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Anti-histamines

Category: Medicines

Type

Involuntary

Introduction and description

First a definition. "A histamine antagonist (commonly called an antihistamine) is a pharmaceutical drug that inhibits the action of histamine by either blocking its attachment to histamine receptors, or inhibiting the enzymatic activity of histidine decarboxylase which catalyzes the transformation of histidine into histamine (atypical antihistaminics). Histamine antagonists are commonly used for the relief of allergies caused by intolerance of proteins".

Our immune system is a system of biological structures and processes that protects against disease by identifying and killing pathogens and tumor cells. So I first would like you to read the explanation on the Immune system and how it works before you take a look at this section. The Immune system uses histamine extensively in its defences. It is in fact an essential part of our armoury.

So why the f*ck do we use ant-histamines?

I really don’t know, it is madness.

The response of the body to pathogens and unwanted invaders includes inflammatory responses. These are essential in the fight because pathogens can be killed off by heat. If we rest [sleep] and stay warm and let our body work away, ‘give in’ in other words to let our body’s systems do the fighting, the inflammation will go and the heat, once the virus or danger is past.

I have observations that show that sensory deprivation in a benign 'Black Room', which produced 24 hours of sleep in the research subjects, cured both their colds and a case of poison ivy.

But of course these approaches are very inconvenient for some people who live in societies that do not tolerate someone taking days off for ‘the common cold’ or days off for ‘a nasty cough’. The pressure is on to keep going, when the sensible course of action would be to take the pressure off and go to bed and sleep.

It is also inconvenient to be ill. But then if you are ill, you have to let your immune system fight it, not the Will. The Will never wins.

The drugs

Antihistamines are prescribed for the common cold, for coughs, to prevent motion sickness, to treat nausea, as over the counter sleeping aids, as so called ‘allergy’ preparations that are supposed to help with rhinitis, to treat hay fever, nightmares [!], in the management of moderate to severe cases of serotonin syndrome (a complex of symptoms associated with the use of SSRIs), migraine in children and adolescents, ‘cyclical vomiting syndrome’, to “prevent morning sickness in pregnant women” and to stimulate the appetite!

You name it, they are sold for it.

Snake oil medicine.

How do they work?

Antihistamines block the binding of histamine to its receptors on nerves, vascular smooth muscle, glandular cells, endothelium, and mast cells. They effectively exert competitive antagonism of histamine for H-receptors. Where histamine may dilate, ant-histamines constrict and so on, for example anti-histamines:

Constrict post capillary venules – so the drugs close up the main channels by which the defences can reach the site of attack, the effects certainly in your limbs may be that you feel very cold and tired, because blood cannot get to the extremities.
Deactivates the endothelium – there will be reduction in the turbulence of the flow of blood, and blood flow will be constricted. If you are actually being attacked by a pathogen then anti-histamines will inhibit the rate at which protective defences can reach the site of attack.
Decrease blood vessel permeability - vascular permeability will decrease and fluid will be prevented from escaping from the capillaries into the tissues. Any swelling will go down and the runny nose and watery eyes will stop, but of course you may then suffer from dry eyes and a nasty dry feeling in your nose. You may even lose your sense of smell as the sensitive cells in your nose die from lack of fluid. And of course if there is a pathogen it will not be washed away.

For more details see Anti-histamines in more detail.

Side-effects

Dehydration - Lack of fluid may affect various areas of your body. You may get a dry mouth, dry eyes, an inability to focus very well. There may be urine retention.

Hypoxia - The opposite of vasodilation is vasoconstriction, so at too high a dose an antihistamine will act to constrict arteries and restrict blood flow. Common side effects of antihistamines are dizziness, insomnia, and itchy skin. Plus rapid heartbeat, and chest tightness, arrythmias and tachycardia. A sort of near death experience.

Stress and brain damage - Histamine has a protective effect on neurons, it “protects against the susceptibility to convulsion, drug sensitization, denervation supersensitivity, ischemic lesions and stress”. So anti-histamines can potentially make you more susceptible to being stressed, having convulsions, being sensitive to drugs and giving you brain damage.

Generally speaking anti-histamines produce audible and visual hallucinations. There have been out of body experiences, but they seem to be ones produced by what is more correctly termed a near death experience caused by over dose.

Antihistamines and death

Of we take the figures of the deaths submitted by doctors to the FDA and SEDA from the eHealthme web site the figure, as of early September 2015 was

3,043

The full list is shown in Antihistamine deaths. This figure applies only to the US and we have just used the anti-histamines shown in the list below.

Antihistamines, officially and unofficially have a very impressive record of killing people.

There are two main types of antihistamines – the ‘first generation’ histamines tend to be far more sedating than the second generation type.

One of the very notable effects of this is that they are responsible for a huge number of accidents – car accidents, pilot aircraft accidents and other work related and home related accidents.

So no spiritual experiences – unless of course you count the one that many of these people get when they are killed…………

Impact of sedating antihistamines on safety and productivity. Kay GG, Quig ME.
Department of Neurology, Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC, USA.
The use of sedating antihistamines by allergy sufferers remains common, and physicians continue to prescribe these older antihistamines with great frequency.
Precautionary statements warning of possible drowsiness and the need for caution when driving or operating machinery, which are required for sedating antihistamines, don't appear to be having much impact.
Sedating antihistamines are frequently found to be a causal factor in fatal traffic accidents and are the leading medication found on autopsy of pilots who have crashed their aircraft.
Patients taking sedating antihistamines frequently don't feel sleepy, yet they have difficulty staying awake and their brain functioning is impaired.
The impact on safety is found in the increased risk of traumatic work-related injuries, driving accidents, and aviation fatalities. The cognitive and psychomotor deficits translate into losses in worker productivity and student learning.

Loss of work productivity due to illness and medical treatment. Cockburn IM, Bailit HL, Berndt ER, Finkelstein SN. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Cambridge 02142, USA.
We examined the effects on work productivity of treatment with antihistamines in a retrospective study using linked health claims data and daily work output records for a sample of nearly 6000 claims processors at a large insurance company, between 1993 and 1995.
We explained the variation in work output depending on the subjects' demographic characteristics, their jobs, and whether they were treated with "sedating" versus "nonsedating" antihistamines for nasal allergies.
Differences of up to 13% in productivity were found after the subjects took sedating or nonsedating antihistamines. The observed effect suggests substantial indirect economic costs, which up to now have been largely overlooked because work productivity has proved difficult to measure objectively.

Accidental poisoning in childhood: five year urban population study with 15 year analysis of fatality. Pearn J, Nixon J, Ansford A, Corcoran A
Patterns of accidental poisoning in children are changing dramatically. A five year population study (1977-81) was undertaken in urban children from Brisbane (population 1 000 000). A total of 2098 children were poisoned during this period with only one fatality, which represents a dramatic reduction in mortality. Over the past 15 years (1968-82) 13 children have died from accidental poisoning from this population, and two were murdered with drugs. …. The current age corrected rate of poisoning is 393 per 100 000 children per year (0-5 year olds). The rank order of poisons, drugs, and chemicals causing hospital admission and death is:

petroleum distillates 13%;
antihistamines 9%;
benzodiazepines 9%;
bleach and detergents 7%;
and aspirin 6%.

Fatal diphenhydramine intoxication in infants. Baker AM, Johnson DG, Levisky JA, Hearn WL, Moore KA, Levine B, Nelson SJ; Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, Rockville, Maryland, USA.
Diphenhydramine is an antihistamine available in numerous over-the-counter preparations. Often used for its sedative effects in adults, it can cause paradoxical central nervous system stimulation in children, with effects ranging from excitation to seizures and death. Reports of fatal intoxications in young children are rare. We present five cases of fatal intoxication in infants 6, 8, 9, 12, and 12 weeks old. Postmortem blood diphenhydramine levels in the cases were 1.6, 1.5, 1.6, 1.1 and 1.1 mg/L, respectively. Anatomic findings in each case were normal. In one case the child's father admitted giving the infant diphenhydramine in an attempt to induce the infant to sleep; in another case, a daycare provider admitted putting diphenhydramine in a baby bottle. Two cases remain unsolved; one case remains under investigation. The postmortem drug levels in these cases are lower than seen in adult fatalities. We review the literature on diphenhydramine toxicity, particularly as it pertains to small children, and discuss the rationale for treating these cases as fatal intoxications.

Possible role of pseudoephedrine and other over-the-counter cold medications in the deaths of very young children - Wingert WE, Mundy LA, Collins GL, Chmara ES. Medical Examiners Office, 321 University Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
The Philadelphia Medical Examiners Office has reported a series of 15 deaths between February 1999 and June 2005 of infants and toddlers 16 months and younger in which drugs commonly found in over-the-counter (OTC) cold medications were present. A total of 10 different drugs were detected:

Pseudoephedrine
Dextromethorphan
Acetaminophen
Brompheniramine
Carbinoxamine
Chlorpheniramine
Ethanol
Doxylamine
and the anticonvulsants, phenobarbital, and phenytoin.

The drugs were confirmed and quantified by gas chromatography (GC)-mass spectrometry, with the exception of ethanol, which was analyzed by headspace GC and of phenobarbital and phenytoin that were quantified by GC with a nitrogen phosphorus detector.
The most predominant drug was pseudoephedrine, which was found in all of the cases (blood concentration, n=14, range=0.10-17.0 mg/L, mean=3.34 mg/L) and was the sole drug detected in three cases.
Acetaminophen was detected in blood from each of the five cases with sufficient sample. Other drugs (with frequency of detection) were

dextromethorphan (five cases)
carbinoxamine (four cases)
chlorpheniramine (two cases)
and brompheniramine, doxylamine, and ethanol (one case each).

In the majority of the cases, toxicity from drugs found in easily available OTC medications was listed either as the direct cause of death or as a contributory factor. The manner of death was determined to be natural in only two of the cases.
This postmortem study supports previous evidence that the administration of OTC cold medications to infants may, under some circumstances, be an unsafe practice and in some cases may even be fatal. The treating physicians and the general public need to be made more aware of the dangers of using OTC cold medications to treat very young children so that these types of tragedies might be avoided.

How it works

How do they work to produce a spiritual experience?

Healing - Anti-histamines have no healing capabilities. Although it appears to be commonly believed that they are the pharmaceutical to use in cases of anaphylactic shock, this too is unproven. To quote " Administration of epinephrine is the treatment of choice for anaphylaxis, Antihistamines (both H1 and H2), while commonly used and assumed effective .... are poorly supported by evidence. A 2007 Cochrane review did not find any good-quality studies upon which to base recommendationsand they are not believed to have an effect on airway edema or spasm".

Antihistamines are masking symptoms and preventing the body from attacking the cause of the illness or disease. As such they are likely to prolong the illness and allow some pathogens to get a more permanent footing in the body - a safe little home in our cells to multiply and spread. Given that some extremely nasty diseases are caused by viruses and bacteria, cancer being one, this fact should not be dismissed lightly.

If we take but one example, cold sores are caused by the Herpes simplex virus. If you take antihistamines in the mistaken belief that they will help the itching and redness, you open yourself up to blindness in later life. The global incidence (rate of new disease) of Herpes keratitis is roughly 1.5 million, including 40,000 new cases of severe monocular visual impairment or blindness each year.

Hallucinations, visions, out of body, near death and death - We can see from the side effects, that any number of the side effects of themselves can produce hallucinations, visions, out of body, near death and death.

Observations

It has not passed the ‘recreational drug user’ community by, that these classes of drugs have ‘abuse potential’ and in some cases you will find that although the number of involuntary experiences is low, the number of experiences posted on EROWID is much higher. The figures in brackets show the number of hallucinations as recorded on the eHealthme web site derived from SEDA and the FDA in 2010. By following the links you will be taken to the eHealthme web site and an up to date figure as well as all the side effects people have reprted to doctors.

In a number of cases I have been able to provide examples of the experiences from EROWID – some involuntary and some not.

Observation identifiers	Observation name	No of observations
002087	Actifed abuse	1
002088	Triprolidine and Actifed	4
002089	Actifed again	1
002090	Clarinex	60
002091	Coricidin	78
002092	Benadryl	141
002093	Terrible Benadryl experience	1
002094	Zyrtec	63
002095	Tylenol	378
002096	Periactin	20
002097	Polaramine	13
002098	Dimenhydrinate	4
002099	Dimenhydrinate and caffeine	1
002100	Diphenhydramine	1147
002101	A glimpse of insanity from Diphenhydramine	1
002102	Diphenhydramine deaths and poisonings in germany	123
002103	DPP and Allergen	1
002104	Doxylamine	33
002105	Unisom delirium	1
002106	False positive for methadone	1
002107	Allegra	87
002108	Vistaril	483
002109	Claritin	441
002110	Midol	120
002111	Meclozine	54
002112	Dextromethorphan and chlorpheniramine	12
002113	Coricidin abuse	47
002114	Coricidin psychoses	92
002015	Civil aviation accidents and fatalities	338
002016	Promethazine	80
002017	Promethazine abuse	132
002018	Tripelennamine	906
002737	Near death on cough syrup	1
	TOTAL	4865

I think you will agree when I say this is a staggering number of observations from just one class of off the shelf medication.

Other drugs in this category with no observations.

I have provided a list in the Science section Anti-histamines other which shows other products that either have no record of involuntary hallucinations, or which have no record but do have some record of abuse. It also include those which have a record of involuntary experiences, but of fairly low figures. In addition some drugs that are simply derivatives of the ones already described are also included. Note that the reason that a drug may have no record of hallucinations may be because it is not available in the USA - the eHealthme site is USA based.

Related observations

Saved from Addiction Ibogaine by Lightofiboga 017439

WHAT AND WHERE IS HEAVEN?

VISIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

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Anti-histamines

Type

Introduction and description

The drugs

How do they work?

Side-effects

Antihistamines and death

How it works

Observations

Other drugs in this category with no observations.

Related observations

WHAT AND WHERE IS HEAVEN?

VISIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

Navigation

Sub Navigation

Overload

Anti-histamines

Type

Introduction and description

The drugs

How do they work?

Side-effects

Antihistamines and death

How it works

Observations

Other drugs in this category with no observations.

Related observations

Healing observations

Hallucination

Wisdom, Inspiration, Divine love & Bliss

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In time

Other observations