So swim and a buddy recently smoked changa for 4 hours straight which they later paid for the next morning with very sore throats (neither smoke MJ on any sort of regular basis). That was not surprising but swim noticed when cleaning his briar that the bottom stem etc was full of a dark brown oily tar that resembled old motor oil. Swim had never noticed this when using a normal spoon pipe. Is this normal? The changa was made from 1 part shredded caapi vine, half part blue lotus, and 1 part spice.

Swim thought that is was dirty liquid spice at first but it did not smell of it.

Although I have not smoked the Vine, Caapi leaf is very oily as is Chaliponga. My Caapi leaf/Chaliponga changa blend tars the bong a lot. I also use blue lotus and it's not that, blur lotus runs pretty clean.

I don't know how oily the vine is, but I'm guessing it's that.

Peppermint, mullein, and lavender are all very soothing herbs to add to a blend.

I too get that oily stuff in by bong stem. I do believe its from the caapi/chali mix.

smoking anything is not really good for your lungs/throat. Vaporizing is the way to go

I do have some mullein and peppermint coming soon in the mail.

The problem I see with vaporizing is that any vaporizer out there should in theory vaporize all the spice well before many of the other alkaloids such as the harmalas etc. because it has such a low boiling point. Maybe my logic is flawed but in my experience it seems to lessen the maoi effectiveness.

SWIM's changa always smoulders. Is this bad/incorrect? Seems to work just fine. No sore throat after ~4 hours of smoking. She only tried passiflora/spice/caapi copy (1/1/0.2) so far.

caapi copy is probably the reason for less harsh smoke. Caapi vine is similar to shredded wood...not ideal for smoking but it does work.

never a sore throat...
try leading a ceremony all night, smoking mapacho and blowing agua de florida on people... your tounge and throat are raw the next day!