Scopolamine: The forgotten antidepressant

Some of my darling Datura Innoxia plants

So, reading about this depressed autistic Dutch woman who died through euthanasia after Dutch doctors said there’s nothing left that can be done for her kind of frustrates me. It simply is not true. Our brains are largely shaped by our thoughts. Those thoughts serve to rearrange matter and neuronal connections within our brains.

The reason there’s a long list of chemicals said to be “antidepressant”, is because the brain just happens to have a very potent ability to deploy chemicals in whatever manner helps it functional optimally. At high doses of substances, it tends to run into diminishing returns.

This is why candyflipping is so popular and useful for many people. The MDMA you take makes you feel connected to everyone around you, which humans want. The LSD you take simultaneously puts your brain into a very flexible state, where it can rearrange its connections so that this experience you have alters how you continue to view the world from now on.

This is also why with very promiscuous chemicals like ketamine, that binds at many different receptors, we do not really understand how it performs its magic. The answer is that the brain deploys such a promiscuous chemical in whatever manner works best to rearrange itself, which will differ from person to person and from one region of the brain to another.

In research, we tend to focus on chemicals that encourage the output of new neurons, like Ketamine, or that radically change the pattern of connections at a high level, like Psilocybe mushrooms. This works well for certain aspects of mental health. As an example, Psilocybe mushrooms can help people by changing their fundamental value orientation.

It’s much easier to be happy as a person, when you can derive the kind of pleasure from the beauty of a tree that us mushroom-eating hippies happen to feel. And so although you were raped or bullied as a child, or put under immense pressure in some other way, the new sources of pleasure available to you still make life worth living.

But actually healing trauma, in practice proves to be much more difficult. There is some success seen with periods of cannabis use, which just accelerates the dissipation of trauma recently experienced. As an example, when soldiers return from war and start regularly smoking cannabis, they’re far less likely to develop PTSD.

This is much more difficult however, with anchored trauma, that has happened many years ago and fundamentally began to determine how you view the world. As an example, teenagers who experienced a lot of stress can start smoking cannabis and will generally be able to overcome the effects of the stress in that manner. In contrast, it’s not going to work as well, for trauma they incurred as children.

And that brings me to Scopolamine. Scopolamine infusion has seen some success in dealing with depression in people. Noticeably, it tends to work better in women than in men. We don’t have an explanation for why that is, but I personally think this is due to women more often having traumatic experiences in childhood, that became deeply anchored into their view of the world.

So how does Scopolamine work? Well, its effect are very much opposite of most chemicals we administer to help the brain. It induces inflammation in neurons and it damages connections between neurons. This simultaneously has the effect of encouraging different connections to emerge. What scopolamine does in mice is that it leads them to unlearn what they had previously learned.

This matters, because when you have a trauma, you just want to unlearn certain things you have learned about how the world works. It’s not even so much that you want to forget these things, you want to stop them from being the lens through which you view all your other experiences. If you were raped as a child and it hurt, this can become a kind of anchor through which you view all future sexual encounters. Someone who treats you with respect or doesn’t hurt you is “bad” at sex, because your perspective on sex has been largely shaped by your first traumatic experience.

Scopolamine seems to be one of the best options we have available, to get rid of these kinds of dark anchors in our view of how the world works, instead of just “building around” our unpleasant anchors, like we tend to do with most treatment options.

I immediately have to point out of course, that scopolamine is not like most other substances, it is much more risky, because its mechanism of action is very different. It takes a long time before the effects begin, which last for a long time. The difference between an effective and a lethal dose is also much smaller than with substances like ketamine.

But it works. It just turns down unpleasant dark anchors in our view of how the world works. And importantly, its effects are synergistic with ketamine. The combination of ketamine and scopolamine has a stronger antidepressant effect than just adding them up together. I always thought this would be true, due to the receptor binding profile and my own experience with both. Well, I looked it up and sure enough, they find that it works like this in mice. The combination of the two gives your brain the opportunity to rewire itself, while it has turned down the strength of whatever strong anchors in your view of the world it considers unwanted.

Ketamine is widely used now to treat depression, but I don’t like it too much. It’s a very asexual kind of entheogen, it gives people an asexual academic type of personality with regular use. Scopolamine is exactly opposite, it is a very animalistic and passionate kind of deliriant. It strengthens sexual desire and self-confidence. It has the effect of making things sexually desirable again to you that you found desirable in the past but no longer care for.

This is not very radical knowledge. There’s a reason shamans in South America sometimes add brugmansia to their Ayahuasca brew: It just works. The DMT containing plants and the monoamine oxidase inhibitors allow your brain to rewire itself with more positive ways of looking at things, but the brugmansia has the effect of tuning down the loudness of whatever traumatic memories you have that make you look at things from a dark perspective.

There are other aspects that need to be considered too. Scopolamine seems to have the ability to cause a purge of viruses that linger around in the brain. When people take scopolamine, there is a sudden burst in inflammation in neurons, but without death of the neurons. Particularly, there is a burst in neurons expressing toll like receptors and interferon. This is known to work well against Japanese encephalitis, I expect it also works against other viruses that go dormant in the brain, like Herpes Simplex and Cytomegalovirus. In general, acute inflammation is a good normal part of how the body functions, chronic inflammation is a symptom of the human body trying to get rid of something, but failing to get rid of it.

And so before Dutch doctors embark on a large scale autist genocide because they want to die, because the other kids in elementary school were not nice to them or just start killing off all the adults who were sexually abused as children, my recommendation would be: Realize that the human brain is much more flexible than we think it is, as long as we work with the right friends.

I honestly just want to see people thrive, instead of forever being trapped and burdened by whatever circumstances they grew up in. I do in fact recommend people to try Datura, if they suffered trauma in the past, against which nothing else seems to help. However, you have to be very careful. My own recommendation would be to grow Datura Innoxia, harvest the seeds and to start out by chewing on one seed in the evening, before going to bed.

You probably won’t notice this, so after waiting a few days, you can move to two seeds. When you start suffering a dry mouth and visual distortions, you know you have achieved the dose your body can cope with.

Do not take more when you don’t notice anything after a few hours, because it can take a long time before the effects start. Just wait a few days and try again with a slightly higher dose.

7 Comments

  1. The industrial-technological system makes people miserable.

    It might be better for some people, who cannot or won’t adapt, to leave the system to the extent that they’re able rather than try to force, or drug, themselves into fitting in, or to commit suicide.

    The system is going to get worse too, so if one thinks one mightn’t be a good fit already, now might be the time to start looking to put more distance between oneself and it.

    It’s trite recommendation, I know, not the least of which because the damn system is everywhere, so how does one get away?

    • > It’s trite recommendation, I know, not the least of which because the damn system is everywhere, so how does one get away?

      Agree with your comment, Wombat.

      Rad seems to be proposing a kind of Huxleyian “Soma” for our burgeoning ZOGWorld.

      Hm.

    • Agree, SYM

      Had a friend who graduated Marine boot camp many years ago, and me and my other friends decided to celebrate with DPH (which was “poppin’” at the time). This Marine had a horrible experience and said his sense of orientation (being able to wander in a forest or office building and know which was was north) was permanently extinguished. We probably overdosed him, but yeah, be cautious with anti-cholinergics.

  2. Child abuse is rife and is a big fundamental driver of problems we have. Sadly, people who are abused as children are often driven to abuse children themselves.

    One of the biggest sources of child abuse after single mothers is in the education system.

    Both of these things are essentially state-sponsored chuld abuse systems.

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