I've been prescribed Indocid for repetitive strain injury. One of the side effects is increased chance of heart attack so I certainly won't be going anywhere near spice for the moment. But how safe is it to take extracted harmalas? I can't find any contra-indications online or here at the Nexus. Thanks

1) Harmalas will make you more sensitive to the prescribed medication.

2) Imo, there are many herbs that have strong antiinflammatory properties, many are COX-2 and IL-6 inhibitors, which act in the same vein as pharmaceutical NSAIDS. If you do your research on those, I am sure you will be able to reduce your pain and inflammation without having to worry about a potential heart attack or negative interactions with harmalas.

I appreciate that RhythmSpring. I had not really considered about getting my medicine through natural sources in this instance. I have done a bit of research and realise there's much I can do going forward. Thanks

I have a 5 day course of this stuff though and it is working, I'm on day 3. Tomorrow I have some free time and was considering having a bit of a dream time.

Abstinence might be the best policy in this case, until I am healed and feeling 100%.

Just to update on this topic. Even after stopping the NSAID for some days (indocid and then naproxen), oral harmala use (200mg and 150mg on concurrent days) led to mild cardiac events. Persistent arrhythmia for some hours and general cardiac discomfort.

This combination, despite the time between administration, definitely was contraindicated for me.

So, some time later I came back to try again with harmalas. I've discontinued all medications for more than a month now. 140mg led to slight cardiac depression, slight discomfort and a light sweat with a rise in body temperature. No arrhythmia or other events though. All these symptoms passed within an hour of onset and the rest of the experience was enjoyable. I don't know how much of these symptoms can be attributed to anxiety as I was fairly nervous immediately after taking the alks and had to talk myself out of it. I slept extremely well afterwards and woke up feeling refreshed. Today feels just fine.
I'm still unsure how well I tolerate harmalas though. I think next time I may even try a much smaller dose next time (50mg) to try and assess this.

Do other people here experience similar events with harmalas? Any anecdotes would be appreciated.

Harmalas are tricky compounds . I don´t find them particularly enjoyable since even with a perfect diet, and prolonged abstention of medicines and drugs that react badly with them it still had bad body loads and was damn uncomfortable.

I suppose lower doses, and more frequently would make one more tolerant to these nasty side effects but I´ve only used harmalas to orally activate DMT, which I suppose is your goal also.

Perhaps try that? I´ve read about people drinking rue seed tea every day, and eventually building it up in their system because of the long half-life yet avoiding all or most of the side effects associated to it.

It seems that this way you get the best out of the both worlds. You get to make the DMT orally active, but don´t get sick in doing so. At least that´s what I heard.

Thanks mate. I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds them difficult. It has been difficult to find anything but glowing reports about low-mid range doses.
My intention with harmalas has actually been to reduce depressive and addictive tendencies, to use them as a healing tool.
Perhaps I will wait and see if I tolerate caapi sourced alkaloids better.