So yesterday´s experience was incredible!! 2g of rue and 200mg of pure crystals.. Here´s the trip report. It is long but I think you wont regret reading it

Prologue

Yesterday I decided to take pharmahuasca consisting of extracted DMT crystals and some Syrian rue. I embarked on this experience with a question to be answered: ´Can pharmahuasca be as deep and spiritual as it was for me with the real ayahuasca?´. To help bring about a proper setting, earlier during the day I went to a friend´s house that participated with me in this ritual some months ago and had recorded the singing of the shaman, so I put the icaros in my ipod. I made my room nicely organized, and put a couple of candles around.


The Rue episode

After a light early dinner, I waited a few hours for the digestion, and started preparing the Rue. I put the 2 grams I had inside 2 layers of ziplock and mashed it for a while with a hammer (the first ziplock ripped open, so it was good to use 2 layers). Then I boiled it with some lemon-acidified water for 15 mins, and after tried to filter the solids with a coffee filter. That was a big no-no, as the coffee filter clogged and then ripped. So I collected the solids stuck to the broken filter, put it all back in the pot with some water, boiled again for 2 mins and this time I ripped some old shirt, attached to a glass with some rubber band and used it as a filter. Now it worked..

Then I came across a problem nobody tells you on the net: How the hell do you take out the rue powder stuck to the filter?! So the best way I found was to put some water in a small deep bowl (like those cereal bowls), immerse the filter in the water and shake a bit. That all was sort of funny, the situation of improvising, it was all a bit messy but I managed it. So I boiled again with lemon water and separated the solids another two times, discarded the solid and put all the liquid together (which by now had become 2 glasses full). Then I boiled it all down to about 100ml and added some honey as advised on the internet.


The ipod freeze, 23:23 and the Rue tea

So I had decided that I would start the experience by ingesting the Rue at exactly 23:23. It was still a few minutes to go, so I made a bit of stretching and quiet straight sitting, to relax my body. When it was about 5 minutes to go, I decided to listen quickly to some music on my ipod before I go down to get the tea which was in the kitchen. So the moment I press play, it freezes. So Im like ´wtf, not now please!!´. So I know there is a certain code to reset the ipod, but I didn’t remember it, so I run down to the computer, turn it on and ask the modern oracle (google ) how to do it. So I make the code and the ipod unfreezes EXACTLY as the clock turns 23:23. I run to the kitchen, get the tea and gulp it down. Pretty peculiar haha.

In 25 minutes or so I feel a bit of light-headedness and body feeling, sort of like the onset of an LSA trip. At this point I start preparing for taking the crystals


Banana Crystals and the beginning of all.

At first when I planned on taking the crystals, I knew they were quite harsh (put it a bit on the tongue and you´ll see what I mean), and this is not because they were impure or with NaOH remains from the extractions, as I had washed them with sodium carbonate AND recrystallized them. So anyways, my initial plan was to mash a bit of bread, put the crystals on top, bit more mashed bread on top and swallow the improvised bread ´capsule´. When I made a test-try without the crystals, it was hard swallowing it, bread gets stuck in the throat, so I had to make another way. I decided to mash some bananas and make the same, but of bananas, figuring that it would slide down easily and the crystals would still be ´protected´ from touching my mouth/throat.

At 00:00 I take 200mg of crystals divided in two ´bites/gulps/banana capsules´. I lay down on my bed and wait for the onset, listening to some icaros.

The Trip.

It took 40 minutes to start, which made me apprehensive thinking I had done something wrong, that the rue wasn’t enough, or that the banana had somehow messed it up. I said to myself (or to the dmt) ´come on, im not afraid, come on´. And boy, did it come.

The first tripping moments had to do with my vision. I could force my eyes to turn the typical closed eyes phosphene imagery into seeing scenes and scenarios, like landscapes, roads, forests and so on. First this was very light but then started increasing and the scenes got more and more realistic. This came together with a very heightened perception of the icaros. They were incredible! I could feel the power of the shaman again, reminding exactly how it was when he was singing next to me in the ritual months ago. I felt the wise science behind the sounds, how perfect they were and how they really match the DMT experience, the repetitions, the patterns.

Until this moment, I had felt no nausea, but then it did come. It wasn’t so bad, it was more like a feeling of having a ´thick´ stomach (hard to describe), having something ´stuck´. It is sort of like the feeling when one wants to burp but its stuck and doesn’t come out. At this point the air was feeling very thick too, like when one opens the eyes during a smoked DMT trip and the air is ´filled´, and not empty.

It was late, and I had woken up sort of early, so I was tired. When I layed down, sleep began taking hold of me, so I had to sit up in bed to fight it off. When I stood up, this ´thick nausea´ began again, so I kept alternating between the two, stuck, sort of like the ´short-blanket syndrome´ (pull at the top the feet get cold, pull at the feet and the top gets cold). Now mind you, this seems like a negative thing, but I felt, like I had learned in the ayahuasca rituals I had done, that this was a part of the whole point of DMT: To take you out of the comfort zone, to make you face weakness and difficulty, so you can ´stand´ it and get stronger.

The trip started getting very very strong, overriding my tiredness. This meant I could lay down without a problem. Listening to the Icaros was amaaaaaaaaazing, but I decided that I should go another step and be in silent for awhile. This proved to be a good experiment. I started having the most incredible auditory ´hallucinations´. They were sounds of the ´other side´, so to say. Imagine playing the keys of the piano from the lowest tone to the highest tone in order, and back. Now this would be a ´linear´ order, sort of ´horizontal´, like the piano is. So imagine the same, but instead of a ´linear horizontal´ scale change, a spiral sound. This was what I heard. I heard the sounds of spirals, fractals, futuristic sounds, bleeps and blops, bubbles and moving balloons. It was as if one could decode all the imagery of a smoked DMT trip into sounds.

This brings me to another point. I was having a trip of the same level of a smoked 50mg DMT trip, except instead of 300km/h, it just as intense, but at 50km/h. This meant I could carefully examine the visuals and the sounds.

Then a very very weird feeling started to arise in me. I started feeling the whole mystery of the DMT, connecting it somehow to the ´dead´ world. It wasn´t ´evil´ in any way, but it was quite humbling. It was just so beyond our level of consciousness, and I couldn’t help but get the feeling it had something to do with death (maybe mckenna was onto something when he called it an ´ecology of souls´, as if its really the primordial world from before birth and after death). The sounds and visuals showed me this somehow, as if the whole existence was made of spirals, vibrations interacting with each other. It´s like those images in movies when a camera stands still in a city and it goes fast forward, and one can see the ´after images´ of all the people passing by. So it was as if the trip was showing me this, but instead of a city, all life, the ´afterimages´ of all souls, and instead of fast forward, both forward and backwards (like the piano thing I said, going up and down the scales, evolution and involution).

This all lead me to start thinking about death more, visualizing it. Suddenly I was imagining people, but in special my wife (im only 23 but im married), and I thought of her death, and it hurt me so much. I cried, thinking of how hard it was to ´let go´ of the attachment of living. This continued for a while, visualizing loads of people that I know, but specially my family and my wife, and I cried about the transitory nature of life and existence. I thought of my death too, and this was hard, imagining the last breath, letting go, releasing attachments, being engulfed by the ´other side´.

We are like birds in a cage, that even when set free, still hesitates going out. The same for us, no matter how ´enlightened´ and ´unafraid´ one says he is about death, there is always a hesitation, a difficulty, but what I came to learn is that we tend to ´pile up´ on this initial worry with loads of unnecessary fears, and that the key is to just do what one has to during life, be productive, give back to the world, have no ´debts´ with existence, and then there is nothing to fear. I don’t think I worked out completely my fear of death, as this is a process that goes on until the day it actually happens, but I am slowly dealing with it each time better, and in the very least it´s a reminder to make my life worth living. I also thought of being even closer with my wife, valuing her more, helping her also make her life worth living. This all lasted quite a while, and it was one of the strongest parts of the experience.

Now the funny thing was that I suddenly had the taste of DMT in my throat (even though it went down smooth because of the banana when I took it, didn’t really touch the throat). The perception of this taste wasn´t simply a usual perception, it was as if I was observing a holography of the DMT molecule in my mind, where I could see it perfectly, feel all it´s properties, taste, smell, consistence and so on. It started feeling quite harsh to the stomach, actually. When one takes ayahuasca, it is very strong, but, maybe because it comes with other substances, it´s as if it is somehow ´protected´ or ´encapsulated´ by the whole liquid. The pure crystals seemed way too harsh, somehow ´caustic´ to the stomach (and as I said, it was a very clean pure one, so it wasn’t because of remains of caustic soda). I could feel the pain of my stomach, and I must have been making some funny faces at this point. I only had water next to me, and it didn’t help.

I desperately needed something like a juice. Then I thought that the best, actually, would be some açaí I had in the fridge (açaí is a vitamin rich berry from the amazon. It comes in the form of a frozen pulp, and you put it in the mixer and you eat this frozen thick consistence yummi ´juice´ with a spoon). It felt like it was the only thing that would help, but the thing is, I was completely loaded, I was so under the influence that I couldn’t really open my eyes, everything was overlayed with dmt-like visuals, the air was thick, I was sensitive to light, I could barely move. Also, I live in a reasonably big house from my grandma, so it was a long way to go, through a big corridor, go down stairs, pass next to the living room which has a weird mirror wall, then into the kitchen, and I still would have to break the pulp, put it on the mixer and so on.. Way too much for a person in my state. So I stayed there, suffering in bed, working over the idea of going down.

Eventually the need for açaí made me overcome the inertia. So I went down slowly most of the way with my eyes closed because it was hard to keep them open, and I started making the açaí. The problem was, I hadn’t properly attached the mixer ´top´, so loads of açaí, which is purple and stains shirts and so on very easily, flew out and made a mess. Now imagine me in that state, having to clean the kitchen and all..

Appart from that, normally one mixes açaí with a bit of water, but sometimes I mix with milk. This time I mixed with milk, and when I took a sip of it, I was totally disgusted! Milk felt completely wrong, and I don’t mean just in that situation, but in general. This realization came in many different levels. First it was a ´moral´ level, imagining us humans ´stealing´ the milk of another animal to drink (AFAIK we are the only animals that do that). The milk I drink was organic, but still it didn’t feel right. Also I imagined the secretion of this milk in the cow, as if I could imagine the glands producing it, and I can tell you it wasn´t very pleasant to ´taste´ cow glands haha. Also, it just felt wrong in general to the human body, as if it´s tolerated and somehow digested, but it´s not meant to be, the body doesnt want it.

This also made me start questioning my whole position as a vegetarian, trying to respect nature, how hard it starts becoming. I thought about it´s not enough to just not eat meat, but how agrotoxic-filled vegetables, milk-stealing, etc are also nasty. I thought of vegetarians, how usually they define themselves as such, as if it morally excuses them in life. But in fact, it´s so much more complex than that, as the milk example I mentioned, or for example how even if one doesn’t eat meat, still so many of the products we use are involved in animal testing (for example, procter and gamble, a big corporation, owner of Duracell batteries, Gillette, Oral B, Pampers, a dozen of shampoo brands, etc, is known to do very nasty animal testing). So this showed me how it´s a very complex and deep issue, and how I definitely don’t have clear-cut answers to it. I know I will always have some sort of cost to the planet, one can´t be ´footprint-free´, but I realized once again it´s my duty to try to diminish that and be aware of things I buy/use as much as possible, respecting all different levels of life. It´s all these dynamic decisions we have to make..
On one hand, a person can choose to live the ´back to the land´ lifestyle, have a sustainable land, be an example of non-aggression to nature.. I find that a very nice iniciative.. But then again, what good does a person do to the world by being isolated? To how many people will this be an example? Will it really change anything, appart from being ´one less problem´? Maybe it´s better to closer to society, try to make an active change to the world thinking of long term consequences, even if that will mean being temporarily harsh to nature.. It´s a fine line, there is no single answer, it depends on each person in each moment.. These ethical questions are very complex, dynamic, contextual. I think it´s necessary to try to be as conscious as possible, and not give up on the search for a better world.

Anyways, I still needed to drink something, so I found some watermelon and made a watermelon juice. Then I went up, and at this point finally the trip was diminishing (3:30 hours after I took). I layed in bed, reviving what happened in my mind, imagining making this trip report and thinking of recommending to anyone who decides to take pharmahuasca that they should definitely have some nice juice next to them hehe

The answer to my original question: Yes, in a proper set and setting, pharmahuasca can be as deep and spiritual as normal ayahuasca. (but if possible, a real ritual with ayahuasca is definitely recommended).

This was a very deep experience, unexpectedly so. Now once again Im gonna try to put things into practice. Hope you all enjoyed reading

WOW!

I'm really, really glad that your 2grams worked out well for you!

That was a good read.

thanks! yeah it was very unexpected, for quite a while I was thinking it wasnt gonna hit, that 2g was not enough.. Made me wonder if its just me in this circumstance, or if 2g is indeed enough in general to inhibit the MAO

200mg of spice?

A good read and I'm glad to hear 2g of rue was enough. While reading I could relate a lot to your story. Next month I'm up to it again and after reading this story I'm really looking forward to it.

Why ayahuasca over pharmahuasca?

It really depends on many different factors. I've ingested 250mgs with mild effects lasting 4 hours.

yeah 200mg seems quite a bit, but I felt pretty brave before.. and as usual, it humbled me and knocked me off my high horse Thats why I love these substances hehe

hope you have a nice experience too.. would be happy to read the report




what do you mean?

This was my first time with pharmahuasca, before I had taken only real ayahuasca both in shamanic cerimonies or in Santo Daime church.. I had many very deep experiences and I questioned myself if all that is needed is the mao to be inhibited and the dmt to do it´s thing, or if the synergies of the plants influence the experience.. I guess to some extent the plant synergies do influence but as far as I can tell, the experience was just as strong and deep as any other

The main difference I think, is the setting, which in a shamanic ritual specifically works in certain levels that one can´t by himself.. It´s sort of like therapy, where the presence of this ´other´ can help you find things you maybe wouldnt have found otherwise, even if the answers are ultimately inside of yourself. A propper shaman is very sensitive to your situation.. Like a mother that knows when the baby cries if its a hunger cry or a pain cry or a cold cry, so does the propper shaman realize exactly what kind of stage you are in and helps you find your ways to deal with it. Whether that is a ´supernatural´ way of working, or if it´s just a deep sensitivity, it doesnt really matter (though I have my suspicions which is it). What matters is that the shaman can help you realizing different things than you would alone, like a double mirror so you can see your ´blind spot´ in the back of your head.

I think that having participated in a ritual before has helped me ´deepening´ this experience maybe more than it would have been if I had only had pharmahuascas experiences so far. But how could one separate these different interlocking variables and know exactly what causes what? Once again, for me it doesnt matter, each thing stands in its own place.. I think a shamanic ritual is a very learning experience and recommend it to those already on the psychedelic/entheogen way.. But I also think one can properly make use of lone psychonaut experiences (such as pharmahuasca). Each one doesnt take the place of the other..

Great report, well written i realy enjoyed reading it Your braveness was rewarded it seems.

thanks

btw guys, I uploaded a few of the amazing Icaros chants from this recording made in a ritual I participated in..

if anyone is interested, here´s the link

the last one is an icaro from the Lakota tribe that was sang in this same ritual, by a guy and a girl that had learned from them

LOL man how funny

only now I noticed that I actually took the dmt at 00:00 of the 23rd of may.. and also my wife, who´s travelling, said that the moment we hang up the phone when we talked before I took the trip, she saw on the phone that the call lasted exactly 23mins and 23 seconds

now tell me this is just a coincidence

Spice does seem to provoke syncronicity like no ones business.

If I might ask, how much do you weigh and what is your diet like?

I'm wondering mg/kg for both rue (and thus harmine type alkaloids) and spice. Also trying to see if there is a correlation between diet and ease of MAO inhibition.

Im 70kg and have a quite balanced basically vegetarian fresh food diet, practically never industrialized foods...

does that fit in to any correlation?

Sounds like a good experience. I've got to say though bananna (& to a lesser extent milk) while on an MAOI is a very bad idea from all the advice I've seen on MAOI & diet. Did you experience any stomach upsets or other negative physical changes during the trip?

hey

I do know what you are talking about, but I must say this common idea comes from a certain misunderstanding..

the harmala MAOIs are reversible inhibitors that act mainly on MAO-a.. tyramine (which is what is responsible for dietary problematic interactions with maoi) is eliminated basically only by MAO-b .. All the warnings of diet and maoi interaction concern pharmaceutical non-reversible MAOIs, which, differently from ayahuasca or syrian rue, act on MAO-b.

Jonathan Ott himself ate cheddar cheese gulped with beer and followed by chocolate just after an ayahuasca trip to prove this point.. not very smart move imo, but ok he got his idea across haha

Also there is the whole experience from Santo Daime and other ayahuasca religions here in Dreamland. There is no real diet check or talks, and I have actually never heard anything about diet before their rituals start (which would obviously be essential if diet was really necessary, or else they could have dead people or a number of health issues and therefore possible legal problems).. Also in many shamanic rituals I´ve participated in, they served fruits, even yoghurt and so on after it was done..

I think the real dietary concern is not about tyramine, but it´s just a matter of good sense and respect to your body.. I mean, you dont want to be eating industrialized or heavy food just before or after the experience, since you will have a sensitive stomach, so that would be too aggressive. Also, the whole experience is about getting more conscious in general, more healthy and so on, so it would be a contradiction and disrespect to be eating all gluttonous, or bad food in general, etc..

independent of the tyramine deal, eating in this negative way, specially with the body/mind/soul as open and sensitive as with ayahuasca, might cause the body to react and complain about it in ways manifested such as headaches. So when some people will describe that they had headaches from eating or drinking something before/during/after the experience, and they blame it on the tyramine, then its probably, imo, just their bodies complaining that they have bad diet in general, but not tyramine related

So I dont think that 2 bites of a banana (or even a whole one if it had been the case) would be responsible for any problem..


btw, on a side note.. I´ve been having a hypothesis on my mind that I also want to check out.. I was thinking about the purging during ayahuasca, and how it seems to me there is some some sort of symbolic meaning depending on where in the body its done (sweat, tears, vomit, nose running, etc) .. I thought about people who claim that they have diarrea during ayahuasca experience and I want to find out if maybe these people have bad eating habbits in some sense in their daily life, so the body is symbolically and literally cleaning the insides through that way.. would be interesting to find out, I might make a poll somewhere about it

whakh ! .. stop there ... ! too many details ..> ! .. .. save those for the shamanic scatology thread !

I've wondered if the stomach upset is just hunger as I always fast alot before a pharmahuasca, or because of the chemical reaction of alkaline dmt-freebase in your stomach acids..?

And re MAOI dose level at 2.0g - I tried 3.5 g of Rue Seed (lemon extract), which is perhaps a really high dose for 150 lb person like me.... With 150 mg dmt ontop of that, I really got a lot of looping, 'shorted-out', multiplied, synesthetic, cross-overs of things happening. This was a little overwhelming, and out of newbie-fear I wanted my MAOs back for awhile, during the peak-of-peaks, (45 min of a 4 - 5 hour trip). 2.0 g might leave enough residual MAO activity to bend things more.

DMT freebase disolves very well in vinegar, or aciditic water. Would'nt be less stomach-upsetting to use it instead freebase ?

Yes. There has been a theory that has been discussed here before. Basically, someone who eats low tryamine foods requires less MAOs in their system than someone who eats a lot of processed foods. This would require the healthy eater to inhibit their MAO enzymes with less MAOI's than someone who eats junk all the time (me).

Weight also does play a part in DMT dosages.

Oh the banana thing. There was one report of someone eating a lot of severly over-ripe banana's while on a irreversable MAOI that has some complications. Fresh banana's are not contra-indicated.

Good point about the reversable MAOI's vs non-reversables. Many people don't understand the difference.

i've done pharmahuasca a few times. The last and most intense experience so far i've ever had with it, was with a variation of the recipe. I decided to add mushrooms (quite a large amount, enough to get four people halucinating) and use a milder MAOI, wich was an extract of 100 grams of passionflower, because i don't like the throwing-up part very much that had always happened when i used the syrianrue. I used 100 grams of mimosa coldwater-infusion wich is orally active without MAOI's because of a special form of DMT in it called yuremamine (wich is DMT with some other stuff detached to the molecule that breaks down once it enters the bloodstream in some compound and the DMT, but before breaking down, the molecule is to large for the MAO enzyme to be able to do anything with it.) The idea of adding the mushrooms was that it would help me get over the threshold, so all the DMT in my blood would be invested in tripping instead, that some of the DMT would first have to get me over the threshold, and the rest would bring me to other places. It may sound like a bizarre theory, but lik i said. The experience was way more intense then with any of the regular pharmahuasca brews i've ever had.
What i really like to say about it and share with anyone, is that i was going to visit a friend a few days later and during the experience i 'saw' him having some personal problems of wich he had told me nothing and i had not visited him for more then 6 months. Anyway, it all apeared to be true. The only thing is that in my vision i was able to help him with these things troubling him and in real life i have tried, but to my own estimation not really succeeded thusfar.

whats the password?

shit good question, gotta remember hahaha sorry about that.. I post when I do remember