hi,

I have been using the herb known in India and Ayurveda as "Ashwaghanda" for healing depression and alleviating stress for a few years. It is a healing herb with no side effects, and can be bought cheaply. It turns out that this herb is a MAO-inhibitor. I'm not sure exactly how much of the herb would be necessary for full monoamine oxidase inhibition, but it's likely not much. One tablet daily is generally a dose. So I'm going to try a little experiment tonight. With the 200 milligrams of dmt I have, I will be taking maybe four ashwaganda tablets orally. The tablets are 100% ashwagandha herb and no other additives, and nothing artificial. If this works, which i think it will, then this might very well be my new method of ingesting dmt.

Thanks for listening and I will post back with results.

I've been taking ashwagandha and noticing it seems potentiate psychedelics, as well as making me feel a little serotonin-type push after taking it.

I wouldn't be surprised if it had some MAO interaction, but probably not enough for oral DMT. I could certainly see it extended some smoked spice.

Let us know how it goes

Sorry to bring this back from the dead but does anyone have any information in regards to ashwagandha having maoi effects?

I have been taking ashwagandha for a few months off and on and was not aware of this...

Please Please Please. Don't assume that because something is herbal or naturally occurring that it has no side effects or can't cause complications either by itself or in combination with other herbs or food substances. I am not familiar with this herb. It might be a wonderful substance but unless there is citable evidence it best not to promote anything as free of side effects. It is best if the end user does their own research and does a risk assessment of their own.

I am sorry if this comes across as a rant. I personally knew two people (close family friends) who developed kidney failure after using herbal remedies from a well renowned system of herbal medicine. They both needed kidney transplants and they both died prematurely as a result of the kidney disease. A friend's mother had nerve injury following a herbal remedy and she was unable to walk for over a year. Thankfully she has recovered now but she still has some sequelae.

Herbal medicines might be wonderful in some cases but very few herbal healthcare systems have been studied rigorously in a scientific manner. This is slowly changing now with the Chinese and some of the Indian traditional medical systems but there is still a significant fraction of both practitioners and patients who ignore these developments and still cling on to archaic beliefs.

Ashwagandha does have side effects, depending on what your using it for.
I had one friend take it as a sedative and continued use made her already overpowered sex drive even stronger, her husband was mad at me (this is why its traditionally not given to young people).
I had one friend take it to boost his sex drive and it mostly just made him sleepy.
I got my doctor to put his wife on it to help her brittle fingernails and the doctor reported back that it fixed that but also 'made her frisky', but that was not a complaint

As an MAOI, if it has any MAOI effects its most likely one of those thats just 'technically MAOI', ie. the effectiveness is way WAY too low to activate spice.
Consider, this is a common herb taken mostly by people with health problems. If it were a potent MAOI people would be getting very sick, very often as a result of drug interactions. This doesnt seem to be the case.
As always, it pays to be careful tho.

Just out of curiosity antares, do you know which herbs etc they were taking?

Auxin that sounds like a TERRIBLE side effect..

Special care also needs to be taken if someone has or is prone to thyroid issues. The recommended dose is 30mg Withanholides minimum and there are many people who use much less and then say it's not working for them. Take care to take the proper dosage and i am sure for most of us it's a very good anxiolytic among the rest (for me personally it seems to enhance my sexuality).

I am afraid I don't know what they were. They almost certainly took a combination of various herbs. I was still a high school student then and I didn't have the curiosity to find out what they took. Watching their plight left a lasting impression on me.

It is interesting that Auxin reports that Ashwagandha increased the sex drive of some users. This might sound trivial, amusing and even desirable for a lot of people but the fact that it does this makes it very likely that it has an effect on the hypothalamo-pituitary axis. This site of action is further supported by Locoboy's post urging caution in people with thyroid issues.

For those not very familiar with human physiology, the hypothalamus and pituitary gland (which are essentially almost a single structure) control the function of various hormones and systems within the body which basically 'keep the engine running' for as long as we live. Anything that alters the 'control of the engine' should be used with great caution as the medium to long term consequences of altering the built in automatic control we are born with might be devastating.

I am not saying that substances like this might not have medical uses but they shouldn't be treated as harmless vitamin like supplements or even worse something to increase the sex drive without being studied carefully first.