After reading many experience reports on both, and seeing them vary so much. I was wondering the main and subtle differences between 'Ayahuasca' and 'Pharmahuasca', physically/mentally/emotionally/etc. Sorta like a Compare and Contrast thing (LoL, now it sorta reminds me of a school-like assignment, I hated those things.)

Does anyone prefer one of the other, for what reasons?

Preferably from people who have experience with both, limited or extensive. But suggestions from anyone who feels they have a good grasp on the subject is welcomed to chime in.

Short and sweet answers are nice, but so are detailed stories, I really don't mind reading so post whatever ya got.

Thanks for any help you guys may have. Also, if this turns into something good maybe we can add it to the wiki for easier reference/availability to the masses?

Peace, and Love.

Edit: The main reason I made this is because I have been thinking about/wanting to try Ayahuasca. But my funds are limited at this moment in time, and I already have everything thing I need to do Pharmahuasca, and multiple times at that (~500mg yellow freebase DMT, and Syrian Rue seeds)

Hello nexus.

Its hard to speculate.
If you find all the ingredients for the Aya yourself you may believe there's more meaning to the whole thing. I find with psychedelics the more intent you put in the more you get out, though i believe the same about life...

If you order all the ingredients for the Ayahuasca off the net and you put it all in a pot and boil away you may have had to find different 'intent' for your experience.(Only if your really looking to gain/grow from your experience, I mean you dont 'have had' to do anything if you dont want...) I believe ordering all the ingredients for the Ayahuasca off the net and taking Pharmahuasca is not to dissimilar and nether of them is bad or good.(I mean with Pharmahuasca you could have done a extract for the Dim and an extract for the maoi and that would give you a little 'intent' right there...)

In conclusion Ayahuasca vs. Pharmahuasca I believe there is know way of telling you which is better or worse because i believe there is one

I know all about 'intent', and I'm a pretty firm believer in plant spirits as well, so I know how much those can affect the experience. But other than that is there no real difference between the two? I guess that makes sense since they would pretty much be the same chemically (minus all the extras that are in the plants themselves).

But it seems most people talk about it like they are two different animals, Is it just that the experience can vary that much?

It's not that your Ayahuasca experience wont differ greatly to your Pharmahuasca experience, lets face it there not the same thing!

Ayahuasca and Pharmahuasca are both equally POWERFUL tools/medicines and or drugs...
I believe if you know how to use one, you will be able to be equally as satisfied with the other...

BTW. Shrabbit420 love your Eckhart Tolle quote.

Some extractions do not pull the full range of psychoactive alkaloids that are present in the spice containing plants, and so, ayahuasca often has a different effect. For example, yuremamine is more likely to be felt with mimosa tea than a pure nn-dmt pharma experience. Also, yuremamine is not a very stable substance, and people say it is likely destroyed, or not pulled with most teks. Mimosa seems to add an element of brightness to visions. Yuremamine is also suspected to cause euphoria.

Oh yeah, and how could I forget one of the most obvious differences, that is ayahuasca is much more likely to make you throw up, or at least feel sick. Many people find this distracting, as do I. I prefer the total stillness of inner mind combined with total peace in the body.

Ime, Aya and pharma are two vastly different creatures. While each method of administration can produce a widely varying range of experiences, in general, ime, ayahuasca is a more holistic/medicinal experience than pharma. My aya experiences have been visionary and powerfully so on some occasions. However, there is a deep emotional context and I have found myself to have experiences with very dream-like or trance-like visions that come into my mind's eye even in a state of half-awake dozing.

Additionally, one of the most profound things I noticed on my early aya experiences was the purge/wake-up. I purged around an hour or so into my experiences on a couple occasions (despite having nothing in my stomach, I still managed to let loose a ball of considerably more viscous liquid than I had ingested via aya) and never felt so cleansed or powerful. Following these experiences (which tended to happen around 11 or 12pm) I found myself waking up by 8am, feeling as though it was about 11 and that I had gotten an incredibly restful nights sleep.

With pharma I have never had that intense of a feeling the following morning. I have never purged on pharma either. Even on my deepest pharma experience, where I had an extended breakthrough that easily rivaled the depth/intensity of a smoked experience, I found the experience to be lacking an aspect of the aya experience...that is, it felt just like an orally administered, smoked-DMT experience. There's something about taking the full brew, whether it's plant spirits or full-spectrum alkaloids, or tannins and oils, I can't say for sure...but the difference is most definitely noticeable.

That makes sense.

What about the physical feelings produced by pharma? Is it more like smoked-DMT and physically demanding on the body (vibrating body-load)? Or does it have that warm-loving-euphoria that I here Aya has?

The waves of euphoric-ecstasy I got from mixing Syrian Rue with Mushrooms was, to put it simply, pure bliss. And most Aya experiences I have read, describe this same feeling.

I prefer pharmahuasca since I find the the purging on ayahuasca distracting, but that is just my personal preference. I've had deep journey's on either pharma with rue extract and with caapi extract. But since I did the caapi pharmahuasca just once I cannot tell if there is a real difference between the two, yet.

Looking at my text I just typed I think pharmahuasca might be a too unspecific word. This since you can either use caapi extract or rue extract for the MAOI. The THH in the caapi might give the journey a different feeling and give a different next day result.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

I tried both, and from my experience, pharma (freebase DMT dissolved in slightly acidified water, after caapi/Moclobemide/Pirlindole) hits really quick and strong, lasting only 30 minutes or so. It was an intense, almost too-much-to-handle experience every time I tried it. Never tried eating freebase — but it should have more lengthy onset, and should last longer.

Aya, on the other hand, is unpredictable beast for me, once it hit me nearly four hours after I drank it, and it lasted really long, coming in psilocybin-like waves.

I’ve had pharma maybe a dozen times or so, and nearly every time the onset wasn’t felt for at least 60 to 90 minutes. The experience (from first ingestion to last visuals) typically lasted for 6 or 7 hours.

There are so many variables with aya, pharma, and personal physiology that I think it’s very hard to make any generalizations.

It has come to one's understanding that each case of of pharmahuasca consumption is unique. Each person's experience varies depending on the purity of the freebase DMT, body weight, and the quantity of MAOI's ingested. One would like to inquire whether ingesting a capsule of 150 milligrams of 95% pure freebase harmaline extracted from peganum harmala would set proper inhibition for a person around 200 lbs without triggering nausea. One would prefer harmaline as opposed to harmine because harmaline acts as a sedative while harmine acts as a stimulant, according to what has been read. Twenty minutes later, a capsule of 50 milligrams of freebase DMT would be ingested, followed by another capsule of 50 milligrams of freebase DMT ten minutes later. The real aim is to have a visionary experience, or breakthrough, in the span of one to two hours with little to no nausea. Can anyone attest to this method for achieving the stated goals?

Snozz, have you tried pharma with harmalas extracted from aya, or just rue?

I'm assuming they would be right? The main difference between Aya and Pharma is just the delivery method, right?


For Aya, you can take a caapi tea and then make a mhrb tea and drink them.


For Pharma, you could just take some caapi extract and then some dmt fumarate or citrate.



Or am I wrong?

I'll admit i'm no expert on this topic, but i have done some research and this is what i have repeatedly read:
The main difference with an Ayahuasca and Pharmahuasca experience, is that Ayahuasca is a purgative and so has greater healing capacity to Pharmahuasca in those respects. Aya is also described as more "grounded and guided" an experience. There is MUCH less likely a chance of a "freakout" than with Pharmahuasca, especially when the purge helps calm down the intensity of a heavy trip.
Pharmahuasca is more like an oral DMT experience, whilst a Caapi brew will always be an "Ayahuaca experience" simply because Caapi IS Ayahuasca.

I dont agree that pharma is more like oral DMT, or that with ayahuasca you have less of a chance of freaking out. That is all just subjective IMO.

Pharma is only more like oral DMT when people aproach it with the idea of taking the bare minimum of harmalas and then a larger dose of DMT..sure then it is more focussed on the DMT..you can dose ayahuasca the same way if you want to as well..You can also take a large dose of harmalas and then just a little bit of DMT and approximate some heavier jungle style ayahuascas.

Alot of these misconceptions are based on the fact that peoples beliefs that caapi is better than rue or something, or that caapi is more psychedelic where rue is just an maoi etc..IME none of this is true in the slightest.

I have had ayahuasca in doses that was more like just oral DMT and I have had mixtures of alakloids or brews from non traditional plants that matched heavier ayahuasca brews easily.

Another thing to concider is that "pharma" can mean many things..any harmala plant extraction with any DMT plant extraction can mean pharma..so effects can varry.

This is speculation, but assuming ratios of ingredients are the same the primary difference will be timelines and inital absorption rates.

I would take my mushrooms in capsules, and this had a repeated effect on the trip compared to eating them whole.

The trip would always begin 20 to 30 minutes later than whole (time for capsule to dissolve), but once it did, it hit like a ton of bricks really quickly. Be walking around, and all of a sudden everything just goes "blank" with visuals and confusion.

I attributed that to the quicker absorption of powderized mushrooms in the smaller intestins, as opposed to digesting partially chewed mushrooms with a gradual increase in blood concentration levels from oral mucosa absorption, and slower absorption in digestive track.

However in liquid form, ayahuasca may not have that much of a difference in speed of onset of full blown effects once it starts, but the time for any effects to start with pharma would definitely be increased due to capsule needing to dissolve.

Might absorb faster or slower.

Ok, maybe i didn't explain the full background of why i said what i did. Traditional Ayahuasca typically is a mix of Caapi and Chakruna. Because it contains the vine, it can be called Ayahuasca. Of course it's possible to freakout if it's made too strong, but the Caapi is reportedly more nurturing and guiding than rue is ( and requires less dietary guidelines to follow). Also, Ayahuasca makes people purge, and this is curative, and helps tone down an intense trip, etc.

Pharma never contains Caapi, or if it did , it would then be Ayahuasca, (even if a non traditional type). Pharma is mostly used by people not wanting to purge, so has less curing potential. And i guess people take pharmahuasca for mostly the psychadelic effects, whilst those that take Ayahuasca want more "curing" to take place, (which is the whole point really of Ayahuasca).

So i guess Pharmahuasca might seem more user friendly with the right dosing, and especially because of the no purging, but i've heard many terror trips on the stuff, especially when mimosa is overdeployed. Ayahuasca tends to be more healing, and thanks to the purge, easier to tame down if it get's too heavy.

okay for starters, Ayahuasca in my opinion is not more nurturing than rue..nor does rue require any more dietary restrictions..I dunno where you read that it does? I am very familiar with both and none of this rings true with me. The least nurturing experience I have ever had was with caapi actaully.

Secondly, tons of people are using full spectrum caapi extracts for pharma. It is all over this forum. Lots of people are doing caapi extractions and using the full spectrum alkaloids for pharma. Pharma is not only rue alkaloids.

The purge with ayahuasca is also not easier for me. I have never understood that. Some people say that sure, but for me rue and caapi both can make me very sick and both can make me purge..but I have never found one to be an eaier purge than the other. I have also never ever found ayahuasca to be more healing than rue. This is another thing I think is in many cases self suggestion. I feel this way becasue for a long time I believed that as well and would tell people the same thing because of my one and only rue experience where I just used too much or something and was not ready for that. Once I began working with rue though I realized none of this seemed to be true in the slightest for me.

When ayahuasca gets heavy purging does not always tame it down. I have spent hours on the floor purging over and over just getting sucked deeper and deeper into the thing..it is not always like that and sometimes the purge does ease it up a bit..but I have had brews with rue get way to intense as well and then just back off as soon as I puke.

Ayahuasca is also a much more complicated issue than just Banisteriopsis caapi. This is something we are just starting to figure out. Ayahuasca does not necessarily =B.caapi..there are other ayahuasca vines that seem far more potent than caapi and reported to be much heavier experiences. From my experience with muricata and alicia ayahuasca I can say that has been true for me. This is why generalizations like this only go so far.

"And i guess people take pharmahuasca for mostly the psychadelic effects, whilst those that take Ayahuasca want more "curing" to take place"

Yes I think this gets closer to the real issue here. With pharma many people dose low on the harmalas on purpse to avoid nausea and then take more DMT. Doing so they also loose part of the harmala experience which is a psychedelic on it's own and the harmala alkloids contribute to much of the effects of traditional ayahuasca.

However, you can make pharma that is harmala heavy and that would be much more similar to traditional ayahuasca..just like you can make rue heavy brews the same way and many people do work with it this way.

"So i guess Pharmahuasca might seem more user friendly with the right dosing, and especially because of the no purging"

People purge on pharma all the time..