StatuesCryBleeding wrote:I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude, I'm simply worried. My daughter says she has been researching this stuff for months now and she's insisting she is ready. Is the experience really that heavy? I'm reading some ''trip reports'' at the moment. She said to look it up on eroid. Is it a good source of information? Thanks.
You cannot be ready for something like this..DMT is beyond anything you can possibly imagine..there is no "ready"..
I never took my first psychedelic until I was 19. I wasnt ito drugs at all before that. I went to some parties and whatnot and drank alcohol after I graduated from high school, but soon got over that-was never my thing.
When I found psychedelics I was very anti-drugs. I began to read about the traditional use of psychedelic plants like mushrooms and ayahasca and became more and more interested until I finally went out and tried them. Mushrooms changed my life, very literally and for the better. I had no ambition to go back to school or do much of anything related to academics, but after haveing what I concider some of the most amazing experience of my entire life, I became facinated with all sorts of things. I went back to school to study anthropology and philosophy and began to read everything I could..I just wanted to learn and I saw the value in intelligence.
If she really has her mind set on having this experience the way I did, there is not a thing you can do. You can stop her from ordering bark etc but it will only be a matter of time. People should have the right to explore they're minds in a safe supportive environment. It is they're life, they have to deal with it and have the right to explore and have new experiences. There are no recorded deaths due to DMT. DMT is not physically addictive. DMT is a very powerful psychedelic and can submerge one farther than they could ever imagine into the depths of the psycheand possibly beyond, so like anything it is not without it's dangers, and like anything so powerful, it demands great responcibility.
All that said...your daughter is still a minor. Members here are required to be 18 or older so while anyone can browse the forum she really cant have an account here and we dont promote the use of DMT by people under the age of 18, for obvious reasons.
Ayahuasca has a long long history of traditional use. It is not concidered a drug to the people who's culture spawned it..it is a medicine and rightly so. Ayahuasca contains DMT, as well was harmalas alkaloids known as beta-carbolines..these allow the DMT to become active when ingested in a brew. There has been lots of research recently into the health benifts of ayahuasca, and there is much pointing towards the long accepted idea that ayahuasca is indeed a health promoting tonic that is good for the brain.
Here is a link to a study at MAPS(Multi Disiplinary Association for Psychedelic studies) with links reguarding ayahuasca research..
http://www.maps.org/ayahuasca/hoasca.htmlMaps in general is a good resource for non-biased information reguarding psychedelics. You might also want to look into the work of Rick Strassman.
Here is a quote from the work of Dennis Mckenna and JC. Calloway in rguards to they'e work on ayahuasca's biomedical effects..
"The individuals who are attracted to the UDV seem to belong to a slightly more professional socio-economic class than those who join the Santo Daime. Of the approximately 7000 members of the UDV in Brasil, perhaps 5 - 10 % are medical professionals, among them physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, chiropracters, and homeopathic physicians. Most of these individuals are fully aware of the psychologically beneficial aspects of the practice, and evince a great interest in the scientific study of hoasca , including its botany, chemistry, and pharmacology. The medically educated members can discuss all of these aspects with a sophistication equal to that of any U.S.-trained physician, or other medical professional. At the same time they do have a genuine spiritual reverence for the hoasca tea and the experiences it evokes. The UDV places a high value on the search for scientific truth, and sees no conflict between science and religion; most members of the UDV express a strong interest in learning as much as possible about how the tea acts on the body and brain. As a result of this unique circumstance, the UDV presents an ideal context in which to conduct a biomedical investigation of the acute and long-term effects of hoasca /ayahuasca.
Due to a fortunate combination of circumstances, we were invited to conduct such a biomedical investigation of long-term hoasca drinkers by the Medical Studies section of the UDV (Centro de Estudos Medicos). This study, which was conducted by an international consortium of scientists from Brasil, the United States, and Finland, was financed through private donations to various non-profit sponsoring groups, notably Botanical Dimensions, which provided major funding, the Heffter Research Institute, and MAPS, (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). Botanical Dimensions is a non-profit organization dedicated to the study and preservation of ethnomedically significant plants, and MAPS and the Heffter Research Institute are non-profit organizations dedicated to the investigation of the medical and therapeutic uses of psychedelic agents. The field phase of the study was conducted during the summer of 1993 at one of the oldest UDV temples, the Nucleo Caupari located in the Amazonian city of Manaus, Brasil. Subsequent laboratory investigations took place at the respective academic institutions of some of the principle investigators, including the Department of Psychiatry, Harbor UCLA Medical Center, the Department of Neurology, University of Miami School of Medicine, the Department of Psychiatry, University of Rio de Janeiro, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Amazonas Medical School, Manaus, and the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Kuopio, Finland.
Since this study was the first of its kind, there was virtually no pre-existing data on the objective measurement of the physical and psychological effects of ayahuasca in human subjects. As a result, this study was in some respects a pilot study; its primary objectives were modest, representing an effort to collect a basic body of data, without attempting to relate the findings to either possible detrimental effects of ayahuasca, or to possible therapeutic effects. The study had four major objectives:
- Assessment of Acute Psychological and Physiological Effects of Hoasca in Human Subjects
- Assessment of Serotonergic Functions in Long-term Users of Hoasca Tea
- Quantitative Determination of Active Constituents of Hoasca Teas in Plasma
- Quantitative Determination of Active Constituents of Hoasca Teas
Most of these objectives were achieved, and the results have been published in various peer-reviewed scientific journals (Grob, et al., 1996; Callaway, et al., 1994; Callaway, et al., 1996;. Callaway, et al., 1997) Some key findings are summarized briefly below.
Assessment of Acute and Long-term Psychological Effects of Hoasca Teas (Grob, et al., 1996)
The subjects in all of the studies consisted of a group of fifteen healthy, male volunteers, all of whom had belonged to the UDV for a minimum of ten years, and who ingested hoasca on average of once every two weeks, in the context of the UDV ritual. None of the subjects actively used tobacco, alcohol, or any drugs other than hoasca. For some comparative aspects of the study, a control group of fifteen age-matched males was also used; these individuals were recruited from among the friends and siblings of the volunteer subjects, and like them were local residents of Manaus having similar diets and socio-economic status. None of the control subjects were members of the UDV, and none had ever ingested hoasca tea.
The psychological assessments, administered to both groups, consisted of structured psychiatric diagnostic interviews, personality testing, and neuropsychological reviewuations. Measures administered to the UDV hoasca drinkers, but not to the hoasca-niave group, included semistructured and open-ended life story interviews, and a phenomenological assessment of the altered state elicited by hoasca, was quantified using the Hallucinogen Rating Scale developed by Dr. Rick Strassman in his work with DMT and psilocybin in human subjects (Strassman, et al., 1994).
The UDV volunteers showed significant differences from the hoasca-naive subjects in the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) and the WHO-UCLA Auditory Verbal Learning Test. The TPQ assesses three general areas of behavior, viz., novelty-seeking, harm avoidance, and reward dependence. With respect to novelty-seeking behaviors, UDV members were found to have greater stoic rigidity vs exploratory excitability, greater regimentation vs disorderliness, and a trend toward greater reflection vs impulsivity; but there was no difference between the groups on the spectrum between reserve and extravagance. On the harm reduction scale, UDV subjects had significantly greater confidence vs fear of uncertainty, and trends toward greater gregariousness vs shyness, and greater optimism vs anticipatory worry. No significant differences were found between the two groups in criteria related to reward-dependence.
The fifteen UDV volunteers and the control subjects were also given the WHO-UCLA Auditory Learning Verbal Memory Test. Experimental subjects performed significantly better than controls on word recall tests. There was also a trend, though not statistically significant, for the UDV subjects to perform better than controls on number of words recalled, delayed recall, and words recalled after interference.
The Hallucinogen Rating Scale, developed by Strassman et. al (1994) for the phenomenological assessment of subjects given intravenous doses of DMT, was administered to the UDV volunteers only (since control subjects did not receive the drug). All of the clinical clusters on the HRS were in the mild end of the spectrum compared to intravenous DMT. The clusters for affect, intensity, cognition, and volition, were comparable to an intravenous DMT dose of 0.1 to 0.2 mg/kg, and the cluster for perception was comparable to 0.1 mg/kg intravenous DMT; the cluster for somatesthesia was less than the lowest dose of DMT measured by the scale, 0.05 mg/kg.
The most striking findings of the psychological assessment came from the structured diagnostic interviews, and the semi-structured open-ended life story interviews. The Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) was used for the structured diagnostic interview. None of the UDV subjects had a current psychiatric diagnosis, whereas two of the control subjects had an active diagnosis of alcohol misuse and hypochondriasis. Only one subject among the controls had a past psychiatric disorder that was no longer present; an alcohol misuse disorder that had remitted two years previously. However, prior to membership in the UDV, eleven of the UDV subjects had diagnoses of alcohol misuse disorders, two had had past major depressive disorders, four had past histories of drug misuse (cocaine and amphetamines), eleven were addicted to tobacco, and three had past phobic anxiety disorders. Five of the subjects with a history of alcoholism also had histories of violent behavior associated with binge drinking. All of these pathological diagnoses had remitted following entry into the UDV. All of the UDV subjects interviewed reported the subjective impression that their use of hoasca tea within the context of the UDV had led to improved mental and physical health, and significant improvements in interpersonal, work, and family interactions.
Assessment of Serotonergic Functions in Long-term Users of Hoasca (Callaway, et al., 1994)
Another objective of the study was to investigate whether long-term use of hoasca resulted in any identifiable "biochemical marker" that was correlated with hoasca consumption, particularly with respect to serotonergic functions, since the hoasca alkaloids primarily affect functions mediated by this neurotransmitter. Ideally, such a study could be carried out on post-mortem brains; since this was not possible, we settled on looking at serotonin transporter receptors in blood platelets, using [3H]-citalopram to label the receptors in binding assays. The up-or down regulation of peripheral platelet receptors is considered indicative of similar biochemical events occuring in the brain, although there is some controversy about the correlation between platelet receptor changes and changes in CNS receptors in patients receiving antidepressant medications (Stahl, 1977; Pletscher and Laubscher, 1980; Rotman, 1980);. However, platelet receptors were deemed suitable for the purposes of our study, as our objective was not to resolve this controversy but simply to determine if some kind of long-term biochemical marker could be identified. Neither did we postulate any conclusions about the possible "adverse" or "beneficial" implications of such a marker, if detected. We conducted the assays on platelets collected from the same group of 15 volunteers after they had abstained from consuming the tea for a period of one week. We also collected platelet specimens from the age-matched controls who were not hoasca drinkers. We were surprised to find a significant up-regulation in the density of the citalopram binding sites in the hoasca drinkers compared to control subjects. While the hoasca drinkers had a higher density of receptors, there was no change in the affinity of the receptors for the labelled citalopram. The significance of this finding, if any, is unclear. There is no other pharmacological agent which is known to cause a similar upregulation, although chronic administration of 5-HT uptake inhibitors has been reported to decrease both Bmax (the density of binding sites) and 5-HT transporter RNA in rats (Hrinda 1987; Lesch et al., 1993). Increases in Bmax for the uptake site in human platelets have been correlated with old age (Marazziti et al, 1989) and also to the dark phase of the circadian cycle in rabbits (Rocca et al., 1989). It has been speculated (Marazziti et al, 1989) that upregulation of 5-HT uptake sites in the aged may be related to the natural course of neuronal decline. Although our sample size was limited, we found no correlation with age, and the mean age of the sample was 38 years. Also, none of our subjects showed evidence of any neurological or psychiatric deficit. In fact, in view of their exceptionally healthy psychological profiles, one of the investigators speculated that perhaps the serotonergic upregulation is associated, not simply with age, but with "wisdom" -- a characteristic often found in the aged, and in many hoasca drinkers.
Another interesting self-experiment related to this finding was carried out by one of the investigators, Jace Callaway, following his return to Finland after the field phase of the study was completed. Dr. Callaway has access to Single Photon Emission Computerized Tomography (SPECT) scanning facilities in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Kuopio. Suspecting that the causative agent of the unexpected upregulation might be tetrahydroharmine (THH), Dr. Callaway took SPECT scans of his own brain 5-HT uptake receptors prior to beginning a six week course of daily dosing with tetrahydroharmine, repeating the scan after the treatment period. He did indeed find that the density of central 5-HT receptors in the prefrontal cortex had increased; when he discontinued THH, their density gradually returned to previous levels over the course of several weeks. While this experiment only had one subject, if it is indicative of a general effect of THH that can be replicated and confirmed, the implications are potentially significant. A severe deficit of 5-HT uptake sites in the frontal cortex has been found to be correlated with aggressive disorders in violent alcoholics; if THH is able to specifically reverse this deficit, it may have applications in the treatment of this syndrome. These findings are especially interesting when viewed in the context of the psychological data collected in the hoasca study (Grob, et al., 1996). The majority of the subjects had had a previous history of alcoholism, and many had displayed violent behavior in the years prior to joining the UDV; virtually all attributed their recovery and change in behavior to their use of hoasca tea in the UDV rituals. While it can be argued that their reformation was due to the supportive social and psychological environment found within the UDV, the finding of this long-term change in precisely the serotonin system that is deficient in violent alcoholism, argues that biochemical factors may also play a role"
Hope this is of some help..you also might want to go check out the ayhausca.com boards..they usually have lots of ayhuasca related links and such reguarding these types of studies.
Long live the unwoke.