Just some follow up:

After taking my melatonin and going to bed, sleep came easy. Dreaming was significantly enhanced and storylines were detailed and highly vivid. Upon waking I was very groggy and had a pretty strong harmala hangover for a few hours. There was a nice afterglow and a lovely centered "zen" feeling as I was going about my day. Meditation came easy and was deeper than normal. After yoga practice, during Savasana there was deep ego detachment and drifting into harmalaesque dreamstates.

It may just be the fact it's been a while since I've had a good strong harmala dose, but this medicine seems to really stay with you in a rather unique way.

400 mg of russian olive jelly was taken with 20 mg freebase mimosa extracted DMT dissolved in a small amount of water to which ascorbic acid was added to dissolve the DMT.

Harmala effects began within a half hour and slowly tapered up over the next hour at which point they moar or less seemed to level off. Harmala effect was significantly weaker than the previous experiment 4 days ago, perhaps some longer lasting tolerance with the compounds is present?

No effects were felt from the DMT leaving me to conclude that the mainly MAO-B inhibiting compounds in russian olive are not suitable for orally activating DMT.

There is still some potential here to try experimenting with mixing russian olive extract into ayahuasca/anahuasca mixtures for inhibition of both MAO-A and MAO-B to see what effect that has on the overall experience.

Since MAO-B tends to act moar on phenethylamines there is also the potential to explore the effects of this extract on mescaline and other phens. This is fairly unexplored territory though so extensive research and safety precautions are called for before considering investigating that line of reasoning.

It looks like Elaeagnus is not the invasive North American ayahuasca alternative we were hoping for, but it is a still a great source of novel beta-carbolines and a worthy teacher plant in it's own right.

wow.

did you know that in the russian speaking world tea from the leaves is considered a common health product?
for example here (djiddha (?) starts at 2:20, try to disregard the sexy voice i dare you )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIR9H0UQSaE

and of course, how could we miss that russian olive moonshine (in russia this is a health drink, i kid ya not)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv-VCxcXwY0

just imagine putin sipping russian olive tea, while taking over the world with a grin on his face, because nobody in the west has a clue as to where his power comes from

boggles the mind, what is this not better known outside the russian speaking world?

requesting id confirmation.

it's a shrub, not a tree, with thorns, buds are yellow inside.
collected 419g leaves. unnoticeable amount to the shrub itself.

full moon, after a witches sabbat, with drums, fires, naked people, pitch black grove on a lake's sandy beach. went to meet a yoga pants fashion model. she was 2+ hrs late, so i said, f*ck it, i'll go collect some russian olive instead. ah, almost forgot, met a spirit animal and that was freaking awesome experience in the pitch black of the night. had to take pictures on the phone, it/he/she(?) agreed to pose, which in itself was freaking weird all things considering, so next morning i'd have proof i wasn't hallucinating... i kid you not.

you can't get more potent plant material than that, to the extent potency is determined by the circumstances surrounding the act of collecting it

any recommendations for a tek?

for now i am soaking it in vinegar to kill a zillion disgusting green bugs (aphids?) infesting the material... ewww...

actually the jar contents smell very yummy in a fine salaty way to the point that i am tempted to start eating it with a spoon from the jar itself... is that the chlorophyll or what...

Did you happen to snap a photo of the whole plant? Based on the description and photo, I suspect you may have some species of Shepherdia, which itself is quite promising, as it appears to contain novel harmala and tryptamine alkaloids. Starting with a fairly crude extraction is probably best as the harmalas in these botanicals seem to be a bit moar finicky than harmine/harmaline.

Attaching the pdf linked above for easy reference.

Ayer, W. A., and L. M. Browne. "Alkaloids of Shepherdia argentea and Shepherdia canadensis." Canadian Journal of Chemistry 48.13 (1970): 1980-1984.

whole plant? i think i have some.

on my way to witches' sabbat before midnight.
and on my way back after midnight.

yeah soapberry is another plant on my very long list of potential cool plants to investigate, nowhere anytime soon though.....

uv test looks pretty bad
on the left russian olive leaves in vinegar, on the right, spent rue water, extracted innumerable times, looks like dirty water in normal light, i keep it as a benchmarking tool, and yet it still glows, olive vinegar does not. the olive vinegar smells and tastes awesome though.

Okay that does indeed appear to be Elaeagnus angustifolia.

Don't be too concerned about the UV test, the harmala alkaloids present in Russian Olive are not UV reactive. My experiments have led me conclude they are not suitable for activating DMT either. They are psychoactive on their own however and they do make a nice addition to changa mixes. I expect the most value with these ones is going to be discovered in the phenethylamine realms.

what are the chances that manske will work? supposedly manske works in the case of autumn olive, so chances are high it will work with russian olives? alcohol is pretty expensive for me to try...

btw the above quote clearly states that tea and extracts from russian olive rootbark exhibit anxiolytic properties. no instructiions as to how to prepare said extract...

I'm not quite sure how well the standard methods really work. I've seen a lot moar failures than success with manske and just basing out the tea, but this may be do in large part to inflated expectations from rue and caapi. Russian Olive has a very low alkaloid content, .7% and 7% are worlds apart when your trying to filter alkaloids out of a solution.

Drinking the tea works fine, making a simple 10x with the leaves to smoke works great as well, if your end goal is just to experience the effects of the plant. The method I used to extract only required a minimal amount of alcohol and so far has given the best yields I've encountered, but it is a rather lengthy route and probably not worth the effort for a couple doses.

I guess it all depends on your intentions, but in most cases I'd just recommend making tea at a couple hundred grams per dose.

your comments sound quite reasonable to me.
i will try manske and post here when it's done.
considering that i have specialized in extracting miniscule amounts, just got 220mg rue hcl salts from stains alone (yes, stains) and i am in the process of getting what looks now like a quite measurable amount from 3l spent rue water i might have a chance, so the experiment is already in progress.

as for intention, r&d x 3

a book with good info about russian olive
https://books.google.ca/...er%20persian&f=false

this is interesting Russian olive grows in my area

according to the attached paper (in russian) the most potent source of tetrahydroharman is see buckthorn bark.

tested Hippophaë rhamnoides L., Elaeagnus angustifolia L., E. orientalis
L., E. umbellata Thunb., E. multiflora Thunb. è Å. argentea Pursh.

authors claim that they discovered why bark preparations are active and conclude that there are enough actives in the bark for industrial production of pharmaceuticals.

This deserves a bump. The tree is a power plant. If you live where it does, consider yourself lucky.

Vine only brews are growing in poplarity, psychedelics are being institutionalized by big pharma. Harmalas are interesting medicinally. Plane tickets to the jungle are $ and flying in planes is burning more resources. This stuff grows in my backyard and it works.

Has anyone tried combining Russian olive with cactus?

Only in very low/micro level doses of 2g mixed trich powder of mostly bridge but some others. 75g of trunk bark harvested last spring. I drank it a number of times through spring into early summer. It synergized with caffeine and seemed to boost the cactus. I can always feel 2g of this cactus mix but it did seem boosted. I took the cactus a few hours after the bark, and only on that one occassion.

I never tried it with oral DMT, after other failed. It does synergize vaporized DMT for myself, on the order I would expect of vine. I very rarely vaporize DMT or even use it at all at this time in my life so have not experimented much with that yet.

My main interest in this plant is as an entheogenic/oneirogenic plant on it's own. My favorite admixture with other harmaloids is psilocybin mushrooms, so that will be the tryptamine admixture I will use when I add stuff.

It feels most similar to vine to me. If you gave me 100g of it and told me if was vine I would probly believe it. It tastes so similar and feels so close. I view it as if it is iboga and might interact with all sorts of things due to the MAO-B inhibition potential. High doses of harmalas in general become similar to my 4g iboga experience, and can change how I metabolize certain things for days. It seems best to approach this as a brew by itself and be aware of diet.

The bark was used traditionally as an antidepressant, so at least there is some history of it's use.

Just to be clear, at 75-100g the tea has produced inner visionary experiences and psychological insight for myself on par with vine only teas.

I still mostly use Rue when I take harmalas, because I have been eating a lot of aged dairy.

These trees became pretty special to me after I got down 70g of the stuff. It is everywhere here and ppl often ask me to remove it from homes(I am a gardener) and there is just no way I could harvest all the bark from the trees I take away to the dump.

I also found Sea buckthorn, which is native in the region so I am reluctant to harvest them. Russian Olive outcompetes them, but the buckthorn should have even more Elaeagnine.

We don't hear much about sea buckthorn, but while people seem to use the trunk bark (at least in the case of Elaeagnus spp.), having recently obtained some offcuts of Hippophae rhamnoides, I decided to examine a piece under UV light.

The inside of the trunks/stems has a darker core under visible light which has lightened considerable after a couple of weeks of drying, and it's this area which glows under UV (pics attached). I've only ever seen small specks of harmala-like fluorescence with sea buckthorn bark, so I'm going to have to do a side-by side comparison of bark and heartwood extractions. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis now seem to be within my reach, now that my chromatography setup is poised for action