Hello! I'm an avid psychonaut who's lurked for a while, but am finally joining because I have a question about an idiotic caapi extraction method SWIM is trying

SWIM has embarked on many a journey of the teonanacatl, and would like to receive teachings from mama aya some day.

EDIT: I suppose I should say a little more about myself!

I've been practicing meditation avidly for about 7 years now, including several residential retreats (one of which was 3 months long). I've been a lucid dreamer my whole life. My work involves making charitable giving more accessible and efficient. Basically, my life revolves around probing the mysteries of consciousness, and as it seems that compassion lies at its core, that's what I've decided to devote my life to.

Cheers,
D

Welcome to the nexus

Could you elaborate on some meditation techniques that you would consider efficient? I severely want and need to get into it, yet i try and my mind becomes quite distracted very easily. Thanks for any input

Probing the mysteries of consciousness seems to be a very prevalent topic here on the nexus.

Thanks for the welcome

Happy to hear you're interested in meditation. It's hard to give you a full course of instruction here (and since I'm not allowed to reveal my identity, I can't point you at any of my work!), but let me say this much:

* The most important thing you can do before starting is to disabuse yourself of the notion of "efficiency" in meditation. Once you're well on your way, you may find adjustments to your long-term path, but even then it's more a matter of "fit".

* The Buddha described two aspects of meditation: calming and insight. Usually for beginners (a phase which can last many years!) it's important to emphasize the former. Calming meditation also emphasizes concentration.

* These are fine instructions for such a meditation: http://www.tricycle.com/...ructions-sharon-salzberg

* The above may not be fun or exciting, nor seem like it is doing much. That's okay -- there's no way to improve on it, and that's sort of the point. This relates back to the first bullet

There's a lot more to say, of course. If you get a chance, check out Matthieu Ricard's book "Why Meditate?" (which also includes a lot of how-to).

Cheers, and happy meditating

Thanks for the tips

This really hit me from the first link you posted:
"The moment you realize you’ve been distracted is the magic moment. It’s a chance to be really different, to try a new response—rather than tell yourself you’re weak or undisciplined, or give up in frustration, simply let go and begin again. In fact, instead of chastising yourself, you might thank yourself for recognizing that you’ve been distracted, and for returning to your breath. This act of beginning again is the essential art of the meditation practice."
That makes so much sense.

Thanks again! I look forward to hearing your contributions here at the nexus

Edit: there are many members that thoroughly know the ins and outs of extractions, especially caapi. Ask away

Thanks, MagicGing. As a young sapling I'm not yet allowed to post in other sections. I'm not sure if it's acceptable to post my questions here. I'll ask anyway, and if this is not okay, I hope a moderator will correct me!

To dip my toes in to the aya experience, I bought 56g of dried yellow Caapi. First, my method of extraction was highly nontraditional, and I hope nothing bad comes of it:

I put all 56g into a 1L French press, added water and 1-2 tsp of vinegar, and microwaved that for ~2 min (no disrespect meant to the sacred vine). After letting it sit for 5 min, I poured it into a stainless steel pot. After repeating this 3 more times, I let the pot gently boil until I had ~4 oz of dark brown opaque liquid.

This morning, I'm still able to get brown liquid out by repeating. Does that mean I have more alkaloids to extract, or is that more likely just very fine powdered material that I can ignore? I recently read a report of someone who got very sick indeed from extracting from yellow powder, and I want to make sure I didn't get any unwanted alkaloids or other nasty material.

As this is my first Caapi experience, I intend to drink only half and wait. What effects should I look for to know that I'm getting full MAOI inhibition?

Cheers,
D

ive read that ~100gs is an appropriate dose, or a bit less. 56 gs may have some mao inhibition, but i doubt anything else. from what ive read

your not extracting unwanted alks by repeating, id say theres more alks in the material and to keep going until you see a fairly drastic decrease in the color darkness of the water from continued pulls.
something my dog noticed about water pulls was that lysing the cells (freezing and thawing in water multiple times) not only helps burst the cells and free alks inside, it also increases the amount of solute the water can pull, so youd be doing less overall pulls and getting as much out of the material as possible.

hope this helps

So I did another extraction, and it was brown, but that seems to be primarily because of suspended fine particles.

Anyway, SWIM decided to drink half of it, and waited 20 min. Nothing, so he drank the rest. Now t+0:45 and boy is he dizzy and light-headed...

Hoo boy, never again. SWIM lay there dizzy and nauseated for 7 hours. Actually, only motion brought it on, but the rest of the time he was too hazy and disoriented for his taste.

Vomiting came around t+6 and the other end at t+4. Neither provided too much respite.

Yeah, maybe he did it wrong.

Welcome to the nexus

Caapi is widely varied in its potency, i've had vine that took 100g to get me where 20-25g of the more potent stuff does. Its something you just have to work out on a batch by batch basis of the vine.

As was previously stated lysing the cells works very well for caapi.

My prefered method of extraction of vine, is rough shredding in a blender (12-3/4" strips, as little powder as possible) then put it in a crock pot with just enough water to cover it. Use distilled water, and 2 teaspoons of vinegar per gallon of water for best results.

After cooking for a few hours, scoop your bark into a corner of the crock pot, tip the ceramic basin, and ladel out as much liquid as possible, then use it to squeeze out the remaining water from the bark in the other corner of the inner basin of your crockpot.

Freeze the bark overnight, repeat 3x, combine all your pulls, filter it, and reduce.

Theres going to be particulates that will precipitate out after filtering when you reduce it, but i don't bother trying to get that out, and it may have some actives as well.


And as a bit of friendly advice, avoid using swim, especially if your going to switch between it and first person so often. It offers no legal protection, and makes posts easier to understand.

Hope you can find some good vine, and get your brewing technique down. One thing to keep in mind, is at high enough doses to be a light psychedelic, caapi only brews will be nauseating. There's really no way around that, or if you add an admixture, or extracted dmt to the brew as well.

Even extracting the alkaloids to their pure form, and taking them dissolved in water, results in pretty heavy nausea depending on your dosage. But damn, once you purge its almost unnoticeable for me. That's when things really start to get interesting with aya....

Good luck, and once again welcome

Thanks for the reply!

To be totally honest, I may be put off from trying this again at any point. I'm no stranger to dealing with massively unpleasant experiences, but the general haziness of my mind during that time makes me wary of mixing it with powerful tryptamines. My mushroom experiences are typically brilliantly lucid, even in 10g+ doses. I imagine some feel the same about ayahuasca, but right now that surprises me

Several months ago, I was invited to participate in an authentic journey in California, led by a shaman raised in Peru. Through some miscommunication and my own misgivings, I had to decline. It so happens that the ceremony is taking place right now. Maybe if I get another chance to do it "right", I'll take it...

For now, I may try to find some moclobemide, though it seems nearly impossible to get in the states (even harder to get than spice). I know it's not really ayahuasca any longer, but may be a gentler introduction...

(BTW, I was never a fan of the SWIM thing myself, but some sites have strict policies against "obvious" self-incrimination.)

Why not give rue (esphand/harmal) a chance? It always works.

I actually managed to get my hands on some Caapi Spirit (actually, back when it was Caapi Blossom) and it worked amazingly! Maybe a little too well....

I have lots more to say and share, but I haven't been promoted to full membership Maybe more questionnaire questions....

Is it an extract?

Yes it is. It contained:

120mg harmine
165mg tetrahydroharmine
10mg harmaline

That seems a lot of THH for being natural -- could it be another rue reduction? If that's the case, it shows p.harmala's good, dense potential......

Fairly certain it's not rue!

I'm not sure whether it's appropriate to ask here, but: how can I become promoted to full membership? I genuinely believe I have valuable additions to make, but for years I've been unable . I've made progress on the questionnaire, but apparently not enough!

3 years is long enough...even though only a handful of posts...welcome to the fold

: palms pressed in gratitude :