makes complete sense to advise against mixing kratom (or any plant drug, for that matter) with strong psychiatric medication, but what you wrote is plain fear-mongering that conflates casual use with extended addiction.

Equating kratom and wine is understating the dangers of kratom. Kratom is barely regulated and often mislabelled, often contaminated with heavy metals or salmonella, and affects people in unpredictable ways. You can have seizures or psychosis or badly damage your kidneys, liver, heart, lungs, brain, or mental health and in some people this takes weeks of use, not years. Kratom’s effects and what makes it so deadly to certain people is poorly understood. Wine’s effects have been known or examined in countless cultures for thousands of years and if you buy some wine from a reputable brand you at least know it’s not full of lead or random drugs. Kratom is taking a big gamble for a dumb trend.

People shouldn’t drink alcohol either, but at least its effects are predictable, thoroughly studied, and well known.

 

[Tryp]

Equating kratom and wine is understating the dangers of kratom. Kratom is barely regulated and often mislabelled, often contaminated with heavy metals or salmonella, and affects people in unpredictable ways. You can have seizures or psychosis or badly damage your kidneys, liver, heart, lungs, brain, or mental health and in some people this takes weeks of use, not years. Kratom’s effects and what makes it so deadly to certain people is poorly understood. Wine’s effects have been known or examined in countless cultures for thousands of years and if you buy some wine from a reputable brand you at least know it’s not full of lead or random drugs. Kratom is taking a big gamble for a dumb trend.

People shouldn’t drink alcohol either, but at least its effects are predictable, thoroughly studied, and well known.

It makes little sense to keep discussing this for longer because clearly we're both going to stick to our opinion (and sources) and that is unlikely to be productive.

I do think that bringing up psychosis, salmonellosis or acute organ damage as likely outcomes of consuming kratom is way off, but well. Not asking you to reply to this again. I just want to leave here a couple points for whoever reads the thread.

- These episodes (meaning, psychotic outbreaks or contaminants) are rare and essentially related to the US, where alarm reports have been amplified by the FDA and other organizations -most especially because kratom is an opioid agonist, that has been used by people as an alternative to (or as a crutch to walk away from) pharmaceutical opiates. I will say it again: kratom has been one the plants more heavily demonized, particularly in North America, over the last couple decades. For reasons beyond the risks the plant may have in itself.

- The use of kratom in south-eastern Asia, which is relatively old, has many, many less problematic reports, and most of them are related to interactions with other substances, especially pharmaceutical drugs, or heavy use. And again, kratom is an opioid agonist and as such it carries risks with sustained use, like development of tolerance and dependence. Problems with casual use are very rare. Source: my own work for over a decade in harm reduction in Europe, and my own experience. Just to link a toxicity review,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

I would rather prefer that we don't blame a plant for circumstances derived of the black market, caused by precisely the same agents that then sustain and amplify all negative reports about it. But I will leave it here, years ago I ended up exhausted trying to bring nuance to alarmist information about plant drugs and I'm not walking down that road again.

 

[Ignotus]

I fully agree with @Tryp ’s response. I’d only add that calling kratom a "dumb trend" is especially strange when you don’t even distinguish plain kratom from the concentrated 7-OH products currently being sold at gas stations.

Those products are relatively new and absolutely deserve criticism but they are not the same as traditional kratom leaf or powder. Using them to portray kratom itself as some new dangerous trend is simply wrong. Kratom has been used in Southeast Asia for centuries and many people use it specifically to stay away from stronger opioids. Plain kratom is much harder to overdo for the very simple reason that it tastes fucking disgusting. If you want to keep increasing the dose you have to force down more and more grams of plant material and that becomes unpleasant very quickly. A tiny tablet containing 7-OH removes most of that barrier and makes high dosing and constant redosing far easier. That practical difference alone already makes plain leaf and powder considerably harder to misuse than concentrated 7-OH tablets.

Also using contaminated products to condemn kratom itself is like saying all water on Earth is poisonous because one lake has been polluted. The problem isn’t the water, but what ended up in it. The same applies here: contamination is an argument for proper testing and regulation, not against the plant itself.

And I don’t really get the wine comparison either. Alcohol isn’t safer because we’ve normalized its damage for thousands of years.

Kratom’s current is liminal, moving between stimulation and calm, endurance and release. Like every plant ally, it has both a gift and a shadow and respecting both is part of working with it consciously. Ignoring that shadow would be naive, but reducing the entire spirit of the plant to its shadow is just as naive. A plant woven into centuries of healing, ritual and ancestor veneration cannot be understood through toxicology and modern consumer culture alone.

But to come back to the Original Question: I’m not against shamanic work at all, but if “stop all your antipsychotics first” is the entry fee before they’ll even take a look at you, every alarm bell should be going off

 

[Tryp]

But to come back to the Original Question: I’m not against shamanic work at all, but if “stop all your antipsychotics first” is the entry fee before they’ll even take a look at you, every alarm bell should be going off

Thanks for bringing this back on topic.

What happens with most modern "shamans" (with my apologies to genuine practitioners for the quotes) is that they will take no liability whatsoever, not even a distant shadow of it. Which is understandable given the grey area they may operate in especially in western countries, not to mention the lawsuit culture in the US. But there is also an important matter to raise here.

Many people understand a "shaman" in our modern context as someone who doesn't only use, but will provide experiences with psychoactive substances, which has apparently become the main criterion for using the word, even before paying attention to context and ritual as more or less therapeutic agents. And this is largely mistaken.

If you go for instance to the Shipibo-konibo people in Perú (one of the most known and influential cultures in regards to the modern (re)discovery of ayahuasca, epitome of shamanic preparation) turns out that traditionally it is the curandero or shaman him or herself who imbibes, and then diagnoses, with the help of spirits and the teacher-communicator plant, the problem in the patient, who in many cases won't even drink the brew. There are traditions where the client may partake sometimes, but the tendency nowadays in shamans (with or without the quotes) to serve their stuff to clients is by no means the default way they all operate among native peoples.

Which is to say - of course we don't know details about OP's "shaman", but the alarm bell also goes off because apparently everything is about delivering the plant in question, and not about the "shaman" operating in order to decide how the client can be helped. Kratom may not quite fit the classic, visionary plant, but ancient traditional uses fit what I wrote above - a spiritual practitioner taking it in order to communicate with the ancestral world. Social and therapeutic uses of the plant are also traditional, but at first glance someone whose role is basically to serve the plant to a client should not even be called "shaman".

 

[Alpha123]

I am trying to find info if antipsychotics and kratom are a bad mix?
Some sort of 'depot' injection.
I really don't think I need psych meds anymore but am cautious.
I have a Shaman willing to take a look at me but have to stop all psych meds first.
So keen to sensibly stop them soon as.

You could check out goddess_athena51 on TikTok, she did a spell for me and it worked. Maybe she might be able to help too

 

[speculumphilosophi]

I specialied in schizophrenia (personal research) because it had an impact on my family, mother's side of the family. I only mention schizophrenia for the simple reason, it doesn't always manifest psychotic symptoms. The psychotic symptoms, however, can be strange physical sensations in the body, distortion of perception, strange smells, bitter taste, audible voices. From my experience psychotic symptoms can be controlled and the perspectives aren't necessarily totally gloomy. Actually I had a Spanish girlfriend years ago who clearly had psychotic symptoms - she was semi hospitalised for a period. I've had so many friends whose families were affected, I started to research myself. I think when you don't understand the strangeness of the experience, it becomes more alarming. When you understand other people have shared the same scenario, it helps. Some of those people were often highly creative or even gifted.