Why do SSRIs stop MDMA From working?
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The science on this isn’t set, but there’s 2 mechanisms that are quite well known.
Reason #1 is tolerance. It’s a very simple concept. If you have increased activity at a specific site in your brain over a period of time, taking a similar drug will result in a diminished experience. MDMA and SSRIs both increase serotonin activity, and there’s a cross tolerance between the two.
Now sometimes you can take more of that drug to overcome the tolerance of another drug (generally not a good idea but possible), but MDMA binds to a lot more than serotonin receptors, binding to norepinephrine and dopamine receptors as well. And those you will not have any tolerance for. You will end up in the ER trying this.
Reason #2 is the drugs competing for each other trying to bind to receptors. SSRIs have a stronger binding affinity binding to the reuptake pumps. They’ll knock MDMA off and bind themselves preferentially. As long as you take SSRIs, it’s just not going to work well. The euphoria mostly comes from the serotonin.
Reason #3 is difficult to understand and not set at all, but whatever SSRIs do, they make MDMA and to a lesser degree other psychedelics just not work even after the SSRIs are stopped for some period of time, somewhere in the range of 6 months to a year. I’m not aware of any known mechanism for this. To be clear I haven’t read about this in some years, so maybe some thing spectacular popped up. But I doubt it.
Mushrooms worked swimmingly for me, but I guess they are different?
Wellbutrin seems to really dampen my MDMA trips how long before it’s out of my system if I quit?
Do they? I never had a problem with this when I used to party
Anyone know if it’s similar for SNRI’s?
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