Mushie's and MAO's

[Guest Ramon]

This is in a book I borrowed today. The book is Mushroom's poison's and panaceas by Denis R. Benjamin.

I have no real experience but any body care to dispute this

It is interesting that monoamine oxidase (MAOI), the enzyme normally responsible for the metabolism and degradation of the other biogenic amines, has almost no role in the elimination on psilocin

[This message has been edited by Ramon (edited 18 November 2000).]

[billy]

whats that mean in english ?

and those maoi's don't seem to agree with me.

[Guest Ramon]

Monoamine oxidase is supposed to be a enzyme that breaks down some of the psychedelics. I have heard that if you take a MAOI you can decrease the dose with the same effect.

I had heard that this was supposed to be the case for mushrooms as well but this book seems to contradict that.

[Guest wira]

It might depend on the type of MAOI used. Syrian rue or B. caapi definitely synergize with psilocybin-containing 'shrooms, to result in a stronger and stranger experience. I'm not sure of whether anyone's tried with pharmaceutical MAOIs.

Exactly what is going on here isn't known, but it doesn't seem to be related solely to the MAOI-activity of the harmala alkaloids. These alkaloids also have a whole host of other pharmacological effects besides MAO inhibition. Anyway, it's clear that psilocybin or psilocin don't need MAO-inhibition to be orally-active, and it's also clear they are probably not markedly affected by MAO metabolism after getting into the brain, or the trip would be much shorter.

[Guest UV1]

The only safe presciption Maoi is moclobemide, but it is the experience of a friend and mine that it did absolutly nothing to increase the effects of the mushies for a given weight, though the dose of maoi was quite low - 300mg

[This message has been edited by UV1 (edited 19 November 2000).]

[sholto]

having taken harmaline & psilocybin together several times, i don't think the effects of the mushrooms were enhanced significantly (in terms of MAOI) by the rue, yet harmaline does have an entheogenic character of it's own. I once had a wonderfully warm, rich and humourous visionary experience from a tiny dose (>1g dried p.cubensis) combined with a lot (?) of crude harmala resin.

[Guest reville]

psilocin?

Isnt that the minor alkaloid with psilocybin being the main and mostly active component?

[Torsten]

MAOI's won't do much to increase the effect of psilocin/psilocybin, however they can have quite a strong effect on the (di)methylated tryptamine content in shrooms.

Moclobemide can be used as a MAOI, however the excessive doses required are probably not safe for non-medically supervised experimentation and have some less pleasant side effects.

[Guest wira]

Psilocybin is believed to be dephosphorylated in the body to form psilocin, which is the more potent of the two and is thought to be the most important 'active'.

[Guest KRussell]

Originally posted by Torsten:

Moclobemide can be used as a MAOI, however the excessive doses required are probably not safe for non-medically supervised experimentation and have some less pleasant side effects.

Well this is in stark contrast to various reports I have heard, and those of my own garden gnomes.

Moclobemide typically comes in tablets of 300mg. My gnomes tell me that half a tablet (150mg) is more than adequate to render a dose of extracted DMT orally active. They reported no adverse effects from the moclobemide.

I'd be very interested in hearing more about "excessive doses" and "less pleasant side effects".

[Guest Buung]

I have done Mushies quite a few times (we go hunting every year} and when i tried combining syrian rue (3g) with about 50-60 mushrooms i found that the effects were greatly magnified with the visuals being similar to that of a weak DMT trip!

This seems to contradict what most people have said, it may be because the shrooms used were Liberty Caps, the ones common in the UK.

Also it is rumored to make a difference whether you have the harmaline 30 mins before the shrooms so it can inhibit the MAO enzymes enough to make a difference.

[DreamingNagual]

Sorry wrong thread!

[This message has been edited by MOJORISIN (edited 19 December 2000).]

[Torsten]

Originally posted by KRussell:

Well this is in stark contrast to various reports I have heard, and those of my own garden gnomes.

Moclobemide typically comes in tablets of 300mg. My gnomes tell me that half a tablet (150mg) is more than adequate to render a dose of extracted DMT orally active.

This was also my personal experience with the first couple of experiments. However I was never able to replicate these results in other people. I referred these results to J.Ott, who also had reports of negative results at that level and was enthused by my positive results.

I then went on to determine the variations of MAO in a group of 10 people and found that it varies by several hundred percent. These experiments were done with peganum harmala. Once the MAO levels of all memebers of the group were determined I found that they will have virtualy identical reactions to tryptamines and mini doses of MDMA. It was my conclusion that once everyone is at the same stage of MAO inhibition, their dose-response to a drug (that is affected by MAO) is identical to the next person.

When I tried to replicate these results with moclobemide the results were messy and inconclusive. The minor variance in dayly MAO levels (or their correspondingly required inhibitor amounts) I observed in harmala was excessive with molobemide, which meant that in most subjetcs there was no reliable dose. To counteract this inconsistency, large doses of moclobemide had to be given, some of these so large that they caused temporary side effects lasting for several days, including severe anxiety and nausea. I won't state the actual amounts, as I feel that experimenting at such high doses (or even approximating them) is much too dangerous.

They reported no adverse effects from the moclobemide.

We never observed any major sideeffects at up to 600mg single dose.

All these experiments were done in europe, btw.

[Guest KRussell]

Very interesting indeed!

When I was last on Mars, I successfully activated oral DMT (crudely extracted from mimosa hostilis, dried, and encapsulated) using 150mg of moclobemide in 5 different people. The moclobemide was taken approximately 30 minutes to 1 hr before ingestion of the DMT.

I am at a loss to explain your results. How much did MAO levels (or at least, the sensitivity to MAOIs) vary from person to person?

From what I have read of moclobemide and harmaline/harmine, they are broadly similar in terms of their MAO-A inhibition.

[Torsten]

Very interesting indeed!

When I was last on Mars,

Thought I might have met you there once before

I successfully activated oral DMT (crudely extracted from mimosa hostilis, dried, and encapsulated) using 150mg of moclobemide in 5 different people.

You may be aware that oral acitivty of hostilis has been proven repeatedly without using a MAOI. Ott suggested a binding action to tannin or something like that to 'hide' the tryptamine from the MAO. The cruder the extract, the more likely to get this effect.

How much did MAO levels (or at least, the sensitivity to MAOIs) vary from person to person?

There were several variation parameters. One of them is the drug induced MAO increase. ie, after taking any of the common rec drug the MAO would increase dramatically, corresponding to at least 100% increase in the required MAOI (harmala). I also found that the two excessively stressed and highly strung people in the group had MAO levels corresponding to 800% of the average (average taken without including these two outliers). Most ranged around the -50% to +100% of average. The outliers were the ones I was most interested in, as one of them had smoked 150mg of DMT once and reported a mere "tingling in the fingertips". The other would routinely take 8 tabs of MDMA as an initial dose, thus piling up the negative side effects and not being able to enjoy the empathogenic qualities of the substance. Both of these extreme variances in dose response to drugs were obviously due to MAO and were eliminated by inhibiting the enzyme.

NOTE (to everyone reading this): Taking MDMA with a MAOI is likely to kill anyone without proper experience in such matters.

From what I have read of moclobemide and harmaline/harmine, they are broadly similar in terms of their MAO-A inhibition.

Yes, I believe that is the case theoretically, but in practice it didn't quite work that way.