I haven't seen anything else posted on the forum regarding the success of a menstruum consisting of caapi vine instead of leaves, so I thought I'd share my experience.

After failed extraction attempt of 50g yellow caapi vine via gibran's tek, a secondary experiment on the remaining 50g of the original 100 was conducted to try and salvage what harmalas may have remained.

The initial extraction was a bit of a bummer. Boiling, straining, acidifying, and basifying the vine's brew yielded hardly any precipitate at the bottom of the glass. Dilutions of the basified mixture were performed, yielding less and less precipitate each time. Waiting for 72 hours, transferring to the fridge, and adding more NaOH had little-to-no effect. A minute amount of aggregate formed, but not enough to be worth continuing the extraction. Out of frustration, the dilutions were dumped. I now realize a boatload of alkaloids could have been sucked up during the initial dilution process and should have been saved in separate containers. C'est la vie

I though the batch of vine was bunk. So a 3x freeze/thaw cycle on the remaining 50g + 1 month in 99% IPA was used to verify if the bark was trash or if I had made a mistake.

The menstruum was strained from the vine after 1 month, evapped for a few hours, filled to the top of a shot glass (1:1 mullein to blue lotus mixture), soaked, and evapped again. Having never tried harmalas previously, a bioassay was conducted to determine potency of a theoretically 5.5x blend...and to see what all the fuss is about

T 0:00 - laying down on a couch. spark it up. inhale the smoalk
0:02 - no effects felt after finishing the first bowl. load up a second
0:05 - halfway through the second bowl. feeling a bit of something something.
0:10 - body load is intense, perceiving gravity push me down deeper in to the cushions. slight euphoria. extremely grounded and present
0:30 - barely perceptible auditory distortion, barely perceptible tracers. like a mix of a really good edible and benzos / except much more clear-minded.
0:30-2:00 - effects seem to stay steady until a gradual decline about 1 hour in. share a glass of wine with a friend and bump some tunes until I'm back to baseline 2 hours in. overalll a very pleasant experience.

Caapi vine menstruum does work. I'd imagine it has a lower degree of potency compared to a traditional A/B extraction, but I had a great time with the (theoretically) 5.5x blend and look forward to developing a relationship with the vine. I'm excited to combine some of the left-over menstruum with DMT and try out changa for the first time!

Sorry to hear about your loss of alkaloids. That can be a bummer at times. Although without trial and error learning would not happen. So not all is lost entirely.

One good thing to do when extracting is to not dispose of any extraction materials until you're finished and satisfied with the results. This way anything can be salvaged.

One good recommendation ime, if you want to extract harmalas and work with them in pure form, is to extract from Peganum Harmala seeds. Their alkaloid percentage is much higher than in Caapi and they're more available and more accessible price wise in comparison to vine. This way, even if there will be some losses present it wouldn't matter as much since the seeds hold so much more. Caapi vine on the other hand is great, so rare and special and can be used for making nice brews. Or at least that's how i see it. Of course that your desire could be to work specifically with Caapi alks, which is also nice, then proceed as you may. I felt the above were a couple of constructive things to point out.

It is nice that in the end you got something to work with, mentsruum is nice, i imagine a crude Caapi isolate must also be nice. You could try to do more alcohol washes on the vine if you still have it. I've soaked so called spent vine in very a acidic solution for some weeks and i managed to recover more alkaloids from it, so it's worth a shot.



Although RIMA's are not known to interact with certain types of foods and drinks, or not as real MAOi anyway, i'd still advise against consuming various foods and drinks, such as red wine (and/or alcoholic beverages) and others high tyramine/tannin ailments, after dosing harmalas. It's not worth the risk imo. Rather wait until some half life is met, then feast in peace.

This first experience is only the beginning of my harmala adventures, I'll be sure to give the ol' rue seeds a shot on my next extraction attempt Aren't the rue seeds far more prone to purging based on alkaloid content? I could be grossly mistaken, but I thought I saw somewhere that either brewed rue and oral ROA or extracted rue and sublingual ROA are more likely to induce purging compared to caapi




Understandably so, thanks for the harm-reduction tip Nereus. Better safe than ded

*Brewed rue will more likely induce some nausea, a lot to some in some cases, but generally a lot more nauseating than Caapi. There is so much more to a rue brew than just harmine/harmaline, that's why it can be so potent even in low doses, in the range of just grammes, and make one sick.

The purified extract on the other hand does not exhibit such symptoms. Not in moderate, moderate-high doses even. In very high doses, as with anything else, it can become pretty overwhelming. Though very high doses are not necessary for most, if any, psychonautic purposes.

Though even this is not a science, because each individual is so physiologically different. What might produce nausea for one might not produce for the other and vice versa. I do know from experience that purified harmala extracts, regardless of source, will be much less prone to produce nausea when ingested as opposed to brews containing a full spectrum of plant actives. And of course that taking care not to overclock the body with high doses on the first contact will help greatly too. I think that a nice relationship with the medicine should be built gradually. Allowing enough time for the body to get used to it. Then it will treat you very very good, no doubt.