Greetings from Algeria

I've been following this wonderful place for years just lurkin around reading and i feel it's about time i start contributing.

The Nexus has inspired me to initiate my own journey into world of psychedelics, starting with pachanoi bredgesii tea. Then i learned extracting. My first extraction was done on pachanoi bredgesii. It was a full spectrum extract using dichloromethane. Next i learned extracting harmala alkaloids and tried them alone. Then i tried mescaline with harmalas extract.
last night though was my first (phalaris ayhuasca analogue)!.

Never had experience with DMT before this. I've only had an acquaintance with its plasticy smell from a very tiny extract from acacia longifolia vaporised on a piece of foil. Smelled like new sneakers from the drying hexane..

Three days ago i harvested 630g of fresh phalaris blades. It's a mixture of approximately 60/40 of brachystachys and what i beleive is aquatica. The brachystachys is confirmed by seed morphology with the short infertile lemmaas, short fat panicles, and ruled out the possibility to be phalaris minor by the non existence of pink pigmentation at the new root tips as recommended by oram (more on him later). The smooth edges of the glumes (unlike the teethed edges on the glumes of phalaris minor). The seeds were also larger than minor.
I haven't confirmed the phalaris aquatica and I'm still undecided on that taxonomy it might turn out to be be truncata. I will attach pics of it at the end of the post.

The upper two thirds of the leaves were harvested using a scissor. The brachystachys was growing spontaneously in a field of cereals on a hill on soil heavy in clay (it clearly shows by the cracking of the soil when it dries up in summer, so messy and slimey when it rains you couldn't drive or walk if its wet: this is another property of clay soil because it has poor water permeability.

I wanted to increase my chances to succeed from my first bio-essay and that's why i decided to include other species than brachystachys. Thus i harvested from the suspected phalaris aquatica. The inflorescence is long and thin and the leaves are quiet thinner than the aquatica i saw in an agronomic research center that was confirmed to me by an agronomic engeneer. I'd highly appreciate it if someone is keen to help me identify it.

This suspected aquatica was growing on the side of a valley..sandy clay soil. Sheep has grazed it and was sending new fresh dark green shoots after some scant rain following a period of spring rain dearth. Some were heavily shaded by competing cardoon (wild variety of artichoke) landscape is heavily popularized with sulla; a very ancient plant in the fabacea kingdom very popular in north Africa and souther europe for its honey and for fixing nitrogen. It grows amongst the phalaris down the valley but not in the cereal fields. The soil at the bottom of the valley could be more concentrated in nitrogen and nutrients where the phalaris grows because of rain dissolving nutrients and carrying it down the valley streams. I'm just speculating here. This keeps me motivated while harvesting .

The total weight of the fresh harvest was 630g on my crappy kitchen scale. I washed the grass blades with tap water then strained. I added boiling tap water to the grass to avoid tryptamine losses due to chlorine. Then i added a spoon of vinegar and two pinches of citric acid. Boiled for a collective of probably 5 hours..with rests in between. Changed water just once then ditched the biomass in the garden to break down. Tea was concentrated to about 800ml. Simultaneously i was extracting Syrian rue. Salted it twice. Three 100mg gelatin capsules was filled with semi dry harmala HCl (my vinegar was inpure and it made my harmala extract hygroscopic and sticky. I didn't bother to clean it any further. I was kind of on a a hurry.

00:00 capsules ingested
00:55 clearly feeling the effects of the harmalas (i'd say is a perfect dosage. Its strong enough to cause minor nausea and some shaking. Slightly psychedelic in nature with minor CEV). soon as i perceived this i began drinking a total of one cup of the ~800ml about 5 mins between each sip being cautious (at this period i was worrying if i reach the dmt time wall of tolerance before i hit the active dosage but also worried i might overdose on some funky alkaloid of no known toxicity and with delayed effects.. no amount of reading has prepared me for that stressful moment

01:40 shaking has increased, there is some buzzing in my head and back. Its a body feel of being more conscious of my body and my form..its like the come up of something.. suddenly i get anxious and scared.. now i understand this as it wasa a strong come up! Curtain is moving slightly but on staring hard at it it stops. Then something kicked in very sudden that made me sit up very quick and afraid. I felt this kind of come up only on a large dose bredgesii cactus tea. I stopped drinking by this time and went to lay in bed underneath a blanket to help with the shaking. My breathing sounded like somone shaking cold. It took some effort to control this initially.

02:00: full on trip with an aphrodisiac effect. Beautiful unfamiliar CEV but very little Open eye visuals. Its mainly colour enhancement and auditory hallucinations from tv and my own movement. My mind drifted in ecstatic thoughts i just laid back and had all these thoughts and emotions washing me, very euphoric and intense. If became more and more enjoyable as the shaking and the intensity of the come up decreased. There was some scary thoughts here and there but controllable (i had bad trips on mescaline before this and it came handy in dealing with this) i managed to ride the wave and enjoy it.

03:00 feeling effects tapering off slightly ...few minutes later it completely comes to a halt something i never experienced on mescaline neither on harmalas alone...like back to baseline like i never drank anything. This took me
by sudden like (wait what??! Am sober) This goes for few minutes then the trip comes back again with more CEV and last another whole hour but its noticeably less intense. Some effects lasted till morning but they were minor and gradually tapering off. On getting off bed early and standing in the backyard i had a psychedelic head space listening to the singing birds and watching them fly around with slight organic fractals in the blue sky, this felt really nice.

The main theme of the trip was the land from which i harvested the grass communicating to me about its richness and history and tells me about myself as part of her. I wrote down what i experienced halfway through the trip screenshot it. I shall include the screenshot at the tail of this post.

There has been a clear ego boost effect during the trip ..its quiet reaffirming yet still spiritual. I could hear the mosques calling for prayer very early in the morning while it's still dark and the prayers visualize to me raising up in the air. The vocals were vosualized to me as brilliant colours raising up towards the sky and a visual of the whole city dancing in bright aurora lights of green blue and violet.. lots of auditory hallucinations.

Had some guilt and confusion about the sexual and religious nature of the experience. This was influenced by my islamic upbringing
The thrill and the excitement from realizing how active this grass can be at such a small dose (just one cup from an 800ml bottle) and the fact it was just "grass" added brightness to the the experience (humbled and thrilled). Hence feeling a tryptamine for the first time although not a classical tryptamine!

Hope someone will put this report in the thread (phalaris the way of the future) and hope i get upvoted to full membership so i can join the threads i'd like to join.

This grass is definitely the way of the future!
No toxicity felt at least not at this dosage. I've took some rhyzomes of each plant and transplanted them in my garden. I also gathered seeds from the brachystachys and i keep collecting more from the harvest sight every few days.
I also received a strain of aquatica from a tunisian friend who got it from an institute of agronomic research. The strain was in développement for 10 years the program started in 1968 ...bred from accessions from morroco, Algeria and tunisia. it's winter active.

Welcome to the nexus. That’s a long introduction and worth reading.

Not many people make their substances from phalaris. I love to hear from those who do. You are on the right track given the fact the grass spoke to you about your connection to the land.

Hope to hear more from you. Good luck with your journeys.

Thank you for your time reading this, i appreciate it. The grass is definitely worth its juice! While available acacias to me (acacia longifolia and acacia karoo) has failed me. the grass has delivered!

I was sceptical at beginning and confused by the conflicting literature. The taxonomy part also seemed challenging with all the new grass botanical terms and the wide morphological flexibility of each species.

Nothing helped me as much as going out to the countryside and trying to practice identification.

This morning i planned to drink a higher dose of the same brew. I proceeded with the same harmals dose in capsules but boy was i up for a surprise. The empty stomach has potentiated the harmals wayyyyy too much. I was feeling quiet sick so much nausea that i couldn't even bare think of drinking the grass tea. I thought to myself this is an apoortunity to trip on harmalas alone to compare the effects with and without the grass.

While there are some similarities attributed to the harmalas. The harmals alone lacked significantly in the aesthetic visuals and caused very little anxiety although the dose felt much stronger than the other night.. it was much less euphoric i'm not sure of this was due to the nausea or if its the absence of the grass component. Harmala alone was harsher teacher more upfront with what i need to see. Like this is where you messed up it's this bad and it's horrible and you deal with it! Dark imageries of falling off a cliff repeating, it lacked the love i git from the grass that affection and care. Harmala though by the end of the trip feels like i have just paid my dues to earn to feel great again. There is a peace at the end of the trip as body is recovering from the body load and nausea so is my spirit! Here is where i can attest to the scientific literature pointing out to harmalas antidepressive effects.

I need to invest in a very accurate scale for dosage and invest more time on purification of harmalas.

Another interesting thing about harmine/harmaline is their derivative alkaloids ability to kill certain strains of bacteria that are very difficult to treat by antibiotics.



https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28124613/

Writing this all down here is really helping me filtrate and organize my thoughts on both trips for better integration.

Pretty awesome man, im gonna be messing around with wild phalaris this year, hopefully manage to isolate some alks. Im taking a long break from experimentation, but I am on the phalaris for future boat. It prolly won't be long before we figure out how to rely upon it.

I think short of a clean profile strain (like AQ1, big medicine, and yugo red) a standard naphtha extractions will miss a lot of alkaloids in there. Unless you're working with brachystachys. I feel like brachystachys will be the future for grass. In my experience and from what i read it seems capable of holding as much spice as the acacias. Though while some strains are mainly DMT others are mainly 5-meo-dmt.

Great work! I was lost a little bit at the beginning, while I am much more interested in the plants, I have never gone wild foraging. I just planted Reed Canary (phalaris) a few weeks ago. My first attempt was overly successful, and my second attempt was not successful at all. I realize the common denominator is the heat. I had a direct heat supply on the first run, while the second I did not. My grow log is in the entheobotanical garden on this site, if you are interested, I make at least an update a week. So you can follow phalaris cultivation there in the coming months. I would be interested in learning more about taxonomy and identifying these plants as well if you had the time to start a post based on these principles. Thanks for sharing! Have a great weekend, and holiday, everyone!

I found the taxonomy part to be quiet plain and simple actually. I'd suggest you stop going by google image for clues and check out websites in the crop science domain at the weeds section. I will start a new post maybe in the phalaris identification thread but i'll add some quick identification tips for brachystachys here and how to distinguish it from phalaris minor and canariensis.

I just checked your log in the entheobotanical garden. An impressive collection you got there. Ahhh the Toad!
I can't see the reed canary grass though, or maybe it hasn't germinared yet? I'm not sure. Wish i were able to get my hands on some mimosa or some consistent strain acacia seeds. Our local laws prohibits this and i'd need a special permit to introduce any seeds that are not listed under this law.

So yeah i'm pretty much left with my good friend phalaris. Which might not turn to be a bad deal at all!

This is the nausea that is "la purga", which is puking up "spiritually" as well as literally.
It's an important part of the symbolic ritual (and also probably good to get out all the grass stuff once you've absorbed the spice).

I am trying to wonder why the dose the next time was felt to be much stronger and I wondered if - as it is not entirely 100% fb harmine/harmaline - you had an maoi effect on the 2nd dose for the other constituent alkaloids.

So I have tried to find something about elimination rates, and found this handy study which has some useful figures:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih...pmc/articles/PMC3629804/
but neglect to leave a model for harmaline elimination... doh.

I guess you had an experience more like only rue or caapi. Freebase harmaline usually brings on the nausea at 150-200mg mark. For pharmahuasca, 2:1 is most often I think.
Doses of ayahuasca have been measured as having 50-75mg DMT, which makes (the only way I have to equivocate this is experiential) 100mg harmaline, 50mg DMT - which is around 1mg/kg range for DMT dose. But I think ayahuasca is way more harmalas, tbh...

Sounds like you came out of it all positive, despite the visual imagery you describe, which is good to hear!


Other than the anti-bacterial/anti-fungal properties - harmalas also glow blue under a black-light.

Additionally, I have never had any luck with the grasses, but I did not think of this route...

I found brachystachys and aquaticas both to be euphoric, aquatica much more strikingly in some strains. Also as you describe, rue alone is more "real" and serious, and adding these grasses changes the experience to be a "psychedelic trip." I distinguiah between psychedelic and spiritual experiences. For me psychedelic experiences are the ones that are really fun, interesting, and can be healing in many ways, and spiritual experiences are the ones that really align one with the Truth/Essence, and are more deeply purifying, healing, transformative. Coming from a muslim background, I think you would understand when I say the plant has a nafs, and I have a hunch that drying might clear it out so that it provides a more pure, truthful experience. Not that there is anything wrong with conscious sexuality :-) Thanks for your reports.

Frankly i dont buy into the "la purga" thing about ayhuasca. I think it's an unnecessary challenge. Ayhuasca is notoriously known to contain larger amounts of harmalas and i think in such high concentrations it overtake the experience and cloud the mind. It's no fun laying down still just so you dont get nauseous. When it comes to harmalas for me it's completely a dose dependent thing. Low doses are euphoric and stimulant even aphrodisiac a little while heavy doses are disphoric. While they are psychedelic on their own the trip is like (meh). It it is a mood lifter and therapeutic for sure but I don't attribute that to what i experienced within the trip, rather its pharmacokinetics just like an antidepressant would.

As for the second harmalas dose feeling much stronger i attribute this to the empty stomach but Also now attribute this to using a cotton swab to compact the harmalas into the gel capsules. I think this increase in density resulted in a much higher dose. I literally could feel parts of the capsules dissolving and releasing it's content in my stomach. I felt their content leeching out burning spreading and gradually diluting. As they leech out i get very sick a sudden and want to throw up. Ughhh just thinking about it now makes me nauseous. Need a new scale!! There was a hissing sound something similar to when i dive deep into water or the sound from a high power line.

Just read the study you linked. It's good to see it conforms with the previous literature on the interraction between 5-meo and harmalas. This interraction still worries me a bit though (like it should).

Like you i also did try an extraction on phalaris tea and havent had a conclusive result. Part of that was due to my impatience near the end while evaporating the vinegar salted portion. The vinegar i used although white was very dirty with lots of unvolatile and hygroscopic organic matter. Instead of further purifying this brown sticky residue I attempted to smoke it. It caused a quick shortness of breath i couldn't inhale enough air (mini panick attack) soon i regained my breathing as normally. No effects whatsoever. Feeling frustrated I ditched the remaining gunk. I know it wasn't my proudest or most professional extraction

The same grass was definitely active orally with rue though! And quiet pleasant. I'd say it's as pleasant as mescaline extract but less controllable and more abrupt in it's effects..

I will definitely start another more methodical extraction with dichloromethane to pull most the alkaloids out and report back and use a larger biomass. It won't be untill autumn though. I collected a good deal of brachystachys seeds and i have plenty of space to grow it.

Sure it glows! Even under sunlight you can see that fluorescence. Its more pronounced on a white background. Looks like glow stick color.

I totally get what you mean with "nafs". I felt that the most with bredgesii cactus. Like i literally had this image of its spirit while am tripping and felt the urge to come out to the backyard and just look at the cactus cutting am growing. As odd as it may sound we communicated i was complimenting it and she liking it. She was conveying notions of hardiness and pereverance and beauty to me. The whole cutting is alternating in flashing bright colors like full of energy. Overall bredgesii extract gave the most pronounced communication with all living things around me from plants to animals.

While on phalaris i felt mostly connectedness to earth! Land..soil .. soil fertility. Millions of years of birth and decay joy and pain, its raw. ugly in its decay cycle and beautiful in its rebirth and blooming..

I still haven't had enough experience with phalaris to fully understand its message and theme but this is my first impression from first experience. Its fun for sure, sexually teasing, suggestive and playful. Ego reaffirming in a healing way like (this is what you deserve take it and enjoy it, you've been neglecting yourself to please others).

I felt every like 10 mins or so i get the feel of a scary thought developing and I quickly catch it early on visually speed right past it like something has pulled me away from it and shoots me far past it...
When the scary thoughts gets a little frightening i get a visual of a sun taking center of vision like (look over here focus with me) and the whole scene goes bright light and euphoric again.

It's truly a fascinating grass!

How come this still isn't a common source for Tryptamines already?!
It saddens me how gramine has been blown out of proportion and low yield and tyramine has discouraged many from exploring these grasses.
Phalaris brachystachys actually has never been reported to contain hordenine or tyramine and it often yields pretty okay too!

Imagine how many lurkers who live in a semi arid location where mushrooms doesn't grow, active acacias are non existent and unable to import the botanical sources. Then when they get a new glimpse of hope with phalaris they're quickly held back by gramine and low yeilds ...and back to the drawing board. The frustration...

I thought one of nexus goals is to help spread access to the molecule to further regions of the globe. Phalaris is the answer for that! And over emphasizing gramine is ruining it already. Internet have such a way of blowing things out of proportion

I see that most of the experimenting on phalaris posted here comes from members who live in the northern regions (cold climates) like in the US , Canada, uk where phalaris arudinacea is the most tested grass and often reported to have very low yeilds. I think this ruins it for the rest of phalaris species in other regions of the world. Many members and lurkers will read the discouraging phalaris arudinacea reports and jump to the early conclusion that phalaris just isn't worth it. I didn't even have to try several times to succeed with phalaris brachystachys.
Even when you open the wiki page for phalaris you will see very little encouraging information.

I emphasize again that i had no toxic effects whatsoever from the phalaris brachystachys. It was just intense and euphoric. To this day brachystachys hasn't been reported to contain neither tyramine or hordenine or beta-carbolines. It grows abundantly even in semi arid environments (where am from) as weed in cereal crops. This is almost too good to be true. This grass keeps spreading to newer regions out of its normal environment introduced as contamination in cereal grains when sowing. It has adapted to low rainfall and hotter climates very well actually. I will add a link to the source of this information. You cant say the same for phalaris aquatica, truncata, arudinacea.

So let's sum it all up:
Phalaris brachystachys most often yeilds decently, hasn't been reported to contain hordenine or tyramine or any beta-carbolines. Grows even in semi arid environments. A very common monoculture weed in cereal crops. What more can one wish for?!
Although it may still contain gramine .. gramine is only toxic to sheep and cattle in very high doses. 5-meo-dmt and tyramine is actually far more toxic to stock than gramine..and gramine was once used as a supplement for humans! It can't be that bad!

shulgin used to synthesise new exotic psychoactive substances and try them on himself many many times! He just started with very low doses and upped the dose incrementally. Hamilton morris did also emphasize on this method he even discussed his intentions to bioassay strichnine (a rat poison) that once was used on humans (i think as a potential suplement or medication) the key is the dosage! The real danger isn't so much in the substance as much as it's in the dose. We consume toxic substances on daily bases and they dont harm us because of low dosage.

If none of this puts your mind at ease about gramine you can still easily remove it by very simple dry tek using calcium carbonate and isopropyl alcohol. Evaporate the alcohol, and extract again with naphtha. There is plenty of details on this matter on the nexus.

Hey I'm interested to know if you do the same tests on the Acacias as you did the Phalaris??
Was it bark or roots or leaves/phyllodes?
Were the trees woody and flowering??
Any substantial rains around the time of harvest??


Longifolia has Phyllodes and has many known subspecies(some with occasional DMT-content i.e. Sophorae), and Karroo has non-phyllode leaves and has a few subspecies growing in Africa and cultivated other parts of the world.
I've been interested in using more of the Phalaris techniques on Acacia foliage since a lot of the more common Acacias naturalized away from Australia + Africa have given me undesirable amounts of plant fats(Longifolia,Melanoxylon,Cyclops,Saligna,Retinodes), tannins(Xanthophloea, Seyal), and sometimes foamy substance(redolens). The Phalaris showed me that not every plant needs to be completely dissected for just 1 alkaloid as the plant has many components to offer, but it is safest to extract and analyze substances prior to ingestion of under-researched plant parts. Acacias may be active as a brew but sometimes an extract will bare no substantial alkaloids in my experience.



Phalaris has demonstrated great healing effects from extracts and brews in my experiences.

Thanks for any updates on your Phalaris quest

Hi
I used phyllodes in the case of acacia longifolia its an old mature tree the ornamental kind. I didn't try making a tea out of the phyllodes with harmala. I just dried the leaves in an improvised dehydrator made from an old yogurt fermentor machine. The dried phyllodes were crushed and soaked in vinegar for a day in a bottle then it was simmered for few hours.. defatted with hexane. The hexane portion when evaporated smelled so tasty just like some really good perfume and left something that looked like beeswax. The acid solution was based with lye.. while still hot extracted with 5 portions of hexane around 40ml each.. let to evaporate for rest of the day till it was milky white. Blowing air over the remaining hexane produced white cloud on the surface. The hexane smelled strongly of new sneakers..

This made me get so excited. So I took the bottle to the fridge for crystallization.

Unfortunately all I saw few hours later was a White blob at the bottom super white. Took it out and it liquified to transparent liquid.. evapped the rest of the hexane and combined with that blob and left it to see of it will solidify and it did...

Was left with something like 30mg of light Brown waxy stuff.
I placed this on a piece of aluminium foil that was preheated to remove any undesirable volatiles.

Heated this price of foil with a lighter underneath from a distance till it melted and started vaporazing...all the time inhaling the smoke ..

It tasted bitter in my mouth not too bitter. Moments later felt some euphoria and slight closed eye visuals but very weak. I felt very relaxed and Inna dreamy state. And that was it.

Acacia Karoo didn't yield anything ..the defatting stage was so messy it caused some very bad emulsions with hexane. So I based it and the emulsion was gone.. the hexane didn't contain anything upon evaping it.

Roots and leaves were used separately.

I tried extracting from the same longifolia again while it's flowering and it had zero alkaloids.