Psilocin is the active ingredient, the best known Psilocybin is a non-psychoactive precursor that loses a molecule in the acidity of the stomach and becomes Psilocin; I will use one or the other term indifferently, in practice they are the same. That said, don’t take products that contain psilocin if you have the following problems:
- you suffer from epilepsy
- you have heart disease
- you have abnormal liver functions
- you take drugs in general (in my first book I go into more detail about interactions with drugs, but generally if you take drugs avoid taking other substances)
- you have problems with alcohol (alcohol and psilocin are enemies)
- you have drug addictions (only cannabis addiction is not critical)
- you have psychiatric conditions
- you have a diagnosis of personality disorder – borderline – or more serious clinical situations
- you are emotionally unstable
- you have a family history of psychiatric disorders
- you are pregnant
- you are taking drugs with MAO Inhibitors
These recommendations are essential, if you take psilocin without following these directions you risk getting very sick or losing your life. Having said that, I think it is clear enough.
Psilocin is taken by ingesting the following products:
- Magic mushrooms
- Magic truffles
- Psilocybin
- Psilacetin
If you respect these contraindications and the rules of the set & setting, any experience, however difficult it may seem to you, will never be dangerous.
Be careful first, then trust!
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Great info and disclaimer. What if I use only low doses; 1 or two dry grams only like a micro dose and never any more than that?
I have not used sine 1999 and I’m 70 now and want to experience the increased health benefits of Psilocybin cubensis. In 1999 I learned the benefits of this mushroom and its healing properties at a low never over two grams. Ive had the heroic does back in the late 60’s and early 70’s and I know I can never go there again. Thank you for any reply.
Dear Elmo, I must repeat that I am not a doctor and I do not know you, but if you have no health problems you can use mushrooms, the quantities you are thinking about are generally safe for everyone. You could start taking mushrooms again starting from a dry gram, pay attention to the set & setting and listen to your sensations, the mushroom amplifies and therefore you will be in the best conditions to feel if and how to proceed for the following times. I don’t know where you live, but in this period there is a lot of fear, pay attention to this emotion, if it comes remember that it is not yours, do not identify yourself! Read my book if you can, I recommend it. All the best, cheers!
It’s worth you having a look at what Dr Bill Sukula has to say on the subject of heart health and shrooms.
Thanks Kate, I searched and read Dr. Sukala’s study, it seems very interesting and reassuring to me, in fact I mentioned these same results also in my book in the chapter dedicated to microdosing, the question was how long can a cycle last to be considered safe for the heart. I confirm that the contraindications described in this post are valid and up to date. Thank you very much
I have combat related PTSD. The first thing the VA did was put me on anti depressants that made me a zombie and did nothing to resolve the root problems. My analyst only gave me coping exercises to deal with the anxiety and loss of sleep. Now the VA is partnered with Johns Hopkins and is performing studies that are showing great results with synthetic Psilocin doses. I am not part of the program as it was only open to a select few that were veterans living in the area the study and trials took place. I will be traveling to Seattle in order to legally seek treatment and will be staying with my son. My treatment will be with a therapist that specializes in the therapeutic use of Psilocybin to reset my brain. My goals are to reestablish my lost empathy for others and deal once and for all with the massive anxiety. I am hopeful and have tried everything the VA has had to offer with very limited success. I find my search for resolution to be urgent and veterans desperately need an effective path to stave off the growing number of suicides. I personally have had two of the soldiers I lead on teams commit suicide in the past three years. We cannot wait another 5 to 10 years for approved treatment. My faith keeps me stable but it does not stop the anxiety nor does it stop the nightmares. I truly believe that God created fungi and other botanicals for us to use wisely in treatment. He gave us the key and our government keeps it locked in a box.
Dear friend thank you, there is no more time to waste, the beneficial uses of mushrooms are numerous and so important to so many people. I wish you all the best, please let me know.
You mentioned borderline as a no-go for shrooms, but would low/micro doses have some therapeutical effects? psilocybin is reported to increase openness
Hi Nick, you ask me a difficult question! The microdose does not work for you, I would rather say that it is a help and does not replace the therapeutic work. Read my post on microdoses on this blog, if you have any other questions then I’m here 🙂
Can you direct me to more reading on how psilocybin is contraindicated for people with history of borderline personality disorder or other characterological disorders. I am a therapist myself and am interested in if psilocybin can be indicated with such patients who have already made substantial progress in conventional psychotherapy over a period of years. At what point does psilocybin become safe to assist a person to access consciously unavailable emotions.states.memories? Thanks in advance!
Dear Wendy, your is an important question, I hope I can give you an adequate answer! I know of no better books than Stanislav Grof’s “LSD Psycotherapy”, even if it doesn’t talk about Psilocybin, I would recommend it to you.
In the meantime, I believe that the microdosing according to Dr. James Fadiman’s protocol can be used without particular problems also for your patients. But here I have to stop because I don’t have the medical skills to be able to tell you more. Thank you for the attention you have for your patients, let me know if you will read Grof’s book, write to me privately if you want. All the best!
Really interesting comments..please let me know the title of your book, d m tripson? Regards, judith
Thanks Judith, how nice! You can find all the info on the book here in the blog, also where to find it, the reviews are on amazon if you like to read them 🙂
These rules seem sensible and line up with what I’ve read elsewhere however I’d like to say my father was schizophrenic and I’ve had no psychological problems after taking shrooms. Bear in mind there is no know cause for schizophrenia and there’s only a 6% chance a child will get it if their parent has it. For the longest time I thought my fathers schizophrenia was caused by his dabbling in psychedelics until I learned that scientifically this is most unlikely to be the case. If you ask me his condition was most likely the result of a traumatic childhood and dabbling in questionable spiritual practices. Its very likely the mushrooms and LSD exacerbated his condition I don’t know but they certainly didn’t heal him. I guess if there’s more than one person in your family tree with schizophrenia psychedelics are not advisable but if it’s just one and you really think they could help with your own therapy I’d say it’s worth investigating to determine if your mind is stable enough. For me I know I’ve always had a stable mind despite my traumatic childhood and had this confirmed by my neurofeedback practitioners who were constantly monitoring me during and after sessions. It was also confirmed when as a teen I foolishly ate shrooms by the handful from a field. I was in the wrong set setting and with the wrong people. Luckily I lived to tell the tale despite a long intense and uncomfortable trip but I’m aware now of how lucky I was. So now at 45 I’m slowly I’m starting my therapeutic mushroom journey. Yesterday I did a gram with no full visual or auditory hallucinations I was just a bit wavy but with music and an eye mask I did delve into some deeper parts of me. Today I feel less anxiety. So I although I feel it’s right to be cautious shrooms could still help people who have a relative that was schizophrenic. Often if it’s our parent we need that healing.
Thanks Jed for your reflection, which I agree with. I am convinced that every pathology has a psychosomatic origin, none excluded, so for me there is no genetic predestination, I agree with Epictetus when he said that things are not good or bad, it is our opinion that makes them so!
The treatment of psychiatric pathologies with psychedelics is possible, but a competent and capable medical assistance is needed, someone like Stanislav Grof to be clear.
In an article aimed at anyone, such as this one on contraindications, I must warn strongly, not doing it would be irresponsible behavior.
But I see that those who want to understand can still do it, thanks again for writing 🙂
If you have read my book on mushrooms, you may have missed the page after the bibliography, where you find a good reason to write to me, so that I can send you something useful for your journeys with mushrooms. I wish you all the best!
Okay, I thought psilocybin was being used by people for OCD, Severe depression, and generalized anxiety. All things which I was planning on using 3.5 grams with the hope that I could get some relief. However, it would seem that it is contraindicated for me. I also take 3 mg of Klonopin daily, 300 mg of fluvoxamine and at the moment take 20 to 40 grams of Adderall almost daily. The adderall is only because I am depressed that I won’t get off the couch and I need to attend to essential matters.
So…can I take or not. I have taken 1.2 grams and after an hour or so felt relief from depression for 2 to 3 hours. I have also within 4 weeks taken 1.5
grams and felt nothing… and 2 grams, nothing. I did not do any preparation or anything different while experiencing.
I was thinking of following the guidelines here, going off adderall for 3 days before taking. Foes this seem feasible?
Thank you for your assistance.
Coleen
Dear Coleen, thank you for writing! I wish I were a doctor so I could help you, but you can imagine that even if I were, I couldn’t do it without meeting in person and talking some time together. With these two major limitations, I would like to try to tell you something useful, but I wish you could talk to someone who has the qualifications and experience to be able to actually help you.
Mixing drugs is always risky, some have dangerous interactions and others either increase or decrease their effects if taken together; already this can make you understand how difficult it is to recommend doses, compounded by not knowing your sensitivity to the active ingredient, in fact the active dose for one may be insufficient for the other or excessive for yet another.
As you can see it is really hard to figure out how to do it, I well imagine that you are looking for guidance to try to change something, the drugs you are taking are to manage your problem but not to solve it – unless you are doing psychotherapy at the same time.
I would do this in your place: start a course of microdosing according to the Fadiman protocol (see my blog post on this topic), the microdose might be a little higher than the standard recommended one, so 0.3 dry grams of Cubensis instead of the standard 0.2, keep the 72 hours between each intake. In the meantime try scaling down (decreasing) the amounts of your other medications, but do not discontinue or stop them completely; I don’t know who you are and have no idea of the effects of stopping immediately!
If you observe yourself over a period of a few weeks I think you might see some differences, but remember that if you found specialist support it would be better.
Work on yourself is done in so many ways, meditation, nutrition, osteopathy, homeopathy, Bach Flower Remedies, acupuncture, of course psychotherapy and also physical movement!
I hope I have given you some food for thought, please let me know! All the best 🙂
You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be actually something that
I think I would never understand. It seems too complex and extremely
broad for me. I’m looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!
Forgive the delay in replying, but I don’t know how it got into spam! I never wrote that mushrooms are easy, but neither do I understand what is so complex. Mushrooms are not to be taken if there are contraindications, either physical or psychological; in all other cases one must know doses and set & setting.
Perhaps you can find the answers you are looking for in my book… otherwise write again, here or privately.
All the best 🙂
Hello all, and thanks DM Tripson for your insightful and helpful blog that I’ve just stumbled across.
Although I am not a medical professional, I do feel obligated to share another contraindication that I feel should be included on this list, in hopes that in doing so I may spare someone else from the ill fate that my best friend in high school was met with years ago.
If anyone is taking Lithium in any doseage or for any reason, they should never, ever consume shrooms or LSD. This is what friend and I didn’t know at 16 years old, and what was supposed to be a fun, chill night at my house turned into my poor friend slipping further and further into a bad, no, nightmare-ish trip, at some point ceasing to respond to me or acknowledge me when asking if she was okay, and losing all ability to speak and was left grunting and making unintelligible sounds and moans. I didn’t know what to do as I was a stupid 16 year old who was afraid of my mom who was sleeping in the next bedroom over to find out what we had done. Not only would she find out, but she would be alerted to the situation in the worst way possible. Also during this time in my bedroom, there were several instances where she’d stop making the noises, and start shaking her body with her eyes closed. I did not know it at the time, but later found out that was her having mini seizures.
My friend, who’s condition was getting worse by the minute, at some point stood up without a word, and ran out of my room, across the hall and into my mom’s room, screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs. This obviously woke my mom up in the scariest way possible. She flipped her light on and asked me what was going on, as my friend began running around her room on all fours. Her behavior was….animalistic. It was scary. I immediately told my mom what we had taken. My mom had already began dialing 911 at this point and then, my friend abruptly stopped circling the room, fell onto her back and began having a bad seizure and foaming at the mouth.
The paramedics came, and her mom met us at the ER. She was okay after being stabilized and given a saline IV, but the whole thing was terrifying for both of us. She told me after the fact that to her, she was literally in hell and thought I was the devil. She was so scared and couldn’t even talk to ask for help. A simple Google search after the incident showed us that this happened because she was prescribed Lithium at the time.
Dear Josie, thank you for your testimony, I imagine it is an indelibly imprinted memory, I also imagine your fright about your friend’s condition, and also your mom, what a bad awakening. I think you were also on the drug, so your discomfort and fright was further amplified.
Lithium is taken as a mood normalizer, this therefore shows us that your friend already had serious contraindications to the use of psychedelics, which require unproblematic emotional and psychological conditions; if she was taking lithium she was certainly on medication, that was the fundamental mistake. To further confirm this, the visions she had, hellish! I assume that taking lithium may be contraindicated, but more than the substance I would say that your friend should not have been taking psychedelics in any case, lithium or not.
That’s what information is for, to know how and what to do or not to do! Another contraindication the young age, 16 is too young to have psychedelic experiences, but I understand well the point of view of those of that happy age 🙂
Thank you for sharing and for your time <3