Best of luck Coastal.

I look forward to hearing of your successes in future!

Welcome to my club Tony, I'm so grateful for your kind brotherhood--

To others--
I want this to make this clear, because I fear some of you may have the impression that I'm lost in a long-term abusive psychedelic haze somehow-- but believe me, I'm one of the "straightest" living guys you know-- I'm married, have responsibilities. Nobody I know would have any idea I have even tried psychedelics.
I'm not blitzed out all the time- these are very special plants to me. I have been completely clean from everything for several different years when I have traveled for work-- 100% sober, the longest stretch was probably 4 or so years.

When I have had the opportunity, I've probably averaged using spice a couple times a month during much of the past 15 years. Ebbs and flows.
When I "session" I will have a full day where I'll bump multiple times in a row to keep "at the level" for several hours" but that's a time or two a month. I doubt I keep up with many of the users on this forum.

I'm saying this to you all only because I think it's very easy to dismiss what has happened with "oh, well he just used too much DMT" but in a way that's a kind of lazy write-off analysis in my view-- because the chemistry of this "lock out" is not explained by that kind of personality judgement.

Especially when it does not explain why many years of identical use patterns have not produced this result with the many thousands of other heavy users.
That's what I'm most curious about-- the actual reason this is happening-- not an arbitrary "over-use" judgement that nobody else has experienced using the same quantities.

I hope it makes sense what I'm saying- there has to be a neuro-chemical reason DMT would stop working. "Over-use" would explain it if it were a known effect-- but this is not shown to be the case on its own.

Maybe the king of hyperspace, the creator, the architect, whatever you call it (them?) has made the decision. Maybe it was out of your hands. I haven’t seen any info if there is research on this subject. But I’ve read plenty of peoples stories, along with a lotta “old timers” who have been in the game for a while explain this as an unknown phenomena. Maybe the gatekeeper said come back later.

It definitely has my attention brother-- I am on hiatus

I lean towards the gatekeeper hypothesis. There are powerful forces on the other end of the pipe. Shutout does not seem to make any sense from a pharmacological standpoint.

I've got another thread where I ponder the scenario of a worldwide shutout. What if the gatekeeper were to lock the door on everyone?!?!

You are the gatekeeper.

Inner peace.... To you all hahaha

Besides, the timing could be much worse-- I have to change careers unexpectedly after all this virus shit got me laid off recently, so I'm under a lot of tension with major unexpected life issues anyway-- I have a lot to keep me distracted in the coming weeks...

If anyone comes across any information about the physical reasons that would explain this lockout thing though, I do hope you'll share it here.

Cheers--

I'm not a doctor but this was interesting so I did a little research...

DMT appears to be a Sigma-1 receptor regulator (link). "This indicates that behavioral actions of DMT depend on the sigma-1 receptor, which may provide an alternative research area for psychiatric disorders that have not been linked to dopamine or N-methyl-D-aspartate systems."

Perhaps serotonin syndrome contributed to some kind of blockage/damage to the sigma-1 receptors in your brain? In the study above, Sigma-1 knockout mice were unresponsive to DMT, so it leads me to wonder if these are connected.

I'm way out of my depth on how all these neurotransmitters work, but this might be an avenue to inquire about with someone with an MD/PhD! A friend in med school thinks they may regenerate in time, so the advice to "give it some time" may be well-founded I know that nerve damage takes months to heal though, so I would be mentally prepared for it to take a while.

Thank you so much ET-- that's very good knowledge.

I've learned a hard lesson in mixing supplements when not 100% sober-minded.
I have always been fastidious about avoiding contra-indicated substances-- that recent incident was the first time I've ever pissed in the punchbowl, so-to-speak.

I'm going to take this information and see if there are any nervous system supplements that can assist in healing.

Should mention that I'm not doing all of this so I can trip again, as much as shoring up my body health in a general way. What a wake up call this has been...

The question you should be asking is why do/did you need to keep doing it anyway?

No disrespect but reading your posts I'm not convinced by the statement that you're 'not doing this so you can trip again..' you wouldn't be asking if you weren't plotting in the back of your mind - if it were a wake up call you would accept the reality and have no need to question it, because the truth of it would be self-evident.

You also have to see the irony in desiring to taking substance B (supplements) to counteract the damage of taking substance A (DMT). Accept the battle scars and let your body do its own thing - it will most likely recover on its own anyway.

No disrespect...but that's your question, not mine-- and I think I've already covered my overall views in this thread so far.
That's why I shared the experience in the first place... so that others can take from it what they wish and learn from it in their own way.
I'm not compelled to explain to you again (or convince you) why I'm choosing anything beyond what I already have. You're entitled to think one should never touch any substance again if there's a bad experience related to it-- but I don't think it's valid to presume your opinion is a correct one for others, and certainly not for me.
I also think you are misusing the term irony-- taking food supplements for body/brain health is mutually exclusive from mixing a contraindicated set of things.

That statement is like saying that an alcoholic shouldn't drink water either because they're both wet and therefore equally harmful. They're completely different things.

Learn what? Not to abuse one of the most powerful psychedelics by taking it again and again until you burn out like you have? I think most people are smart enough to know that before trying it even once, with the exception of a small crowd who frequent this forum who will inevitably only learn if they permanently fudge their neurology or psychology.

I think the question here is what biochemical process is going on here, which causes the lockout effect for some people and not others, regardless of their frequency of use, intentions, and how healthy their lifestyle is. Longterm use of alcohol, for example, has been studied and found to be unhealthy in many ways for most users, whereas long term use of dmt, psilocybin and lsd, although not studied in as much depth, has been found to be relatively benign in relation to physical and mental health. Perhaps with the recently renewed interest in psychedelics by the scientific community, this question will be answered one day.

Two things - firstly, the semantic mapping of the term 'irony' is significantly different depending upon which side of the Atlantic Ocean you're living on. Secondly, coAsTal's suspected serotonin syndrome was not directly attributable to a specific "DMT overdose", nor a cumulative overuse - as stated in the OP, it was from combining harmalas with a large amount of 5-HTP.

If anything, this is a reminder that harmala alkaloids and neurotransmitter precursor nutrients need to be treated with respect just as much as any other pharmaceutical agents.

downwardsfromzero wrote:

yes..i might add, it's been suggested more than once, here and elsewhere, that harmalas may 'dampen' or suppress mental effects of tryptamines..
[from all evidence i know, with pure dmt there is no true tolerance, including to subjective effects, but there can be 'lung tolerance']
..and that, over the years, i've seen anecdotal and first-hand evidence of mid-term to long-term changes, in some people, in metabolism, digestion and mood, from large and repeated harmala doses..this would include drug metabolism..

First of all, I just want to say that I don't judge you in any way.

The reason for lockout can be physical, mental, or a combination of the two. As you say yourself, your life situation has been going through dramatic changes lately, society lock down, loosing your job and so on. A physical/chemical reaction in your brain is another option, the third a combination.

It might be many different reasons for lockouts person to person. Imho it can be difficult to find a single reason for lockout with so many variables in place.

This thread have some interesting ideas. https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=67905

Hope everything works out for you on all levels brother, take care.

Blessings

I thank you all, (including xss27!) for your kindness, concern, and helpful thoughts--even criticism is welcome, because I posted to hear your thoughts and share my situation with you.
I am at peace with this time of cleansing and re-focus on other things in life-- I just really want to understand the why/how of what's happened, and for deeper reasons than just experiencing DMT again.
Propello, I saw that thread from Glossolalia where he experienced the same thing. It's part of the reason I wonder so strongly what the mechanism of this experience is.

If only to warn/educate/guide others from reaching the same cul-de-sac, which again seems to afflict even short-time users.

I want to stress to you that I don't dismiss out-of-hand the premise that this is some kind of sub- or meta-conscious blocking effect. I'm inclined to believe that it could be some form of mental declaration that I'm not in a life state where I am/can be receptive to that frequency or mode of being.

My soul could be locking me into regular life right now because that's where I need to be. But I don't necessarily want the conversation in the community to just wave off the chemistry and physical realities of this effect either-- because saying "the universe said so" may be right, but that says nothing about "how" it said so!
And while it's easy to just say "if you abuse, you lose" it's not factually correct in 99% of users-- so while such sentiments are emotionally satisfying, they're not accurate for most people and don't explain anything to help others learn from the condition.

I hope this is all coming across as a measured effort to try and shine light on what/how this happens. I want the conversation to be fruitful for future searchers that go through this and stumble upon this thread in their efforts to understand how to navigate through times like this.

Wish you a speedy and full recovery brother.

I'm the last to judge your situation because I know how unfortunate injuries can be, even when you are trying to be careful... it's so easy to do one little thing wrong and end up with damage to your body. I've spent a lot of time and energy making up for a moment's indiscretion (in my case sports injuries), and I feel that wanting to heal is completely normal regardless of whether you want to experience DMT again (and I also wouldn't fault you for wanting to, it's a miraculous substance).

Thanks for the cautionary tale. I personally had no idea 5-HTP interacted with MAOI's, so you can count at least one person that learned something!

In the meantime, a suggestion might be to try out other forms of spirituality? I've been simultaneously interested in lucid dreaming, astral travel, opening the 3rd eye, etc. There's a lot out there that is peripherally related to the exploration of consciousness that might be interesting or valuable. I CONTINUE to be surprised that much of it is real once you get passed the religious-sounding vocabulary and some egotistical preaching. Best of luck!

I once took some melatonin with a fairly moderate amount of syrian rue, expecting to fall asleep even faster than would normally be the case.

It resulted in an MDMA kind of stimulation, keeping me awake for hours.