Posted by Quintal on August 16, 2007, at 13:28:52
In reply to Beta-carbolines and benzos, posted by psychobot5000 on August 16, 2007, at 12:51:42
I think coffee is pretty widely accepted as an alcohol 'antidote' of sorts, tea less so, so there might be something in what you've observed. I took coffee with benzos and noticed an improvement in wakefulness and cognitive functioning etc, and also an increase in anxiety. It's hard to distinguish between the effect of caffeine and beta-carbolines of course, but like you I never noticed this effect with tea particularly, though that could be due to lower levels of caffeine.
I was curious, because if beta-carbolines are benzodiazepine receptor antagonists, then they would likely cause withdrawal symptoms in people dependent on benzodiazepines but I didn't notice any as such, apart from increased anxiety. I was curious if beta-carbolines are antagonists at sub-sets of benzodiazepine receptors and made several requests to see the original study to no avail. A quick search on Wiki reveals that beta-carbolines frequently act as MAOIs, so from that I conclude they must be present in fairly small amounts or heavy coffee drinkers would be suffering hypertensive crises and serotonin syndrome (in heavy coffee drinkers taking SSRIs for example) fairly oft. I've heard of studies showing higher than average MAO inhibition among regular coffee drinkers though. I think some beta-carbolines are RIMAs so that might explain the a lower incidence of adverse interactions, in fact there are no reports of hypertensive crisis or serotonin syndrome resulting from coffee drinking as far as I know, so I assume the beta-carbolines present in coffee are either not MAOIs or are present in such small quantities that they have no clinical effect. It would be interesting to see the original studies.
Q
poster:Quintal
thread:776629
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070815/msgs/776634.html