Thank you very much for this thread, Aegle. It has given me the inspiration to quit using MJ for an indefinite period of time. MJ is the only thing I currently use that acts like more of a crutch than a medicine or a tool to become a better person.

I've got enough hash oil to enjoy the rest of Labor Day weekend. But by this upcoming Thursday, I'll essentially be tripping the entire night

Even though it appears to be completely legal, I would prefer to order it from a source within the United States. Would someone please PM a good vendor in the US?

Entheogenadvocate

No worries, I'm really overjoyed that this thread has had a positive impact on your life.

I truly wish you the best of luck my friend. I'm really looking forward to reading your experiences with Silene Capensis. It seems that most vendors are out of stock of Silene Capensis so i hope that you are able to find a source. Happy and safe travels.


Much Peace and Kindness

yes, please keep us informed and let us know what progress you're making with it. :-)

1 0z. of organic Silene Capensis on the way!

I should run out of hash oil tomorrow evening, and I want to give myself at least 3-5 days of detox so I can let the crazy dreams associated with the withdrawals subside before I intake any of the Silene Capensis.

If all goes to plan, I should have some interesting experiences to post about within 2 weeks.

Much love to all of you. I will make sure to direct any anger associated with the herb withdrawals towards my punching bag, and away from all you beautiful people.

Peace and Happy Journeys

Just wondering:
After you eat the foam in the morning the effects are to bexpected in the follwing 3 to 5 nights to come, right? I have some of that root around and was planning on giving it another try. Haven't tried the froth-method yet.

And this sounds like something to try with some MHRB powder. I suppose mixing MHRB powder with water and shaking it
up in a bottle will cause a similair froth to form. This pure water-based froth would not contain any DMT, right?
But perhaps it will be amazingly psycho-active, as the cold water infusions of MHRB are claimed to be by some people.
Worth a shot.

Some technical notes regarding ingestion of Silene Capensis.

I use amounts of 300-400mg in double 00 capsules (~800mg capacity according to the label). This way the bigger half of the capsule gets filled.

I weight the capsule, drop the powder on a clean surface (usually paper) and the fill the bigger part of the capsule with tweezers (those attached to the official Deal Extreme Nexus Scale work great). Weight again and if OK, seal it.

Capensis is Maya's powdered one.

As for effects, dreams are more vivid/intense, more frequent and easier to recall (in the morning, it all still fades in the afternoon).

The active/s in silene capensis root are most likely triterpenoid saponins, according to the soapy foam produced when you shake the root powder or fragments in water. Other triterpenoid saponins have been indeed isolated from MH stem bark (Mimonoside A, B, C) as well as steroid saponins. Those are reported to have relevant medicinal properties, but I've seen no notice of them being psychoactive.

Regarding Silene, I'm starting today. The plan is to have 300 mg of powdered root daily until I finish my current supply, that would be in around three months. I'm curious about the claims of a somewhat permanent effect after this time.

@Shaolin - In which time of the day do you consume the gel cap? Are you observing the empty stomach factor?

I have just initiated a silene capensis regiment myself. I have been chewing and swallowing approximately 250-350mg sections of whole root in the morning and prior to sleeping. I am into the third day of use. Dreaming aside, I do notice subtle effects from consuming the root, such as a dreamy headspace, lethargy, and a few other effects that I can't quite put my finger on.

@Vodsel

15 - 30 minutes before sleep. Last meal 3-4 hours before that. Hypothesis is that full stomach supresses the effects ?

Thanks, I was wondering about this.

Relevant quote (from Psychoactive Ubulawu Spiritual Medicines and Healing Dynamics in the Initiation Process of Southern Bantu Diviners, Jean-François Sobiecki, published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, vol.44, #3):



Saponins are known the have emetic properties. I wonder if the empty stomach has basically to do with the vomiting routines in some rituals. One might think that an empty stomach is necessary in order to get the actives in the system at an optimal concentration, and in a short period of time, in order to obtain any effects... but all the suggestions about long term effects (or about effects kicking in after a few days starting consumption) do not seem to agree with that assumption.

Or it might have to do with the possibility of interaction with some foods, but it is unlikely. Saponins in many sources, such as legumes, don't seem to have incompatibilities. Unless the actives in silene are not saponins, but I wouldn't put my money on that.

I'll start conservative and take it on an empty stomach, and then we'll see.

I found my baggie of Silene Capensis dried root. It's 10 grams, but
I already made 2 maybe 3 cups of tea with it. +/- 5 grams are left in the bag.

I think I'll make the foam and drink it in the morning and in the night,
before bedtime for 3 consecutive days. That should do the trick right?



PS: About Mimosa foam; If non of the Mimosa-saponins are of significant
Psychoactive value, then what a great, simple way of prewashing Mimosa.
Put MHRB powder in plastic bottles, add water, shake untill foam forms,
then squeeze out the foam & repeat untill no more foam forms. If you
would do this with your MHRB before doing a STB extraction on it,
do you folks recon the product to be significantly cleaner?

Yesterday was my first day quitting MJ, and the dreams last night were horrible. They were uninteresting, constant and busy. I woke up every 2 hours in a pool of sweat feeling like I had been doing difficult manual labor.

I really want to experience the true power of Silene Capensis, so I'm going to have to wait out these withdrawal dreams for a while. Unfortunately, I just spoke with a buddy of mine who also recently quit MJ, and his chaotic dreams are still occurring 30 days after he quit. I really hope I can start working with Silene sooner than a month from now, but that may be how it goes.

I got mine in the mail today, and I also picked up a mortar and pestle to grind it into a fine powder when the time is right.

I'll keep you guys posted on my experiences once my detox is finally over.

Peace and love.

Hi Aegle,

Thanks for sharing, your thread inspired me to order some. Mine will be arriving tomorrow. when you mean water(just normal cold water?) or does it have to be hot water? So morning is the best time to ingest? how long after do you start eating?

Thanks!

River of Thoughts

Nice! I'm really glad that my thread has inspired you.

I used cold water, the morning is the best time to munch the foam. I usually would wait about an hour or two before I would eat breakfast. Its just really important to eat the foam on an empty tummy.


Much Peace and Happiness

Hey guys, I bought mine from Tranceplants, I can't get it to foam for the life of me. They came in actual rootbark. At first I tried breaking them in a cup and try to make it foam but had no luck(even letting it stay in the fridge for a day). Then I went and bought a coffee grinder and made it to the most fine powder and poured some water and left it in the fridge and then used the wooden spoon and whisked it and still 0 foam not even a bit. I think I have a faulty product or something. Can someone hook me up with a legit online vendor that has proven that it will foam(when you ordered from them). thanks!

I am interested in this plant but I'm debating wether or not to order some.

Hopefully someone can help push me in the right direction. I usually remember my dreams, they are not always that vivid or lucid though I can make some choices in my dreams. However, whenever I try to potentiate them with substances claiming to have positive affects on dreaming it seems like they diminish in vividness and I have a hard time remembering them.

The only things I have found that reliably induce vivid dreams are alcohol or melatonin, and the melatonin will not work 2 nights in a row.

The other night I tried the vitamin dream combo I have read many good things about. This combo included 450mg valerian/hops/passion flower mix, 100mg vitamin B6, and 3mg melatonin. I remember having multiple fragmented dreams but have no memory of any of them and they seemed rather dull.

So basically I don't want to spend money on silene capensis if I am going to be underwhelmed as with most "dream enhancers" my normal dreams are better without supplementation, although I know that they can be much much more vivid and or lucid and that is what I am shooting for.

Does anyone have similar experiences that has tried silene and can vouch for it's effectiveness?

Nice thread. Glad I stumbled upon it.

I have been messing around with Silene for many years, but in the first 5 or 6 years I never quite appreciated it. I didn't really know what to do with the root that I had, and tended to chew it up, try smoking it etc. These things did have some psychoactive effects, but as I was simultaneously playing with Calea and another African dream supplement whose name escapes me now, it didn't seem to shine until perhaps 3 years ago when I heard about Zulu usage and gave it its proper respect.

The truth is that I dream very vividly every night anyway. I do notice an effect on recall and intensity, but as a lifelong lucid dreamer, I tend to have the kind of dreams that others are hoping for without any supplements.

This is all rather hard for me to separate out properly because I tend to eat well and have a number of supplements and nootropics going at any given time. Dreaming seems to be affected by acetylcholine, and this is boosted by many things that I take from time to time. (Piracetam, CDP Choline, Lecithin, various herbs etc.)

But back to Silene...

I realized that I still have a bag of roots in my medicine box, and am suitably reinspired to mess around once again. I will take the empty stomach thing into consideration, and am keen to see what's what with a month of foam munching!

I will report back. I suppose I should refrain from putting Calea into my self-mixed teas for a while to really see what Silene can do on its own. But to be honest, I don't really see myself as giving up all my other supplements for a month or longer in the interest of being totally objective. I guess i will just have to say what it does in addition to my "not so normal normal" baseline.

Thanks again Aegle.

To those here talking about MJ vis a vis dreaming...

For me, my ridiculous and lengthy Cannabis habit certainly did throw a bit of a wet blanket over my dream life... mostly in recall. It wasn't able to erase my fantabulous oneirological adventuring, but it certainly wasn't helping things. (Probably worth searching the forum on this subject as we have discussed it many times here.)

Quitting did bring a rush of dream recall and clarity, especially after it really began to leave my system. But oddly, after perhaps 9 months off weed... the dream recall bounce seemed to go away. I can't really complain any way with this as I have probably the most active dream life of anyone I know. I tend to remember many many epic dream sequences every morning with a healthy 20% or more being lucid or semi-lucid. My dreams are realer than real, generally have stable consistent timelines, and can be ridiculously psychedelic.

Of course, dreamwork is a high art. It is something that you must invest time and energy into. Your ability to lucid dream and work with dreams involves the development of certain mental "muscles" that IMHO are more important than any amount of chemical supplementation. That said, I love me some supplements... I may have to do a galantamine month when i finish my silene capensis month.

I recommend reading Thomas Yuschak's book Advanced Lucid Dreaming: The Power of Supplements He has aggregated a ridiculous amount of information and gives very, well... lucid commentary and advice based on his fairly ridiculous personal experience.

To the poster above, archaic_architect I believe, who spoke of a Dream Supplement that just made things more dull, the ingredients you describe are by and large restful and anti-anxiety herbs and not truly dream herbs. Useful perhaps when you are feeling overstimulated, or want to get to sleep... but it doesn't surprise me in the least that it did nothing but muffle your dreams. Valerian, hops and passiflora (individually or together) are basically like herbal valium. Enjoyable after a workout for muscle relaxing and a nice cloudy feeling... but certainly not dream herbs in my opinion. Melatonin on the other hand, does work, but it is important to dial the amount in correctly... too much and it is even sleepier than valerian.

Yeah, this sounds about right. Now I see why I felt like complete dookie the next day, still groggy around 5pm. I do have trouble getting to sleep and it did help knock me out but I would not recommend combining melatonin and the valerian/hops/passionflower supplements, it was not a good feeling for me.

Thanks for the info HF!

Okay, I'm leaving here a little update after a week of experimentation.

At first, and following the feedback left by Shaolin here and others in other places, I decided to start simple and ingest 300 mg of powdered root at night, three hours (or a little more) after the last meal of the day.

I am not a heavy cannabis user, although most evenings I do smoke a rolling tobacco cigarette with a little sprinkle of indica. I stopped smoking it three days before the first SC dose, and resumed in the middle of the week. I am not using any other supplements or medication atm. Only some cocoa or guayusa in the morning, no other psychoactives. The most recent use was a moderate changa experience four days before the first SC ingestion.

Findings:

- The root undoubtedly works... The second and third nights ingesting SC I had unusually elaborate dreams and I'd say better recall too, although my stronger attention towards dreams these days might also be accountable for that. Night #3 I had a quite memorable dream with a complex, coherent plot (a mysterious wave of religious suicides happening in a medieval european town where I was living, orchestrated by someone I wasn't able to find; my wanderings one evening, witnessing groups of people that were calmly and efficiently getting ready to die, carrying with them these little paper crosses floating behind their backs, was a memorable scene I will remember for long. Devoid of any horror or shock factor, a bergmanian, curious glance upon this strange ritual that simply felt wrong).

- The effects, considering the reports I read, felt somewhat mild. Not that I was expecting sudden dreaming lucidity, since I don't recall having ever had a clearly lucid dream at least for the last fifteen years... but even if not disappointed, I was not surprised either. It has been observed that powdered SC root may be more prone to degradation by oxidation. Since my dose was not low, that might be another reason that impoverished the effects.

- The re-introduction of a minimal amount of cannabis in my evening routine after three days definitely made the dreams more dull and clearly affected recall. So I think the negative synergy of cannabis with SC is out of the question, at least for me.

- IME, an empty stomach is a good way to enhance the effects. As far as I can tell.

I will start a second round in three or four days, after cleaning up from MJ traces again. I will switch to a morning routine, using the same amount (300 mg powdered SC) right after waking up, ingesting as much as possible as foam.

I'll let you guys know if the push works as it should. And thanks all for the thread, this is getting nice