Hello Nexians.

I've lurked and learned a lot of important things here for about 3 years. I've never said anything until now, but I've absorbed a lot, and for that I would like to thank ALL of you who have made this community what it is.

I suppose I didn't assume an identity through which to say things because I thought I had nothing to contribute. But after 2 years of experience with the Spice, I feel a sort of duty to report what I have learned from it.

Very early in my journey with this chemical, I had some frightening experiences (the old "more real than real" trope) that nearly led me to throw everything out and never look behind that curtain again! To read about this mysterious gateway is nothing like actually walking through it; with just my toes in the water I learned quickly that this substance is POWERFUL and the philosophical/spiritual implications that inherently come with it can be disturbing. That's how I feel about it... simultaneously in awe and crippling fear of what it means to me. I would not have had the courage and mental fortitude to continue my involvement with this substance if I hadn't learned the following:

DMT is an EXTREMELY effective treatment for aborting Cluster Headaches! Like nothing else I've ever come across, this chemical can INSTANTLY and CONSISTENTLY stop the most intense pain I've ever known. This has been mentioned in a few Nexus threads over the years, but I think its importance is vastly understated in the relevant communities. I've shared it with a close friend who also suffers from cluster headaches (as well as migraine and tension headaches, poor guy!) who enjoyed the same therapeutic effect I've come to depend on: his cluster headache goes away with one toke (but unfortunately the less debilitating tension headache remains).

Next important point to note:

Journeying through Hyperspace is NOT necessary to achieve this relief! A microdose of 5-10mg is almost always enough to fix my head, with minimal visuals (usually none). We can all agree that the DMT experience is not for everybody, and most people would not want to invite that into their lives. But for those seeking pain relief, the full experience is not necessary. You could think of the trip as an avoidable side-effect. Shamanic initiation is not required for the use I'm describing.

I know this may sound like wasted sacrament to a lot of folks here, but consider that 20% of people with cluster headaches eventually commit suicide to avoid enduring another one. 10 years into my biannual cycles of agony, I was resigned to the notion that I would never escape this hell until I end it myself. It wasn't a matter of if, just a matter of when. I love my family, that's all that kept me from allowing these thoughts to consume me, but I could never really escape the feeling that death was seductively beckoning to me. And then DMT changed my life! First, by showing me the hidden divinity that many here have been fortunate to witness (throwing my staunch atheism straight out the window). But more importantly for me, it has revealed itself to be a very powerful medicine that gave me unprecedented hope and a renewed love for life! Because I have this medicine in my life, I no longer fear the next cluster of painful attacks. I can live a relatively normal lifestyle now, I can function at work without stifling tears, and I can sleep through the night. For 10 years, I was awakened several times a night 2-4 months of the year, with a pain that no chemical could touch. Now I can take a sub-psychoactive dose of the Sacrament and go right back to sleep. The past 2 years have been dramatically better for me, thanks to DMT I now feel like this disease doesn't own me anymore. It's as though there's a monster sleeping inside my head who wakes up in a violent fury, but all I need now is a little bit of the Sacrament to satiate the Beast and stop its fit of anger. As long as I feed the Beast when it stirs, it is content to stay in hibernation indefinitely. If I can achieve that without requiring the stronger effects of DMT (which no sensible human is ready to take on at just any given moment the headache may strike), that is just fine with me!

Don't get me wrong... I do still travel to the Fractal Realm on occasion, about 2-3 times a year lately. I don't like to go out super far and I don't travel often, but I deeply value the teachings of this substance. I actually like guiding newcomers into that space more than I like being there myself

However the biggest point I wish to make here is this:

You are the Gate Keepers. Nexians have the power to heal. As a fellow human who reclaimed his life thanks to this magical spice, I beg you all to reach out to anybody you know that is suffering from a primary headache disorder (cluster, migraine). Modern Medicine has very little to offer to these poor souls, as primary headache is still poorly understood. The medications available for these conditions are mostly off-label drugs intended for other conditions, which bring a lot of unnecessary (potentially fatal) side-effects to the table. The world needs to know that DMT is an option. In my humble opinion, it is the best option for instant relief of this kind of pain.

If you know somebody who suffers from cluster headaches, you should know there is a good chance that person has already considered suicide as an option. You might save a life by guiding that person through a microdose experience. If that person responds well to the treatment, you could then educate them about this substance and how they can ensure they have enough of it for the bad time of the year (1 gram is enough to keep me pain-free through a 2-month cycle of 1-6 attacks per day!).

DMT can easily be dissolved and diluted in an e-juice mixture. This is my new favorite therapeutic dose method, as one would have to vape the whole 2ml tank of juice in order to significantly alter perception (no accidental journeys). I shared that solution with a friend who has zero interest in ever altering her perception, and she now has an effective migraine treatment that is about as safe as this substance can be. 3 hits gave her a little bit of body load, which she didn't like, but moments later her migraine was gone and she decided her short-lived discomfort with the sensation was far better than the pain. I highly recommend that all Nexians who vape should keep such a solution ready to give to somebody who needs it. It's a very simple route of administration that gives just the therapy without the mind-shattering break from "reality."

This chemical is not just for phychonauts! In much smaller doses than what most of us desire, it can save lives. Every time you break through to the other side, that was enough medicine to abort 4-6 headaches. If somebody who uses this as a medicine wants to later explore its hallucinogenic properties, that's their decision to make (though I make great effort to inform them it's no decision to be taken lightly). As for me, I'm on a mission to share it in careful moderation with any person who may otherwise be stuck with that maddening pain until they give up on life. There's so much to enjoy in this life, and I want to help people remember that.

I ask all of you to rise to the occasion if you have a friend in need. You may be the most helpful person that friend has ever known.



Side note: I think this speaks volumes on the subject of endogenous DMT. I posit that primary headaches could be a symptom of some kind of endotryptamine deficiency. Those here who are knowledgeable , please discuss.

Welcome to the Nexus!

Sorry you have to deal with these terrible headaches!

I have seen many articles and videos over the years about LSD and mushrooms being used to treat cluster headaches. I had not heard about DMT alleviating the pain of cluster headaches until now.

Some people were able to block these headaches for months at a time with the use of mushrooms. Many of these people are not psychonauts, but simply want relief from the pain. It is a shame that more people will not or cannot access these medicines because of current laws. Hopefully this will change soon!

Here is a couple videos on the profound relief that psychedelics can have on cluster headaches.

https://www.snotr.com/vi...against_Cluster_Headache

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mQSO4Tzbwk

https://www.snotr.com/vi...against_Cluster_Headache

Ah yes, the psilocybin treatment! I remember Dan.

That's why I'm so grateful for DMT and the subculture that has been born around it. It was this community that sparked my interest in chemistry, which taught me about the structural similarities between all the substituted tryptamines. It was ClusterBusters.com that helped me understand that I even had a disease, thanks to the underground psilocybin research that was just blooming 12 years ago when my headaches started. I was reading about mushrooms as a young lad, and Erowid led me to an article about medicinal use of mushrooms, and wham-o, I found a perfect description of the headaches I was experiencing (I thought it was a stroke or a tumor or something).

So naturally I got some shrooms and tried the Cluster Busters regimen. Didn't work for me. The thing about psilocybin treatment is it prevents future attacks for many sufferers, but requires several weekly doses to do it. It can end or significantly dampen a cycle. Same goes for LSD and LSA. None of those 3 were effective for me, so I always thought of psychedelics as just an exploratory tool.

Cluster Headache is treated in two ways: preventative and abortive. Try to prevent future attacks, and try to stop a current attack. Psilocybin/LSD are preventatives (now being legitimately studied! Yay!), but they didn't seem to do it for me. Nothing I tried would prevent future attacks, and very little could be done to abort an attack.

Well since the psilocybin treatment didn't help me, I figured I'd just be stuck with this forever. I have probably damaged my kidneys and liver with repeated high doses of acetaminophen, ibuprofen, aspirin, naproxen, hydrocodone, morphine, dilaudid, cocaine, tramadol, carisoprodol, clonazepam, darvocet, just off the top of my head... None of these ever helped much if at all, but in the throes of a cluster attack you'll be willing to try just about anything. It's pretty annoying to have a pain that comes and goes in 1-2 hours when most oral medications take an hour or more to kick in. Chances are, the headache will subside on its own and you've just unnecessarily ingested chemicals for your body to metabolize. Placebo effect is a joke when it comes to this condition, you can't fool The Beast.

In my quest for DMT knowledge, I learned that it's only a few atoms away from psilocybin. LSD and LSA are also remarkably similar, all of them are based on the indole structure and are believed to affect the same receptors. So an internet search about DMT and cluster headaches led me right back to the Nexus, where somebody had posted about his experience. He said his girlfriend suggested DMT (based on the same correlations) while he was having an attack, and he laughed at her, thinking the last thing he needs right now is to blast off. Well she loaded the apparatus for him and left the room, he said screw it and took the hit, and was amazed to find that his headache was gone with a snap, crackle, pop, before the elves and fractals could even materialize. This gave me hope, but it was during a time that I had a lot of fear about this stuff... the "more real than real" trip had given me a big respect for what this stuff can do to you, and I too was thinking the last thing I need while in pain is to possibly be surrounded by improbable monsters. I know about set and setting, so it's very counter-intuitive for me to take such a strong drug in such a situation.

I remember the day I tried it. I woke up in the morning with The Beast thrashing wildly in my skull, and I stumbled out to the kitchen to get some Tylenol. I ground up 1000mg and put it in capsules, hoping it would dissolve and start working faster. I think it did, because 15 minutes later the headache ended pretty abruptly. I thought I had found the secret! That's all you gotta do, crush up a gram of acetaminophen! Boy was I wrong though... an hour later the Beast came back with a vengeance, what is known as a Rebound Headache. I went back to bed, this time knowing I shouldn't take more acetaminophen because it hadn't even approached its half life. I lay there in tears, wishing for death, and then suddenly I figured... how bad could a DMT trip be? I realized that this was my first bad day since the scary DMT trip 3 days prior, there might be a correlation there.

I took a hit of (guessing) about 20mg, and as my bedroom erupted into a cacophony of fractal train tracks and animated musical scores, I saw an entity appear in front of me. Oddly enough, it looked like a certain doctor I work with, and it reached a hand out and touched my face. I felt a pressure quickly build inside my head, akin to driving up and down a mountain road. The pressure grew until my ears popped, and then there was a crack that I heard and felt around the base of my skull. And then the pain was gone. The "doctor" stayed with me until the trip ended, and I lay there in tears of joy, thanking the concept of God that I hadn't believed in for over a decade (I now believe there's SOMETHING).

No rebound this time! I couldn't believe it, in 30 seconds I went from wanting death to loving life, the pain wasn't just reduced or masked, it was GONE! It didn't come back when the drug wore off, as it always had with all other drugs. This drug did something specifically to the headache, it left me speechless. For the first time in 12 years, I knew that I wanted to live.

Since then I've lowered the usual dose. I work far from home, so I do a lot of driving. I work in a medical setting, so I have to keep all of this stuff to myself. It's dangerous to drive under the influence of anything, but especially something that makes you see things the rest of us can't see. I kept trying smaller and smaller doses, as I want to kill the pain without having to break from reality. Well I've found that the smallest threshold dose (inhale for <5 seconds and hold for 10) can almost always abort a headache for me. I've found a dose that I can safely use at work, or on the side of the road. I'd much rather pull over or hide in the bathroom for 10 minutes, than drive or even try to think while the Beast is active. Once in a while I intentionally use enough to explore the fractal realm, but it's nice to know that at different doses it's good for different purposes.

Long story short... mushrooms are good for the long term, DMT is good for instant relief. Some people who don't respond to psilocybin may still respond to DMT. I want to shout it from the rooftops, but I don't want to draw the wrong kind of attention to myself (and the rest of us) either... so I figure this is the best place to start.

The best contribution I can make here is to tell you all, that you have the power to heal. And to thank this community for sharing that possibility with me.

Hmmmmm... very interesting.

First of all, welcome!

I am a longtime sufferer of chronic, sinus related headaches , but I have never noticed this correlation - but then again, I have never micro-dosed, or consumed with that intent. The headaches I suffer are not 'extremely' painful, but of such long and sustained duration, and quite noticeably painful and frankly, all-consuming, that my curiosity has been piqued.

I'll try this and if I see any benefit I'll report back.

thanks,

JBArk

It might help. Secondary sinus symptoms very commonly accompany cluster headaches (it's in the diagnostic criteria), and when the Spice kills my headache it kills the secondary symptoms as well. For me, the sinus pressure/discharge is probably caused by pressure inside the head, which is relieved by the Deemz and then all the rest of the associated problems back off too.

Could be different for you, if the headache is caused by the sinus problems, opposite of me... Worth a shot though... what's the worst that can happen, right?