In all situtions I agree that botanicals are not always best, but in many situations they are.



Exactly, but with Datura it's 1000 years of use shows us NOT to use it!




Right, thats why I don't mess with them!!!

well then SWIM will!

try 2ce with spice...its interesting

Hoffman lived to be 102. SWIM is not worried about the long term effects of LSD in the least bit. The other ones some have risks some don't just be safe as with all things.

I want to stress that botanicals can kill you in the wrong dose. So can synthetics.

Certain botanicals can, other cannot.

Avoid those which can.

I dare you to try to kill yourself with Trichocereus cactus! I bet you a million bucks you can't do it!

Your right because SWIM will puke it out before you get enough of the alkaloids in you. Self defense mechanisms.

Really? Then why in hell is it mixed into traditional ayahuasca brews by many tribes throughout South America?

^^They got their dose down. They know their plant thats why they use it. They like the effect.

I think these are some of the reasons shamans do accidently kill themselves though. You hear all these funny story's by other shamans saying "He was killed by astral darts" and other weird things, but in truth if he probably overdosed on some alkaloid because the plant had a different amount of some alkaloid or he weighed out his plants wrong something like that.

I bet someone could die if battered with 50cm pieces of cactus for 20 hours non-stop. Easier though, just stuff the whole cactus down one's throat. Or simply feed someone to the point of bursting? 1 kg of cactus powder could be pretty dangerous, especially if it stars absorbing all the liquid from your body and gets slimier and slimier.

I don't know! Why do people use things like heroin and meth when they have proven so dangerous?! I think it's cause they are stupid

Do I ever say anything about South American shamans knowing what they are doing? I think I can brew better Ayahuasca than alot of them and I'd never add any fucking Tobacco or Brugmansia.



LOL, I meant ingesting it for entheogenic purposes, I don't think you can eat enough for it to be toxic, I think you'd just puke. I guess you could beat them to death with it too

^^Haha. You guys are great.

Anyway



Yea I agree I really don't get the tobacco thing. The shaman told SWIM it was to open your senses and he was right it did open SWIMs sense enough to make SWIM want to puke and shit SWIMs brains out literally for like 4 hours straight. SWIM don't think just b caapi or p viridis would have done that. I can see the benefit for some people but not for SWIM. Yuck!

With ayahuasca...well there's a whole thread here on the mysterious alkaloïds in mimosa, and i do find a brew with mimosa, realy different from a brew with chacruna.
I think anybody who's done both will agree with me on this.

With mushrooms you have the same thing; they realy are different.

I do not have some sort of ideology on this, but all the stuff that i realy, realy, realy like happens to come from plants (except LSD).

I realy would like to combine LSD with spice sometime. Whether something comes from a plant or from a lab is not that big an issue to me.
But knowing something has a long history realy ads something to the whole psychedelic journey.

Suffering/martyrdom is part of the Christian religion. Puking your guts up is the new flagellation!
Personally I find it unpleasant and unncessary, one of the reasons why my foaf wanted to extract DMT rather than drink.



I pretty much agree with you, but this sounds oversimplistic. Organisms aren't designed, it's just that a mutated one may fare better or worse than others, and when better it may take over the population due to its more successful reproduction. Couldn't the chemicals sometimes be irrelevant by-products to another useful function? Maybe one day a plant will be able to do its thing while producing less of these chems and might be more successful. What is the role of DMT in plants, what does that attract or defend from (genuinely interested in this point, were our ancestors tripping all day long until one was born able to break it down)?
And sometimes the fact that humans WANT to eat them is the cause of their success, because then we'll tend them and plant more of them, hence domesticated crops being far more prevalent that their wild ancestors. Skunk is an entheogenic example, and it's probable that shamen did it with many others in the past. I'm sure I heard that Salvia has been harvested for thousands and thousands of years, and I'd be surprised if they hadn't been selectively breeding it in some form at least. It is conceivable even that Amazonian tribes would kill wild plants that gave poor yields so as to not waste their time harvesting them for nothing, so that stronger yielding plants prevailed. The Amazon was once sustainably farmed using slash and char, which is why the ancient and fertile self-renewing black earth can still be found, so this isn't too far fetched a suggestion. Sorry, I know this is a bit off topic, and you're the expert, but I just found this bit really interesting.

As for the research chemicals, when we are all old and grey and they've studied the effects on you guys, then I'll start taking them too! Until then, I'll stick to what is known to be relatively safe

My foaf's list goes:
mescaline
DMT

(big space)

alcohol
kratom
(and he doesn't bother with the others any more, although his alchemy skills are improving and he's interested in the goodies inside yopo)

Your right I was oversimplifying. Basically its advantageous for a plant to make secondary metabolites not because the plant knows that they will work but for the chance that they might work. A plant has no way of knowing whether or not what chemicals it makes are useful. Evolution takes care of that. They are also sometimes byproducts of primary metabolites with no obvious other function. But if you look at some structure of secondary metabolites they are very very complex and require many many biosynthetic steps so there must be reasons to keep making more and more variety of structures.

But this also a give and take. It takes resources to make these compounds so if a plant keeps making a bunch of useless compounds its wasting its energy and might be out competed.

About DMT the exact role is not known but I'd imagine it does play a defensive function. Someone just has to study that to find out but its not exactly type of thing people like to fund.

However about our ancestors tripping all the time. Well no I don't think they were all the time (I have no idea how old the MAOI system is it could be very very ancient for reasons such as what we are talking about) because they most likely would eat things that they found out were safe to eat.



Well I don't consider myself an expert I am still learning too . But anyway yes your right human beings do play a major role in selecting plants they happen to like. For sure no doubt about that. But is the plant aware the human will want this chemical? I don't think so at all I think its the other way around the plant makes the compound and then an organism in this case human likes it so human helps that plant along. The same goes with plants and insects some of the scent compounds happen to attract insects. The first time the plant made the chemical it did not make it thinking hey some insect is going to love this it was a gradual evolutionary process that kind of relationship. Explaining the evolutionary biology of this kind of stuff is complex but did that make sense?

There are some amazing review papers on this subject if I can find them I will post.

It makes sense... ah the wonders of evolution. I just read a book on evolutionary psychology and loved it, it makes psychoanalysis look stupid in comparison. I want to evolve!

Check out the shaman in South America and you'll know what I mean.

They are all into jesus and purging!



I disagree. I think these botanicals were sent by God to ad humans.



Ahahaha! Same here dude!

Surely then by your logic god also gave you the research chemicals... maybe to aid you in the 'next step' once the botanicals he left more obviously had aided you enough?

certain synths can kill you...some cant..i dare you to try to kill yourself with LSD! well that doesnt count actually killing yourself while on that much L

Name a couple other research chemicals besides LSD... I bet the first three that come to mind can kill you in the right dose.

well thats just not fair..because anything at the right dose will kill you

Both nitrous oxide and ketamine are quite forgiving in their therapeutic index.