Friends I found this report.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
I read it over and would like to report what happened and why its a bad paper and also negative attention for our kind of community.
Basically someone admitted themselves to a hospital in italy after overdosing on peganum harmala. He was hallucinating and vommiting couldnt stand up etc. No other drugs were detected. Urine was collected as an analysis of the crude extract was made by GC-MS.
The authors also quantified the amount of alkaloids in the tea. The result was about 7.2 mg/ml harmine and 12 mg/ml harmaline. This is a very strong tea! If someone were to drink 100 ml of this solution they would be taking almost 2 grams of total alkaloids all at once. No wonder this person went to the hospital. However a serious problem with this study is they did not ask the patient whether or not he had eaten anything that could contain tyramine! Its not even mentioned as a possible cause of the adverse effects by the patient. Anyway most of his symptoms were blamed on the p harmala because of the high dose, which makes sense but maybe they should have asked him his diet.
Anyway another important fact. They also detected two quinoziline alkaloids known to be in p harmala in the tea infusion. These alkaloids are acetylcholine esterase inhibitors and could be toxic and high doses in fact taking too much of any acetylcholine esterase inhibitors could be very dangerous.
No data is presented on how this tea was made. The presence of these quinoziline alkaloids in p harmala could be dangerous if one takes too much. However if one stuck to the doses recommended about 200mg of alkaloids one should not injest enough of these other alkaloids to be dangerous. SWIM posted a theoretical report of an extract of p harmala and was unable to detect any of the quinoziline alkaloids by using the acid water extract salt out method. See theoretical report in DMT allies section.
Now why does this paper suck. One because the dose is so high obviously this person overdosed. But the paper goes into detail to describe how bad the internet sites are that are out there describing how to extract these compounds. But they fail to mention that this person took too much! To make a solution that strong one would need to use about 50 - 100grams of seeds! Thats way way too much. 5 grams is enough for MAOI inhibition. Thats the dose recommended on good sites like this one! Perhaps this person wanted to take enough to hallucinate but that is stupid especially with this plant because of potential side effects.
Anyway I just wanted to let you all know that forensic scientists are starting to notice this and if people continue to do stupid things like injest up to 2 grams of alkaloids at once they will have more and more reasons to start banning these plants.
A case of beta-carboline alkaloid intoxication following ingestion of Peganum harmala seed extract - PubMed
Beta-carboline alkaloids harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine can stimulate the central nervous system by inhibiting the metabolism of amine neurotransmitters, or by direct interaction with specific receptors; they are found in numerous plants, including Peganum harmala, Passiflora...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
I read it over and would like to report what happened and why its a bad paper and also negative attention for our kind of community.
Basically someone admitted themselves to a hospital in italy after overdosing on peganum harmala. He was hallucinating and vommiting couldnt stand up etc. No other drugs were detected. Urine was collected as an analysis of the crude extract was made by GC-MS.
The authors also quantified the amount of alkaloids in the tea. The result was about 7.2 mg/ml harmine and 12 mg/ml harmaline. This is a very strong tea! If someone were to drink 100 ml of this solution they would be taking almost 2 grams of total alkaloids all at once. No wonder this person went to the hospital. However a serious problem with this study is they did not ask the patient whether or not he had eaten anything that could contain tyramine! Its not even mentioned as a possible cause of the adverse effects by the patient. Anyway most of his symptoms were blamed on the p harmala because of the high dose, which makes sense but maybe they should have asked him his diet.
Anyway another important fact. They also detected two quinoziline alkaloids known to be in p harmala in the tea infusion. These alkaloids are acetylcholine esterase inhibitors and could be toxic and high doses in fact taking too much of any acetylcholine esterase inhibitors could be very dangerous.
No data is presented on how this tea was made. The presence of these quinoziline alkaloids in p harmala could be dangerous if one takes too much. However if one stuck to the doses recommended about 200mg of alkaloids one should not injest enough of these other alkaloids to be dangerous. SWIM posted a theoretical report of an extract of p harmala and was unable to detect any of the quinoziline alkaloids by using the acid water extract salt out method. See theoretical report in DMT allies section.
Now why does this paper suck. One because the dose is so high obviously this person overdosed. But the paper goes into detail to describe how bad the internet sites are that are out there describing how to extract these compounds. But they fail to mention that this person took too much! To make a solution that strong one would need to use about 50 - 100grams of seeds! Thats way way too much. 5 grams is enough for MAOI inhibition. Thats the dose recommended on good sites like this one! Perhaps this person wanted to take enough to hallucinate but that is stupid especially with this plant because of potential side effects.
Anyway I just wanted to let you all know that forensic scientists are starting to notice this and if people continue to do stupid things like injest up to 2 grams of alkaloids at once they will have more and more reasons to start banning these plants.
