Concise background:
-Been doing extractions for almost a decade
-This includes a whole lot of spice, a couple of mesc from torch and caapi vine when that was available to me
-So, not a chemist, but a fairly experienced chef IMHO with consistent results.
-With caapi vine having become prohibitively expensive and difficult to find (was always gifted to me before), I've been without harmalas for too long. I've been over straight spice for years and am a changa monster.
A friend approached me with 300g of rue, asking if I would do an extraction in return for keeping a third of the alks for myself. I've never bothered with reading up on rue as it just wasn't part of my reality until now. I knew people were saying that it didn't come close to the effects of my beloved caapi because of ratios of harmalas and other less quantifiable effects, but it had to be better than straight enhanced leaf, right?
So I checked the Nexus and the processes described for rue extraction just didn't fit into my life as it stands at this juncture. Days of work, Manske, maniacal filtering, etc. I didn't see the point... If a strong alkaline solution causes the harmalas to crash out just like with caapi, I could surely wash out the lye and a great deal of impurities (I have no issues with sodium hydroxide and use it exclusively) to the point where the water had no taste, odour, soapy texture or sting on the tongue (not very scientific I know, but I'm not going to try and hunt down litmus papers in an African city) and then wash it again for good measure. So most of the work consisted of washing and cleaning. Boiled the night before with a healthy amount of lemon juice. A single, slow boil which caused reduction and I'd just top up with more lemon juice water. About 3 hours of that.
Filtered it through multiple layers of cloth and squeezed every last drop out of the powdered seed paste. Took a small amount of the liquid and added concentrated lye water. It went latte-coloured as expected and immediately crashed out as with caapi. Cleaned this until I was happy and knew that this was as pure a freebase mix as my resources and knowledge allows for. Then I pulled the rest in one big batch. The yield, my god, almost 15g!
My share in pic below. Phone camera and flash making it look more pink than it is. Still, no dirty Sanchez here.
PicPersonally, very happy with this.
Unfortunately, I am not in a position to bioassay at the moment as I'm tapering off Zoloft that I needed to go on to get me through a very tough few months. It will be two months before I'd touch a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. Until then, I have some questions and assumptions...
1. Is harmaline a "less pleasant" RIMA? Any unpleasant side effects? Or is a harmine/THH dominant mix just qualitatively better? This question relates to changa and pharma/aya.
2. I'm a milligram man for many reasons, including controlling and fine tuning the mix that works best for me. People make a tea or even smoke the seeds. Surely there can't be anything bad in my product when I've isolated the actives only? It's a lot cleaner than a raw tea or eating the seeds.
3. As soon as all traces of SSRI are flushed from my system, I'm really keen on doing a proper pharma session with a sitter as I need release and healing in a big way. I am prepared for the fact that this may be a challenging experience. It would be pointless if I didn't puke and cry and battle my demons. Been there and it scares me to go back, but it's almost time. Do rue extracts add any discomfort or darkness to the journey compared to caapi or does it serve the same general purpose?
It seems to be the most widely used source of harmalas for this purpose, so it can't be bad?
The reason for my questions are because of the sheer amount of obsolete and dogmatic rubbish online, a lot posted years ago by obviously very young people (the entheo sites need a serious clean-up). Some say that they hate rue - that it's caapi or nothing. Others swear by rue.
It's years later, a lot has changed and we know more. I'd like to hear from people with serious experience as far as the full-spectrum rue experience goes.
Thank you.