Hi everyone, I am posting this on behalf of a close friend of mine. His dad has developed parkinson disease within the last few years and is currently taking an antipsychotic - seroquel (quetiapine) and a non-benzodiazepine - imovane (zopiclone) to treat the symptoms.

My friend and I did an extraction on syrian rue a little while back and also did the separation to harmine. Basically, my mates dad wants to try the harmine as an alternative treatment to the meds he's on for the parkinsons after reading of serious relief of symptoms from ayahuasca, but doesn't want to come off the meds to see if the harmine will have benefical effects.

My question is, is it safe to take harmine in conjunction with the seroquel and imovane or are there serious contraindications? I searched for at least an hour without coming up with any concrete answer, the best I got was people who had been prescribed moclobemide (an antidepressent RIMA that works similarly to harmalas) in conjunction with seroquel which might indicate no serious interactions between the two.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated by me, my friend and his dad, cheers guys!

Hmm, my sister takes seroquel, pretty heavy meds imo, for this reason its always best to consult a doctor that familiar with this persons case. Messing around with these meds can be pretty fatal.

Harmalas are not illegal in most country's, so there should be no problem in consulting the doctor, patient confidentiality and all.

Ive always had a very open relationship with my doctors re psych use.

Or just hang in there and see if corpus chimes in, still best to consult the doc, imo.

Thanks for the advice Gammagore, I think the main reason why my friends dad is worried about coming off the currently prescribed drugs is the worsening of symptoms before he'd try the harmine. But your advice makes a lot of sense. I'm not sure on his relationship with his doctor but I'll definitely pass on that advice.

I would love to hear other perspectives and advice also.

A doctor is the best person to ask, as we generally do not advocate giving medical advice here.

Harmaline is used to induce essential tremor in animal models and by inference I'd assume the use of harmalas in parkinsons is contraindicated.

not seroquel, but perhaps l-dopa.
the use of rasagiline or selegiline in conjuction with l-dopa is rather common.

Quetiapines an interesting drug and is regarded as one of the atypical antipsychotics ie has significant effects on receptors other than dopamine, the principal target of the older 'typical' antipsychotics.A patient with Parkinsons disease who needs antipsychotics will do better on this med than most of the other available antipsychotics as its lowish affinity for the D1 and D2 receptors is less likely to worsen Parkinsons symptoms.Psychotic features can be seen in Parkinsons disease, often as a consequence of the dopaminergic therapy used to treat it.

It has a greater affinity for the 5HT receptors than it has for the Dopamine receptors; more importantly it has even more potent antihistamine receptor antagonist effects which makes the use of concomitant RIMAs potentially hazardous.Not recommended, IMO.

Corpus..
may I just say I'm so glad your here...

equally glad for the presence of Benz, Infund and all the chemists...
I'm in awe of your knowledge...really wish I'd stayed a school!

Thank you greatly Corpus, that information coming from a doctor is very important so I will inform my friend of this and advise against trying the harmine in conjunction with the meds he is on.

Thanks to everyone else for any info or opinions, you guys/girls are all tops