Mindillusion,
I didn’t think changa was a such big deal at the time in a sense, it seemed like an obvious thing to do. I was surprised that other people didn’t do it. (At least I hadn’t met them or read about it on dmtworld, is that site archived btw?) I was also surprised that many other people didn’t GET IT. It honestly took a while before it really caught on. In Australia, people really seemed to stick to crystal until around 2011 or so, now I’m a bit out of touch, but I think Changa is more popular than crystal in Australia.
But like I keep saying, I saw the value in this blend and gave it legs. I can’t see how it was an open source project as I never met anyone else who was working on that project. I’m not grasping for anything here, just taking the opportunity to communicate about the past hopefully in an entertaining and informative way as I’m aware a decent number of people will read this over time.
So I found it somewhat odd at the time (in the early noughties), that I was a scapegoat clearly for everyone else. What they accused me of, is what they were doing! But so hush hush! My attitude was more… open, sharing. They didn’t want the attention and they could only see me as an attention seeker. I was on fire, I was a bit mad, but I was passionate also.
Nen,
So you downplay any maliciousness in the scene against me, then are typecasting me in a malicious way with stories you may have heard. I know you like to posit yourself as a guardian of the obtusifolias, as you discovered them and seem to feel a right to speak on behalf of the trees and the indigenous people, as your question to me delivered to me by the panel chair, at the end of my breaking convention talk recently showed.
Times have changed, there are new challenges. My response to your question was that we should encourage more people to grow plantations of trees, which many are doing and encourage people to source acacia acuminata phyllodes, which I believe is the most sustainable source.
So I’ve never heard people thought I was selling Changa to teenagers at dance parties! I gave away a hell of a lot and it got it out to many people. I made friends with a bunch of teenagers (18-19 mind you!) who were very switched on and into psychedelics in general. One of them is now a festival organizer.
Regarding big, old trees. I think the issue was at the time, we only knew about the obtusifolias. Regarding maidenii as a source, I did a fair bit of research into them and it was never a reliable source, even to harvest from the tall, older trees would be quite tricky!
The issue with obtusifolia phyllodes is that the yield was very low (like 0.1%) or non-existent. I am aware there are places you can gather and get decent yields of obutisfolia phyllodes (up to 0.5% I tested), but it is very tricky.
I recently heard of some mimosa hostilis trees that are many hundreds of years old in Mexico, but this is not the case with acacias, they seem to have a maximum 70 year lifespan. They die and fall over very easily, and are considered a pioneer species.
You can see when a tree is about to die because much of it is rotten and the bark changes consistency, it often goes red and rough, from smooth and pink. Also, I think its important to ask the tree first. I actually started to communicate with plants in the late 90’s as I would make flower essences from plants.
If the tree says no, then move on and find one that says yes. The one’s that say yes are normally rotten in the middle and are leaning over and about to fall over. It shouldn’t be necessary to cut down trees anyway, as there are normally fallen down one’s if you spend the time walking in the forrest. You seem to think that the trees are completely opposed to working with us, but my experience is that many are happy to share their wisdom.
This connection and communication with the trees is the primary part of the alchemy, everything starts and ends right there.
All the DMT around that time was really coming from trees that people cut down or had harvested after they had fallen over. But also, I knew of areas where there were stands of trees, where many of them were falling over and dying due to old age! Some people were collecting bark from fallen down trees, something I have always tried to encourage people to do! Or these days, just use the phyllodes of others species.
But I have always wondered about the hypocrisy of people who rage about some people cutting down trees to make DMT that actually may well totally transform dozens or hundreds of people’s lives, while they are sitting in a chair made of wood, on a table made of wood, in a house made of wood! All those trees were cut down indiscriminately, without even any recognition that we are dealing with a living being.
Also, just my view, in this war of consciousness, I would see DMT as nature’s way of trying to bring humans back to balance. Does it always do that? No it doesn’t. But I do think I’m far from alone in seeing that DMT can have a transformative effect.
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dmt had already become very well known, and plenty of people were accessing it..this is even covered in Graham St. John's book which you refer to so often, and ER in the 90s..there were already problems with people decimating wild, and in cases endangered, trees..and people already had smoking mixtures, for years...
DMT might have been quite well known, but there was never much out there on the ground level in my experience. In terms of this decimation you speak on, wasn’t there some sort of organized crime attempt to make a huge batch, and that is what you are talking of here? The other decimation you wrote about here a few years back, it makes me think that organized crime was behind it too. How stupid would you have to be to destroy a large stand of obtusifolias when there are much higher yielding sources?
Me and my friends made a concerted effort to give the smoked DMT experience to people in Byron Bay at the time. So many had never come across it. This is 2000-2002.
There were 2 other people I knew of who were giving DMT to people as we were, for free. But not so many people. They both got it from the same guy. There seemed to be only really one person extracting it at the time and maybe a couple of others who exported out of the region to where I do not know! It was a somewhat cliquey group of people often harking back to the mid 90’s Goa culture. And the people I met who had not smoked DMT were switched on locals, maybe just not as connected to that 90’s culture. Obviously, I can only talk about things as I saw them at the time.
Like I said, even in 2003, one American girl I know, (who also went on to become a festival organizer), was only able to find one person who had DMT at intra cortex festival and she was very well connected. There was very little of it going around then. As I saw it, people would do it once or a few times, have a full breakthrough dose, and maybe get a bit freaked out and take however long to integrate that. Changa was a more low dose experience, people could make friends with it, DMT could be more gentle, it could be more integratabtle. A lot of people made friends with DMT through Changa.
Another example, I had some friends who were into the psychedelic trance culture, it would have been 2001 that they extracted a whole bunch of DMT and gave it away to people at a party with a lot of the “core crew” as it were, of that culture. They said the people at this party were really happy because there was just so little of it going around at the time, nobody really had much quantity to play with!
You say people had smoking mixes, great! Give me their contacts I as I would like to talk to them.
Dreamer042,
I never claimed “ownership” of changa. I always let it play and do its thing. That’s why I didn’t poke my head up until 2011.
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Given the fact that he had ample opportunity over and over again as it came up repeatedly on SA forums and Bluelight where he was an active member since the early 2000's, it's a bit curious that he didn't have moar information to offer up about it over all that time.
And I’ve already explained why I didn’t do that, I wanted to let it do its thing and not interrupt its growth and have any claim on it. I wanted to see what people would figure out about it and how it would develop. Actually, not as much as I would have thought!
But actually I did start this phenomena, and I did give it its name. No, it doesn’t matter who it was in the end who did that, but I think I did a very good job navigating a very tricky terrain with a lot of people pointing fingers at me and sending me a lot of hatred. I had a very steep learning curve, in the early days, and sure I made some mistakes. I haven’t really scratched the surface on this story, one I will tell one day I am sure.
Do you really think I care if some people on the internet disagree with me? I’m just trying to get the facts straight as I know them with some people wanting to spin doctor some other kind of story of smoke and thin air, about what happened in the past based on nothing but they think. And this was over a decade ago, lets move on!
But it would be great if we could get some actual real data about people in Amazonia smoking ayahuasca and DMT and the culture that surrounds that.
What’s happening now, in Australia and the world, is you have an increasing interest and demand and people trying to find sources of DMT. I’ve been trying to encourage people to start a company selling Acacia Acuminata phyllodes. Thing is, mimosa hostilis may be a sustainable source, but how to bring it into Australia? I know of a guy who recently got busted for importing Acacia Confusa root bark which he would sell on eBay. Now get this, importing the Acacia Confusa root bark is considered illegal, but possession of it in Australia is not illegal!
I think the issue a lot of people have with you Nen, is that you seem to not respect people’s desire to connect with the DMT space, up until you started posting on the nexus, you largely appeared against people using DMT at all and just wanted people to leave the trees alone!
I have had people give me heaps of trouble about telling people about the Acacia Acuminata phyllodes. But I don’t think this phenomena can really be stopped. And what is happening around WA is very concerning! They don’t even seem to be aware that you can use Acacia Acuminata phyllodes.
My focus is very much on the oral tea use of acacias and ayahuasca, I don’t really smoke changa myself now (too harsh for my lungs!) or have much to do with it these days.
I know that there are people who have risen to the challenge and are creating acacia plantations, especially in the last few years.
I have some other ideas about what I can do… but I’m going to leave it that for now. At the moment, my work is focussed on plant research all over the world. Luckily I inherited a bit of money from my aunt which enables me to do this. The plants have certainly never made me rich by any stretch of the imagination! And that was never my intention, as much as people would like to claim it was so, like I said, I’m writing an article about motivation and intention, which may further explain my motivations and where I’m really coming from in how I live my life.