There was a thread on the aya forums a while ago that linked to an article that was sayig the 5 substituted tryptamines are in some ways more similar to phens then the other tryptamines, so that may be why 5meo is somewhat similar to mescaline. I have found this as well with low doses of chaliponga extract smoked with harmalas, its very empathic and warm at a low dose...bufotenine though is a 5 substituted tryptamine and it is very different..but it also does have some empathic effects that are sort of devoid of any mental warp until you take lots of it.

Please see the paper I cited in my last post. Most 5-MeO-DMT is converted into bufotenine in the liver by CYP2D6. A MAOI increases the bioavailability of the substance and the conversion process escalates. Most of the ill physical effects felt by people who have used 5-MeO-DMT with harmaline are similar with intoxications with oral bufotenine. The paper also notes that some variations of the CYP2D6 are not as effective in this conversion process and some people react differently



It is highly debatable whether chaliponga has 5-MeO-DMT or not. Most studies refer only traces of the substance. Even if is present in some samples (for which I would like to see GC/MS results) I strongly doubt that it is the major alkaloid component.

The only way to actually assert how one may react with this mix is not with an unknown alkaloid extract, but instead with a verified synthetic product. I do not advise anyone to do it but 5-MeO-DMT is a legal RC in most parts of the world and readily available in many places, some very well reputed.

Imo, 5-meo-dmt is not an RC...it has a long history of human use in various cultures. Just cuz it's sold by RC vendors doesn't automatically make it an RC.

Yeah true "oco yage" is totally different...there are diff plants referred to as "chalionga", and this is probabily part of the problem here..some might be the stuff with meo while other stuff just has DMT..but I can notice a large difference when chaliponga is used. Chaliponga is also active for me sublingually..so that points to at least something else in it.

For sure this is misinformation. 5-MeO-DMT does not produce the effects of bufotenine. And real chaliponga contains 5-MeO-DMT. The only chaliponga SWIM had that didn’t was misidentified chaliponga. SWIM knows the effects of oral 5-MeO-DMT, smoked 5-MeO-DMT, and sublingual 5-MeO-DMT. He's had pure 5-MeO-DMT before. It is an alkaloid with very unique psychedelic effects. He's also had pure bufotenine to compare it with.

whatever it is, there is something else in there..

I wouldnt be so quick to discount the idea that meo is converted to bufo in the liver..just becasue the effects from ingesting meo are diff from bufo doent mean there is no bufotenine conversion going on in the liver. Oral 5meo being metablized into bufo in the liver, and oral bufotenine itself are 2 completley different things. We dont even know if bufotenine itself isnt first metablized into something else before its visionary effects are apparent.

This statement made me interested, so I researched it. It seems like the research on the subject gives us very clear answers.

It is true that CYP2D6 catalyzes O-demethylation of 5-MeO-DMT to bufotenine, but without a MAOI most is metabolized by MAO rather than CYP2D6. With only 5-MeO-DMT consumed, most is in fact N-demethylated by MAO to 5-MeO-indole acetic acid. When 5-MeO-DMT is consumed with a MAOI, a greater extent is O-demethylated into bufotenine.

There's huge variations in how effective CYP2D6 is among individuals. This should account for the vastly different effects reported. The reason 5-MeO-DMT + MAOI doesn't feel quite like bufotenine is likely because not everything is metabolized to bufotenine, so the effects felt are a combination of bufotenine, 5-MeO-DMT and the MAOIs used.

http://www.springerimage...1208_s12248-008-9028-5-4
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20206139

While I don't doubt some is converted, I don't believe most is, not for a second. Most enters into the blood right through the walls of your mouth, throat, and stomach before even getting to your liver. 5-MeO-DMT is extremely easy to soak through your membranes. You can feel it before most is even digested! It’s active at 1 mg sublingually! By the time it gets to your liver, most of it has probably already been broken down elsewhere.

You make a good point, but if MAO is totally inhibited then the 5-MeO-DMT will eventually be O-demethylated into bufotenine. The body will always try to get rid of alien substances, so when MAO is inhibited CYP2D6 takes over, given that the enzyme is properly functioning in the individual.

Do you people ever read the scientific papers or just scan through the title and the abstract and then go to make your conclusions? I made a thread about the 5-meo->bufotenine conversion in vivo a while ago there, where I also tried to present some limitations of the study.

It is very important to at least read the studies whose results you wish to cite. The authors injected fairly big amounts of 5-meo (20mg/kg, that is 1500mg for an average person and different from the average dose, no?) in mice intraperitoneally (= different from oral, no?) as well as they assessed the 5meo->bufo conversion in in vitro liver cell culture, and an artificial system (that is, the 5meo->bufo metabolism of a transgenic mouse that bears the human CYP2D6 enzyme)

All the elegant observations made by the authors are definitely different from oral administration. Vastly different I may say. In this respect, 69ron is very correct in exercising some caution. What appears to be a well demonstrated metabolism of intraperitoneally administered massive dose of 5meo to bufo in mice, has now been extrapolated to mean that the same happens with average doses of orally administered 5meo in humans! This is not to say that it doesn't possibly happen to some extent but the way people throw around their "facts" makes it sound like "ingesting 100mg of 5meo is like ingesting 100mg of bufotenine"

Please be careful with the facts.

Thank you Infundibulum! You make an excellent point. I didn't mean to say that all 5-MeO-DMT is metabolized to bufotenine, but nonetheless you are absolutely correct that I did draw too much conclusions based on only abstracts. Thanks for pointing that out!

Hi Infundibulum

I thought long about answering your post. I'm going to do it just because the topic is very serious. And a casual reader of this topic may get the idea with some of the opinions expressed here that it is pretty much safe to go for 5-MeO-DMT orally with a MAOI. It is not safe, not even at the same doses used in smoking or vaporizing.

This said, I'm going to dissect a couple of your comments



Well, having a PhD and doing actual research in a related area, helps getting through the paper without a fuss! What I ask you Infundibulum is, if everything is so biased, why bother doing this research at all. Why spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in materials and equipment to do something totally useless? More, if everything is such rubbish (as you imply), why would a very reputable journal as Biochemical Pharmacology (with an ISI Impact Factor of 4.8!) publish it? The authors and the reviewers are probably out of their minds, for sure! It would help to actually read the paper in full to understand the conclusions. Some of the objections you put are correct but without the context are just disinformation. Sometimes scientists have to work with models (being in vitro or in vivo models, like working with mice or rats, or microssomes) as it is dangerous to do the actual tests in humans. Sometimes concentrations of substances must be different because animals do not have the same sensitivity as humans (mice have LD50 for bufotenine of 200 mg!). Also, as you probably know, or should know, in vitro study subjects cannot have the same substance concentration levels as in vivo, for the biological membranes act as dynamic regulators of homeostatic processes, increasing or decreasing concentrations for determined substances (the BBB is an extreme example of such a system). This method of working, even with its flaws, allows for scientists to ground their experiences and derive most of the times correct assumptions. This, I do believe it is the case.

5-MeO-DMT has a markedly different profile in the brain than 5-HO-DMT. That's a fact. But why is it that when taken orally with a MAOI several of the symptoms are markedly similar to bufotenine intoxications? The model argued and (hopefully) demonstrated by the authors explains it. As 5-MeO-DMT enters the GI tract with a MAOI it is not depleted and is progressively released to the blood. As it goes through the liver it gets demethylated into 5-HO-DMT and showing the adverse body reactions (extreme vasoconstriction, dyspnea and seisures, among others) typical of this substance. Why it does not happen with other ROA like vaporization? I have never seen it written but my guess is that 5-MeO-DMT enters the lungs and the blood being pumped by the heart directly into the brain (5-MeO-DMT should pass easily the BBB), showing then the typical 5-MeO-DMT effects





I apologize but I must disagree. Of course one should get the facts. But having an unknown powder extract from a plant, without any quantitative measurement by any of the standard methods (as GC/MS) does not not makes it the truth. If 69ron (or you, or anyone here) has tested the effects of oral bufotenine and 5-Meo-DMT coming from a lab, that would be totally different

I may add that if controlled experiences could be performed with these substances, who knows, we might write a paper together!




Always!

I need to stress the first point I made in the beginning of this longer than expected post.

No one should ingest lab grade 5-MeO-DMT with a MAOI. People can die from it! On the other hand if you extract "5-MeO-DMT" from chaliponga it should be pretty safe as it probably does not contain a single measurable milligram of the substance (it may contain other alkaloids though).

Picatris, sorry for the confusion.

I did not imply for a single second that the paper is rubbish as you write in your reply. I totally acknowledge that it is a great paper, actually one that I really enjoyed reading. I love their experiments. But of course there are limitations. There always are limitations. My main point of the post is that people extrapolate their results a bit too easily to derive truths about human physiology from animal physiology and from one method of administration (oral) to another (intraperitoneal). The paper definitely opened important questions about the metabolic possibilities of 5meo in humans. It also opens the possibility to fresh interpretations (e.g. why oral 5meo is similar to oral bufo?). But still, I prefer to wait for a more ample demonstrations to put it in my "facts for humans" list. And thankfully there can be designed experiments to demonstrate whether such conversions do actually happen in humans. We just need to wait methinks.

Could it not just be, that combined with a MAOI, the effects of 5-MeO-DMT are amplified to such an extent that the caapi and chaliponga are safe toghether because the dose of 5-MeO-DMT you ingest that way is just very low?

I think that the presence of 5-MeO-DMT in chaliponga is more or less a fact. Certainly if people report identical effects from it.

You have to acknowledge that this is a substance that is active in very small amounts and that MAOI could even lower the amounts needed. Caapi is known to be able to amplify the effects of many substances up to three or four times their normal potency, wich would make 5-MeO-DMT active in doses far less than a milligram, like substances as LSD. If 5-MeO-DMT is active in LSD-like amounts, than it figures that combining milligrams of it with MAOI could be dangerous, but that doesn't has to mean that the combination is by definition dangerous, no matter how small the doses taken.

I think that if only LSD-like amounts would be ingested in chaliponga/caapi brews, the effects of such brews could still be atributed to 5-MeO-DMT and at the same time it would explain why taking amounts of more than a milligram with MAOI is risky.

For the record, chaliponga with caapi is NOTHING like bufotenine. Ive never ever experienced the level of sickness from chaliponga that a full dose of bufotenine can bring abut, not even close..anyone who really makes that comparison i doubt has every had a full dose of bufotenine. Chaliponga has mdae me sick yes, but nothing like bufotenine.

SWIM loves bufotenine when SMOKED, but orally, a dose needed for visual affects makes you nauseous from start to finish. 5-MeO-DMT taken orally has a tiny bit of the same sort of body feel bufotenine has, but it's not nearly as nauseating, and is way stronger, way more psychedelic. No one would ever mistake the effects of oral bufotenine with the effects of oral 5-MeO-DMT, with or without an MAOI. The only similarity is the body feel, and that's only a small similarity.

SWIM knows 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenine very well. He’s used them for several years. He’s had them in their pure form, and as compounds in herbs. He’s smoked them, taken them sublingually, taken them orally, with MAOI, without MAOI, etc. It’s totally impossible to mistake one for the other. Totally impossible.

Despite what that study might imply, it’s interpretations are obviously wrong if you are interpreting that it is saying that all 5-MeO-DMT taken orally becomes bufotenine. That just cannot be. They are extremely different compounds with different duration, different potencies, and totally different effects.

SWIM's experiences, orally, and sublingually WITH an MAOI have been pleasant. There are those who like this combination. It's not automatically dangerous unless you OD. It's all about dosage. 5-MeO-DMT is very potent and you can easily kill yourself by taking it without an MAOI. This idea that an MAOI is needed to make it dangerous is not true. It's dangerous on its own.

I never heard of doses of 5meodmt that are found in plant doses used in various mixtures having strong negative interactions with MAOI's. Sure potentiation could make dosing with 5meodmt more difficult but I don't see why its so dangerous if one works the dose up properly?

Case studies?

Actually I think there is a case study when death was reported from pure 5meodmt being added to an ayahuasca brew. But I can't find it right now. I think the dose was high though.