I wanted to tell everyone about my tests with psychoactive plants to treat my manic depression.

A background on my depression, I have been depressed since I was about seven years old. From a young age I was cursed with what Fyodor Dostoevsky calls "excessive consciousness". Basically my mind is constantly racing with negative thoughts, even in the best situations I always think of worst situation and every possible case scenario. I often fall in a rut for no particular reason, even when things are the best.

The first thing I experimented with was Cannabis. Weed made me feel good, and for a while, I told myself that I felt fine, because I felt good from the dank. Actually, I have found that dank can often make me MORE depressed.

The next I tried was magic mushrooms. They did not seem to help with the depression, except they made my mind slow down a bit for the day after. I stopped experimenting with these because my stomach can no longer take them, even when made into tea.

Then came various herbs, Kava Kava, motherwort, lavender, hops, Passionflower. Kava Kava, did not seem to work at all, only made me sedated. Motherswort calmed me, but no help for depression. Lavender helped a lot, but it makes estrogen levels go wack so I abandoned that one. Passionflower did not really help at all, although a few of my friends said that they liked it for mood.

Next came Ayahuasca. So I find that aya, (typically I make it with rue and mimosa), puts me in a good mood for about 3 days after use. Unfortunately, the strength of anti-depressant effects varies from each time I drink. I also find that I have more mood swings after Aya, even though that my general mood seems to be better.

LSD, definitively ineffective. LSD helped me come to terms with a lot of things about myself, and how I think, but it does not help my depression.

Now I would like to talk about Salvia Divinorum. The extract does not help me with depression at all. At first, trying the extract, salvia worsened my depression. It made me feel like all the happiness in the world was gone.

Then I tried salvia leaf. Salvia leaf is a miracle to me. I would prob be dead by now if I did not find it. It literally brought me out of a very, very dark time.

One bowl of leaf, is enough to stabilize my mood for the whole day. It also makes my body feel very good. Strangely, the extract does not elevate my mood, So I have reason to believe that other active constituents in the leaf are causing these effects.

I hope this will help some of you.

Before someone gets mad about your misuse of the term aya, I'll tell you that ayahuasca specifically refers to B. Caapi. Admixture plants that contain DMT (or MEO/etc) are just that - admixtures.

Anyways, sorry that things haven't worked out for you yet. Just remember that these things are TOOLS and they are not the solution by themselves. They tend to promote introspection + reflection in key areas for some people. My advice would be to focus on this aspect rather than just the afterglow/literal effect specifically.

Please update us when you can about your situation. You're lucky to be here at the nexus where people actually care =)

So now you are saying that Salvia divinorum (plain leaf) is helping to calm your depression ? This is interesting, in fact, you probably know the website:
http://www.sagewisdom.org/

Daniel Siebert -who's running this research center- was actually studying differents applications of salvia to cure depression. he actually even recommend mucosal salvia (so you don't need to smoke if you don't want to, and it can be more gentle), you can make easily your own tincture if you want or grow live plants to chew fresh leaves.
I say this because I tried all the way with salvia, and I agree that salvia has not only salvinorin A as active constituant.


Tools are very personnal, so some will work a charm on somebody and make things worst on somebody else. You are lucky to have found such an allie, which is probably not a bad treatment.
How long do you use it for treating your depression ?

all the best.

I used to be very bipolar and that ran with a huge self destructive streak that would raise its ugly head. I thought I would "grow out of it" and it was just residual teenage angst but no. I should have known that my outrageous attempts at self medication my whole teenage life was something else.

Anyways, what has helped me have more stable moods more than anything is cutting gluten out of my diet. For people who are allergic to it, it can be devastating, even causing schizophrenia. The withdrawal period from it was even uglier yet. So, I'd look into that if I were you.

Other than that, yea taking psychedelics definitely helps me. Just let the medicine do their work, and then make sure you put the effot into integrating.

I do think I tend to be less stable than most people, but it is possible for me to handle now. I chalk it up to personality quirks.

Life can be much better, and you'll get there in time.

Take care.

I tought at first, Pharmahuasca would help me each time. But certainly it doesn't. I had several experiences which made me think suicidel. (I know that these toughts are my own and not caused by the drug, but it can make you go paranoid if it discovers a conflict and you go trough painful emotions you can't explain.)

I guess cannabis is the best "tool" in terms of earthy problems.
DMT seems to be a much more powerful thing. But has also a higher potential of damaging, as i experienced.

Ayahuasca is very good for illuminating where growth is needed onthe earthy plane for me..where cannabis just makes me sort of fazed out and jaded after a while if I use it alot. For me ayahuasca is far far superior to cannabis in that sense.

I have found that cannabis has the highest potential for damage and misuse of all the psychedelics, becasue its the most likely one to get addicted to..then its like a downward spiral. If you can use it once or twice a week then yes I agree its very useful, but any more than that for me and it just becomes more a roadblock than anything..it stops being an entheogenic experience and instead something I NEED to feel good and happy about my life, as I loose sight of the fact that its all good anyway.

Caapi only brew cure sounds much more grounding than smoking skunk.
I had to stop smoking. It was unhealthy psychologically.
Going deep into the membrane does sound less addicting to me.

Weed makes me depressed.
I don't smoke anymore. Don't need to.

Just out of curiousity have you tried prescription medication? If so how would you compare its usefulness with other substances?

The combination of therapy and medication is known to be the most effective way of treating depressive dissorders. It probably highly depends on finding a good psychiatrist, but any medication works best if you have someone guiding you who can also monitor whether the medicine is doing what it's supposed to do.
Maybe a psychiatrist is the western equivalent of a shaman. Anyway, finding a good shaman may be as harder than finding a good psychiatrist since anybody can cal himself a shaman and charge whatever some of money he feels like.

Well, I'm not sure we know what the effectiveness of psychedelic use is for depressive disorders. We know therapy by a competent psychotherapist, potentially including medication, works great. But is it the most effective method that exists? Well, no. It's less effective than electroconvulsive therapy (even though the potential for side effects means that is by no means called for unless nothing else has worked, or in cases of severe suicide risk that needs results immediately). For the record, the fastest acting and most effective way to make depression go away is a night of total sleep deprivation. That couldn't work as a real therapy for obvious reasons.

But unless I'm mistaken (and if I am, someone please let me know), we don't have a good objective picture of how effective psychedelics are for depression. Lots of people SAY that psychedelics have been very helpful, and that's awesome that they've experienced good results. But then again, lots of people SAY that Freudian psychoanalysis helped their depression. What does the evidence say? You're better off telling your thoughts to a good friend and listening to their advice. The results of psychoanalysis can't be attributed to anything other than human contact, unlike with newer therapies. Are psychedelics also deceptive in some way? Is it possible that the act of searching for a way to get better is more responsible for the improvement than any direct chemical effect of the substance or any psychological insights gained from the trips? Maybe, maybe not, maybe it's both, maybe it's neither. Speculation is welcome, but unfortunately we don't seem to have hard answers.

swim wouldnt call himself a manic depressive but 1 or 2 times a week he would get hit with a brick wall of depression. it would come out of nowhere and he could almost physically feel it wrenching in his chest. a few months ago he tried dmt for the first time and since then has done it every few days. in this time he has not felt that sudden depression hit. swim doesnt know if it helps balance him out or just fills a void. he knows at any time he can think of one of those beautiful places hes been to (in his mind lol) and a smile will come to his face. he doesnt plan on using it in such frequency forever, but for know he is happy. swim's not saying this can help you but so far he thinks it has helped him.