When I was young my favorite drug was a little red pill called Acromicina. Acromicina is a drug that can only be found in Mexico and as far as I know/remember it was a drug you could buy over the counter until 2001 or 2002. These days you can only purchase this drug in Mexico if you have a prescription. Acromicina might have caused my microbiome a lot of damage because of how liberally I used it when young. I was unaware of the damage antibiotics do to your body and feel like it could have been a major factor in my adult depression.

When I was young we would often visit my maternal grandparents in Mexico. Although the drive seemed very long when I was young, I enjoyed visiting my grandparents because they had cable TV and because the food in Mexico was super delicious. It was nice visiting my mom’s favorite taco stands and food trucks. However, I would always be very cautious and worried because these delicious tacos prepared on the corner of streets or in food trucks would sometimes give me the runs. The lower food service regulations in Mexico combined with my weakened gut microbiota were probably the reasons my stomach would soon be making sounds warning me of the inevitable. I would soon be sitting on a toilet shitting my guts out while I rubbed my belly in hopes of making the abdominal pain disappear.

“It was nice visiting my mom’s favorite taco stands and food trucks. However, I would always be very cautious and worried because these delicious tacos prepared on the corner of streets or in food trucks would sometimes give me the runs.”

I remember being around eight years old when my mom first introduced me to my favorite drug at the time, Acromicina. I asked her a couple of months ago how she found out about this drug. She told me that she was introduced to Acromicina when we visited my Dad’s family in Mexico. She had gotten food poisoning during the week-long trip and my Dad’s sister had told her how good these little red pills were in curing intestinal problems. These little red pills had the power to kill even the strongest case of diarrhea. After my first introduction to this drug, I became an immediate fan. I made sure to always have some when we went to Mexico and the stock back at home was always abundant. Eventually, this drug became a drug you could only purchase with a prescription. If I had known back then what they were treating with this drug, I would have never touched it. Perhaps Mexico wasn’t completely aware of how powerful and dangerous this drug was initially.

Acromicina (Tetracycline hydrochloride) is an antibiotic used to treat a wide variety of infections. This includes acne, cholera, brucellosis, plague, malaria, and syphilis. Because I was young, I didn’t know better and would use this drug every time I felt another case of the runs coming. I remember I sometimes would use the drug preemptively whenever we were going to eat at a place that I felt might upset my stomach. When I was young I hated using public toilets and well the public toilets in Mexico aren’t always the greatest. I also didn’t want to ruin the plans we would have for that day by asking my Mom to take me back to my grandparent’s house just to take a dump. So I would take the drug and never had to worry about needing to find a toilet. But inside my body, that drug was killing a lot more than just whatever was making me sick.

Our guts are populated with an enormous amount of good bacteria and bad bacteria. We are just beginning to understand how this ecosystem affects our bodies and personality. Antibiotics are one of the main culprits to a decrease in the biodiversity of these organisms. Like in any ecosystem, the more species that live there the better life is for all organisms. Different organisms contribute to different parts of an ecosystem and the ramifications could be huge when a certain species is underrepresented or overrepresented in the species. Take Clostridium difficile colitis, which is a bacteria that can overpopulate our gut’s microbiome. This bacteria can become a problem in our gut when we end up taking too many antibiotics. The antibiotics we take can potentially kill off both good and bad bacteria in our guts. Symptoms include diarrhea, belly pain, and fever. Serious infections are treated by fecal transplants.

Some scientists believe that antibiotics might be linked to a lot of problems like obesity. If my timelines are correct I started gaining weight around the same time my family learned about this drug. I feel like maintaining my weight is very hard and feel like things never really added up. I don’t like blaming my weight problems on anyone or anything, but I believe it is not a coincidence that my introduction to this drug and my weight problems happened around the same time.

I tell you this story because I’ve recently been wondering how different my life would have been if I didn’t abuse Acromicina. I love that drug because it helped me deal with my gastrointestinal problems. These days my favorite drug is LSD because it helps me manage my depression. Something that might have not manifested if I hadn’t put so much stress on my microbiome. I was not aware of the damage Acromicina was doing to my body when I was young. Very similarly I’m not sure if what I’m doing to treat my depression is damaging my body. What are the repercussions of microdosing psychedelics? Are the side effects better or worse than other antidepressants? Why are we not allowed to research these types of drugs? It just doesn’t make sense. The more information we have, the more informed decisions we can make. I started microdosing LSD because I was desperate and as a last resort. I’m just telling you to beware of the things you put into your body. I wish I had never taken Acromicina as much as I did.