I'm usually very reluctant to share any form of personal information but i feel this is too important not to share as there are many out there that may benefit from reading this.
I'll try to keep this short, my partner recently had some severe symptoms indicative of a spinal injury. They had lost feeling from the chest down and over the following days in hospital lost the function of their left hand and arm. They could barely lift a 1kg weight as they couldn't stabilize their left shoulder, arm or wrist properly. Grip strength was very weak almost non existent and eventually they couldn't control their fingers properly or even cup there hand. There were other minor changes to gait and balance which effected their walking. We eventually learnt my partner had suffered their first serious MS attack and the MRI had picked up a number of old lesions on the brain as well as 3 active ones (2 in the brain and 1 in the spinal cord) which was causing the motor function issues.
Quickly for anyone not familiar with multiple sclerosis (MS); Multiple sclerosis is a potentially disabling disease of central nervous system. The immune system attacks the protective sheath (myelin) that covers nerve fibers and causes communication problems between your brain and the rest of your body. Eventually, the disease causes permanent damage of the nerves often resulting in disability both physical and cognitive.
Anyway, my partner was given a high dose of steroids for 3 days to reduce inflammation (this doesn't fix or lessen the damage it just enables for a quicker recovery from the inflammation). Being relatively young we were told the recovery rate is usually fairly quick, months to a year to gain most of the function back (and another MS attack or relapse may not occur for several years).
It's hard watching your partner one day perfectly fine and the next unable to do basic tasks such as tie their shoelace or wash their hair.
Ofcourse being the little pyschonauts we are we did as much research as we could. In, MS myelin can repair to a degree and neuroplasticity is key to retraining the central nervous system to function again. In the literature DMT and other psychedelics have proven to induce serious neuroplasticity. Harmine (and to a lesser degree other classic psychedelics) have been shown to increase BDNF (Brain-derived neurotrophic factor). Myelin can be repaired to a degree by the protein BDNF. BDNF also increases the number of oligodendrocytes in the brain, oligodendrocytes are the specialised stem cells which make new myelin to help remyelinate nerve cells. So going off what little research could be found on harmine and psychedelics in relation to BDNF and neuroplasticity, pharmahusca and changa seemed like a good option to help with rehabilitation. We also decided to incorporate dried lions mane mushroom 5g a day due to its effects on helping repair the CNS (the idea I got from one of Loveall's posts).
After my partner spent nearly a week in hospital and came home we got straight into smoking changa (harmala infused ofcourse). We decided sub-breakthrough doses were the best, with the idea being to conduct as much rehabilitation as possible while under the influence. These session where conducted 1-3 times a day. And once a week a pharmahusca trip was conducted.
Daily harmine (or harmala) doses may have been effective too but we decided not to pursue this at this point.
It's been two weeks and my partner has almost made a full recovery. Would they have recovered naturally this quickly without the DMT and harmala? No I don't believe so and here's why...
During the changa sessions there were noticeable changes while under the influence each session more and more function was gained. These weren't subtle changes they were noticable changes. I will note the progress was 5 steps forward while under the influence of changa and then 2 steps back as the effects faded. But those 3 steps forward remained after the DMT/ Harmala had worn off. Each phamahusca trip bought a lot of feeling back and function. And above all kept my partner head strong and positive throughout the ordeal. Its been two weeks and they can run again, have full control over their hand and fingers, grip strength is strong and normal again and coordination is back to normal, a lot of feeling has come back except in the finger tips and parts of the stomach but we're confident this will come back in the next week.
The progress observed while under the influence of these drugs was incredible. Watching my partner gain feeling back in couple hours while on pharmahusca was amazing to watch and the co-ordination and strength gains were something else to witness as well. All I can say is that it worked and worked well.
Link to some of the studies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih...pmc/articles/PMC6082376/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34566723/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20686906/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih...pmc/articles/PMC4912000/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23510212/Disclaimer: All my posts are of total fiction.