I haven’t tried aya or pharma yet, but I have had very small doses of black caapi tea. Even with 5g simmered for about 15 minutes, I had noticeable effects. Anyhow, with ayahuasca, I’ve noticed that the recommended dose for caapi is generally 50-150g. Yet with pharma, the recommended dose for harmala alkaloids is in the 50-150mg range.

I thought that caapi vine contains about 1% alkaloids. If this is correct, then 50-150g caapi vine should contain 0.5-1.5g of alkaloids. This would mean a caapi dose taken as part of ayahuasca contains 10 times the alkaloids of a typical pharmahuasca dose.

Does caapi vine in fact contain a much lower concentration of alkaloids? In the neighborhood of 0.1% ?

What am I missing here?

I think the thing with the pharmahuasca culture is that it's more about activating DMT orally. Ayahuasca is it's own animal and IME the more vine I can handle, the more positive the long term effects.

I don't even think of them as the same category of experience anymore, although there are a lot of very obvious similarities.

Also it should be noted that black caapi is meant to be quite strong. I would never take the same amount black as I do with my work with white, where anything below 100g isn't noticed unless DMT is added to the mix.

With white caapi I found a 100g experience was good, supplied some great insight and gave me a good glow the day after. 150g had my life on a naturally flowing positive track for 2 weeks. For a few days there was nothign I couldn't accomplish and I'm the worst person for putting things off until later. The vine heavy brew seems to help me deal with this and seize the day, as a result I'm going to be working less with pharmahuasca and more with a vine heavy ayahuasca.

I'm sure more experienced folk will concur and add to this ten fold.

IMO, in ayahuasca, caapi is not being taken solely to allow for an oral dmt experience, it IS the main focus of the experience. It is the power, dmt the light. As such, higher doses of caapi are taken precisely for the psychoactive effects they illicit at higher doses. Take for example my first brew of ayahuasca. The ingredients had sat around in plastic baggies for the better part of a year. I made it with 50g caapi and 50g chacruna. I had a very powerful visionary experience, but there was almost no influence from the chacruna. It did present itself at a few intervals throughout the experience, but the vast majority of the experience was me in a visionary state somewhere between waking life and Sleep. I was seeing things with my mind's eye (namely these aliens pumping reality into existence, very similar to the fates in Greek mythology). There were almost none of the "classic" dmt visuals, yet I found this experience to be a beautiful and amazingly healing experience. I find the vine really is the essence of the Ayahuasca experience, the DMT helps you to see what's going on and make more sense of it (that is, it becomes more visual, more easily accessible and able to be associated with lessons or a theme than emotions or trances or pure vibes from Caapi alone). Vine alone is almost like listening to and old radio broadcast of "The Shadow" and adding dmt is like watching that same episode when they started black and white films of it (if that makes sense ).

Yes, I understand that caapi in ayahuasca is there mainly for its own effects and secondarily as an MAOI for DMT, but how much harmala do you estimate is in a typical dose of aya? 100mg? 1000mg?

I’ve never taken oral harmalas (other than low-dose caapi tea and sublingual harmala alkaloids) but I’ve been under the impression that large doses, let’s say 400mg and up, can be very uncomfortable.

Soulfood and SnozzleBerry hit the nail on the head there. B. caapi can contain anywhere from 0.05 to 1.95% harmala-alkaloids, so I think below 1% is a good estimation. It would be interesting to know what the average tend to be, as I think above 1% is very rarely seen. This means that 50 grams can contain anywhere from 25 to 975 mg of harmala-alkaloids, but likely is somewhere below 500 mg. That should be more than enough, not only for MAO inhibition, but also from experiencing hallucinogenic qualities from the caapi alone.

The dose of b-carbolines in tested Ayahuasca varies dramatically from around 20mg to 401mg, Erowid have a nice comparison. Personally I feel above 50 grams of caapi is too much if the caapi is of good quality. Very high doses of caapi is indeed very uncomfortable. I guess the high doses seen here and elsewhere is partly because of bad products.

I prefer taking 4-5x what is needed for strictly full MAO inhibition: the vine guides, shapes, leads, and offers translation of the experience. Without that, I am MUCH more prone to fear and a chaotic, disordered experience.

I'm not just there for the fireworks, I want the teaching.

Finally, Ayahuasca in these high doses (with no DMT) can be fully visionary alone.

I really like you wonderful people and your very accurate and so nicely written explanations! It's so nice to be here (haven't said that yet I am afraid).

So the most important facts have been said already. Let me just add what SWIM found out: The vine contributes so much to the whole ayahuasca experience, that chosing her and her dose is in fact very important. You can use the same dose of a light-containing plant (like jurema e.g.) and have a fancy and colorful journey with pharma or a not so strong vine on one day and an overwhelming and really teaching experience on another day when you use a more sophisticated brew of the caapi. Everyting can be completely different (visuals, sounds, meaning of course) with the same amount and source of DMT by using different vine brews. So the vine in fact is very important (and of course active by herself in adequate doses).

But you will find out by yourself later

I wish you powerful journeys, full of healing, insight and light gibran2!

Know your vine.

I don't think I'd ever launch into a high dose with an unknown vine, knowing some vines contain the same alkaloids as some rue seeds that have destroyed me. This is why I won't label numbers for they are no guarantee of experience when it comes to what nature supplies.

I think it's important to treat every plant as a different experience, for that's what it is. The way I work with a vine is to test a small quantity which I can verify at a small dose, buy in bulk, then work my way up until I'm where I want to be.

after saturday night..Id say go with a higher range dose..but I started low when I began drinking so...

20g of ceilo or red vine I can get away with for some effects and activation of DMT for a short period of maybe 1 hour..but 50g is where it really gets deep..

on saturday I drank 50-60g of red vine and about 6g of mimosa..and oh god it was terrifying for a while!..all I could do was lay there in the dark for about 30 minutes turning into weird circuit boards that looked like honeycomb while a strang disembodied futuristic/mechanical voice spoke to me. I *really* freaked out and got sick and felt I was dying but then it turned into some thing great once I let go and I began to reintegrate from hyperspace and felt more alive and full of love then ever..the caapi went strong for a few hours after that and it was just cosmic bliss..so dont be afraid! Ayahuasca just givews you what you need. Even solid doses of vine alone are very empowering and healing and you feel so strong afterwords. I used to dose more like 25-30g but now I htink I prefer more like 50-60..but that is strong ceilo and red vine..

I have no idea of harmala ratios in vine..

I don't really feel harmala intoxication through the vine. Maybe my vine doesn't have that much harmala, but I've experienced far more uncomfortable feelings through low doses (200mg fairly pure harmaline for example) than I have through 150g white ayahuasca, thoroughly brewed.

In 90% of all cases, 40 to 50 grams of vine would do to get both the MAO-inhibition as well as the vine's special glow.
Sometimes, a batch of caapi can be very weak and you would need a lot more of it but this rarely happens when you buy from a vendor with a good reputation.
sensitivity also varies with each person.

For a good ayahuasca experience, you don't need to take more than you're comfortable with.

The same dose of DMT can also completely different, depending on the levels of vine you have. Last night I drank 120g of red vine with .25g Mimosa, and it was WAY TOO MUCH DMT. There is definitely a synergy, and the two plants play on each other. So sometimes, to have a more cohesive and brilliant, visual experience, the results will be different (increased) if you increase the vine and keep the same amount of admixture.

I also feel like sometimes the DMT-containing plants are so powerful and have this completely different world of their own, the vine mediates and reminds them to "play nice" with the humans. It feels much safer, manageable, and grounded to have extra vine, vs. extra light. This is just my experience.

Just out of curiosity:

Did you drink that 2:1 liquid extract from Hawaii (because this should also be red or black vine)?

If so, I could imagine having a quite powerful experience, that vine seems to not only enable but to almost "potentiate" the DMT.

Oh, why, yes, I did. My whole body smells like it at the moment.

But it is true with other vines, as well--when there is PLENTY of Caapi present, you only need a smidge of admixture to get pretty far into hyperspace.

It's also a pleasant contrast from smoking, too, to go into hyperspace with full body consciousness, instead of just mind/awareness...

this is starting to be tricky stuff . #'s are ALL over the board. last week i did my first caapi only brew of 100g and was very, very intoxicated to the point i didnt think i could have handled 1mg more. last night i drank 60g caapi and 35g chacruna all from the same supply and brewed identically other than multiple decanting's and i felt absolutely ZIP!

how the heck can that be? i think i understand why peoples doses vary so much, things like brewing method, diet, potency of supplies ext but in my case its all the same but with drasticly different results.

i would think that if 100g was more than enough, possibly too much, how could i feel nothing from 60g vine plus 35g admixture?

i did do 2 things different this time.
1. i ate a small amount of fresh melon and strawberry's about 90 min before i drank. this was so i would have something to purge up. the emptiness last time was gut wretched while trying to purge.
2. i did not mix all the sediment into the brew and drink. i decanted multiple times.

would those to things have that much influence?

SWIM decants as much as possible, using multiple cold breaks, with no loss to potency.

Not sure as to other reasons.

even though that goes against some opinions of very experienced people it does seem logical that there would be a higher # of active molecules in sediment vs. water per volume.
however i would feel better about drinking and using more vine with lots of filtering and decanting to reduce sickness rather than drink lots of sludge and be sick as a dog.
one thing i could say about the last brew i drank, it was far cleaner and i had no nausea at all.

heres a thought i had last night'
would it be better to not filter the brew through a t-shirt multiple times before reducing? obviously strain the vine debris out but leave all the very fine tannins and particles to continue to release actives during reduction.
then when the brew is all the way or mostly reduced either filter it and decant as many times as needed or couldn't you just keep decanting over and over?

it just seems it doesnt matter how many times i filter the brews nothing gets the shmegg out like decanting.

am i off track with this logic?

I have a designated holy TEA-shirt... Filter after each wash, yes!