Opinions - 5-HTP: Is it worth it?

[darkglobe]

I (yes me, not SWIM) was wondering... Has anyone actually experienced using 5-HTP at the stated doses for the stated purposes? What does it do, exactly?

My friend (really, my friend) was wondering if 5-HTP has recreational values?

[psyche]

No recreational value, it's a mild sedative and mood-enhancer. It also suppresses appetite and helps to fall asleep, especially on higher doses. SWIM offered 5-HTP for his father, who was depressed and meds didn't help. 5-HTP helped a lot.

[darkglobe]

Thanks very much for your help, psyche.


I have no idea about most of the nootropics/research chemicals.

I think I may try this combined with Gingko Biloba to balance my mood a bit.

[Micklemouse]

Indeed, at the stated dose A Certain Mouse has had good results as an antidepressant & mild mood stabiliser (we're talking for depression related mood swings here, not the type of mood swings associated with personality disorder, schizophrenia or manic depression). He generally finds that taking it for just a couple of weeks helps tremendously, but that's just him - some may benefit from a longer course.

He has also combined it with ginko to he believes great benefit.

Within the NHS it is rarely if ever prescribed, even for the treatment esistant depression which it is indicated for, which is a shame. I read somewhere a while ago (damned if I remember where, & have lost many bookmarks since) that the shop bought 5-htp is actually stronger than that prescribed - would be nice to find that page again!

[darkglobe]

Thanks, Micklemouse.

My doctor believes I suffer from a type of Anxiety-based depression, but I do not think I suffer from depression; I'm just moody and pessimistic.

I now take St. John's Wort for my slight depression, and I have to say it's flippin' effective! It's a bitch to watch out for MAOI's, though....

~Dark

[Zaprenz]

Originally Posted by Micklemouse

Within the NHS it is rarely if ever prescribed, even for the treatment esistant depression which it is indicated for, which is a shame. I read somewhere a while ago (damned if I remember where, & have lost many bookmarks since) that the shop bought 5-htp is actually stronger than that prescribed - would be nice to find that page again!

Tryptophan is available on the NHS but 5-HTP isn't. It is one stage back from 5-HTP which is 5-Hydroxytryptophan (Phosphate). Tryptophan was the first supplement available (and is why is the only one available on the NHS) but after problems with purity and production it got banned from being available in supplement form. (There are many theories to the politics of this but I wont go into them now). 5-HTP came out subsequently as an alternative to the banned tryptophan which happened to be a step ahead in the metabolic cycle to serotonin.

More information on wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HTP

The two should not be confused though, they differ slightly in effects. Broadly speaking 5-HTP is 10x the potency of Tryptophan but tryptophan is also a precursor to other compounds which 5-HTP is not. (I believe possibly niacin but am not certain of that).

Shulgin as ever has superb commentry on the subject in TIHKAL...(The topic is covered whilst talking about tryptamine)

http://www.erowid.com/library/books_...tihkal53.shtml

TIHKAL 53

Then, an incident occurred in 1989, at the Showa Denko company in Japan, where a change in the manufacturing procedure produced an impure product. The impurity led directly to a health problem, a condition with a flu-like syndrome called Eosinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome (EMS) which cause some 1500 incidents in the United States, including 38 deaths. The FDA quite rightly removed tryptophan from the market on the 17th of November, 1989 and banned its distribution. The source of the health problem was quite quickly identified, and the production operation was changed back to the original process, and the tryptophan product was again available free of any toxic impurity. This freedom from any impurity was acknowledged by the FDA, but they transferred the toxic aspect of the substance from the impurity contained within it (now no longer present) to the substance itself. The implied declaration was that tryptophan was intrinsically toxic.
The sale of tryptophan as dietary supplements for man is now illegal. Dietary supplements to animal stock feed is OK. Tryptophan is available to hospitals for use in critical situations. Tryptophan is available as a prescription drug. But it is not available in the health food stores and so cannot be explored by the lay researcher. The world of inquiring into the action on normals, schizophrenics, alcoholics, people who are overweight, people who are depressed, is denied both to the private individual and to the clinical researcher. There are commercially available drugs, all approved, that can play the same role. Within four days of the announced ban of tryptophan (after the problem had been resolved and corrected) a broad promotion of Prozac (an antidepressant similar in action to Tryptophan) appeared in Newsweek (March 26, 1990). Prozac is still widely promoted. Tryptophan is still not available to the private individual. Both can play the role of being an effective sedative.
A quotation from the FDA Dietary Supplement Task Force Report, page 2, June 15, 1993, deserves careful reading.

"The [FDA] Task Force considered various issues in its deliberations, including ... what steps are necessary to ensure that the existence of dietary supplements on the market does not act as a disincentive for drug development."

What are dietary supplements? How might they get in the way of pharmaceutical industry creations? Where is the line to be drawn between nature and big business? What plants are there that might serve as health adjuncts? I truly think that we are being had by the powers that be, who are authorized to control our access to medicines. Today we cannot eat ABC because it contains an outlawed drug. Tomorrow we cannot eat DEF because it is suspected of containing an outlawed drug. The day after tomorrow, we cannot eat GHI because it has not been shown to be free of outlawed drugs. And yet, everything in the drug store had its origins somewhere in a botanist's observation or in a chemist's mistake. Where does this oppression stop? When do we say, hold, enough?

We must be free to eat this plant, and smell that flower, as we choose to. To deny us this right, is to deny us a simple, and basic freedom that is our Constitutional identity. If I want to continue to eat bananas and drink milk, I will do so, and get off of my back. If I want to consume tryptophan because I feel it brings me closer to God and Jesus, or makes me sleep better, I will consume tryptophan. You, the empowered authority, will not tell me not to. As was so eloquently expressed in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, when the hero group of heroes came up against the authority group of authorities, they said, "Hey, Officer Cronsky, fuck you."
There are a pile of pharmacological details that should be collected and disposed of. For example, l-tryptophan is the natural and normal amino acid and yet it is more toxic than the unnatural d-isomer. The rat data would suggest that it might be a problem at a something over a 100 gram dose, although I know no one who has nibbled that high. In fact, l-tryptophan is the most toxic (in rats at least) of all the natural dietary amino acids. Interesting. So what? And there is a botanical side to all of this. Gramine is a synthetic precursor of tryptamine, and yet it has been reported here and there as a natural plant component. The same is true for indole-3-ethanol. Yet, both of these can serve you in the laboratory for the synthesis of tryptamine and, of course, of DMT. The plant world seems to be fully aware of these same processes. A final comment to connect man and plant. The primary animal metabolite of both tryptamine and of DMT is the corresponding indoleacetic acid which is itself a potent plant hormone. This just happens to be one of the most thoroughly studied plant growth hormones, and has been isolated from a number of natural sources. Less well studied is the reduction product of the intermediate aldehyde, by the action of monoamine oxidase, to the corresponding alcohol, indole-3-ethanol or tryptophol. This rather rare plant stimulant has recently been found in cucumber seedlings, but has also been shown to be present in trace amounts (along with the hormone indoleacetic acid, MMT and DMT) in at least one Ayahuasca component, the Illinois Bundleflower legume, Desmanthus illinoesis. Another circle has closed upon itself in an interesting way.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Thanks for the input & clarification - had wondered!

[darkglobe]

Cheers, Zaprenz.

Happened to have already read the links you posted, but nevertheless thank you.

With regards to Niacin (Vitamin B3): Trytophan is indeed a precursor to Niacin production. This is useful because Niacin is actually an effective support for stress.

[CRUNK]

Originally Posted by darkglobe

Thanks, Micklemouse.

My doctor believes I suffer from a type of Anxiety-based depression, but I do not think I suffer from depression; I'm just moody and pessimistic.

I now take St. John's Wort for my slight depression, and I have to say it's flippin' effective! It's a bitch to watch out for MAOI's, though....

~Dark

St. John's Wort helped me once when I went thru a depression stage. But watch out when you stop taking it because it does have some mild withdrawl symptoms, like you'll sometimes go thru stages when your really happy, then you'll go back to feeling down again, or sometimes you'll get these "zaps" in your head, which feel really weird sometimes. I'd reccommend taking less and less if you ever want to stop using it.

Peace Bra!
crunk

[grecian]

Swim has been taking 5-HTP for about a week now in 100mg per day doses, once a day, in the evening.

He wanted it primarily for sleep problems. Since his mid to late teens he has only been able to sleep after 2am, most often considerably later. The only times in the past 5-6 years he has got to sleep earlier is because of heavy cannabis and/or alcohol use in the evening. His sleeping problems have become even worse in the past year or so, perhaps as a result of semi-regular MDMA use.

Well last night he fell asleep at 10pm (admittedly after a weak cannabis joint), the night before around midnight. These results are far better than he hoped for.

At this stage, Swim thinks that for someone in a similar situation to him 5-HTP is definately worth it.

Swim will post again if his view changes or if he notices any other effects/side-effects.

[Bajeda]

SwiGrecian may want to look into Melatonin. Its levels are supposed to peak at 2-3 in the morning, so maybe swiy is simply producing less? Hard to say though, could be a range of other things.

Some melatonin supplements could very well help swiy adjust his circadian rhythm so he isn't dependent on substances to help him get to sleep.

Reputation Comments on this post:

useful advice

[Spelvin]

SWIM has ben diagnosed with depression and prescribed both zoloft and wellbutrin on separate occasions. SWIM has found wellbutrin to be ineffective and zoloft to have bad side effects. Swim has been using 5-HTP and prefers it to zoloft because it does not make swim angry or lightheaded and swim finds 5-HTP to be effective within the first few hours of taking it. 5-HTP is also non-prescription and cheaper than zoloft, making it the best anti-depressant SWIM has come across in his admittedly little experience. Swim would reccomend trying 5-HTP out before going to a doctor if SWIY thinks they are mildly depressed, as if it doesn't work SWIY can always still go in for an official diagnosis.

[imyourlittlebare]

i would recommend for depression Inositol. It is much more effective and absorbed better by the body than 5-htp. However i dont believe you can get recreational value out of these drugs and in fact mixing it with antidepressents to "get high" can kill you by causing seritonin syndrome. dont mess around with it in high doses with other stuff!