[HN Gopher] Psilocybin and migraine: First of its kind trial rep...
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Psilocybin and migraine: First of its kind trial reports promising
results
Author : futureguy
Score : 94 points
Date : 2020-11-23 21:05 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| kcmastrpc wrote:
| There is an entire class of migraine medications that is based on
| triptan-class of drugs. They target similar receptors as
| psilocybin without the psychoactive effects. I've been using
| triptans for almost a decade to treat migraines.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triptan
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| I had chronic migraines so bad 4 days out of every week I could
| not drink water or eat food. I'd puke from the pain. I could
| barely think straight and in the rarest of situations my mind
| would pass out from the pain.
|
| Migraine medicine and other kinds of medicine I was given did not
| work at the time, so thinking they might be cluster headaches I
| turned to 4-aco-dmt, which is psilocin without the psilocybin, so
| no stomach nausea, but a bit weaker. It didn't stop a migraine
| once it had started, but it did work as a preventative. I did a
| little bit larger than a microdose once a week and had no pain,
| no migraines, no problems, for quite a long time. (A regular full
| sized dose I could take once every 12 days without migraines.)
|
| I turned to 4-aco over mushrooms, because it was legal at the
| time, and no nausea. I believe it's still legal today, but I
| haven't kept up. Today, mushrooms are legal/deregulated in parts
| of the US, including where I live, so it's less of a concern.
|
| Today I have a prescription medicine that works. I'm cognizant of
| taking a single drug for too long. When I look up what I'm
| currently taking (sumatriptan) people online complain it stops
| working at 7 years of use. This is great, because now I feel
| comfortable taking it for 5 years before needing to switch.
| However, the second I start needing more to function, I'm
| switching it out. I do not want a life long resistance. That
| needs to be avoided at all cost. When I was taking the 4-aco I
| was a bit more cautious, because I can't find online how long it
| works for migraines. I would rather keep it in my back pocket if
| I ever need it again, so I went off it the second I found a
| prescription drug that worked, despite that the 4-aco worked
| better.
| smcleod wrote:
| I used to take Sumatriptan, it was a life saver if you got onto
| it quickly.
|
| As I've got older I've had them less and less so no longer need
| to take it - but I do recommend people having regular migraines
| to speak to their Doctor and mention it.
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| >I used to take Sumatriptan, it was a life saver if you got
| onto it quickly.
|
| It's the opposite for me. If I take it too early into the
| migraine it sometimes doesn't work. I will intentionally sit
| with the migraine for around an hour, or until it gets bad
| enough, then take sumatriptan and wait the 1h30m to 2 hours
| for the pain to go away. 2-3 hours of a headache is far
| better than a day of a full on migraine. Once I take it and
| it doesn't work it builds up resistance for at least 12
| hours, so I'm stuck. I'll take the headache.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I've heard this making people a lot slower in reaction times
| and just general reasoning.
|
| I've definitely seen those side effects in my mom.
| zaroth wrote:
| I'm so glad you found something that works.
|
| My wife is perhaps in the early stages of this journey. What
| started as "bad headaches" once a week has, over the last six
| months, graduated into serious migraines where she can't leave
| a pitch black room for most of the day. They seem to cycle
| intensity where they are much worse 2 weeks out of 4.
|
| She's on nortriptyline daily with sumatriptan taken during
| episodes, but which is only partially effective after the 2nd
| or 3rd dose and about 5 days a month basically totally
| ineffective.
|
| It's fucked up that the human body is capable of causing itself
| so much pain over an ailment we can't even identify in any test
| or scan. It's completely debilitating.
|
| If it was for myself I would absolutely experiment with
| psilocybin or mushrooms in search of a treatment, but her
| personal history just isn't conducive to anything remotely
| hallucinogenic without a very highly experienced guide in the
| best of circumstances.
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| I was given a few drugs over the years similar to
| nortriptyline where they would remove the pain entirely, but
| then weeks later would guarantee pain. Worse yet, other drugs
| did not help when I was going through withdrawal, if you
| could even call it that.
|
| Some things that helped me massively: Despite having 20-20, I
| would get eye strain and I could not differentiate it between
| a migraine and eye strain. Worse yet, eye strain lasts for
| days just like a migraine. Switching from a 1080p monitor to
| a 4k monitor with a reasonably low dot pitch, minimizing
| video game playing, and hunching (looking at a laptop screen,
| looking at a cell phone), helped me massively. Oh and
| blackout curtains are a godsend if the sun rises or sets in
| the general direction of the room you're staying in.
|
| I went to a chronic pain clinic, and I was glad I did. When
| you lay in bed too long (especially when females do) the
| muscles deteriorate and this in itself causes chronic pain
| that can at times be difficult to distinguish from a
| migraine. I had to go to a physical therapist and it helped
| tons.
|
| A pain clinic will prescribe antidepressants, because they
| often will work for all kinds of chronic pain, including
| migraines, but sadly for me they only worked about the first
| month and then became ineffective. However, I did learn from
| that the best anti-depressants and anti-anxietiants in the
| first world outside of the US (because pharmaceutical
| companies can't make a profit off of it) are RIMAs [1] and
| are absolutely worth perusing if you have depression. Out of
| pocket they're about $20 a month, and they can help with pain
| too.
|
| And on top of all of that, turns out I get migraines from
| allergies. I'm unfortunately highly allergic to every grass
| and tree allergy allergists test and a few of them cause
| migraines for me. Second, I'm allergic to soy which causes a
| severe migraine response, so I'm constantly cautious. It was
| an allergist of all people who helped me get on the right
| migraine medicine. The allergist I went to dubs himself an
| allergist when other allergists fail, and does food allergies
| too. Unfortunately, my allergies haven't gone away, but at
| least I know a cause for my migraines.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moclobemide
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > It's fucked up that the human body is capable of causing
| itself so much pain over an ailment we can't even identify in
| any test or scan.
|
| This is the thing that really irks me about migraines:
| there's no fucking purpose. If my arm is over a fire, the
| pain is for a reason ("hey uhhhh you might want to move your
| arm") but migraines are senseless and debilitating pain for
| no conceivable reason. Even things like "oops, I forgot to
| drink enough water six hours ago" isn't particularly useful
| to me: I'm well-hydrated _now_ but hve a migraine anyway.
| Thanks, body.
|
| Lukcily for me, daily feverfew cuts back my migraines about
| 70-80%, and sumatriptan covers another 50% of the migraines I
| do get. That's still not 100% coverage though, and every time
| I'm sitting in a pitch black bathroom with cold sweats and
| vomiting into the toilet I have to ask myself "what is the
| point of this???"
| electriclove wrote:
| I tried a sample of sumatriptan once and my head/mind felt so
| clear. I've been able to manage without prescription meds but
| have always wondered if normal people felt like that all the
| time.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Interesting. Sumatriptan makes me really loopy and slurs my
| speech. It can also make my jaw ache really bad, which is
| usually a sign it's working (it has about a 50% success rate
| for me). I often think that it works by moving the pain from
| my brain into my jaw.
|
| I never really feel great after taking it, but I'll happily
| deal with the effects over a migraine any day.
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| Not for me. It's the opposite. The first two hours after I
| take it are a come up. My symptoms are different each time I
| take it: Sometimes I'm half cognizant at that time, sometimes
| normal. Sometimes I get very sleepy and want to take a nap.
| Sometimes it makes me feel like I have low blood sugar during
| the come up and I start mildly shaking needing to eat
| something. Sometimes an arm or my arms will go to sleep
| during the come up, which happens to me on lsd (but not
| mushrooms) as well. But once the come up is over, usually
| within an hour and a half, I feel completely normal like I
| took nothing.
|
| I'm probably abnormal. I imagine if you take it while you do
| not have a migraine you'll get a mild heightened experience
| that may or may not be noticeable. It is, after all, a
| triptan.
|
| Oddly, 4-aco always made my mind feel clear the way you're
| describing. A bit more awareness, a bit more clarity. On
| 4-aco I wouldn't notice much or any come up. It was just the
| effects from the drug getting stronger over the first hour.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Anyone doing research on the effects of nicotinic acetylcholine
| inhibitors mixed with psilocybin? That seems like an obvious
| avenue for exploration, given we now know that they naturally
| occur together[1], but I haven't seen any papers on that yet.
|
| [1]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260043066_Gymnopili...
| philg_jr wrote:
| A close friend's father uses Psilocybin to treat cluster
| headaches. He dealt with these debilitating headaches for a long
| time, basically unable to function as a normal human. This is in
| the US, and he is a former small business owner (retired), with
| money, and was able to see numerous specialists, attempted many
| treatments, all of which were unsuccessful. I'm not sure how he
| figured out that Psilocybin is an option.
|
| Psilocybin is the only thing that relieves his cluster headaches
| for months at a time. I believe he doses 3ish grams of dried
| mushrooms, once a day for 2 days. I hope this gets more attention
| now that some states are decriminalizing Psilocybin. I suspect
| that other substituted tryptamines would be helpful as well,
| without needing to digest lots of mushroom fiber (which can be
| hard on the gut unless you fast for a period of time before
| consuming them). 4-HO-MET and 4-AcO-DMT comes to mind.
| sibeliuss wrote:
| A friend of mine has been using small doses to treat his
| migraines for years. Such a nice surprise to see this article
| headline!
| spottybanana wrote:
| I use large doses just for fun. It is great. Haven't had
| migraines either, I think I will keep using just to prevent the
| migraines.
| echlebek wrote:
| A very nice surprise. It's been known anecdotally for many
| years!
| (https://erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_medical1.shtml)
|
| Science sure moves slowly when there's artificial barriers in
| place, like the object of your research being a Schedule I
| substance.
| jb1991 wrote:
| How do you have a placebo dose of psilocybin?! The effects are
| very noticable so lack of them would quickly reveal it was a
| placebo, I'd think. Unless it was not a blind test, in which case
| this would not matter.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| The patient would have to not know what the real drug was. And
| then maybe they list hallucinations as a possible side affect.
| But then it can't really be a double blind because an hour in
| the care giver would know if they had the placebo or not
| bfgoodrich wrote:
| Small doses of psilocybin are very difficult to detect.
| Personally I barely find it barely noticeable at 1.5g (in the
| dried shroom measure). Microdose levels are 1/10th of that, and
| often much lower.
|
| Give someone a so-called microdose and it is unlikely that a
| placebo vs actual study would actually find that people could
| detect it.
| gardnr wrote:
| The articles that I read on this 5 years ago stated that a sub-
| recreational dose was sufficient to reduce or eliminate cluster
| headaches for 6 months.
|
| The patient doesn't need to take an amount that would get them
| "high" and the drug is still effective at keeping migraines at
| bay.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Perhaps, but this study wasn't testing a sub-clinical dose.
| There was a significant psychedelic effect (19.5% vs 3.08%
| for the placebo).
| meetups323 wrote:
| Why must we be so quick to discredit placebos? If a certain set
| of stimuli (someone in a medically authoritative position
| saying "this thing will help you", followed by you taking it),
| can be shown to work well at reducing symptoms in clinical
| studies, why not embrace it?
| jb1991 wrote:
| Nothing wrong with that, but it may be testing something
| different. Worth testing, but it's a different concern.
| leetcrew wrote:
| how would this work at scale? people tend to take a dim view
| of doctors that lie to them. imagine finding out you've been
| paying $50/month for a sugar pill prescription.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Well, the study wasn't very well blinded.
|
| "Psychedelic Effects Subjects scored the 5D-ASC scale at the
| end of each experimental session. The percent possible score
| for the total scale was significantly higher after psilocybin
| (19.35% (7.55)) as compared to placebo (3.08% (1.80); p =
| 0.026, t(9) = 2.65)"
|
| So, the placebo effect could have caused the reduction in
| migraines.
| tcannon wrote:
| A common placebo for a small dose of psychadelics is a large
| dose of niacin, which causes you to flush and get hot flashes
| and chills. It's more than enough to get the mind going for
| someone who is bracing for the drugs to kick in.
| bfgoodrich wrote:
| I do recreationally partake of psilocybin (for "spiritual" and
| simply entertainment reasons), and this was something that I
| personally have noticed: I no longer have migraines. Previously I
| suffered extreme migraines that would easily knock me out for a
| day, I couldn't take any medicine or I would vomit it back up,
| etc. I haven't since my first "shroom" experience.
|
| The weird thing is that I get the pre-migraine experience at the
| same rate, it just isn't followed by a migraine. Previously I'd
| get the vision distortions that would get worse to the point that
| I could barely see, and then an extreme migraine would start. I
| still get those vision distortions (every week or two) just as
| frequently, but they're followed by just returning to normal.
|
| This is obviously single case anecdotal, could be purely
| coincidental, and I don't encourage anyone to base any action on
| it, but it was something I literally had a discussion about this
| weekend.
| SebastianKumor wrote:
| Keto diet helped me a lot with my migraines. As soon as i started
| to ear more carbs again the frequency of migraines increased.
| Also wine is a big trigger for me. Would be nice to try this.
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