Hi Jees,
Thank you for your analysis and review. I would like to see more first hand and fact based discussion of RIMA food interactions on this forum. Mindless regurgitation of decades-old information pertinent only to entirely different substances altogether doesn't help us understand the real risks and benefits of the harmala alkaloids.
In my opinion, based on my own experiences with harmalas, the interactions with foods are both overrated and underappreciated.
They are overrated in the sense that a true hypertensive crisis appears to be very unlikely to occur as a result of combined harmala alkaloids and tyramine ingestion.
They are underappreciated in the sense that there are, although generally not life-threatening, very noticeable effects from the interaction between harmala alkaloids and various foods ingested immediately prior to and during the active phase of harmalas.
I want to emphasize two points in the above statement:
1. The interactions are not restricted to tyramine, as the debate often is. I sort of know the effects of tyramine (nervous unrest, palpitations), but have also had different effects from e.g. candy containing licorice root extract (feverish response), coffee (restlessness, sweaty), chick pea meal (harrowing experience, fits and blackouts). Obviously the interaction with dmt-containing "foods" is of major interest to members of this forum, which is abundant with testimonies of such interactions.
Furthermore, as regards to the "dieta" in the classical sense, as far as I have always understood it, the "dieta" is not just some preparation to observe for an ayahuasca session, it is an essential part of shamanistic training in the Amazon. The initiate spends considerable time fasting, thus abstaining from most foods in order to better sense the particular foods under study as part of his training. Banisteriopsis caapi is consumed in abundance during the course of the "dieta" because by sensitivizing the body, the harmala alkaloids can really bring out the workings of the plant that is the subject of shamanistic study. Please correct me if I am wrong on this, I have no personal experience or acquaintance with genuine traditional amazonian shamans, but this tentative practice would agree with my personal experience.
2. Foods ingested after the aya/pharma appear to show very little interaction. It seems logical that when the trip is over due to the harmalas having lost most activity, the harmalas will no longer have much of an effect on the digestion of foods. Also, I suspect that they will be cleared from the gut earlier than from the central nervous system, and if that is the case then even though one might feel like the harmalas are still active, they would no longer be interacting with food uptake.
I feel that overall, stories of people eating or drinking "forbidden" foods _after_ a session are argumenting a moot point. Seriously, how many people here would even think of eating while the ayahuasca is still going full blast?
The situation is very different when harmala alkaloids are ingested when interacting foods are still being digested in the gut and/or are circulating in the body. From my own experience, I believe that there are two different interactions happening, a peripheral one in the gut and a central one in the central nervous system, giving different symptoms, the first being more limited to the digestive system (e.g. nausea and colics), while the second causes more mental effects, but may also have systemic effects, like on blood pressure or body temperature.
My own path with the harmalas has been this:
- Initially I had a strong apprehension of doing pharmahuasca, based on fear of the interactions with some of my favorite daily foods, like coffee, sourdough bread and aged cheese.
- After initial attempts with no discernible problems, the fear turned into disregard, having found that I could easily drink a full thermos of strong coffee and eat a stack of sourdough bead with aged cheese for lunch, and do pharmahuasca later in the afternoon.
- As I progressed through more pharma sessions, I began to notice that I suffered from more physical and mental side-effects and discomforts than other participants. It began to dawn onto me that perhaps, while the lethality was overstated, there might be something to the food interactions warned about.
- When I finally seriously employed some (not even much) discipline about diet, I was struck by the fact that my pharmahuasca experiences where so much more clear and pleasant.
- Of course, I had some lapses of care and discipline since, causing noticeable interactions. Since I now know the diet-based baseline, the effects of the interaction and their causes have become quite easy to pinpoint.
Finally I want to state that I have no experience with interactions between harmala alkaloids and SSRI's and the like. It is wise to assume that this combination is dangerous and must be avoided. On the other hand, given the prevalence of the prescription of these "doctor-drugs" as I like to call them, I have to wonder how often people do actually consume aya/pharmahuasca in combination with them and how dangerous/lethal this combination really is. I have not seen many reported cases in relation to harmalas.
thanks!
