Psilocybin and migraine: First of its kind trial reports promising results
newatlas.com
newatlas.com
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.
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.
I never really feel great after taking it, but I'll happily deal with the effects over a migraine any day.
I haven't been able to correlate actual jaw tension, teeth grinding, and migraines in any meaningful pattern. I'd say a good 60-70% of my migraines are due to some mix of brightness, hunger, thirst, exercise, sleep, and stress. Another 10% alcohol, and the rest is random: "Here's the migraine you ordered! Oh, you didn't order one? Well here it is anyway, enjoy!"
Don't get me wrong, I 110% prefer the dizzy over Satan piercing my brain with a trident.
Unfortunately, I don't know if there is a process to clean out the inner ear. I met someone once who would get dizzy from time to time from her inner ear and it was just a condition she lived with.
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.
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.
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???"
It is a signal beyond the normal subtle communication we get from our bodies that must be listened for to be heard, the stuff yogis talk about.
For people in my family, including myself, it means avoiding certain contaminated food products, such as processed food including white flour.
For me personally, it is also avoidance of synthetic products such as VOCs, which cause me much suffering when I'm exposed to them. For example, furniture will off-gas that stuff for months and years after manufacture.
Another common source of pollutants is regular household "cleaning" products -- look up "indoor air pollution".
This stuff is rarely acknowledged in mainstream information sources, and it is certainly not easy to get away from. It requires a conscious effort, basically becoming your own EPA and FDA, and being much more strict than them.
I think it is worth considering for anyone suffering from migraines to try eliminating all this stuff from their life and seeing if it helps before trying to suppress the signal with drugs.
An easy way to try is to camp out in a clean outdoors area, bringing only clean food with you, while also avoiding new camping products, and any "sprays".
So by this reasoning, a migraine is designed to stop you from consuming more information than your mind can handle. The pain of bright light is designed to keep you away from the stimulation of bright light. And the pain of noise to keep you away from stimulating noise.
I upgraded to a 4k monitor from 1080p in 2005 and suddenly half of my headaches went away. When the season changed and the sun started coming into my room, those headaches came back. Blackout curtains stopped them.
It was a pretty big ah ha! moment, because before that medicine didn't work on my "migraines" because I was suffering from multiple kinds of chronic pain at once.
Perhaps, given her suffering, it's time to find that guide.
Was in your wife’s shoes. Locked in a dark room most of the week.
Most medications not working. Supplements helping, but not enough.
Someone suggested TMJ. Looked up video on TMJ massage. 3 days later I was nearly normal. Been mostly fine since.
The only real solution is to keep moving forward and keep hounding your doctor to keep you moving.
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.
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.
Sometimes when migraine medicine does not work for me, it's because it's a headache not a migraine. I have some over the counter "migraine strength pain killer" pills which are acetaminophen, asprin, and caffeine, which works most times the migraine medicine does nothing.
I've definitely seen those side effects in my mom.
So, in the US it's over the counter if people will seek it out. This way they can charge more. If it's not over the counter it's something generic that people will not go out of their way to a doctor for. In the last 10 years in the US I think the only prescription drugs moved to over the counter is allergy medicine, which seems to fit this pattern: People will not go to a doctor for seasonal allergies typically.
Thank you.
Anecdotally, I have a friend who experiences chronic cluster headaches and low mushroom doses were the first thing in 20+ years which they said just worked, and well, without any negative side-effects.
It says in the US it's still unscheduled. ^_^
Technically they don't go after buyers for unscheduled drugs. If you buy in bulk large enough that they suspect you're a seller, but don't have any reports of you being a seller they'll give you a love letter which is, "We confiscated your package. Don't do it again." and that's the max penalty for buying 4-aco in the US. If a law is unenforced in the US, it is legal. To prove it is enforced if they ever want to go after sellers, they have to capture multiple sellers at once in bulk to prove there is no bias. The legal system is interesting in the US, isn't it?
Also, where I live (Oakland) it's totally outright legalized, so no problems.
We can talk theory and everything, but I've seen people get arrested and charged for both possession and procurement, so.
Sumatriptan saved my life.
I don't drink much in the way of caffeine. When I drink coffee I drink decaf. I also drink decaf tea sometimes. I also drink irregularly. I'll go a week or two without any decaf or anything and then another week drinking six cups a day.
...in the final analysis
... And how many subjects were not included in the final analysis?
10 is tiny in any case. This is noise. Ignore.
edit: Thankfully the article does actually include enough information to figure this out. 69 subjects screened, 12 took part. Two dropped out, 1 because of scheduling conflicts, 1 because their migraines went away). I also disagree with their experimental methodology. All 10 were given the placebo on the same day, and then two weeks later all 10 were given the psilocybin on the same day. As this was a local study (all participants in the same town), something as simple as the weather changed could explain the difference.
I now will double-plus ignore this study.
It is perfectly reasonable exploratory research.
This is, of course, a relatively common epistemological failure for many individuals - the reduction of science to a binary proof/refutation system where a study can only transform your priors into a posterior of zero or one, so I guess it's hard to blame you.
Despite the long words in your sentence, this comment amounts to "you foolish binary thinker!"
This study has little predictive power and is hardly distinguishable from noise. It has a poor experimental design and is not a good example of how to do research.
It deserves a complete do-over with a better design and more subjects.
I chose the words to not direct any criticism towards your person or identity but to a mistake that I also make sometimes. No insult was intended. But, all right, I won't talk about this with you any more.
You could have just said "Well, Science isn't binary". Which is fine. Instead, you had to go on about how it's so tragic that everyone is wrong about it.
So, to put it more simply, you're saying that this study should increase his confidence in psilocybin as a miracle cure for migraines from 0% to what? 0.1%? Whatever that updated degree of confidence is, it's very small. It's safe to ignore this study.
OC isn't saying this is unreasonable research. He's saying it's not attention worthy due to low statistical power.
Had I ever thought about this question before, I would have started out at higher than 0% because I think a lot of migraines have psychiatric/psychological causes, which psilocybin can help with, I think.
So maybe an increase from ~10 to ~11 percent confidence in this hypothesis, for me.
The key to the experiment was this: "Initial studies at the time seemed to suggest psychedelic drugs that activate 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A (5-HT2A) receptors could significantly reduce headache burden in chronic migraine sufferers."
We still need to do more studies and experiments and change our explanations to test those new explanations. That's all they've said. And here the initial comment was just going to cancel it outright because, probably, it didn't fit their internalized cultural moral landscape.
The experiment in question was testing an explanation, there is a HUGE lack of understanding of things that are banned, like Psilocybin--because they are banned.
See also: The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch
But prediction is the proof that your explanation (i.e. model) is correct, no?
The only purpose of science is prediction. The rest is bottle-washing and button-pushing.
Many nonpsychedelic indole alkaloids that are structurally related to psilocybin, (e.g., methysergide, ergotamine, dihydroergotamine, and methylergonovine) are used as treatments for cluster headache, although they do not abort cluster periods or extend remission period as psilocybin is noted to do.[1]
2-Bromo-LSD is also used to treat cluster headaches. In fact if you look, essentially every drug used to treat migraine/cluster headaches is closely related to and acts on the same serotonin receptors as approved medicines.
[Psychoactive substances as a last resort—a qualitative study of self-treatment of migraine and cluster headaches] These patients are in a desperate and vulnerable situation, and illicit psychoactive substances are often considered a last resort. There appeared to be little or no interest in psychoactive effects per se as these were rather tolerated or avoided by using sub-psychoactive doses. Primarily, psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide, and related psychedelic tryptamines were reportedly effective for both prophylactic and acute treatment of cluster headache and migraines. Treatment results with cannabis were more unpredictable. No severe adverse events were reported, but it was observed how desperation sometimes spurred risky behavior when obtaining and testing various treatment alternatives.[2]
Given their longstanding legal status, much of the research has been amateur/anecdotal/self-experimentation by people desperate for any kind of treatment. Cluster headaches are also known as "suicide headaches" given how many sufferers without effective treatment choose to kill themselves rather than live with the pain. You will find widespread anecdotal reports of people finding lifesaving relief from psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, 5-MeO-DALT, etc.
All of which is just to say this sort of generic "underpowered study!" skepticism isn't very helpful. Maybe it's not a great study, but you should update your confidence starting from more like 50-90% that at least a subset of people suffering from migraines/cluster headaches would greatly benefit from psychedelic treatment. And if you're not aware of any of this background, it might be worth doing some reading before telling people to have 0.1% confidence in a low risk treatment that just might save their life.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3345296/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5584001/
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.
There is one interesting experience which might be of value to other people: for a year I went on a zero carb diet -- and I mean zero with no cheating -- to lose fat. I lost the fat but also lost all migraine episodes as well. Completely migraine free for a year. Just that makes me want to go on the diet again.
With white flour, I don't even think it is the pesticides, because I know at least one family member for whom it was a trigger before we moved to a country which uses them for everything.
I can reliably induce a migraine by looking at alternating black-and-white lines. I have never experienced more than one migraine in a 24-hr period.
For treatment, I've always used a combination of early identification (sudden awareness of own body temperature gradients) plus quick caffeine and marijuana supplementation.
When I was younger, the aura was short and the primary issue was the debilitating, long-lasting headache.
For the last 5 years or so, I only get the headache-part maybe 25% of time. In exchange, the auras have become instantly debilitating, nauseating, and almost incapacitating. My vision goes from normal, to mangled, to "I can see-but-not-comprehend" what I'm looking at. After some time, the aura lightshow slowly moves offscreen and then I feel fine again.
I have subsequently been following the literature on this effect. It annoys me that the opening line of this article reads "in a first of its kind"
Science sure moves slowly when there's artificial barriers in place, like the object of your research being a Schedule I substance.
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.
Homeopathy
"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.
Give someone a so-called microdose and it is unlikely that a placebo vs actual study would actually find that people could detect it.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260043066_Gymnopili...
* white flour products.
* processed food products with preservatives.
* VOCs from furniture, new cars, etc.
* any kind of synthetic cleaning products, which basically means dr. bronner's soap and nothing else. (If you look at "seventh generation", "mrs meyers", "jason", and other "eco" brands, they're all the same crap as dawn and others. They used to be OK in the beginning, but no more.)
It is certainly not easy, and basically requires you to become your own EPA and FDA and be vigilant and strict, and may initially cause tensions in your relationships, but I live in multiple domiciles without having one myself, and I've been able to slowly but surely convert them to Dr. B.
No brand is forever, and you have to keep watching it and switch to an alternative when it goes bad. For examples of brands who have already gone bad, see above.
Every day we play roulette with our bodies, bombarding them with thousands of synthetic chemicals we did not evolve with, meaning they came about in the last hundred years after millions of years of evolving without them. I think migraines are often "last resort" signals which tell us something is seriously wrong, and we need to stop.
I think we're just beginning to come around to this as a society over the past ~50 years, and it is only getting better, but very slowly. If you want to be ahead of the curve, this is it. I think we'll soon look back on this time the same we look back on shoe-fitting X-ray machines from back in the day.
I started taking it for mildly high blood pressure and my (almost daily) headache's disappeared. I've since found a couple studies where Lisinopril was tested for headache relief.
https://blog.joeldare.com/migraine-headache-solved-by-lisino...
Apparently beta blockers are well known for this, as a neurologist told me a few weeks ago. No clue why it was never mentioned when searching treatment. I found out myself also only after having to take it due to high BP.
Still looking for something that works for a relative, tried almost everything, including triptans and vitamin B2 (which I havent seen mentioned yet). Maybe mushrooms would be something to try next.
I wonder what that mechanism is. Why not worse headaches, or any headaches with large doses? Why would such a tiny amount cause so much pain?
Has anyone here experienced anything similar?
It's a shame because I enjoy the glow of microdoses prior to the delayed onset of the headache. I don't feel anything remotely like a trip, but I do feel a sort of positivity and warmth I otherwise wouldn't. Almost like my mind has slowed down to take a break, and as a result, it feels a little nicer.
Initially I thought that my BJJ training was the issue as there was a direct correlation between training, exertion, neck strain and migraines the next day. But they progressed to migraines from the gym (weights), after a meal and one drink, and even for no apparent reason. I still think there is a link between neck strain which is exacerbated by computer use and eye strain.
Sumatriptan saved my life. Maybe this could also help, in small doses.
They come back with stress, not enough breaks from mobile/monitors, and other unknowns.
Exercise daily getting your heart rate up has helped also.
There’s a migraine book out there about the exclusion diet where you slowly cut things out and make detailed logs. Log what you eat, what you did, felt, a super detailed journal. I never make it more than a few days of that.
Speaking out of personal and family experience.
I’m suffering from vertigo for 17 years now—from multiple times per week to having it only a few times per month.
When having an attack/phase getting my head into another position triggers really strong vertigo which is strange.
Everything else is ruled out (including bppv).
Often times I also have blurry vision, things just feel out of proportion and I’m having a really tense feeling in my face/jaw. (Which may be associated to migraines).
I almost never have headache.
Someone who feels the same?
Even thought they aint legal its fun growing them and easy to grow enough to last a while
I myself am lucky to not suffer these, but the horror stories I've heard from my friends make me really sad that we are just now exploring this avenue of treatment.
Psychedelics and marijuana helped me to integrate the conflicting aspects of my self. Then the migraines stopped coming.
I've heard about other people where the opposite happened - they ended up completely losing their minds.
Once they're eliminated or reduced, the migraines stop.
Have you tried anything like this?
Even the study itself is vague on the definition of 'migraine' other than stating the study was based on rumours of self-medication by self-diagnosed migraine sufferers. The article itself is paywalled, but I suspect subjects were recruited from a base of volunteers answering 'do you suffer from migraines' on a questionnaire.
There is, in fact, a medical definition of what a migraine is. It excludes tension headaches, cluster headaches, anxiety-induced headaches, earaches, back and neck injuries (chronic or acute), and even post-concussion headaches.
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.
Couldn't say whether caffeine is negative or positive as it's pretty much always been a component.