1)3 attempts were made to smoke the leaf material in joint fashion, with a distinctive "aussie" bush aroma to them. The smoke is palatable, but has a slight bushy harshness to it, and a slight numbing of the lips. The smoke on each occasion produced a mild state of intoxication, a +, but I was looking for something more...

2) a tea was made with 3 tablespoons of leaf, brewed for 10 minutes in boiling water. The tea was bitter, but increasingly and intoxicatingly more palatable. I began to feel like there was something in this plant but it needed more.

3) a 50c piece of bark was chewed, which is meant to contin the major alkaloid fraction of the plant. The taste was extremely bitter, almost so bitter it was HOT, reminding me of cinnamon or what I would imagine camphor to taste like.
30min in a distinct fussing of the edges of reality started to happen, with peripheral vision starting to blur, and an edginess creeping in that started to speak to me of tryptamine hallucinosis. More soon

I had become interested in the effects of Magnolia Bark after trying the patented formulation of Relora, which is a 2:1 mixture of powdered magnolia bark and phellodendron. It seems to show great promise in being a pleasant GABAergic substance. As I was pondering the possibility of obtaining some fresh bark for further assays, I recalled that sitting in my garage in a dark and cool place I had stashed away what is probably the largest amount of Galbulimima bark in anyone’s possession in the western world, barring pharmacological development organizations. The bark was identified and given to me by a well-known Australian semi-professional ethnobotanist a couple of years ago, sourced from north Queensland, Australia. Quite frankly I was scared to try a series of bioassays on it at the time, due to its relatively unknown nature and mechanisms of action. I had also had a nasty experience with amanita around that time and was unwilling to go anywhere near other psychedelic substances that purportedly had their major action on the muscarine receptors. A small sample was tried many years ago, by me and a friend, the details of which can be found at www.shaman-australis.com/forums/ or here.-A size of bark equivalent to a 10c piece was thoroughly masticated and a mild anxiolytic effect was felt, and that was about all there was to say about this bark ethnobotanically apart from traditional reports and one western report found here.

Let me say at the outset, that I am gravely unsure that this substance should be released unto the world. I think if it ever became available mainstream then it could well be likened to a plague visiting humanity. I also realize that there is no holding back on the inquest of the human mind, and that at some point, if it is not me that is introducing the entheogenic effects of this bark to the world then one day, it will be someone else. I am sadly aware that the transmission of this information will only heighten curiosity in this substance, yet also feel that it is my responsibility to report on what I have found, if only to highlight the dangers. I feel like I am introducing Quetzalcoatl. (Please indulge the melodrama – this was written shortly after the tryptamine combination described below)

The Assays: it must be remembered that the age of the bark may have diminished or even changed the alkaloidal content in the bark somewhat – also it must be remembered that due to its age its moisture content is also extremely reduced, probably rendering the bark per unit of weight much higher in alkaloidal concentration.


1)

A significant amount of bark was broken into tiny pieces and thoroughly ground in an electric coffee grinder/ice grinder until finely powdered and partially fibrous 2.5mm needles. In my system is 2 drinks of Kava, prepared from about 2 teaspoons, and 4mg of oxazepam.

T:0.00 half a teaspoon (1.25g) of the bark was washed down quickly with a small glass of water. Taste is very bitter, almost quinine-like, and slightly hot, in a cinnamony sort of way.

T:0.30 A funny feeling in my head with a slight relaxation of the physical and cognitive faculties. It feels like I am slightly drunk, with a bit of a headache in the frontal cranium.

T:0.50 Another half teaspoon is washed down with water. The drunken feeling increases after another half hour, with a noticeable anxiolytic effect. I feel calmer and my sense of time seems to slow down, but not significantly.

T:2.00 the effects seem to have stopped. I decide to go to bed, and as I enter the dark room there is a brief “remote viewing” flash, for maybe about half a second, a scene before my eyes that is completely still, colourful and real.

T:11.00 I wake up after having experienced very confrontational dreams all night. There seems to be a motif of childhood memories with a sense of having to justify one’s personality to a random assortment of characters.

T: 11.00-20:00 All day I notice a summery, holiday-like antidepressant feeling. I feel slightly numb to ego-problems and sort of drifty - quite mellow, amenable and well balanced really. There seems to be no cognitive, emotional or social impairment. In fact, it aids social activity.


2)

T: 24.00 (hereafter 0.00) I decide to try 2.5 (6.25g) heaped teaspoons of the powdered bark. As before, it is washed down with a glass of water.

T:0.25 effects come on strongly. The alkaloids here seem to be absorbed by the body extremely rapidly. I have never really known a substance to act so fast orally.

T:0.40 I am staggering, can’t balance properly and stumble into the wall. My whole mind and body seems to have slowed right down to a point of stillness and absolute tranquillity. I have felt this feeling before but at the time can’t quite seem to remember when or what. There are 2 things that come to my mind at this point: that this could be GABAergic or opioid. But I am wrong: it slowly dawns on me where I have experienced this before: it is a feeling of dissociation, an anaesthetic dissociation, and seems very similar to the effects brought on by DXM, and what I imagine Ketamine to be like. Galbulimima is NOT a psychedelic, it is a dissociative! Reporters in the literature of the “sleepiness” induced by this bark had obviously not experienced dissociative anaesthesia and thus used the terms of description most familiar in their vocabulary. There is an unmistakeable NMDA antagonist signature to the experience. This would make it, apart from ibogaine (and related compounds), the only natural-known NMDA antagonist in nature.

T:2.00 The feeling of utter relaxation seems to be waning and the experience is changing into a strangely alert but depersonalized afterglow feeling. I decide to go to bed but I cannot sleep. Upon closing the eyes, there are many “remote viewing” types of scenes flashing before my eyes but they seem quite below the surface, not as fully present to consciousness as similar visions induced by DXM. My sciatic nerves start to ache and I am tossing and turning. There is a curious drifting feeling that sort of feels like sleepiness yet which keeps me awake.

T:4.00 My partner wakes up and a major confrontational scene erupts, and is acting out of control. This proves to be a portentious sign, in keeping with the motif of galbulimima intoxication.

T:6.00 I finally get a couple of hours sleep in the early hours of the morning, and the sleep is filled with confrontational, very vivid, colourful and realistic scenes, combing present anxieties with childhood environments; the backyard on a swing from 25 years ago, sitting around the dining table in the country residence when I was 9. These scenes seem mixed together with present anxieties: alcohol, lack of enthusiasm in self-nature, self-justification to parental figures.

T:10:00 I wake up and am still very much affected. My appetite for food is shot, I do not take any food for nearly T:48 hours. Every time I eat, the visions and galbulimima experience seems to gain force and I have to lie down in bed.

T:24.00 I still feel the effects very strongly, but in a strangely neutral way. If I had to speculate, I would say that the speculated NMDA antagonist in galbulimima binds irreversibly to the receptor. I feel like I need to wash the substance from my head, so I buy some vodka, but it does not really help.

T:32:00 It is morning and I think I have slept about 2 hours tonight. That’s about 4 hours sleep in 48 hours. Constant sciatic pain is brought under control by vitamin B complex tablets.

T:38.00 I am at the beach lying in the ocean on my back. I feel very dissociated for the whole day, and I cannot eat. The substance is very much still in my head, and the effect waxes and wanes. In the afternoon it is particularly strong and I rest for 2 hours, the sub-conscious remote viewing scenes keep flowing through me throughout the whole day. It feels pleasant in some way but I feel like my personality has a permanent visitor, a helping but ultimately anaesthetic spirit.

T:48.00 I drink some more vodka. The galbulimima will not wash from my head. I am still affected. It is scary, because if I have damaged part of my brain I know that there is no-one that can help me. Partly, it is exciting being on this cutting-edge: One gets so used to understanding things that it really seems quite spiritual to have a plant communing with me without me having any idea about its psychopharmacology. I must accept it for what it is. The desire not to eat or sleep seems stronger than ever.

T:50.00 I decide to take half a tab of LSD and 2g of psilocybe mushrooms. Don’t ask me why, I’m not sure.

T:51.30 Utter chaos ensues. I am very experienced with an assortment of chemicals, and I have never experienced anything like this before. It is steep, negative and scary. It is scarier than 5meo-DMT. I eventually work up enough semblance to terminate the trip with 5mg Olanzapine, 15mg oxazepam and 1000mg of phenibut. During this period the galbulimima shines through: it tells me in no uncertain terms its name: “Ghost-bark”. Galbulimima is the Ghost. It is at this stage that I realize the utter devastation that this substance will have on mankind if it ever becomes a mainstream entheogen. It seems like a Philip K Dick sort of nightmare.

T:52.30 I go to bed and fall asleep for 12 hours.


3) I decided to try a daily reduced regeime of the bark to test its therapeutic potential at sub-psychedelic doses.
The trial lasts for 30 days, and on average on each day I take 750mg of the bark before sleeping.

The dreams are beneficial, not as vivid or intense but sleep is light. Most pronounced effect is with social phobia. I feel for the first time in 10 years free to relax socially and make small chat, and feel powerful enough to take to a podium and speak, or have protracted conversations with shop assistants. I am more animated with customers and colleagues at work than I have ever been, and feel quite interpersonally cheerful and unflappable. Whatever section of the brain this acts on, I feel it has great promise pharmacologically as a view to new antidepressant or sociophobic medication.

There is a powerful urge to exercise on this bark, and I begin to sweat it out aerobically for the first time in 10 years. Even 1 month after quitting the regeime, I still retain an increased daily habit of exercise.

After a week, the afternoons bring a strange sort of sleepy malaise, slightly depersonalized, probably about as strong, as say, a standard SSRI. This pretty much disappears into the 3rd week.

Over the month there is 1 side effect worth noting: my neck muscles seem to be in rigor, and every morning I wake up with a terrible headache. Most of the headache seems to be from an aggravation of the C1 vertebra – but there is also a recurrent headache happening in the area of my head around the prefrontal motor cortex, phrenologically speaking.

1 month after, some of the social confidence installed has vacated, yet I still seem somehow more confident.


I had hoped to include in this report a 12.5g dose, a high psychedelic experience. Yet I do not think that at the moment I am up to it and will maybe try it in a year or so. The only other information that I can offer is the following: a very close friend of mine, upon urging, tried 2.5g of the bark before bed. They had vivid confrontational dreams that seem to have sparked a 4-month journey of unburdening and uncovering of repressed feeling and memories, within semblance of normal psychological parameters. However, this experience was not “blind” as they were fully aware of the content of my experience before ingesting.

Galbulimima bark and leaf is currently available at one Australian Ethno vendor as an experimental compound.
To date no live plants are for sale in the marketplace.

10g of bark was ground up in a coffee grinder, the coffee grinder did me proud . the material was placed in a cup and equal amount of lemon juice was added followed by boiling water, this was left to cool down. it smells like a funny pine with nutmeg in it, i have a feeling its gonna taste like crap......

1:25pm
took my first sip, its not nice:S not as bad as peas though . drank half the glass. now im trying to cover the taste with anything i can find. the taste reminds me of somthing that is gonna come back up later. tastes like juiced calea but worse.

1:45pm
hmm effects maybe. i had a hard time getting rid of the taste so i got the most over powering taste i could think of, vegemite it worked.

1:55pm
drank the rest. yuck. slight effects but nothing great felt at this stage. my eyes feel duller.

2:05pm kinda trance like. Cant put a finger on what the effects are like though.

2:15pm well the effects are coming on now. i played a song i normally like listerning to when on drugs, it normally makes me shiver but this time that did not occur. my brain feels like its getting massaged inside my scalp. walking is interesting. i kinda feel devoid of emotion. hungrey also. i think the effects would go well with people on alcohol. i could dance on this aswell, music isnt a vibrent as on other drugs. looking at my media visualisations and they look to have more depth.

the effects seemed to peak at around 2:40pm. they were goin at 4pm and gone by 5pm leaving me really sleepy. not a headspace i liked being in, kinda stoned, drunk, feeling. i got some more bark left if somone else would like to try it pm me. thanks to thelma for the material

In 1957, the Australian dietician Lucy Hamilton (Mrs. J.
Reid) conducted an experiment at Okapa in the Eastern
Highlands of Papua New Guinea to observe the effects of
eating a substance called “agara” bark, identified as the
species Galbulimima belgraveana (F. Muell.) Sprague
(Hamilton 1960). The French ethnobotanist Jacques
Barrau was also present at Okapa to observe this experiment
(Barrau 195. A local man called Ogia volunteered
to do the bioassay. Seven or eight pieces of “agara” bark about
the “size of a penny” were chewed and swallowed. While
Ogia masticated the bark, he also smoked some tobacco,
chewed some ginger, and additionally ate the dried leaves of
a plant called “ereriba” (an unidentified Homalomena species).
Following consumption of all this, Ogia waited for the
effects, which began shortly thereafter:
[…He] began to tremble, as they say, “like a kuru meri.”
His arms and body trembled, but not his legs. After a
few minutes of this, he suddenly became quite violent.
He swept all the things off the table and would have done
quite a bit of damage if I hadn’t had a policeman standing
by to detain him. I was very thankful for this forethought
as I was the only European on the station at the
time… He was put in handcuffs and let go outside. He
picked up a stick and chased several people with it. He
tried to take a bush knife from a workman in the garden.
The station women were warned to keep their children
inside. I am convinced that his behavior was not an act,
as from a pleasant mild little man, he had suddenly become
a crazed being. He neither spoke or smiled, and at
first did not appear to hear. The pupils of his eyes were
mere pinpoints. At the onset of violence the trembling
had ceased (Hamilton 1960).
Ogia’s destructive frenzy was followed by calmness, euphoria,
drowsiness, and finally a deep sleep that lasted for several
hours (Hamilton 1960). It has been suggested that, after
eating “agara” bark, one experiences visions while asleep
(Schultes & Hofmann 1979; Hamilton 1960). For this reason,
the bark has been called “dream man” among the Fore
people (Hamilton 1960), although several other substances
used by the Fore to produce visions are also known by this
term, including the “ereriba” that Ogia had eaten, as well as
“maraba” (Kaempferia galangal) (Hamilton 1960). However,
Ogia reported no visions related to his experience. He later
told Hamilton that the reason he did not experience any
visions was because he did not want to. It was also suggested
to Hamilton that in this experiment, Ogia had eaten “agara”
bark in the morning and not in the evening, which was
thought to be the proper time to eat “dream man.” The only
aftereffect reported by Ogia was a stomach ache (Hamilton
1960).

MY OWN EXPERIENCE
On September 21, 2003, at 7:15 pm, I bioassayed dried and
powdered “agara” bark. Below is the chronology of effects.
7:15 pm • Begin chewing 10 grams of “agara” bark
7:16 pm • Intensely bitter taste
7:20 pm • Strong alkaloidal after taste, similar to quinine
7:25 pm • Bark is swallowed
7:55 pm • First alert, becoming drowsy
7:57 pm • Dilated pupils
8:00 pm • Difficulty in concentration
8:05 pm • Increased pulse and heart rate
8:10 pm • Pleasant drowsiness, similar to 0.3 mg dose of
hyoscine (scopolamine) hydrobromide, but
without changes in perception
8:15 pm • Dizziness
8:20 pm • Lying down with eyes closed, no eidetic images
8:25 pm • Relaxation
8:30 pm • Hypnagogic state with no dreams
9:55 pm • Drowsiness wearing off
10:05 pm • Afterglow, euphoria
10:25 pm • Baseline, no aftereffects
The effects that I got from eating “agara” bark could be characterized
as a “plus two” on the “Degree of Intensity Scale”
(Shulgin et al. 1986), also known as the “Quantitative Scale
of Potency” (Shulgin & Shulgin 1991); that is, “There is an
unmistakable effect, and both the duration and the nature
of the effect can be stated.”

The use of Galbulimima belgraveana in Papua New Guinea has been reported in several popular books on psychoactive plants (BOCK in press; EMBODEN 1972; 1979; OTT 1993; 1996; RATSCH 1998; SCHULTES & HOFMANN 1979; 1980). The bark of Galbulimima belgraveana has been chewed with the leaves of an unidentified Homalomena sp. [Araceae] by the people of the Okapa region, Eastern Highlands (BARRAU 195. The chewing of Galbulimima belgraveana bark (agara) and Homalomena sp. leaves (ereriba) has been reported to induce visions and a dream-like state (BARRAU 1958; HAMILTON 1960). Physical effects of chewing agara and eririba include violent tremor and miosis (DE SMET 1983:296; 1985). The violent tremors last for about an hour followed by a sense of calmness, euphoria and then drowsiness (DE SMET 1983:296; 1985).

Galbulimima belgraveana has also been used without Homalomena sp. leaves for divination and to produce trance-like states and visions among the Gimi people of the Eastern Highlands (GLICK 1963; 1967). The bark and also the leaves of Galbulimima belgraveana have been used among other groups of the Eastern Highlands to make young men fierce (POWELL 1976:150; WEBB 1960).

The people of Aseki in the south of Morobe Province use waga, the bark of Galbulimima belgraveana, as an analgesic by chewing the bark, spitting it out into a bowl, mixing salt with it and then swallowing it again to relieve pain (WOODLEY 1991).

The Oksapmin of the West Sepik Province use alusa, shredded Galbulimima belgraveana bark mixed with wild ginger (Zingiber sp. [Zingiberaceae]), in the treatment of diseases caused by sorcery and witchcraft (eg. fever, skin conditions and poisoning) (SKINGLE 1970). The Bimin-Kiskusmin of the West Sepik Province have also used Galbulimima belgraveana in ritual (POOLE 1984).

The use of Galbulimima belgraveana in indigenous medicine has been reported in Papua New Guinea (GLICK 1963; 1967; WEBB 1960; LEWIS & ELVIN-LEWIS 1977). Among the Gimi of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea the bark of Galbulimima belgraveana, incorrectly identified as Himantandra belgraveana (GLICK 1967:45), is used in ethnomedicine to counteract malevolent power which is thought to be the cause of a variety of illnesses. When an illness is believed to be caused by sorcery, the Gimi seek the assistance of the aona bana ("man of power" who is regarded as having extraordinary natural healing abilities (GLICK 1967:45).

For the Gimi, the term aona has a variety of different meanings depending on the context of its use. For example, aona can mean "soul", "shadow", "vital force" or "familiar spirit" (GLICK 1967:45). Animals, plants and natural phenomena are also thought of as possessing an aona. When people dream of an animal, plant or other natural phenomena, it is the aona that is believed to have manifested itself. After initially experiencing an aona, the Gimi expect to contact these same aona in dreams throughout the rest of their lives.

There is a symbolic correspondence of human aona with natural aona. Spiritual and symbolic bonds are created between people's iuna (plural of aona) and those of animals, plants and other natural phenomena which allows the transmission of attributes and qualities of the one to the other (GLICK 1967:45). Iuna are the source of information about difficult situations or future events which are revealed while in a trance-like state. The Gimi aona bana have chewed the bark of Galbulimima belgraveana to induce this trance-like state during which information is received from iuna (GLICK 1967:45).