so i've had a little theory going on in the back of my mind for a while now regarding this topic.
i greatly enjoy the heart-opening qualities of MDMA but am always taken aback by how crappy the hangover is for me.
i started noticing that some of the qualities of the MDMA experience are related to the fact that it's a phenethylamine, not just cos it's MDMA.
as i tried more and more Phens, i started seeing the underlying current that connects them all: warm, friendly, gentle, energetic.

my theory is based on the fact that it always takes a certain amount of a chemical just to "get you in that space," that is, to get you "high."
this "certain amount of chemical" we'll call the Backbone.
once you are already high on something you only need a little bit of another chemical to "push" you in a certain direction.
if you took 65 mgs. (half a dose) of MDMA by itself, it would either not do anything or just barely lift you off the ground.
BUT, you also wouldn't get anywhere near the hangover you would if you ate a whole dose...significantly less, in fact.
the MDxx compounds are notorious for their dose-sensitivity.
if you eat just a little bit over the recommended amount you get 2 or 3 times the hangover.
this logic also works in reverse: if you eat less than a light dose, you won't really get much of a hangover at all.

at first, my culprit for the "backbone" of the experience was mescaline, say, 200 mgs. plus a half dose of MDMA.
but i was deterred for various reasons:
mescaline takes 2 1/2 hours to come on, it's a quite unrewarding yield when extracted from powder....etc...
(i get a gram and a half of resin from a 100 gram cactus powder extraction batch, but only 500 mg. or less is mescaline usually...hardly something to work with considering all the work...)
well after splashing around in 2C-Bumblebee land for a month or so, it became quite obvious who the backbone was going to be....

much is written about the synergistic effects of 2C-B and MDMA, though they (usually) always recommend a full dose of MDMA first, and then a full or slightly backed-off dose of 2C-B at the come-down.
well, concerning this theory, i'm not interested in a full dose of MDMA!!!!!!

the session started with a trippy but comfy dose of 14 mgs. 2C-B.
though not intense, a solid plus 2 only, still i couldn't tell which were visuals and which were clouds when staring into the sky!!!
2 hours into the peak i decided to boost.
traditionally, if 30-40% of the original dose is taken while still tripping, the trip will be lengthened and not intensified.
so i chose 6 mgs. of 2c-b as the booster dose, plus added 68 mgs. MDMA
the theory is that the 6 millies of 2c-b would lengthen the already existing experience, creating my backbone of Phen energy and openness.
the 68 mgs. MDMA on it's own would do virtually nothing to me....now we're hoping for a big lift-off....

indeed, within 30 minutes after the booster we are definitely going somewhere else...
the typical MDMA come-up is noted. a definite rush, complete with gushy words of appreciation and love for the attending patrons.
after an hour, i am most certainly in a spot i would call 75% MDMA consciousness, 25% 2C-B consciousness.
success! we've tipped the scales in MDMA's favor here without the dosage reflecting it! :idea:
now, MDMA purists and the psychedelic-phobic beware.....we are not talking about a free, no worries trip here like MDMA.
what we are talking about is a deepened, trippyer, and more vulnerable state than any shallow-tripper would be comfortable with.
the catch is this: adding a psychedelic backbone to MDMA gives her the oceanic depth she deserves in the first place!!
those familiar with psychedelic states will find this combo to be a piece of cake compared to ayahuasca, so no worries there.
indeed, what we're creating here is pretty much more on par with what MDA is: MDMA with a trippy, analytical edge.
i should note also that no diminished time scale was experienced with the booster:
it lasted a solid three hours before letting up, exactly my experience with MDMA alone.
so it wasn't a "compromised" MDMA trip.
it was just as long and strong as a "normal dose."

as for the hangover: i would say i got only 25% of the hangover i would get from a full dose of MDMA.
there was absolutely no crash, no serotonin "burn-out" feeling.
i was just a touch spacier in the head than if i'd taken 2c-b by itself (which, for me, produces almost zero hangover.)
and i recovered in a day, whereas usually i would need two days if i took a full dose of MDMA.
so were talking 75% of the MDMA experience, with only 25% of the hangover.
i'd have to say that that's pretty much as close as you're gonna get to "milking" it without getting burned!

in hindsight i would say that taking a full 2c-b dose before the combo definitely made it more trippy than it needed to be.
that is my preference, but you can certainly achieve the increase of MDMA without exposing oneself to the "analytical chopping block," as psychedelics sometimes reveal themselves to be.
whatever Phen you choose as a backbone, it must be a light/medium dose or else it will overpower the delicate MDMA softness.
if i didn't take the 2c-b beforehand, i would've taken 10 mgs. as the backbone.
this is my sensitivity range for a light/medium dose so your's will vary.
good luck, and for God's sake, stop taking full doses of MDM so much....we don't wanna burn out, we wanna shine....

while on the initial 2c-b dose i was thinking about how the report about combining MDMA was gonna turn out and reflected on something funny:
when newspaper reporters want to run some coverage on something they just have to get in their van and drive around town interviewing people and then go back to the office and write up some uninspired, dull version of what all those people said in the day...
if i wanna write something up here, i have to:
deal with the varying levels of anxiousness before tripping...
keep my cool while coming up on (usually) unknown doses of unfamiliar molecules....
have my ego completely ripped to shreds, forgetting who i am and my role in this galaxy....
face the little buried shadow emotions locked up in my psyche...
relinquish control to the higher powers....
surrender my being to the infinite....
take note of intergalactic activities happening simultaneously throughout the cosmos...
come back with a spacy head and a fierce appetite.....

all in a day's work....
will report soon....

Thats great work. SWIm might have to try that soon.

Better then XTC even: peyote in a dose that's just below where it realy starts becoming psychedelic, combined with around 20 grams of caapi.

What's realy great about this combo, is that the effects you get when you've taken XTC and it just starts to work, that awesome rushing sensation, are even more spectacular with this combo and that rushing will last for literally hours and hours. It's totally orgasmic in that sense.

It's like OP sayd: mescalin is a phenethylamin+ the typical euphoriant effects of XTC are because it's dopaminergic and serotonergic effects.

Mescaline in low amounts is already a bit like XTC, but caapi as a MAOI (don't take too much of it, and definately don't try it with other phen's) adds to the dopaminergic and serotonergic effects, making it more XTC-like, more euphoric.

And more good news: there's no hangover, no serotonin depletion like with all the MDxx's, but instead....a nice caapi afterglow that will last for a few days.

If looking for euphoriants.
What more do you want?

Another interesting thing to try, SWIM doesn't have any caapi, though he does have some nearly pure harmine he separated from some rue harmalas.

Would that work? At what dose, 100mg, 150mg?

To the OP:
nice experiment. i remember 2cb to be lovely
and i sure can imagine that to be a nice combo. too bad i dont have acces to 2cb anymore..



Very interesting..
i am exploring mescaline as a psychedelic, but also as a replacement (surrogate) for MDMA
and now you mention caapi for adding a touch of 'rushing sensations'. i like those

so the caapi brings this extra euphoriant effect to peyote or mescaline?
was caapi tried with mescaline?

Sounds like an awesome combination. Wish I had access to a pure form of either of those.

I don´t know. I think rue would be very different, but maybe pure harmine is different than rue.
I have never tried it with rue, but someone on this forum who did, said it was awfull and realy disrecommended it.

I never used pure mescaline. I bet it would even work better with pure mescaline. 69ron says that pure mescaline has much more stimulant effects than any cactus.

Great input polytrip! thing is, who has access to peyote on the regular?!?! not i...
indeed i have much experience combining rue with cactus and while i never experienced the "rushes" like with peyote plus caapi, it was definitely great. though i found, with rue at least, that cactus alone is more euphoric. dried torch powder is virtually identical to pure mescaline (i honestly can't tell the difference) so anyone interested in combining caapi with pure mescaline could just add some powdered torch to the mix for equal effects (and WAY less hassle!).
i have tried caapi once on it's own and while it was definitely an unpleasant overdose, i can see from the effects that it would be WAY more euphoric compared to rue because of the unique combination of harmine with THH. i have tried pure THH and it was delicious, to say the least, though it needed something else to send it off in a more intense direction...mescaline seems to be the best culprit.
to Q21Q21: 150 mgs. of harmine sounds like a good place to start adding some mescaline, though in my opinion at least, i don't prefer the sleepiness it gives the experience, (well, RUE adds sleepiness which is a combo of harmaline and harmine....could be different with just harmine)
(69ron describes harmine as the "coffee" of the beta-carbolines so maybe it does have some punch on it's own that sleepy harmaline strips from it.)
(a funny sidenote....one time i took 100 mgs. pure harmaline with 200 mgs. pure mescaline and just when it started to get intense i FELL ASLEEP for the whole night!!!! i woke up the next morning and thought, "what a rip-off, remind me to not take harmaline after midnight...you won't make it!!!!)
finally i wanted to say that while the euphoria and expansiveness may be replicated by all these combos, there is no substitution for the "eye-contact, holding hands, empathogenic bonding" that is present when even a little MDMA is in the mix. thanks for the input friends....

these combo reports are really good news, and thanks. What's better than "better and easier? Definitely time to check these out first person...

SWIM will give it a try some time soon.

Also for the record harmine is MILES away from the effects of just rue. SWIM has never had visuals or tracers on rue alone even taking 190mg of rue extract. Though it was strong it wasn't very psychedelic.
200mg of harmine on the other hand gave clear tracers, OEVs and CEVs along with a very psychedelic headspace

SWIM's PH tester broke but he separated the harmine from the harmaline by dissolving the manske precipitates in water then adding baking-soda-saturated-water until the color stopped changing. This should have brought the PH to 8.25-8.5 thus precipitating pretty much only harmine.

Both the bioessay and solubility suggest the separation was a success with the precipitates from the baking-soda and the precipitates after using sodium-carbonate-saturated-water having solubility of 48mg per ml and about 84mg per ml respectively in vinegar.

Nice theory, but it is one thing I don't understand... MDA is a psychedelic that shares most of the empathogenic effects of MDMA, while having a considerably lower neurotoxicity even in large doses. My guess is that the proposed combination of 2C-B and MDMA will have roughly the same effects as MDA, but likely higher neurotoxicity. Then why don't just take MDA? Because of poor availability?

evening glory, thanks for your input! with all due respect i feel a few points here are mistaken.
every study i've ever seen has stated that MDA is the same or moderately more neurotoxic than MDMA:

Davis WM, Hatoum HT, Waters IW.
“Toxicity of MDA (3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine) considered for relevance to hazards of MDMA (Ecstasy) abuse”.
"...MDMA was either equally toxic or slightly to moderately less toxic than its close congener, MDA..."

O'Hearn E, Battaglia G, De Souza EB, Kuhar MJ, Molliver ME.
“Methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) and methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) cause selective ablation of serotonergic axon terminals in forebrain: immunocytochemical evidence for neurotoxicity”.
"...The results establish that MDA and MDMA produce structural damage to 5-HT axon terminals followed by lasting denervation of the forebrain. Both drugs have similar effects, but MDA produces a greater reduction of 5-HT axons than does MDMA at the same dosage...."


Hardman, H.F., Haavik, C.O. and Seevers, M.H. Relationship of the Structure of Mescaline and Seven Analogs to Toxicity and Behaviour in Five Species of Laboratory Animals. Tox. and Appl. Pharmacology 25 299-309 (1973).
"...The toxicology study showed MDMA to be one of the more toxic of the drugs studied, in most animals second only to MDA..."

besides all that pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo, i just plain feel worse after taking MDA compared to MDMA...more body aches/head ache, though interestingly i must say, less emotional swings.
now before you throw all your "E dust" away, realize that 99% of all studies conducted like this use high-dose injections for multiple days on end.
i don't have to link to prove but you can read it in "ecstasy: the complete guide" by julie holland that when they gave monkeys oral doses equivilent to 125 mg in humans once a week for a month or two, no damage was seen. it's a very important point to remember that the amount of milligrams, route of administration, and frequency of exposure is everything with MDMA/MDA. which is why i posted this report...to help people use less and get more. low doses haven't been proven to do much of anything damaging, only ULTRA high doses...keep that in mind.

anyhoo, i can see how someone would think MDA and "2c-b + MDMA" might be similar, but in the actuality of experience, MDA is only very mildly psychedelic at reasonable doses and only VERY psychedelic when combined with cannabis (or other trippy compounds) or in doses too large to actually ingest (MDA starts getting a little trippier at 150 mgs. for me, but by then i feel so toxic that i would never, ever bother to go further.....i stick to 130 mgs. which is VERY similar to MDMA and not really very trippy...definitely feels 99% "empathogen" and 1% "psychedelic" regardless of official classifications labeling it a psychedelic). i would give MDA to my mother at moderate doses knowing she could handle it....i would NEVER give my mother a psychedelic at moderate doses!

i would say that MDA is roughly the same as MDMA, and "MDMA + 2c-b" is deeper than MDMA or MDA alone could ever be.

the statement about MDMA + 2C-B having higher neurotoxicity than MDA alone is a curious one to me.
2c-b has similar or less toxicity than mescaline (which is to say none), i'm not sure how replacing half of a toxic dose for a non-toxic one would cause greater toxicity. am i missing something?? i don't know everything about 2c-b but i'm quite sure it works on the psychedelic brain receptors (causing perceptual changes, not toxic changes) and doesn't pump the seretonin/dopamine receptors (which is what is responsible for the neurotoxicity of the MDxx's in the first place).
fortunately, pure MDA is not poorly available in this little hermits cave, so i have much experience with the compound.
i feel that anyone who tries a half dose of MDMA/MDA with a non-toxic psychedelic like mescaline or 2c-b will experience drastically reduced feelings of bodily/mental toxicity. anyone can prove this to themselves, we don't need pseudo-science to spell out what is blatantly obvious through the fires of actual experience.

i sincerely hope you don't take this as trying to "stand above" you on these matters, evening glory, it's not personal , i just think that experience says infinitely more than speculation, which is usually based on assumptions.
please offer corrections where they are needed.
love and peace to you all....

Great, thanks for the correction! i actually have 200 mg. of pure harmine sitting in my fridge waiting for me to understand what you're saying!!!
that explains why my 48 gram Caapi tea was crazy psychedelic!
i'll have to give that harmine a try soon....

From the san pedro resin and mescaline experiments i have done so far, i say this is true.

Caapi has been on my mind. Read much about it in other threads.
Sure i will try mescaline + caapi one day..

Dragon-n

Thank you for this fascinating thread... its definitely got me thinking...


Much Peace and Happiness

What about a cup of passionflower tea? I'm thinking passionflower may be too weak an maoi to cause adverse side effects but may increase euphoria as it's known to do. What are your predictions of this combination? I am weary as I DEFINITELY would not want full maoi potentiation of an amphetamine. I'd sooner try it with the less tried MDAI. But the idea interests me..

what makes you think that low doses of MDMA aren't neurotoxic? because you don't feel a crash?
if anything, that is pseudoscience, because it's a subjective observation that says nothing about the physiological effects of MDMA at the fine axons in the raphe nuclei even at low doses, which is well documented. fortunately, elasticity repairs the damage at low doses so you don't notice it.

"Fine axons with small varicosities originate from the dorsal raphe nuclei, and beaded axons with large spherical varicosities arise from the median raphe nuclei. These two types of 5-HT-containing axon have different regional and laminar distributions and appear to be differentially sensitive to the neurotoxic effects of certain amphetamine derivatives, including 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), referred to more commonly as "ecstasy." The fine axons are much more sensitive to the neurotoxic effects than the beaded axons, and the loss of fine axons lasts for months and may be permanent. Beaded axons appear to be resistant and remain unaffected following neurotoxic treatment with MDMA. This finding may be relevant to human studies, which have indicated that individuals using MDMA as a recreational drug may be exposed to dosages approximating those shown to exhibit serotonin neurotoxicity in nonhuman primates. A 26% decrease in the serotonin metabolite 5-HIAA was observed in the cerebrospinal fluid of MDMA users. This indirect evidence of a decrease in serotonin turnover in the brain perhaps reflects destruction or compromised function of this fine serotonin-containing axon system. Further studies of MDMA users seem warranted and could provide important information on the effects of selective loss of this fine axon system in humans. At present, the functional roles played by the fine and beaded axon systems and whether the functions are distinct or similar remain unclear. In serial section analysis of 5-HT terminals in the primate visual cortex, the fine and fat boutons appeared to coexist in the same axon, arguing against distinct 5-HT innervation of this brain region."

(taken from Ch. 10-Serotonin, "The Biochemical Basis of Neuropharmacology", 8th Ed. Cooper, Bloom and Roth)

i dunno. once i read in Entheogen Review about someone combining rue with 10 mgs. MDMA and said it wasn't threatening in any way perceptibly.
i've thought about stuff like that for 2 seconds and then realized that it's not even worth it. why risk it??
it's not like it's permanent omnipresent bliss anyway, you'll just come down, so what's the point in stepping into quicksand for it?
if someone were to do it, maybe passionflower would be safest but i would strongly dissuade anyone from it if i could.
fun ideas, and a good one, but my intuition just shies away from it (as i'm sure it does yours!!)!!!