Call me crazy, but I don’t like vomit and I don’t like to vomit.

Before last night, the last time I vomited was about 20 years ago – I drank too much cheap wine at a Christmas party and became violently ill. Only 4 glasses of wine! (I don’t think my liver processes alcohol very well, which is fine with me – I only have a beer with a meal once a week or so.)

Yesterday, I was exchanging posts in another thread about pharma/aya and nausea, and a couple of people said they never have nausea at all with pharma! I find this astounding, since I have intense nausea almost every time. I’ve been “working” with pharma for almost a year now, trying different dose sizes, different time intervals, Pepto Bismol, fresh ginger – nothing seems to work. I’m beginning to wonder if my body just doesn’t process oral harmalas very well – they almost always seem toxic.

If I keep the harmala dose low (150mg or less), I won’t get nausea, but I also won’t get adequate inhibition for effects. If I raise it to what seems to be my personal “inhibition dose” of 225-250mg, I often get nausea so severe that it becomes the focus of the experience. Very frustrating!

So anyhow, as I said I hadn’t vomited since before some of you were even born, but I’ve often read that purging during a pharma/aya session can relieve or even eliminate the nausea. So I decided to try again, and vowed that I would purge if the urge was there. I took 250mg of rue extracted alkaloids in two doses, followed by 60mg of DMT. I spread the doses out in the hope that there would be less nausea. Ha!

After about 1.5 hours, I noticed some light effects. No visuals though. And then it began. Mild nausea. And over the course of the next 2 hours, the intensity grew – the nausea intensity, not the trip intensity. So I decided to visit my old porcelain friend, and almost immediately, I violently purged. Some people say that under the influence of DMT, their vomit looks like “rainbows” or some other psychedelic material. Since my trip seemed very light, my vomit just looked like vomit: my semi-digested meal from 6 hours earlier. Yuck. After 7 or so good heaves, it was over. I said out loud to myself, “That was awful!” It was the Christmas party all over again: Head in the toilet, feeling very ill, vomiting, and asking why I do this to myself.

I returned to my bed, anticipating a ramping-up of the experience, since that’s what many people say happens after a purge. No ramping-up for me. A few vague CEVs and little else. But at least the nausea was gone! I rested, and then 30-45 minutes later… The nausea is back! Not again! Yes – again. I purged again, this time not as much as the first, I said out loud to myself again, “That was awful!” and went back to bed.

Again, the nausea subsided, and again, after about 30 minutes it returned, although nowhere near the intensity of the previous two times. I’d had enough. “I’m not going through that again”, I said to myself, and decided to ride it out. Over the next few hours, the nausea slowly subsided, as did the very minor pharma effects. I slept lightly for maybe 3 or 4 hours, and woke up this morning feeling queasy. That’s another thing that seems different for me: Other people talk about the morning after a pharma session and say they feel refreshed, alive, re-energized and filled with a warm glow. You know how I felt? I felt like I had been up half the night sick and vomiting. That’s how I felt.

No visuals to speak of. No insights. No personal revelations or self-discoveries.

Just nausea and vomit.

^ what he said..

There is no way around it. Some people think pharma makes the nausea go away..Ive never found pure alkaloids to eliminate the nausea though..even sublingual-nausea when enough is taken.

The larger doses of harmalas are definatily more theraputic in the end I feel, and you do become acustomed to the nausea and everything the more you work with it. You will learn to both breath through the nausea and get up and wlak around etc while in that state, and the nausea seems to either get less harsh or you just get used to it so that it is not so bad.

I think in certain amazonian tribes they have some word for the visionary peak of ayahuasca that actaully translates to "sickness" or "nausea".

The trick is to have a dark room and a bed and not to move. When you get that nausea it also usually means(for me anyway) that the harmala visionary dreams are going to start to happen, but you have to be laying down very still in bed..darkness is preferred..the more you let the body go and enter into the dreams the less you are aware of the sickness.

I think the people that say they never have any nausea are taking the least ammount of harmalas necessary and then just taking more DMT..like Dagger said even 40mg I could probly get away with but the experience is lacking something if I make the DMT the main event..so I usually want more harmalas.

With caapi, I am not sure how much I take becasue I dont extract caapi.. anywhere from 50-100g..often I will settle at like 80g..but I could get away with like 25-35g really to activate DMT..

If you really just want an oral DMT experience without having to go through the harmala side effects sometimes, you might like psilocybe mushrooms..

fractal you take harmalas every day correct? Do you feel nausea from them every day? I've never felt nausea from pure alkaloids, but i've limited my intake to 150mgs...so I haven't really gone big like you guy's have.

I aree with gibran. If the nausea lasts the whole time the experience is completely wasted. I don't personally feel there is anything to gain from being violently ill for 4 hours while tripping balls. In fact it sounds like a recipe for a horrible trip to me.

Tonight will be my first aya experience. I'm aiming fro 3g MHRM and 50g caapi. If I have an experience like gibran it is safe to say I will stick to mushrooms only for oral experiences afterwards and just use changa for dmt. I have a pretty tough stomach though so I'm hoping it's not to much of an issue...I alo have a pretty solid vegetarian diet that should help I think.

I dissolve the harmalas in a few drops of vinegar, then dilute with water and drink. I do the same thing with the DMT maybe 30 minutes later.

40mg of harmine? Really? Anything below about 150mg of harmalas doesn’t produce any nausea at all for me, but with lower doses of DMT (let’s say less than 100mg) I don’t think I’d get any effects.

Once I tried 175mg caapi alkaloids and 175mg DMT. The onset was delayed – I wasn’t feeling anything after 2.5 hours, so I went to bed. By the 3 hour mark, it started. (With minimal nausea if I remember.)

no no..I take like 40mg daily probly..so no nausea..though I have sort of trained my body to respond to low doses of harmalas and still fall into a bit of a trance like state..I take them at night before sleep with melatonin.

It takes at least 50g for me to feel any nausea with caapi..usually more like 80..unless I drink the sediments..I brewed a kilo a few weeks ago, and drank 50g worth of it with all the sediments shaken up into it with some mimosa and chali
and yeah, I got sick that night.

There's even less to gain from being violently ill for 4+ hours and not tripping at all, as I learned last night.

Despite it seeming like there is nothing to gain from sickness
on another level beyond conscious focus these medicines are still working on our bodies
and if you haven't purged in 20 years
maybe this is just the beginning of a crack in the flood gates
of another level of yourself.

also gibran..are you feeling anything from the harmalas when you take the DMT? I always wait until I am being hit by the caapi to drink the mimosa or chaliponga now because otherwise the DMT does not work so well and I need more of it..harmalas hit me fast though so I just take the DMT like 20 minutes after the harmalas. For some people the harmalas might take longer to work though, especially if you just ate a big meal or something.

I think some peoples bodies just react differently to these compounds.

I read reports of people saying you can't take to many harmalas or people drinking 120 grams and being fine. Then we get stories like gibrans.

It's the same with mushrooms. I get mild discomfort, but the body load is so heavy for my wife that she simply can't enjoy the experience. I suspect there is an element of resigning yourself to the experience that needs to happen, but beyond that I think some people's bodies just don't like these sorts of compounds.

Now I'd be very curious to see a detailed scientific study correlating diet and psychedelic nausea...of course that is going to happen!

There definately is a psychological dimension to it. When i take harmala's, at first i get the feeling that there's something inside of my body that doesn't belong there, something the body could easily eject to get rid of that feeling...and a feeling of nausea.

But somehow i always manage to give my body a signal that everything is fine, and it just passes.

I don't know how i do that, but it's a psychological 'trick'. And once you get it, taking harmala's will never lead to vomiting anymore.

It's like there is a button in your head and you just have to find that button.

I can't tell you where that button is. With buttons in the head it doesn't work like with café's and bookstore's, that you just say:"two blocks north and three blocks east and there it is".

But i think that other people who hardly ever get sick from harmala's, like fractal enchantment and miss_manic minx will agree with me that it's something you can 'learn', though the word learning may seem a little odd in this context.

A very helpful observation.


Yes – I always wait until I’m starting to feel the harmalas – usually 30 minutes.


No doubt there’s a psychological component – the reason I’ve chosen pharma over aya is because of my aversion to nausea and vomiting.

Regarding those who rarely get sick from harmalas – my guess is that frequency of consumption has a lot to do with it. I take pharma sporadically – maybe once every 4-6 weeks, so maybe my body is never “adjusting” to it. I also bet that diet plays a role – my diet isn’t unhealthy, but it’s more or less “traditional”.

Thanks for all the useful responses!

But there still doesn’t seem to be a consensus. Some say a harmala dose as low as 40mg is sufficient for MAO inhibition. Others suggest 400+ mg. And no one has mentioned DMT doses specifically. Balancing harmalas, nausea, DMT, and depth of visionary state has been very challenging for me!

Puzzling...

It could be related to tension:"i don't want to throw-up"/"this time it HAS to work" etc.

Enabling yourself to relax may be difficult once your relationship with oral DMT has become so problematic.

Having a second brew or some mushies may help because 1-if you vomit you can just immediately take the second brew or the shrooms and then you will be tripping eventually and 2-this very fact may help reduce any tension...release some pressure.

Ginger also definately helps in reducing nausea.

I think some mushrooms on hand will basically guarantee an experience, but it might be an extremely intense and drawn out experience if you take the mushrooms to kick in a weaker ayahuasca/pharma dose..

Your pharma situation is really unfortunate. On the one hand, you seem to have physical sensitivity to the substance, but for some reason you don't get psychedelic effects at normal doses. Indeed, harmalas will cause nausea at certain doses, whether pure extract, or taken as ayahuasca. I believe the reason for this has something to do with serotonin levels. Apparently, increasing serotonin causes nausea. I'm not sure the exact chemical reason, but the sensation of harmala nausea does not feel like stomach upset. It feels like brain nausea, or a full body nausea. It's chemical induced nausea. Or maybe the harmalas somehow make chemicals migrate to the stomach, causing nausea, in the same way that spinning in circles affects the inner ear and causes nausea. I don't know.

I've been experimenting more with plant teas lately, and realizing that while they do cause a bit more stomach nausea, the mind nausea is the same for plants and extract. And it seems that it's the harmalas that cause most or all of the nausea, not the dmt, as long as the dmt is completely salted. So, my only thought would be that maybe your dmt isn't completely salted? The only time I've thrown up on pharma was when I didn't let the spice sit long enough in acid. I suspected I had ingested some freebase and that was the culprit for the purge. You may want to consider making some dmt fumarate and letting it dry so you have some spicy salts ready for use.

I don’t think it’s tension. I go into the experience very calm without any expectations regarding nausea – I’ve had a few experiences where the nausea wasn’t too bad and a few where it subsided after a while, so I don’t assume that I’m going to feel sick every time.

I don’t have access to mushrooms, so that’s not really an option. (And if I did, why would I mix them with pharma? Wouldn’t they be better on their own?)

I've tried fresh ginger in the past - it helped a bit, but not much.

Have you tried the cold pressed distilled lemon oil? It's been mentioned in a few other threads...I recently found it to be useful with mushrooms...while my nausea usually isn't too bad, it removed just about all discomfort from the trip. Perhaps this would be worth you exploring for pharma/aya.

Haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds intriguing.

Both beta pinene from lemon oil and galanolactone from ginger are 5HT3 inhibitors, effectively diminishing nausea. How did you consume ginger, did you try tea, gibran? If so, thats not the way to go because galanolactone isnt water soluble, gotta eat the ginger. Maybe a combination of both lemon oil and ginger will help out a lot.

Good luck!

I tried fresh ginger without much success. Quite spicy though!
Maybe next time I'll try lemon oil AND fresh ginger.

Thanks.

Mr. Gibran, there is another way for you to get a pharma like experience, whilst eliminating most of the nausea. You could take the anal route. I think the anal route results in an increased efficacy of the harmalas, like sublingual, but the dmt might be a bit weaker this way. So, you may want to salt some of your harmalas and spice and try it that way. Maybe 50mg harmala followed by your usual 100mg spice dose. A dropper or enema bulb will work. I have tried this method with success with zero nausea. In fact, that's how I plan on taking a BIG chaliponga trip because I know the chali will make me throw up if drink lots of it.

oh yeah, if you mix ginger with yogurt, it takes away almost all the uncomfortable spiciness of it. You may not want to consume dairy with your ayahuasca though, with possible tyramine or whatever. Also, simply having water in your mouth will reduce the spiciness a lot.