Hello,

A friend has recommended I start taking 5-HTP or Tryptophan to help me with my depression. Is it okay to still do mushroom trips if I do this? Does anyone know how the two will react together?

Any advice much appreciated,

Thanks

As health and safety should be number 1 priority for any traveller, I think you'd be better off seeking medical advice with an actual MD.

It is safe, but i wouldn't do it. It would diminish the effects. Classic hallucinogens decrease serotonergic activity (temporarilly), which is an essential part of their psychedelic effects. Tryptophan and 5-HTP increase levels of serotonin in the brain and have the opposite effect.

Thanks. That's useful to know. Perhaps I'll consider it for when I'm having time off from tripping

If you take them close together, the extra serotonin produced by the 5-HTP will compete with psilocybin at the receptor and diminish the psychoactive effects. If you just skip taking 5-HTP on dosing day, you shouldn't really have any issues.

As an aside, I'd advise against frequent or long-term use of 5-HTP, as artificially inflating serotonin levels on a consistent basis can lead to receptor downregulation and increased depressive symptoms. You might consider looking into St. John's Wort as a daily supplement to help upregulate the receptors and allow your body to make better use of your body's natural serotonin stores. Plus good diet rich in fruits and vegetables, exercise, meditation, yadda yadda yadda.

I could be wrong here but I was under the impression that more 5-HT being released the more intense the experience. I know MDMA is a MAOI also, but I thought part of the reason for it intensifying psilocybin and LSD more due to higher 5-HT levels.

Total nonsense dude....

Working in the medical industry and alongside MD's for the last 17 years.... there is not a SINGLE ONE I've met who would have known how to recommend an over-the-counter supplement like 5-htp or tryptophan.... nor would they for liability purposes.

I am the one they turn to when they have questions on this stuff.

It is not their job. Their job is to diagnose, and prescribe pharmaceuticals... that is all they were taught to do.

Also, good luck telling your doctor you take psilocybin... you get a permanent digital record attached to your name that you are a drug user. This has the potential to effect your eligibility and premiums for health insurance. It would be only by chance they even know what psilocybin actually is (until you tell them its from magic mushroom) or anything about the research on it over the last 10 years.

Their advice is almost always the same... Don't take hallucinogens and don't take over-the-counter supplements instead of prescriptions, as supplements don't have the same standards of regulation. Approving of patients taking them is simply too much of a legal liability for them.

Very rarely, also region specific, you might encounter an MD who has a personal passion for supplements and\or alternative medicine, but it is rare.

We.... are on our own with this one bud...

CosmicLion I very much agree. There would be no point whatsoever going to my MD with this question.

MDMA is a neurotransmitter releaser, this is a very different mechanism of action from a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. Psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD and mescaline bind to serotonin receptors but they don't have as much affinity for the receptor as serotonin itself does, so if you already have an excess of serotonin in the synapse, it will bind the receptors preferentially over the psychedelic. Incidentally, this is why SSRI's diminish the effects of psychedelics.

A very basic overview of neuropharmacology 101:
Neuron A creates and stores serotonin. It receives an electrical impulse that causes it to change polarity and fire some of it's serotonin out into a gap between connecting neurons known as the synapse. Neuron B has receptors to take up the serotonin from the synapse. Neuron B collects all the serotonin it can and uses it to fire it's own electrical signal and send the message on down the line to the next neuron. Any extra serotonin that is not taken up by Neuron B is picked back up by Neuron A (an SSRI prevents this, hence selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor). Then monoamine oxidase comes in like a cleanup crew and collects the used up serotonin from Neuron B and any extra serotonin that Neuron A didn't take back up that is still sitting in the synapse.

So when you take psilocybin it floods into the synapse and binds the open serotonin receptors causing the neurons to fire a little differently giving a psychedelic experience. Now if you take a bunch of 5-htp it's metabolized into serotonin and the synapse gets a little extra flood of serotonin for a couple hours. If you take psilocybin when the synapse is full of that extra serotonin, most of the open receptors will by bound by the serotonin leaving fewer for the psilocybin to bind and resulting in a dimished experience.

Too much serotonin results in serotonin syndrome which can be very dangerous. This is why MAOI's and SSRI's should never be combined with one another or with MDMA or 5-HTP.

This is very much a dumbed down explanation, but hopefully it's enough to help clarify the basic mechanisms at work here.

Yea right dude lol

It's like those foreign kids who say the most articulate thing ever then end it with "Sorry if my English isn't very good, I am still learning"

Dreamer. Thanks for the info. I have always been under the impression that psychedelics had higher affinity than serotonin, Terence McKenna used to say that during his talks.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih...mc/articles/PMC3110631/#!po=4.16667

There’s affinity charts in the link.

Im curious now as to why MDMA increases duration and intensity of these psychedelics, I have heard Dennis McKenna talk about it acting as an maoi. I can’t find any sources for that other than a YouTube video.

MDMA does a lot more than just increasing serotonin levels. It also increases noradrenaline and dopamine levels. Those two substances do synergize pretty well with psychedelics.

I've never done it myself, but most people I know who've done it, also experienced candyflipping as something that comes in waves. A continuous changing between the effects of the two substances.

Have you done mushroom trips before? Does it help with your depression?

Dreamer thanks that explanation is really helpful.

Well I've only just started using mushrooms so I can't really say yet. I've done a little bit of micro dosing, which has been helpful, and a couple of 3g trips. I would like to do a 5g trip in silent darkness to see how that impacts on me (I've been told it will scare me so much that normal life will seem easy in comparison ). I think mushrooms have potential to help with depression, but it seems people are right when they say there is no quick fix

Yeah, thanks! It's propably the first time, I read a warning regarding the supplementation with 5-HTP or Tryptophan.
But the points you set out are not the only or even most important reason, why 5-HTP rather produces or really manifests depression: Serotonin is of course not the only neurotransmitter with an important role in mood-regulation. If 5-HTP is supplemented for a few weeks, AADC, the aromatic aminoacid decarboxylase is fully stretched by decarboxylating 5-HTP into Serotonin, while only small amounts of L-DOPA get decarboxylated into Dopamine. Thus the rather sensible balance between Serotonin and Dopamine gets off the rails causing a worsened brain chemistry which is seen in an increase of depression symptoms after the first few rather positive weeks.

For further information, please read this very useful and easily comprehensible open access ( ) review:

5-HTP efficacy and contraindications