Hi M,

Unfortunately I did not see your other reply until just now:

"I tripped yesterday. I ended up having to take the whole 7g I bought, wondering if they were quite weak. I'm curious to know how soon the thoughts stopped after you tripped? I couldn't sleep until about 4am, and woke up just after 8am. The thoughts still come, but my mood is quite a lot higher than normal, despite being tired, so they bother me only minimally. I'm wondering if there will be a bit of adjustment time to let the pathways keep building in my brain."

Re the dosage you took, that is a lot. 5g is commonly referred to as a "heroic dose" which often involves full-blown ego death. 7g would typically result in significantly pronounced effects. For the record, I took around 1.5g

The problem likely isn't that the batch was weak, but that the SSRIs attenuated the effects. Unfortunately, psilocybin is not a viable treatment for people using SSRIs. Adam Strauss experienced something similar when he tried to treat his OCD with magic mushrooms. As mentioned in the podcast below at around the 5-minute mark, his first "trip" didn't have any effect because of the SSRIs he was on:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-man-who-treated-his-ocd-with-magic-mushrooms-podcast/

I strongly recommend listening to the entire podcast. Adam emphasises that mushroom therapy isn't an instant fix for intrusive thoughts, which aligns with my experience.

The mushrooms did give me temporary relief after the trip, but their real value was in helping me learn to accept uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. This acceptance was a crucial part of my long-term recovery. About a month after the trip, my intrusive thoughts also returned, but I was able to handle them better by applying insights from the experience. With time, the thoughts eventually stopped completely. Mushrooms were the catalyst for recovery, but they were by no means a quick fix.

Expecting the thoughts to stop instantly is unlikely, it's much more likely that you'll be able to handle the thoughts better at first. Then, with time, they may stop, as was/is the case with me.