DOSE:	3 - 5 g	oral	Mushrooms	(dried)
	40 mg	oral	Pharms - Fluoxetine	(daily)
	450 mg	oral	Pharms - Bupropion	(daily)
	400 mg	oral	Pharms - Lamotrigine	(daily)
	30 mg	oral	Pharms - Buspirone	(daily)

BODY WEIGHT:

200 lb

Mushrooms & Prozac: It Worked for Me

tl;dr

I took mushrooms while on daily Prozac. It worked. I tripped.

-----

I’m a 31-year-old cis man, weighing about 200 lb.

I’ve been interested in psychedelics since college, but only rarely had opportunities to use them. I previously took mushrooms once in my freshman year of college ; LSD once in college then twice right after graduating (third time was too small of a dose, didn’t do much); salvia a number of times while in college.

I use weed about weekly these days (previously less); I generally like to get real high, but slowly. I generally have 10-12 drinks a week, spread over 5-6 days.

I take a whole bunch of psych meds. 40mg Prozac, 450mg Wellbutrin,* 400mg Lamictal, 30mg Buspar.

(* The day of this report I skipped my 150 mg pill because I figured too much of Wellbutrin's stimulant-ish effects could be a problem.)

I’ve kind of idly wanted a chance to trip for about the last 7 years, but didn’t know anyone with access to drugs or who I knew well enough to feel comfortable asking. Last summer, my partner Tara (all names changed) and I were on vacation in New England with her brother Francis. He has been open with his family about using mushrooms to treat his depression. On our last day there I asked if he would sell me some. He gave me ... I believe 5 g, though I never thought to write it down, for free. Good guy.

I meant to take them about two weeks later, but a million things happened so they sat in the freezer until November.

I did a lot of reading to make sure there weren’t any serious drug interaction risks. I didn’t find any credible evidence of really bad interactions, but a lot of credible scientific research and experience reports saying SSRIs made it hard or impossible for some people—but not everyone—to trip.

What frustrated me is that it was hard to tell what share of people on SSRIs couldn’t trip. A research paper said something like 80% had “diminished or no effects,” but there’s a big difference between Less and Nothing. There were lots of experience reports of people not being able to trip at all, but it’s the kind of surprising experience you would expect to see overrepresented in self reports. (I fell off the roller coaster; I took mushrooms and nothing happened; etc.)

So going in it seemed like a crap shoot. Maybe something would happen, maybe nothing. My main purpose in writing is to add to the pool of anecdata by saying, Something Happened.

I dosed at home on Saturday of a 3-day weekend, with Tara sitting. I took the mushrooms (again, I think it was 5 g, but I’m really not sure; at least 3) mixed into milked-down almond butter with cinnamon a little after 3 pm. (Forgot to add vanilla.)

I had what I believe was the most intense trip of my life, though for me that isn’t necessarily saying much. My body felt sort of like a hollow shell, or like the empty space inside the shell. I felt immersed in the music I was listening to, almost like each song created its own world. Lots of closed-eye visuals, but all fairly dim—like more-detailed afterimages, or like the lights were off. Pretty standard stuff: circular arrays of cartoon faces, eyes, rainbows/prism spectra; square and triangular grids/tessellations; squiggles.

I did a lot of giggling. Once was because one of my thoughts reminded me of a Longmont Potion Castle quote. Once was because I had a vision of a poop machine. Other times I’m sure were very funny but I don’t remember them.

Blankets felt extremely good. I didn’t actually think my couch was alive, but it gave me kind of a friendly animal feeling, and its velvety gray upholstery reminded me of an elephant/whale/manatee. Petting my dog felt extremely good.

I was extremely grateful to Tara for watching over me. I told her a lot that I loved her and that she was wonderful—partly just because it’s true, partly because of the gratitude. I was struck at how completely I trusted her to keep me safe. That felt like a small revelation.

I had to pee fairly often. It was usually hard to pee, and once I just couldn’t do it. I was very conscious about not making Tara worry about how long I was in the bathroom, but also very distractable.

The later part of the trip (I would say the second half, but time is pretty hazy) was dominated by mind racing and thought loops. There continued to be sensory stuff—a vision of a drippy/melting ceiling (while lying on my side; the ceiling was oriented relative to the earth, not relative to my visual field; i.e., sideways), the sound of a train going by (there are no trains nearby). I had done a lot of reading before tripping, and taken to heart that if you get scared, it’s better to go with the flow/“let go” than to try to hold onto reality. This got me into a weird place. I would have a thought, try to hold onto it long enough to remember it, remember I’m not supposed to try to hold onto things, and then allow my mind to race. But then I would think, I’m not supposed to hold onto things, but there aren’t really any rules, you can do this any way you want. So that got me into a confusing “the only rule is that there are no rules” thought loop, which sounds extremely cliche but caused a good deal of emotional conflict. A similar thing would happen when I would think about real life, or the real future, or try to communicate with Tara. “You’re not supposed to try to go back to reality because that would make you anxious. But also the rule is that you can do whatever you want.” There were times when it kind of felt like this conflict was tearing me apart, and times when it felt hard to breathe. It definitely related to some ~psychological~ stuff in my real life.

I started coming down around 9. Tara gave me some Thai food, which was delicious, and some yogurt to cool my mouth down, which was also delicious. For some reason it surprised me that mushrooms made food taste better? Not sure why.

There’s a lot of stuff I wasn’t able to cover. A weird distorted voice from a (real, though I wasn't sure) TV upstairs; being very conscious of the clock ticking; paintings swimming around on the wall; etc. (Tara paints. She’s p cool.)

We hung out for a bit, then I started absolutely bawling. I wasn’t really crying “about” anything, but the stuff from my thought loops was definitely on my mind. The crying gave me an awful headache the next day.

Conclusions:

1. At least for some people, in some cases, it’s possible to have a “full” trip while taking SSRIs daily.

2. Taking the mushrooms at home, during the day, with one trusted companion was a really good choice for me.

3. It was hard but overall positive. In the future it might be a good idea to be more flexible about how flexible I’m required to be?

4. I would like to do it again, maybe in 6 months to a year; hopefully it will work again despite the meds.

Exp Year: 2019	ExpID: 113800
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 31
Published: Dec 2, 2019	Views: 2,553
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Pharms - Fluoxetine (80), Mushrooms (39) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Combinations (3)