This

Agreed!

"in conclusion, i find the whole plant brew leaves me feeling more physically healed afterwards..the mental effects can be almost equivalent"

This was how I felt about it as well. I only ever worked with rue harmalas from a manske tek though. After trying it 3 times I decided pharma was not my thing really and gave alot of my extracted harmalas away. Also I was using DMT fumerates, which made me feel poisoned every time I ate them. I dont know what that is about, but I will not be ingesting DMT fumerates again. I could sort of taste the fumaric acid in my body the whole time and I hated the feeling. I converted half back to freebase and made changa and gave the rest away.

I did try harmalas and DMT fumarate sublingually once and it was mild but nice..sort of like changa.

Ha Ha, somebody mentioned Gordon Ramsey...

I would like to learn a DMT tek from that guy.

He would be a rough teacher though....

It would go something like this....

"That was the worst mimosa pull I have ever seen!! Do it right this time before I box your ears for you!!!
And this!! You call this a bloody extraction???!!! I call this pile of dog &%#@!, This is the most pathetic freeze precipitation I have ever bloody laid eyes on!!! Get your lazy act together before I jam that separator funnel down your throat and fill it with basic solution, you bloody moron!!!"


Hate to go off topic but it seems like this thread could use some comic relief.

you guys are too nice here.

Oh yeah??

Well...
You guys are too evil there.

In Vermont I guess.

Wait, ,,My Ben and Jerry's Ice cream is made there!

HOLD ON A MINUTE......NO.... WAIT!!!!!

VA stands for Virginia....

I'm safe.

Phew!

I found this to be a rather interesting viewpoint from Alan Shoemaker:

"An ayahuasca can be made from the extraction of DMT from a variety of plants or synthetics, and blended with syrian rue;Peganum harmala; seeds to supply the beta-carbolines."
When I read these articles I come to the understanding of how to prepare a drug, not a medicine. It is the life force contained in the entire plant that activates its healing energies and it is the manner in which the plant is harvested and prepared and ceremoniously consumed that allows the synergism between us, the plants spirit, and life force energy to affect a cure. When we extract only the alkaloid we take the plant out of balance. We turn these Sacred Power Plants into something they were never meant to be and in the majority of instances create a substance more closely resembling drugs than medicine. It is commonly believed that when you use only the alkaloid containing bark of the Una de Gato vine you are recieving the medicine from the plant in its best form. However, aren't we also creating a situation where our own cellular structure more quickly builds a resistence to this? If the entire plant were used it would be in balance and keep us also in balance. Curanderismo is about healing the whole body: Spiritually, physically, and psychologically. In order to accomplish this it is essential that the plants and their energies are allowed to do their work, which cannot happen if only the psychotropic essence of the plant is extracted.
Certainly you can achieve a visionary experience; cathartic even. As don Ramon has told me numerous times,"Alan, this is then like a drug. It has no medicinal value."

"Si, don Ramon. It takes the magic away."

Christian, I'm sure you know when you brew aya or any plants you water extract it, you don't simply ingest all what is inside the plant.
So it is just a manneer of crude extracting. Then you can simply eat 70 grams of caapi and chacruna leaves (good luck with that) to ingest ALL that is in the plant.

That opinion about plant spirits is full of prejudices, generalizations, suppositions and beliefs.

As rOm said, a brew IS an extraction. At what point do spirits leave the plant, the moment you cut it? Or when you make an acqueous polar extraction (aka brew)? Or only when you add acid to the brew? Or if you cook in metal pots? Or when you add a base to it? Or only if you use a non-polar solvent? or or or.....


Maria Sabina agreed pure synthetic psilocybin Hofmann gave her had the spirit of the mushrooms

South african traditional healers preffered 2CB to their own plant

I myself gave some DMT freebase to a shaman who really loved it

Some shamans feel one way, others feel another. Some shamans feel alcohol brew with aya is good, others feel is absurd. Some think ayahuasca is great to celebrate beheading enemies, others think its a substance that brings peace. Some think one type of aya/extraction is great, others think another is better. And some just think these are different ways that all have their place and value in a given context and given certain preferences and intentions.

Plus, this is, AGAIN, going back into the old natural vs synthetic discussions, and the return of the old "appeal to tradition" fallacy.


How about people stop trying to judge the ways that others use to connect to X (Spirits, Gods, one's unconscious and self, whatever model/belief you want to use) ? Nobody has the right to tell another explorer if the way they change their consciousness is wrong or unbalanced or whatever else.

Pharma is not like aya (caapi with chacruna) which is not like aya (caapi with chaliponga) which is not like aya (just caapi) which is not like anahuasca (rue with mimosa) which is not like all of those consumed in a different context etc etc etc.

Each one of them have their own characteristics, and everybody has their own preferences in one context or another. Choose what YOU feel is right for YOU, and let others chose what THEY feel is right, if it doesnt hurt you, without trying to argue to show their way is somehow lacking or wrong or whatever else.. It's very simple.

Rom, he means purified axtracts vs whole plant extracts,etc.

^ Thats as arbitrary as it gets. Differnet compounds will break down and change when you boil a plant (isnt that killing the spirits? Or do spirits want this breakdown?), plus you might be missing different substances that are not polar and stay in the plant. You are NOT extracting a "whole" plant by boiling, you are separating some things from others.


Edit: That being said, while it may seem im "defending" the extracted/pharma way, that is certainly not what im doing. Lately ive been taking aya with brewed caapi twice a month or so, and its been a while since I took pharma.

Its just that I dont take it as "pharma is bad or lacking spirits", but rather its my personal prefference at this particular moment, and each one has to find for their own through direct experience instead of blindly believing what one or another person said.

Endlessness, you obviously haven't properly understood what Alan Shoemaker was trying to explain, and have missed the bit about the "support" offered from whole extracted goodies, rather than isolates, like he was TRYING to explain. Perhaps you are being overly defensive here!




AHH, what a load of tosh!..I'm not bothered about if it's tradition or not either. The fact is this that Ayahuasca is about working with plant spirits, and if you don't agree with that then i dunno why you even bother with having an "interest" in it, because it's steeped in tradition, it's like you are saying that only science is valid and spirituality is utter rubbish!. Of course the African shamen, Maria, etc, have already gotten the benefits from their chosen plant spirits and can use chemically synthesysed compounds to make them work again for them.It can also be argued that there's mure to shrooms than psilocybin too, and they have their purpose.




I never said anything whatsoever like this. You are twisting words.




Yea, i think we all know that?..AND..?



This is EXACTLY what i've said before, you obviously didn't read where i've quoted you as saying the same thing..You need to read the posts of mine you missed....It's very simple, really it is!

..i can't resist throwing in my personal opinion, which is that i can still sense the 'spirit of the plant' in apparently almost pure extracts..even it's that's just 'autosuggestion'..spirit is, after all, non-material by definition..

maybe the wider range of compounds in a water extract give the heightened senses more information about the particular biosphere of the plant..and some DNA..
..some of the water soluble anti-oxidants, flavonoids, and polysaccharides, and other things, would give the aya brew a wider range of potential therapeutic actions, as well as even nutritional value (more brain food)

churches make me suspicious..even well meaning ones..
.

Christian, I'm really happy for you you found a guru. Now you will believe everythig he writes or said blind and stop questionning yourself.
Why not leave this arguments here and say you found what suits you and you will not come back ?
This thread isn't about reasonning anymore but about BELIEF.

Ive read it, and I think his reasoning is flawed. You are not answering the questions I asked, and I think they are important. Who defines where are the spirits, and when do they leave the plant?

Also you are again ignoring the fact that there's no such thing as "whole extract", some extracts may have more things than others, but they are still just that, extracts, and you ARE throwing away the bark (and a bunch of substances together) after boiling, and you ARE changing the alkaloid content by boiling, so how comes the spirits come up to that point and are ok but they dont go further?



You have clearly contradicted yourself there. You say you dont care, but then you claim the purpose of ayahuasca is X, and you base this on what you think traditional use is ? How about, "ayahuasca is used for a variety of reasons, and what matters is that your use is being beneficial to you in any of the number of important areas of human existence, and not hurting anybody else" ?



No thats not it, Maria didnt say "she was getting benefits" from it, she directly said the spirits were there! (not that she's right or that I care, but its just an example of a famous shaman that thinks the opposite of one shaman you chose to quote)

Also, you are saying that if one has already had contact with the traditional way, he can use the synthetic way afterwards? That opens up a whole can of worms and contradictions with previous ideas posted in this thread.



LOL what?? Where did this come from? Where did I ever said spirituality is utter bulshit, where did I ever said only science is valid?

Im just questioning that BELIEFS = TRUTH. You are free to have your own beliefs, I dont care, I have my own suspicions on how things might or might not work existentially, but you wont see me passing off my suspicions or beliefs as facts, which is what this whole "your extract has no spirits but mine has them all" kind of argument is.

..actually, i casually used the term 'whole plant' without thinking a few pages back..and yes, of course it's a water extract..maybe the argument going on is merely a semantic misunderstanding..(iboga jungle-style sure is a whole plant experience)
i didn't get the impression that Christian was heavily pushing the Shoemaker/UDV view..just reporting it..
i really dig everybody's points of view here..

Thanks for your posts nen888. I think you do make sense and I think thats good reasoning regarding whole plant extracts possibly being more therapeutic, plant spirits or not.

One question though, isnt it possible that this argument goes the other way, and that at least in some cases (maybe not caapi but maybe some other admixtures and ethnobotanical plants) that whole plant brews are at the same time more toxic?

Also, im sorry if i have reacted in a negative way, christian... That was not intended, but I honestly think the line of reasoning you are bringing forward has very significant logic flaws and rings of judgemental. I might be wrong, but I think you should meditate on it calmly and see if you cant take this as a constructive criticism.

Thanks, nen, that was EXACTLY what i was doing, and it was obvious wasn't it.

Maybe try to find some compromise christian, reach a mid point, learn too.

endlessness wrote:
.. i'd go as far as to say (and do) that the traditional 'whole plant brew' ayahuasca is potentially more likely to lead to unpleasant complications..is more 'dangerous'..
as i said earlier, i think Pharma (pure extracts) is more controllable..particularly in dose..people can more easily misjudge or not know the strength of an Aya (trad.) brew, and there have been occasional bad outcomes of overdoses (especially harmala OD) ..and of course less known plants you don't know what else is in there..
.

a last thought on Syrian Rue for now..a friend the other day commented that while they really liked caapi, they personally preferred to use rue (in water extract brews and/or pharma)
..they said 'With rue you know within about half an hour what kind of strength it'll be and if it'll work..the caapi can often leave one guessing, seem mild for ages and suddenly knock you out, or be strong quickly at the start and then go mild.'..or words very close to that effect..
while i say there are no absolute rules, this kind of clicked with me..
.