Cluster headaches also known as “ice pick” or “suicide headaches” are known medically as the most pain that a human being can endure. The reason they are called clusters headaches are because they come in patterns or a cluster of cycles. The large majority of cluster patients are episodic and they come at the same time of the year, time of the day (cycles). Generally it happens when the patient falls deep into the REM cycle and they are woken by excruciating pain. The attacks happen for most of us 3 to 8 times per day and last typically anywhere from 30 minutes to 90 minutes. Some patients are chronic and they will only experience around 30 pain free or cluster free days per year.

It is generally thought that this disorder is caused by a deformed hypothalamus – though no one knows for certain what causes them, what is known is that there is not a cure and medications used for them are used off label. Some of the medications commonly used are: Verapamil, Imitrex, Topomax, High Flow O2, prednisone, Cafergot, lithium, and many more. Some of the medications are used in combinations, for example prednisone and verapamil might be given to help control the cycle.

This is my story – I happen to be an episodic patient. I first started to get attacked with these at the age of 17. I am now 43 and can still remember the day of my first attack. We patients do not call them headaches as this is not a true representation of what they are – we tend to call them attacks. I remember being taken to our family physician and I was diagnosed at that time as having allergy or sinus headaches. I live in the Sacramento area in California and it is a pocket for pollutants and allergies. I was started on allergy medication and even allergy shots. This did nothing for these attacks and so back to the doctor I went only to be diagnosed as having bad migraines. I was given directions to sit in a cool dark place, the problem with this is that a person having a cluster attack cannot sit still – we tend to roll around on the floor and bash our heads with our fists and slam our heads into walls and curse to God. These are far more painful than a migraine. There is really nothing to compare them to. Sometimes when asked to try and compare them to some other aliment of pain I often tell someone to give themselves an ice-cream headache and keep eating it for 45 minutes. There still isn’t anything comparable to the pain that they cause.

Because I am an episodic sufferer, the cycles I experienced when I was younger would last 6 weeks and I would get around 4 attacks per day. They would then go away and 2 years later they would return. This is so disruptive to a person’s life that it starts to affect them physically and mentally as well. Physically you have no energy, medication’s start to dry out your joints or other medications will have unwanted side effects. As I got older the cycles changed for me as they tend to do as we get older. We have no idea why but they can and often times do. My cycles now run 3 times a year every year, they tend to last 6 weeks still and I get attacked about 6 times per day, they last around 58 minutes for me (I have kept a detailed logbook since I was 24 years old and can predict when they will come and go).

At the age of 39 I was having a horrific cycle – I am not sure if it is due to getting older and it is harder to fight them or just them changing. I was on 4 different medications at the same time – the reason for this is because what works for one 6 week cycle more than likely will not work for the next cycle so they (Neurologists) change up the medication protocols or cocktails. I went to my Neurologist (difficult to find one that even knows about CH due to very few of the world population having this disorder) during this difficult cycle and was given a new protocol, heavy doses of verapamil (well above what a heart patient would be prescribed), I was also given a vial of Imitrex, Prednisone, Depakote, and just to try it out Stadol. I had an EKG done as they wanted to monitor my heart with the calcium channel blocker (verapamil). Everything was fine, my weight was great and I seemed to be very healthy other than the Clusters. After 2 months of this protocol I was removed from it, I had developed a right bundle blockage. I could barely catch my breath going up and down stairs. I went from being lean (160 pounds) to 198 pounds. I came home that day in pain with another 12 pack of red bulls – cluster patients have good success with slamming icy cold red bulls. We have no clue why this works but toward the end and sometimes even in the middle of an attack we can usually abort the remainder of the attack by slamming icy red bulls. High Flow O2 is also one of the most beneficial means of aborting an attack as well, not the cycle itself but the attacks. As I placed a few red bulls in the freezer I overheard my wife flipping channels on the TV and an episode of NatGeo’s Drugs Inc. was starting, it was an episode on Magic Mushrooms and a man that would later become a good friend of mine (and change my life) using them to end the pain from cluster headaches.

As I was only in the second week of the most painful cycle I had had up to that point, I looked at my wife and we talked about it for a long time. I come from a very disturbed background, I was physically abused (beaten) as well as emotionally abused, and came from a very hostile background that bled into my personal wellbeing at times. I didn’t have the best upbringing to say the least. I came from a very unfortunate background with a Mother that has mental issues. The people that raised me are not good people at all. The concern that my wife and I had for my use of mushrooms came from my background as we had always heard that it could do more damage to one mentally, especially with my background. I won’t even get into the fact that I am also a former soldier that was more than likely also suffering from PTSD topped off with probable PTSD from my upbringing.

Drugs were bad in my book.

As we considered my options for treatment my Neurologist thought it would be a good idea for me to go on disability until the cycle was over because I was mentally and physically exhausted, also I wasn’t the nicest person to be around. I refuse to go on disability; I have worked hard after the military in college to get a degree as well as an executive level in the I.T. field. After some more attacks and not being able to handle the pain, my wife and I agreed that I would try magic mushrooms for the first time. I immediately stopped all prescriptions I was ordered to take, within days I started to work out and exercise, I was trying to detox the medications out of my body. In order for this to be successful one has to detox from all cluster medications. Some of the medications will block psychedelics from working to abort clusters. It is important to detox off of all drugs for 5 days prior to using any psychedelics to treat cluster headaches. Acquiring them was the most worrisome part for me. I had never done “street drugs” and I was timid to even try and find them. However there is a great deal of them on the wonderful west coast that can be found naturally and if you can find someone that has any mycology experience there is plenty of medication to be found.

I decided with a handful of shrooms to go at it. I had no clue what I was in for. I measured out 1.2 grams of dry shrooms. As I sat for a while (30 to 45 minutes) I started to feel something change. Cluster headaches are unilateral. My side is the left side. I felt that side of my face go completely numb, not the right side of my face or head but only my cluster side. My nostril opened up finally and I could breathe in and out of the cluster side as well, it started to drip in fact. During attacks the nostril will close up on the CH side as well as a watery and droopy eye. As I sat there strange things started to happen. I could almost feel the Clusters retreat a little. After about 6 hours I had a very bad attack, more than likely one of the worst in my life. I was told by other cluster patients that use shrooms that this was normal.

As the next day approached I was amazed that I had slept all the way through the night and even slept in a little. I was feeling pretty good. This didn’t last long and I was warned it could take several attempts to achieve what is known in the cluster world as a bust. A bust is where a cluster patient is able to use psychedelics to abort the complete cluster cycle all together. Some patients say that this is remission – I don’t call it remission as they come back too often for me, I call it the dormancy state. After my first bust attempt (decent success) I decided I would go for a complete bust.

This time it was different. I chewed down 3 grams of wonderful Psilocybe cyanescens. I had done a little research and this time decided I would go to my bedroom in the dark and put on some headphones and play Pink Floyd’s Zabriskie Point. Wow – I was amazed and had the best life changing event in my life. Everything made sense – I took the opportunity to work on myself but I couldn’t I just kept playing the same song over and over again. It was amazing! I can’t put into words what happened to me that night, but I was able to take certain elements of life and hold them in my hand and rearrange my world. The next day I had the dreaded slapback. A slapback is the way you know that a bust was more than likely successful – it is the absolute worst cluster attack that a patient will get, however it typically lasts only 5 to 10 minutes and can be aborted with O2 and red bulls. Within 5 minutes of slamming an icy cold red bull I could almost feel the cluster cycle drain down the back of my skull into the base of my neck. My eye went back to normal, my nose was opened up. Life was great. A tingle sensation would occasionally run over my skull on my Cluster side. It felt great.

After my “bust” was successful I did more research and found that in order to stay in this zone I would need to do maintenance dosing. So I started on a schedule and figured out my body and really listened to it and followed my protocol. I was pain free for 4 and half years! My protocol was simple, 2 grams every other month. I didn’t always enjoy having to do this and at times would have anxiety, but I suck it up knowing that this is medicine and that to maintain pain free living and to have a life it is necessary. I eventually started to grind them up and now I put them in gel caps. It is much easier for me to take this medication in this form.

Sometimes I think that when we cluster patients bust with psychedelics (or any medication) we are just kicking the can down the road. I recently after 4 and half years had my dormancy interrupted and it was by far one of the most painful cycles for me in recent years. In December of 2015 my Mushroom grow was finished and now I had medication again to bust. I find that when I am pain free and living life I tend to slack off and not have medication for my maintenance doses until it is too late. Growing them is a challenge at times for me. I get too complacent with pain free living and ignore them, even though the signs are still there at times. This doesn’t work that well for me. Due to my complacency they caught up with me. I had to bust – this time it took 2.5 to 3.5 grams every 4 days for 5 attempts. It finally went dormant right before a scheduled vacation. I am getting to the point however where mushrooms are no longer as effective as they once were. I tend to think maybe it is the strain I was using and potency but then it I also have to remember that what works for a while tends to no longer be as affective over long periods of time. Also due to not knowing how much psilocybin is in the mushroom we cannot accurately dose this wonderful medication. It is just a guess and experience.

I have had a very successful run with this medication. Due to it not being as effective for me it is time to move on to a new substance. I will now have to try LSD. Some Cluster patients report better success with LSD – for instance I know one person that was chronic and used one hit of LSD and this has given him 5 years of cluster free living.

I refuse to take no for an answer. I don’t care about laws at this point or who makes them. I think that Cluster Headaches are cruel and unusual and I feel that what is even crueler is that this medication is illegal! It is also illegal for one to commit suicide as well. I would much rather take an 8 hour trip with this medication over ending my life while breaking a law. I feel so strongly about this that I would take it to a jury trial and even beyond. I feel so bad for people that suffer from this disease. I have been in a cluster support group for many years now and sadly along the way we have lost a few members that have taken their own lives. Statically, Cluster patients have a 20 % higher suicide rate. There is a member that was in my group that asked his Government to be euthanized.

One of the saddest parts to me about this is that when trying to talk someone off of the ledge of suicide they look at psychedelics as wrong due to what I think is the stigma that has been given to them. They have been labeled as such horrific drugs that people are afraid they will lose their minds or go crazy. For some it is a moral issue for them. For others it is the stigma and the legality of these drugs. Unfortunately it tends to turn some away from such a powerful medication and they continue to needlessly suffer.

I hope that in the future there can be more research in this area for medical purposes. We already know what the benefits can be mentally and therapeutically, but not so much for medical purposes that I have been able to find. I have seen some promise in “research chemicals” such as successful reports from Cluster patients using 5-MEO-DALT. But I am sure once word gets around about this, those channels will get blocked off and it will be on the scheduled list. Users have reported aborting cycles with it at just 15 MGS and there is no trip involved. I have tried this but it doesn’t work for me that well.

There is also promise of 2-Bromo as well but who wants to make this for us when it usually only requires one dose for them to go dormant for 5 or more years.

There are so few of us out there and the pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t make very much money from us. So we are left to do what we need to do – each one of us are different but what is known from informal surveys is that psychedelics are a proven method for cluster patients to end a lifetime of excruciating pain and have a somewhat normal life.

I have changed from when I first started using (busting) with psychedelics. I am no longer depressed, depression what is that? My shortness of a temper is much better; I don’t drink and haven’t really ever because it is a trigger for cluster patients. But now I do have an occasional drink or beer. I am a better family person. My attitude is really great and I have a great outlook on life now. I feel I am a better person for not just me but my family and coworkers as well. I went from being 198 pounds to a very lean 160 and I mountain bike ride at least 20 miles per day. The prescription drugs took that from me but psychedelics as medication have given me this gift back. I have also worked on and solved very complex algorithms while on a trip. I have learned to use psychedelics to my advantage both professionally and personally. Sadly – I sometimes have to trip too often which can cause some bad trips, but I am learning and recently read James Fadiman’s book The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide and will take some of what I have read and apply it to my future sessions. I am not complaining at all and I am so thankful that I am here and alive enjoying my life and I attribute this to my using psychedelics as medication. I can’t foresee myself ever going back on pharmaceutical medications for this disease; it is too harsh on my body and robs me of life – I don’t take any medication at all.

Psychedelics have restored my wellbeing and balance – it has given me my life back.

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