A few weeks back, as mentioned in passing in another post, I had an exceptionally euphoric rue tea experience so it seemed pertinent to get to the bottom of what might have been going on. The factors suspected of being at play were, broadly, twofold: earlier in the day I had eaten a pepino fruit (Solanum muricatum or S. mucronatum, probably the former), while along with the rue brew I had a herb tea blend.

In the intervening weeks I've tinkered around with various levels and combinations of the herbs that were in the tea blend. This was to little avail, so it's not particularly relevant to list them here.

Now the interesting part. Time came round such that it seemed a sufficiently long time from the last pepino-related experience that it was reasonable to try again - not wanting to have too much of a good thing and only having one home-grown pepino left.

A brew was prepared using three grams of rue seed, which was first toasted for a couple of minutes in a cast iron pan to improve the palatability to something almost enjoyable rather than utterly revolting. The toasted seeds were subjected to 5x 10 minute simmers with c.100ml tap water each time, the odd numbered brews also having 80mg ascorbic acid added.

The combined brews were stirred with a palladium/magnesium couple for a while, just because it was possible. (Magnesium forms an insoluble yellow coating from the yellow stuff of the rue brew.) This may or may not have converted some of the harmaline to THH.

Some herb tinctures were added to the brew (while drinking a cup of peppermint tea to prepare the stomach): 5ml cleavers tincture, 5ml lemon balm tincture and 2ml pink rose blossom tincture. The cleavers was added slightly by accident so rose was added as a kind of nod towards my "hedgeahuasca" experience of some years ago, as well as it having a lovely odour for general good vibes. I accept that this could be regarded as a confounding factor in the experiment.

The rue brew was consumed a good two hours or so after eating the pepino (three-quarters of a 10cm long by 6cm diameter fruit, unfortunately not weighed). After having dozed off after drinking the rue tea, I awoke about half an hour later (three quarters of an hour after drinking the brew) to an exquisite full-body euphoria - rivulets of liquid bliss like an extended pre-orgasmic moment, hopefully you get the picture.

I now have a goal of further confirmation of the effects of pepino on the rue tea experience. Unfortunately, however, my home grown supply has run out and they're not commonly available in my locality. Thus it would be amazing if there were some of you out there who have access to pepino fruit and would be willing to put this idea to the test.

The fruit itself had something of a bitter layer below the skin that I strongly suspect to be related to the effect. Of course, other fruit have also been shown to contain betacarbolines and neurotransmitter-type goodies including melatonin and dopamine to name but two, so this observation should not come as too much of a surprise. I kind of suspect that my slow-ripened pepinos may even have contained something like THH.

Disclaimer:
If you decide to embark upon this course of inquiry please be aware that it is not entirely free of risk and you should arm your awareness accordingly.

Edit: One further noteworthy observation is that my teeth were chattering during the come-up, something which has never happened in my rue brew experiences before. I relaxed and dozed off as it was my bedtime. When the euphoria woke me back up my jaw had settled down completely.

Thank you for the post! Really interesting. I unfortunately have no pepino fruit. I've never tried growing it (I have a major interest in growing and have a quite long history of it), I think it's because I didn't really liked the fruit when I tried it 20+ years ago.

But who knows, it was from a shop here in northern europe, were 'exotic' fruit sometimes can be quite far from the taste they have closer to the origin. And now I got intrigued and I might try growing some here. Might be to late this season..

Meanwhile I might try one from the shop again. This time for science... and possibly a good time

I would prefer to use the rue extract I've made instead of seed-tea.

Thanks for the reply - what I will clarify is that here in northern Europe the climate is broadly unsuitable for successful cultivation of pepinos. My pepino plant came from a local supermarket and it took 6 months (from October to March) for the tiny handful of fruit to ripen. This may well have affected the chemical profile of the fruit compared to that available for sale as I find it unlikely that retail pepinos would be that bitter.

Where in northern Europe can one buy pepinos? I suspect I'd have to travel into a large city - although I can't say I've extensively surveyed local supermarkets.

If anyone else has any similar kinds of experiences of interactions between harmalas and fruit of whatever variety please feel free to share them here.

I will perform a few more experiments with the same herb teas and tinctures, minus the pepino, to examine if there is an influence from any of the four other herbs involved.

Yes, I thought that I could have started in indoors and then grown it in my green house. Perhaps the season would be long enough or else I might have to bring it indoors for the winter. Tree tomato, daturas and other plats can be grown like this here.

But being so far from it origins will probably effect the properties. Day length is one thing, heat and humidity another. But some say that the very long summer days and the quality of the light makes herbs and this essential oils more potent. So who knows?

I've not checked for the fruit in the local supermarkets here for a long while, but it was not so unusual for around 10 years ago. Even in smaller towns you'll find it somewhat surprisingly (that is another thing, the huge amount of food waste that these super market produce)

Looking forward do ream more about your experiments with teas and tinctures. I have really a lot of both from my own making.

And finally cleavers tincture? I've never hear of it before. Knowing the plant but never thought of using it. Why do you use this?

Cleavers is good for lymphatic cleansing as a spring tonic. I think it makes a nice tea in its own right as well. It has a special place on my 'plant radar' as well because Shulgin listed it in TIHKaL - without discernible reference - as containing harmine, although my various experiments with cleavers preparations have failed to display any tell-tale fluorescence. Come to think of it, I haven't UV tested this particular tincture AFAICR.

Link added to OP - the first time round with the pepino incident was actually with crude Manske rue alkaloids.
Here's the "hedgeahuasca" link. There is an analogy there, where it was a combination of sage, cleavers, rosewater - and fruit - that worked. Swap sage for lemon balm (there are both in the mint family) and the analogy is very close. There might be some kind of SSAO inhibition going on somewhere in all of this. I'll check the the lemon balm/cleavers/rose petal combination again very soon, both with and without rue, similarly re peppermint.

Intriguingly, we have this post come up on a search for "pepino" as well - even though the therein mentioned study attempts to exclude pepino as a suspected 'lost' hallucinogen on the basis of a few morphological details (and not on the basis of its biochemistry). Maybe I'll try smoking a few pepino leaves sometime, or a pepino changa. Toxicity studies would be necessary as a predecessor to that particular experiment, of course.

Sadly, the pepino plants that survived the winter have not flowered this year, the weather in August was atrocious. I don't really live in the right part of the world to grow these fruits.

At some point I'll try and track some more pepinoes down at an exotic fruit market or suitable grocer's. It would be good to get a picture of whether this effect is actually real or if it was just down to the planets or whatever.

If any of you out there have access to pepinoes and harmala alkaloids (without the THH), please give this a try for science's sake!


There is a faint resemblance to a mysterious psychoactive fruit from some historical mesoamerican text that I referenced above. I look forward to hearing of any findings you make.

Thanks for bumping this, I realise I also have some 'hedgeahuasca' experiments to carry out!

Yeah, this is probably the wrong thread for that but I did note the similarity between aloe vera mucilage and cactus mucilage not so long ago. This led to an experiment with application of a fairly slimy cactus tea to various body surfaces (it makes a great skin lotion and shower gel!) and it would be prudent to test the stuff from a more baseline state to check whether actives do indeed absorb transdermally (wrists, forehead - well, practically anywhere really) because that's what seemed to be the case.

[I'll probably move these two posts to the right place sometime later.]