Psychadelics and lithium

[Zapgunn]

I have been taking Lithium for 2 months because I was recently diagnosed with bipolar 2. I'm not sure I agree with this diagnosis, but I thought I'd try the lithium anyways. Hasn't really done much for me. I recently got a decent amount of LSD and Mushrooms (Penis Envy and Golden Teachers) I almost took some the other night, but last minute, I looked up drug interactions and found a large amount of horror stories surrounding Lithium and LSD (strangely I did not find any warnings about lithuim and shrooms)

I did a brief taper and I stopped taking the lithium a few days ago and I feel fine. My plan is to trip 9 days from now, which will be day 11 no lithium (again, affter a brief taper). Do you think this will pose any risk for me? The main stories I see are that taking LSD with lithium, can cause siezures, fugue states, and bad trips. I do not understand why litium causes these different reaction. I can easily understand why SSRI'S can block the effects of psych's, but lithuim is more confusing to me.

I figure I will be safe from having a siezure, because all of the lithium should be out of my body after 11 days (right?) but what about the fugue states and bad trips? Why does litium cause bad trips anyways? If I were to take a macro-dose of LSD or Shrooms, would I still be at risk? Would shrooms be safer to take than LSD? How long should one wait after stopping lithium to be safe?

thought I'd post on here because there might be deeper understanding of the pharmacology of these drugs.

 

[l41n]

it's not a good idea

mood stabilisers can kill trips i think

lithium is a pretty serious psych drug, just not a good time to think about psychedelics when you are on it for bipolar.

i have bipolar 1, don't take antipsychotics or mood stabilisers and don't use psychedelics

it took me quite a few years to come to terms with what being bipolar and have a psychotic disorder and what that means.

 

[Zapgunn]

it's not a good idea

mood stabilisers can kill trips i think

lithium is a pretty serious psych drug, just not a good time to think about psychedelics when you are on it for bipolar.

i have bipolar 1, don't take antipsychotics or mood stabilisers and don't use psychedelics

it took me quite a few years to come to terms with what being bipolar and have a psychotic disorder and what that mean

it's not a good idea

mood stabilisers can kill trips i think

lithium is a pretty serious psych drug, just not a good time to think about psychedelics when you are on it for bipolar.

i have bipolar 1, don't take antipsychotics or mood stabilisers and don't use psychedelics

it took me quite a few years to come to terms with what being bipolar and have a psychotic disorder and what that means.

I hear you. I’m not asking if I should take take psychedelics while on lithium. My question was if 11 days is enough time to get the lithium out of my system so that I can enjoy psychedelics, or if it’s possible I will still have adverse effects, such as a bad trip or going into a fugue state.

I don’t have a psychotic disorder. It’s possible that I have bipolar 2, but I’m not so sure. I have no history of psychosis (except for a few times when I did to much meth) and I’m not sure that I really need to be on lithium.

 

[l41n]

I hear you. I’m not asking if I should take take psychedelics while on lithium. My question was if 11 days is enough time to get the lithium out of my system so that I can enjoy psychedelics, or if it’s possible I will still have adverse effects, such as a bad trip or going into a fugue state.

I don’t have a psychotic disorder. It’s possible that I have bipolar 2, but I’m not so sure. I have no history of psychosis (except for a few times when I did to much meth) and I’m not sure that I really need to be on lithium.

oh, that doesn't sound very severe. its during my psychosis' that my life gets pretty destroyed every time.

i'm not a fan of mood stabilisers at all, like i hate them.

antipsychotics are a great class of drugs for getting to sleep if it's needed, or just get me out of mania and psychosis. but i can manage getting sleep naturally so thats why i don't take a neuroleptic every day.

does lithium have discontinuation symptoms, also won't comment on the 11 days, not sure

for bipolar depression i'd recommend look into the snri class (pristiq) and wellbutrin

what dose do you like for shrooms and cid?

 

[Rectify]

I took LSD in college while on lithium at least 1x, and I didn't have a bad reaction, but some people find that lithium makes LSD something like 100x stronger.

I read a really informative trip report involving LSD and lithium here years and years ago. I don't have that link though and for all I know, it may have been pruned since then.

Stay safe.

 

[Neuroprotection]

I think there are a few things to note here.
Firstly, lithium has a mechanism of action very different from most other modern mood stabilisers although it does share a lot with valproic acid. you would expect mood stabilisers to kill psychedelic trips and some of them may certainly do that, but it all depends on their mechanism of action and how that interacts with the psychedelic. this is going to be quite detailed and contained a lot of speculation so please forgive me. also feel free to ask for any clarification.
Basically, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that people using lithium experience a bad range of interactions in response to serotonergic psychedelics with common ones being an unusual intensification of psychedelic effects, greater general discomfort/anxiety and the most dangerous one being life-threatening seizures.
Although I’m not a neuro scientist, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the mechanism of action of lithium as well as psychedelics and they both act on one common target, glutamate. that’s where I think things go wrong.
Although the mechanism of lithium is really complicated, The final outcome that produces its mood stabilising effect is a change in post synaptic glutamate AMPA receptor density and subunit composition. by temporarily screwing up the recycling of these receptors, lithium decreases the number of stable calcium impermeable GLUR1/GLUR2 containing AMPA receptor complexes on the cell surface as well as preventing them from being rapidly delivered to the synaptic membrane in response to dopamine and other neurotransmitters. that’s how it produces the anti-manic effect.
Now on to psychedelics:
Although the 5HT2A receptor is the main common target of these drugs, it is actually only the first step in a complex cascade which ends in an abnormally large overflow of glutamate in certain brain regions especially those responsible for memory, sensory perception and emotions. this extra glutamate overexcites neurons in these regions meaning that the brain is temporarily no longer processing internal stimuli properly and is certainly not in line with external realitie.
The interactions:
Keeping in mind what I said about lithium and glutamate receptors above, we can see that lithium would very likely alter the response to the extra glutamate released by psychedelics. The nature of this response hasn't really been studied scientifically in detail, but we could theorise that lithium might lead to an increase in the number of calcium permeable AMPA receptors in some brain structures. calcium permeable AMPA receptors are believe to be increased in seizures and epilepsy, where they not only contribute to seizure activity, but also to associated neuron damage and steadily increased vulnerability to seizures.
If lithium does do this, then the additional glutamate released by psychedelics could dangerously interact with these extra calcium permeable AMPA receptors.
On a sidenote, the cholinergic drug pilocarpine is used to trigger seizures in animal models of epilepsy. interestingly, adding lithium to the pilocarpine regimen massively lowers the seizure threshold so less pilocarpine needs to be used plus the seizures may be more severe.

 

[Neuroprotection]

I would advise you all to read this article i’m going to link below. it doesn’t mention the potential mechanisms of the interaction I explained in my previous post, but it just gives more evidence that mixing psychedelics and lithium is a really bad idea.

Mixing psychedelics with lithium poses significant risk of seizures

The findings from the review showed that combining lithium with a classic psychedelic involved seizures in 47 per cent of 62 reports.

psychedelichealth.co.uk