Hello everyone. (tl;dr: I took harmala 24+ hours ago. Would I be safe to take cyclobenzaprine? Also, what is the total elimination time for the harmala alkaloids?)

So last night I decided to jump back into hyperspace after a fairly disturbing trip about a week ago ("Dark freaky experience with changa". I took 91mg freebase Spice with 3-4 grams encapsulated harmala (I always jump back in with jurema or pharma after freaky experiences). The trip was amazing, lots of very beautiful visions, the most memorable of which was living out an entire alternative life in which I had a brother (a lifetime in 5 minutes! it was beautiful). On the tail-end of this trip I decided "I don't do enough mixing", which seemed a hilarious statement at the time, and decided to try some of the bufotenine I recently extracted. 22 mg. I got the head pressure, abdomnal pressure, and a dreamy thoughtful state. I then smoked 100 mg of changa (11x caapi leaf with 720mg Spice per gram of caapi leaf), in two doses. That was wild, edge of my seat, but it worked out ok.

Anyway, fast forward a few hours. I'm mostly down, just the residual energy and slight visuals remaiing, when I got a nasty headache (probably from caffeine - I have had harmala after caffeine (at least 4-6 hours between the two) with only minimal side-effects many times as I am quite habituated to caffeine. I wasn't as lucky today, something in my metabolism must have fluctuated and I got the oft-mentioned caffeine-harmala migraine. On top of that, my back began hurting terribly. That is normal for me , I don't think it had anything to do with any interactions. I have days when my pain in almost unbearable. So after a few hours of being in fairly severe pain, I asked my mother-in-law if she had anything to help with pain/sleeping. She gave me 20 mg diazepam, 5 mg oxycodone, and 20 mg cyclobenzaprine. I did searches for interactions and found that while the diazepam and oxycodone would probably be ok (those are low doses) but the cyclobenzaprine is majorly contraindicated with MAOI's (nothing about RIMA's, but I wasn't going to tempt the fates). So I took the diazepam and oxycodone and within 30 minutes my pain was receding and I was feeling quite sleepy. I slept for 10 hours and feel very rested.

However! Today my back is still in lots of pain, and I don't have anything on hand that may help other than this cyclobenzaprine. It has been 24+ hours since I have taken harmala.... would I be safe to take the cyclobenzaprine now?

For those that read this whole thing, thank you! And I look forward to any replies..

PS. I've been researching this since I got up, and while I did find many sources stating the severely dangerous nature of combining cyclobenzaprine with irreversable MAO-I's, I can find nothing on interaction with RIMA's. I looked high and low, searching for RIMA's, harmaline, moclobemide and combinations of the above. I found nothing.

Hm, well, I still can't find anything but the interaction between cyclobenzaprine and irreversible MAO-I's is rather ghastly,
So I just stuck it out until some cannabis could be procured. That was also part of the problem last night, I was out of my normal herbal medications (kratom and cannabis)!

I read that the half-life of harmaline is 3-6, so total elimination time would be around double that so 6-12 hours. Meaning I probably would have been safe to take 10-20 mg of flexeril (I don't like using brand names but sheesh that's a long word to type again and again!) @ approximately 25 hours after ingestion of harmala...

But MAO ain't nothin' tah fuck wit (Wu-tang ref, ) so I'll save these for another day.

I'd highly advise against it. If I recall correctly, there was someone on this forum who took that combination and ended up feeling very bad from it. It may be as bad as combining DXM and a MAOI (which is NOT a good combo).


...and...


So, highly not advised.

Cyclobenzaprine is a nasty substance.

FWIW, it has antagonistic effect on histamine, serotonin, and muscarinic receptors.

IME It doesn't even work well for its intended purpose. Every time I used it, it took me 3 days to recover from and all i want to do is sleep all day

Yeah I know it's a rather nasty substance. I have about 8 tablets and I am saving them for when I need them. From what I can tell, the antagonisms you list help muscle spasms and causes skeletal muscles esp. in the spine to relax. And it does help a *small* amount with pain for a 2 week period after which it loses efficacy for pain management. I have a spinal fusion for scoliosis, with the curve beginning to return. The past two weeks I have had an increasing amount of pain and extreme stiffness, which is why I think this (admittedly somewhat whack) substance could help me a bit. Especially if used as an adjunct to cannabis and/or kratom.

BTW I have no intention of attempting any recreation use of the stuff. I don't even think it's possible to get any recreation out of it. I was prescribed to the stuff a few years back and took relatively large doses (I think somewhere around 30-40mg) with nothing but some unspectacular sedation, relaxed muscles (duh), and a weird headspace (to be expected from such a close relative of the Tricyclics). A swig of wine may have made the sedation a little better, but of course ethanol is a better sedative... which says alot about how unspectacular of a sedative cyclobenzaprine is. It may have increased dreaming but probably not in a positive direction. It definitely has undertones of delirium - pointing towards its cousin amitriptyline but not nearly as overcoming... that stuff is really bizarre...
However I have never had the long hangover effects you describe. That's metabolism for you!

Anyway, yeah better safe than sorry is a mantra when it comes to using RIMA's!