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How real is harmala maoi danger?

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ouro

ouro

Rising Star
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Is there any credible report of a definitive bad interaction between harmalas from rue or caapi and another substance? I know the conventional wisdom is that mixing "maoi" with many things can cause very bad side effects, but recently I've been questioning how wise conventional wisdom really is... I have personally in the same evening ingested caapi, iboga root, and any food that I normally eat including many spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, tumeric, black pepper) meat and cheese with zero bad effects. I suspect that the medical view of maoi is mostly based on the behavior of maclobemide or older non reversible maois and some of those fears do not apply to caapi.

For example, has anyone ever had kanna (supposedly ssri) and caapi in their body at the same time? I will probably try incrementally microdosing them together... if there are any hints of bad effects I will stop.
 
The danger of mixing maoi or rima's with SSRI medication is potentially a serious problem. Of course, everything is dose dependent.

The other potential problem with maoi's or rima's is the potential for the inhibition of tyramine, resulting in too much tyramine in the system, which can cause irregular heart beat, or heart failure if severe enough. It is said that rima's allow for the inhibition of mao-b, (tyramine), however, experience suggests that eating tyramine rich foods do in fact have an effect on the body while under the influence of ayahuasca. A lot more tremors, sometimes odd muscle spasms, faster heart rate, odd breathing. You never really know just how much tyramine is in the cheese or pepperoni you eat, or how much will be inhibited by rima's, or how much it would take to be dangerous, so why not just be safe and stay away from tyramine rich foods before taking ayahuasca?

It's probably not going to kill you to eat a small piece of cheese after you've had syrian rue, but that doesn't mean there is no wisdom behind the idea of not combining tyramine rich foods, and not combing ssri's with rima's. Just the skip the cheese! Might as well be safe. I have not personally heard of a case of someone dying or going to the hospital for tyramne poisoning or serotonin syndrome, although it is possible. Hopefully that is because the people who use these substances have tremendous respect for them, and the safety of their usage, and have researched enough to know not to be on ssri's and mix it with ayahuasca. And they also know not to eat tyramine rich foods before ayahuasca.
 
the indigenous amazonians eat tyramine rich foods with the ayahuasca diets..plantains are like a main food on the diets and are rich in tyramine!...I personally wouldnt worrey about the tyramine thing too much, but thats just me. SSRI and other drug interactions are another story.
 
Harmalas+amphetamines = serious risk

I would say experimentation with SSRI and harmalas is absolutely discouraged and unnecessary.

Food is a completely different story. Harmalas being RIMAs and inhibiting mostly MAO-A, while tyramine is mostly metabolized by MAO-B, makes food interaction a lesser issue. Our FAQ tries to cover this. There have been researches using RIMAs that show there is no real interaction with tyramine. But im pretty sure to have read that harmalas can also start inhibiting MAO-B at higher doses so I wouldnt suggest eating tons of harmalas with tons of aged cheese.

Though even without tyramine or harmalas, I wouldnt suggest eating heavy food just before or after any psychedelic experience. Common sense is enough with harmalas+food I think, people arent really in danger there. With stuff like pharmaceutical/drug interaction though I would be much more worried, which is why these specific interaction warnings must be present!
 
Thanks for the words of warning, apoc. And I think you have a pretty level headed approach fractal and endless... but I still think the ssri / maoi interaction is not as cut and dry as general internet dogma makes it out to be. For example, THH is an ssri and an maoi, so by standard logic eating enough caapi would cause serotonin syndrome by itself.

What is the source of information for harmala dangers? I hear the same sort of nebulous catch phrase warnings repeated in many different places without support, and that makes me suspicious about how true it is. I made this thread to collect proof of any bad interactions or lack of interactions... thanks for the link endlessness, thats what I am looking for.

yesterday I ate 6 ml of 10x kanna extract and about 8 hours later smoked 2 large caapi cigarettes to no ill effect.

PS I'm not trying to encourage dangerous experiments, I just want to collect information to understand these substances better.
 
burnt said:
Harmalas and food is usually not a problem. But I wouldn't recommend having beer with harmalas. Gave me the worst headache of my life.

Nothing is known about interaction with kanna and harmalas.
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swim can attest to this... beer caused some crazy interactions with swim.. very sick and headaches

endlessness said:
Harmalas+amphetamines = serious risk
Click to expand...


swim can attest to this as well.. learned the hard way of combining caapi with san pedro... the worst pedro experience ever had.. had the jitters.. twitches... agonizing stomach pain.. all for about 10 hrs straight




and as far as food goes.. the only interaction swim had on aya was eating foods with a lot of preservatives.. and it wasn't really a "negative" interaction.. was taught about water body load and had the shiznits
 
Alfrendo mixed kanna and harmala last summer. Turned the kanna kinda manic and he stopped because he said it wasn't fun for him that way.

He mixes with any food but is very careful with any "drug" that goes into him. He limits caffeine and avoids stimulants but might eat a pile of nacho's washed down with red wine.

He does occasionally get headaches, and rue is more likely to headache than caapi for Alfrendo. These headaches aren't bad and easily controlled.
 
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