Harmala alkaloids and opiate withdrawal

[cdin]

Ok, id mostly been sticking to kratom lately, but did a few 30 - 60mg oxy in the last few days because it was cheap. I had been at a minimum dose of 8g krat daily, the day before yesterday i took 12g over the course of the day, and 90mg oc. I felt like i was in for it. I had been thinking a lot about MAOIs lately, and about how it could be nice to have less ability to break down some nuerotransmitters while in withdrawal. So i said fuck it, didn't eat any krat this morning, instead ate 6 drops of extract roughly equal to 5g caapi. I felt amazing all day. later i took another dose, same size. No sweats, no tension, about to go to bed. I'm going to try it again tommorow. If this works as well at 48 hours i'm going to crap my pants in joy. Someone GAVE me 30mg of morphine today and i PUT IT AWAY fOR A RAINY DAY. That's madness for me. All because i want to take more caapi tommorow. Any chance this is just freak or is the pharmacology sound? and if so, why on earth dont more people do this??

 

[Xorkoth]

Never heard of this, I hope it does work though and it's not a fluke, as I am quite addicted to opiates and really, really needing to be done with them once and for all.

I'm actually going to be taking a flood dose of ibogaine at the end of the month in an attempt to be done with opiates, but I would like to be able to taper down significantly before that so I'm not quite so dependent, but it's extremely hard for me to do that.

 

[Nicholai]

Huh. I'll try this with syrian rue and see if it works! That would kick ass for sure.

 

[cdin]

i would like to strongly encourage the previous poster in seeking ibogaine. I was addicted to .5g 80% pure no. 4 dope a day. 1400mg of ibo and 24 hours later I gave the last of my stash away!

 

[Xorkoth]

It's not in my possession but it's lined up, it's going to happen. I plan on taking 1000mg of ibogaine HCl and 500mg of total alkaloid extract (which is supposed to be 50% HCl plus the other iboga alkaloids). So 1250mg plus the whole range of the plant's alkaloids. Pretty excited and also nervous. I've been addicted to opiates for 9 years, I quit for 1 year in there, 4 years ago. Time to be done but I have tried everything and I can never make it through withdrawal these days, maybe I have a low threshold for pain.

 

[YBC]

Yes, harmalas are fantastic as a WD aid! I made this post back in December, but it got merged with the opiate withdrawal arsenal thread and quickly got buried:

Most opioid users/ abusers here probably have a few tools in their arsenal when the time comes for withdrawal, the right comfort meds can really make a huge differance in the intensity of acute WD. I've tried and used many of them, here is i brief review of the effective ones:

Oxcarbazepine: Works wonders for tramadol withdrawal, it literally puts every WD symptome on hold. Needs to be fased out since the WD symptoms comes back when cutting the dose. In my limited experience it's not as effective on methadone and kratom WD:s, but my memory of it may be skewed. I can only vouch for it on tramadol WD:s, but there it works wonders.

Phenibut: Seems to be suprisingly selective on managing kratom WD:s, but it's not a magic bullet like oxcarbazepine is on tramadol WD:s. Symptoms are still there, but at least kratom induced withdrawal symptomes are greatly attenuated. Not really effective on other opioid WD:s IME, but it could be a dosage issue.

Loperamide: Seems to help quite a bit with most opioid induced withdrawals if you eat enough. Not a magic bullet though, and it needs to be phased out or WD:s return full force.

Pregabalin: Just tried it for the first time on methadone withdrawal. It's very efficiant and takes care of all symptoms. The mood stabalizing and anxiolytic effects really shines on this one, but this one needs to be phased out as well.

But here comes the reason for this post, I'm really baffled that there seems to be a complete lack of first hand accounts on the merits of utilizing harmalas to manage acute opioid withdrawal symptoms. I first discovered it's powers when I was dependent on kratom a few years ago. I was experimenting with microdoses of powdered banisteriopsis caapi vine, and to my suprise found myself sometimes "forgetting" my kratom doses which I'd normally be brutally reminded of by a running nose, aches and chills. The effects of kratom was not in any way potentiated by the vine, but the delay of the doses would not put me in WD as expected. This benefit of the caapi was duely noted, but no further experiments where undertaken at that time. However, just a quick google search revieled that the attenuating effect of harmalas on opioid (morphine in particular) withdrawal symptomes in rodents were thouroghly documented. Just a quick pick, there is a lot more:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429990500676X
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024320503006477

Fast forward to today, I've used peganum harmala seeds to quickly taper out and withdrawing from a small (about 30 mg/day) 6 month old methadone habit. I use about 5 grams spread out a day (I've made capsules of the ground seeds, about 500 mg per cap) and I'm happy to say it helps alot. No insomnia, no restless legs (or arms!), no temperature fluctations or sweats! It is not as effective on anxiety or overall mood as pregabalin, but still, absolutely no lack of sleep and the complete absence of "restless arms" and other shitty pains when withdrawing from methadone is huge for me! It's been 2 weeks since I dropped the last dose of methadone. I'm completely broke and can't afford any other comfort meds, but I have in my possession more than 1.5 kg of Peganum harmala seeds so I will not run out anytime soon

I experience no psychoactivity from the amount of seed I'm consuming, I just pop the capsules spread out during the day, as soon as I'm beginning to feel cold, achy or restless another capsule halts the WD:s in it's tracks. My P.H seed dose is limited by a bit of upset stomach, but that is about the only side effect I experience.

Anyway, I only wanted to share this because as mentioned earler, I've never ever seen any personal accounts of this, and given it's percieved effectiveness, documented efficiancy, availability and price, it is absolutely baffeling it isn't raved about on forums like this. If I were to rate it it would fall just abit behind pregabalin in efficiancy, but it is quite available, non-addictive and practically free (I payed $55 for 2 kg, am I allowed to say this? ). This is huge IMO Granted my current habit wasn't a huge one, but if it wasn't for the seeds, I'd be a complete mess right now.

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/617166-Your-Personal-Opiate-Withdrawal-Arsenal?p=12010055&viewfull=1#post12010055

I quit using the seeds back in February with out any discomfort. Still a bit plauged by PAWS and my stomach is still not 100%, but I'm happy to say I got off that methadone habit with practically no physical discomfort. I'm happy someone else also got to experience this, it is truly one of the most miracularly effective wd tools in my opinion.

 

[Xorkoth]

Just ordered some syrian rue seeds... hopefully it helps me as it has helped you. I'm trying to taper down as much as possible before my ibogaine at the end of the month, to make sure that once the ibogaine clears I am 100% in the clear.

 

[endotropic]

Ok, id mostly been sticking to kratom lately, but did a few 30 - 60mg oxy in the last few days because it was cheap. I had been at a minimum dose of 8g krat daily, the day before yesterday i took 12g over the course of the day, and 90mg oc. I felt like i was in for it. I had been thinking a lot about MAOIs lately, and about how it could be nice to have less ability to break down some nuerotransmitters while in withdrawal. So i said fuck it, didn't eat any krat this morning, instead ate 6 drops of extract roughly equal to 5g caapi. I felt amazing all day. later i took another dose, same size. No sweats, no tension, about to go to bed. I'm going to try it again tommorow. If this works as well at 48 hours i'm going to crap my pants in joy. Someone GAVE me 30mg of morphine today and i PUT IT AWAY fOR A RAINY DAY. That's madness for me. All because i want to take more caapi tommorow. Any chance this is just freak or is the pharmacology sound? and if so, why on earth dont more people do this??

Hey cdin, just wondering how things have been progressing since this first post. Would like to hear another update when you get the chance (hoping you crapped your pants as promised ).

 

[YBC]

Just ordered some syrian rue seeds... hopefully it helps me as it has helped you. I'm trying to taper down as much as possible before my ibogaine at the end of the month, to make sure that once the ibogaine clears I am 100% in the clear.

That's great, I'm sure it'll help you a great deal
What opioid and what dose are you coming off if you don't mind me asking?

 

[Flaga121]

Hmmm, this is fascinating.
Going to try this out of curiosity. My dependency is kinda low at the moment though, but it'll still be a good test. If I can feel normal for 48 hours, i'll know its working.

 

[cdin]

4/7/2014, awoke to stressful day - emotional BS, highly confused from too large a benzo dose last night, apparently w/60mg oxy. oh no, i thought, kratom is going to be a problem. Consume ~4 units caapi @ 3, another ~4 around 5:30 - so far feel great, centered, dry, no need for anything but weed even much less nicotine. Going to try this for a few days, see how it goes. (around ~6 units total after looking, so about 5.5 grams caapi by my calculations. no kratom or oxy withdrawal noted, i’m going for a bike ride)

4/11/14 had one more day i took it, didnt document, didnt push doses down so no real reason to. Took 17g kratom over the course of yesterday, today took .35ml of the aya juice, may take 2 g of krat, had a rough night last night took 3.8g kratom concurrently, my plan is to go from opiates -> high dose kratom -> drastically cut dose/w RIMA’s. My hope is that the potentiation of the nuerotransmitters doesn’t just create a more ingrained habit, see my experience with smoked tobacco. I have a theory though, that a short run with declining doses may be useful, we’ll see. Science rules.


so i've been up and down, a lot of things have been happening in my life, i've got my eye on this ball with a concerted taper plan, I want to do it over the next 5 days as I have some concern with RIMAS and long term administration as noted above. Seriously though, this works better than phenibut. YBC - glad you made it onto the thread! it was your post that i sorted through miles of back internet that inspired me! Everyone else on every other forum just says "harmalas and other stuff will fuck you up" but i know their experience is mostly at 70+g and at full MAOI inhibition. The best part, is this puts the missing piece(if it works, still testing) in my two tiered natural detox plan - tier 1 (above 80mg oxy daily, above 40 used for over two years): ibogaine is necessary, tier 2 (below 80mg oxy daily, below 40 if used for over two years): people at this level i really don't think should risk the danger of an ibo flood session, smaller doses might be clinch, but you're not in DIRECT danger from your habit, hence the need for a different approach. best to switch to 2 doses of kratom a day, between 4 - 8 grams, whatever it takes to hold the person, stabilize for 3 days, then drop by 2 grams (1 gram off each dose, or 1 gram alternating which one you lower), stabilize that for another day, then drop again. I have detoxed someone off 40mg a day oral dilaudid habit with this method, although this person(and i find it best) went a full 72 hours before beginning so the kratom was extremely relieving, it's not how i feel it should be done for the larger habits. Now I'm going to suggest adding RIMA doses to the end of the process. I'll bet this is amazing for PAWS. Sorry for the wall of text, im excited, and not sick!

 

[YBC]

Hi cdin,
I'm afraid I don't grasp everything in your post, but I'll go ahead and try to make some points anyway. The withdrawal attenuating effects of the harmalas are likely not so much from their MAOI mechanism, but rather from their interaction with the imidazoline I2 receptor. Note that clonidine is a imidazoline I1 receptor agonist, and a lot of people find it somewhat effective on withdrawal symptoms, but in my experience it can't even compare with the effectiveness of the harmalas. Harmalas simply crush clonidine in this regard, there is no question about it.

Also, am I right you are somewhat worried abot using the caapi extract long term? I don't see any reason to frankly. Personally I used it for about three months during this withdrawal, first during the 10 day methadone taper, then all the way uptil February. Then I quit the seeds with no taper what so ever and experienced no rebound or any ill effects at all. No side effects from the seeds were noted, except *maybe* some upset stomach when I was hitting the seeds too hard, but I'm actually not certain it was not simply a result of quitting methadone

Good luck with your process of getting off, and please continue to post your experiance here, I feel it has the potential to help a lot of people.

 

[cdin]

ok, i have some thoughts. clonidine has never been terribly good an opiate withdrawal tool for me. in fact almost worse than sober - not a good feeling. Are you sure that's the mechanism for attenuating opiate withrawal?? Correct me, please if im wrong here, I've been going on the assumption that a lot of the attenuation was simply through the general RIMA activity - like just from having more dopamine, nor-epinephrine and serotonin.
Also, i'm not worried about taking the caapi extract long term - I'm worried about the alarming tendency of RIMAs to render other dopamine/serotonin releasing chemicals MUCH MORE ADDICTIVE by virtue of extending/potentiating the activity of smaller amounts of material. I'm thinking directly of cigarettes vs. nicotine gum or some other nicotine formulation - the difference is the harmala alkaloids present in the cigarette smoke(or at least the major difference in addictiveness). It would be easy to push your tolerance extremely high from small doses, get a massive habit, stop and need like 50g of kratom to get well(seems to me anyhow, haven't tested this, don't want to)

 

[YBC]

No, clonidine is not very effective for me either. It interacts with a closely related group of receptors, but it's still different than harmalas. See this study I posted above:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429990500676X



This is a good review on the different uses of harmine in substance dependence:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278584612001364

I dont have the digital full text, but I have it in paper version, here is a bit from it regarding the imidazoline I2 receptor interaction mechanism:

It has been suggested that β-carbolines may represent novel targets
for opiate dependence therapeutics due to reported modulation of
some behavioural effects of morphine by I2-BS ligands (Sanchez-
Blazquez et al., 2000). Harmine (5 and 10 mg/kg) attenuated the intensity
of most signs of morphine withdrawal in the rat (Aricioglu-Kartal et
al., 2003). These findings were extended by Miralles et al. (2005), who
also investigated a series of β-carbolines for binding affinities at I1-BS
and I2-BS, in addition to the effects of norharman on the behavioural
and biochemical effects of opiate withdrawal.

Also, this review finds nothing that supports that MAO-inhibition has anything to do with harmines WD attenuating effects, not even when it comes to cocaine dependence. A more plausable mechanism for this seems to be harmine's DYRK1A- inhibiting effect. For opioid dependence, imidazoline I2 receptor interaction seems to be the primary mechanism.

 

[cdin]

wow, that was extremely illuminating. well, still as i'm using kratom the dopamine aspect is worrisome and i can already feeling myself pushing my oral nicotine dose higher. my bodies like "o! the good shit!!" is there any evidence of chronic administration of rimas and withdrawal from them? I also felt like the withdrawal from constant harmalas from quitting smoking tobacco was particularly brutal. I

 

[YBC]

I felt no withdrawal or rebound what so ever after 3 months of about 5 grams/day of peganum harmala use. One day I just thought I might try not taking them and see if the WD was all over and I felt no difference, so I saw no use in continuing taking them.

 

[Xorkoth]

That's great, I'm sure it'll help you a great deal
What opioid and what dose are you coming off if you don't mind me asking?

Poppy seed tea, I use it every other day at 2.5-4 pounds (varies on potency of seeds).

 

[Hammilton]

MAOI's will not help with withdrawal from opioids. Well, something like selegiline might give you a little extra energy, but it won't eliminate withdrawal, even a little. Tried that before.

A lot of the negative effects of opiate withdrawal is a sudden upregulation of the adrenergic system, so I really don't think you want more noradrenaline and adrenaline coursing through your veins. However, these particular compounds ARE effective, so a mechanism other than MAO inhibition must be responsible- as it has already been pointed out above, it most likely involves I2 receptors.

 

[cdin]

well, more research should certainly be done here, and i can say with no uncertainty that harmala alkaloids are WONDERFUL for withdrawal. imm gonna go eat my .25 of caapi juice and try not taking anything today!

 

[cdin]

oooh, someone post pdf of that second journal article. The thing i'm worried about ill explain more clearly: it seems to me, that things that specifically realese dopamine, when paired with a RIMA are a WAAAY more fun, and b WAAAAY more addicting. Less material is needed to produce a similair domaminergic response, so when you start using full amounts(IE, a whole cigarette) you've pushed your dosage WAY up WITH the RIMAS, which makes quitting extremely difficult, because now even large amounts of the same thing wont produce the effect you want, inhibition and all. So how does this relate to you? I though you quit cigarettes? You might say - well, it relates because my DOC is kratom - something with a strong dopamine as well as opiodic component. It would be easy to be an idiot, get better longer highs with more stimulation and experience some REALLY bad withdrawals. To this day, stopping the b-carbolines in tobacco was the hardest thing ive ever done. I still use nicotine, orally, but it AINT THE SAME ..... til i dose a RIMA. then im like "woo, tobacco works again!