Hi Nexus,

So my friend's neighbor's garden gnome recently performed his first Syrian Rue extract (after having failed extracting some very mediocre aya vine) and today he decided to trial the product.

He dosed 210mg and went to work purifying some mescaline from another project. He was seated for around twenty minutes and then rose to his feet to fetch an instrument for the work. Immediately he felt a strong sensation of imbalance and general disorientation. He had expected the experience to be more or less benign, and was really only expecting potential problems with nausea and/or diarrhoea. The feeling he was experiencing twenty minutes in definitely changed his mind...

Within another 15 minutes walking had become significantly different, and was somewhat forced to retire to the sofa and watch some tv for distraction. Any time spent in a position other than laying down caused dizzyness, vertigo and a sharp increase in nausea.

By the second hour the experience strengthened again considerably. His nausea had increased, as had his disorientation. He decided he best make his way to the bathroom and induce vomiting, so as to try and help the nausea. The ten metre walk was very difficulty, and the motion caused him to vomit upon reaching the toilet. He emptied his stomach and then continued to painfully dry-reach for several minutes. He then noticed that he had broken into a thick cold-sweat, and was experiencing slight trembling through his arms.

He then retired (with CONSIDERABLE effort) to his bed, where he lay awake either watching television or resting in silence for the next four hours. He began to feel better once on his back, but was left with an almost complete inability to move. Another interesting effect was that he had difficulty determining the origin of sounds - for example sounds from the tv were often mistaken for events occuring from the opposite direction.

Six hours after dosing (present time whilst writing this post) his nausea has all but gone and feels perfectly lucid. Whilst seated his vision is a little blurry and there is still a feeling of slight dis-ease in his head. Upon standing he still has significant trouble remaining on his feet, and even the smallest distances are difficult to navigate.

This individual has significant prior experience consuming ayahuasca, and as such did not predict any problems with this experience (except the general nausea). However, now he is very glad he trialed the extract before choosing to combine it with spice for a pharmahausca trip - if he had the experience would no doubt have been extremely unpleasant.


I suppose the obvious conclusion is that he has a high sensitivity towards harmalas (despite not necessarily having determined this through prior ayahuasca consumption). The question now is what will be an appropriate dosage for combining with spice?... Obviously he wants to ensure MAOI inhibition, but he definitely does not want to repeat a similar experience to this one.

He was thinking that perhaps another trial with 100mg would be a good idea, despite the fact that people seem to generally require at least 150mg.

Can anyone share any similar experiences, or thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks a lot!!

peace..

Hmm, if you took 200mg of harmaline i'd expect this, but i'd not expect it for 200mg harmine. It may just be the ratio of alkaloids involved. You may not get the same negative effects from the same amount of caapi sourced alkaloids. Try halving the dose and see how well that works?
Results will always vary.

Congratulations on your first rue extract being a potent success!

Your seeds might be high in harmaline, which is twice as potent as the harmine you are familiar with from caapi. There can be quite a bit of variation, as much as 2:1 to 1:2. If it is mostly harmaline, you might not need as much as 150 mg. I personally think that 150 mg is a starting point for the typical skinny person, because I take much more than that. With pure harmaline, I usually take 200mg, but with harmine I take 400 mg. I can smoke harmine all day, but harmaline gives me the "body wave shocks" after just a few puffs.

harmalas can be a bit of a wildcard ime... and I have eaten many gs of harmalas. From the same batch of extract 140 mgs can consume me with visions and a full blown trip while 250 mgs sometimes is very tame and 350 along with spice is perfectly pleasant. I don't know what causes the differences but it probably has to do with your current levels of food in the gut, hydration, recent diet, endogenous neurotransmitters, etc.

Thanks for the reply, very good info! This definitely sheds some potential light on things.

Seven hours after consumption and my friend is still having significant difficulty standing. The idea of getting up and taking a piss seems like quite a difficult mission.

He is definitely not keen to repeat this experience. I think he will attempt 100mg at a later date.

He was considering a moderate mescaline experience tomorrow. Do you think he should wait a few days given his current discomfort, or do you think 20hr is enough time for the harmalas to have passed through his system?

cheers

Interesting...

One important factor I had forgotten to mention is that my friend dosed at lunchtime and hadn't eaten since dinner the night before. He foolishly thought he may still be able to eat a late lunch, the way he feels he will be lucky to eat any dinner :S

I am curious as to WHY people chose to extract the rue like this?
Regardless of combo, I always just boil down 2-3g raw rue seeds as this is enough for total mao-i.

For the sake of experimenting I've tried 15g raw seeds, something I strongly advice against... Very psychedelic without anything else, also terribly painful in everyway possible.

However, why not sandwich 2-3g seeds instead of trying to isolate the alkaloids like this? Considering how dangerous harmalas can be.

What?

Also there are plenty of reasons to extract harmalas, like weighing out a precise amount to put into your changa, less nausea, separating out harmaline from harmine, etc.

uhhh..do more reasearch. How is it that you assume harmalas are so dangerous? There is no evidence to support that.

To the OP..I am wondering why you chose to watch TV etc? Seems like a waste to me..you most likely could have shut off all the lights and lay in silence or put on some mellow music and lay in bed and have a benificial visionary experience. All the physical effects you mention are very normal of harmalas at psychedelic doses, and you get used to it as well. Watching TV etc will just distract from that part of the experience though and you can totally miss that that is even possible unless you go lay down in the dark somewhere comfortable and close your eyes.

This does not sound like an overdose at all..not by a long shot man. If you really take too much harmalas you will be puking for a good while and still have tracers the next morning alot of the time. What you described is just an adverage harmala experience IMO. If you did that weekly or something your body would get accustomed to the physical effects and they stop being much of a problem, while you learn to go deeper into the visions.

I recomend you exploring at this dose with harmalas alone..it is worth it and if you can then add the DMT to that sort of harmala dosing it really opens you up to a whole new level you just dont reach if you take the bare minimum ammount of harmalas for potentiation.

Hey if it works for you that's great, but a lot of people like to be a bit more certain of what and how much they are consuming.

This extract was obtained from 900g of Syrian Rue seeds and yielded only 2.3g of semi-pure product, which is a VERY low yield. Assuming a very significant amount of loss did not occur in the extraction, it would have required 100g of seeds for a 210mg dose of harmalas. Your suggested dosage of 2-3g of seeds would have proved COMPLETELY inactive, as likely would have a 15g dose. For this reason people choose to perform extractions rather than consume raw materials.

I really do respect this opinion (and in most similar circumstances I would likely agree), but the OP is confident that there was little to be gained from this experience other than a lesson of caution.

A significant portion of the experience was in fact spent lying down in a darkened room without television, and still it was highly evident that little was to be gained from the experience. There was no strong impression of being in a psychedelic headspace, nor any kind of pleasurable nor insightful visionary experience. The experience could best be described as being semi-delirious with fever, coupled with immobility and violent purging.

The user is well accustomed to 'the purge' and has spent much time stumbling through the jungle to violently vomit or empty his bowel, and was always able to focus on the potential benefits of the experience. This experience however, really did seem to simply be an unpleasant physical reaction that merely had to run its course, hence the desire for distraction and placation rather than introspection. It is not something he wishes to repeat.

Perhaps I've still failed to convince you :S Either way, thank you for your input.

There is no way that you got total yield or that you could consume 15g of those seeds without going much much MUCH farther than you did. I just dont believe it. I have worked with rue alot lately and done lots of extractions..2-3g is quite normal for a dose of seeds. I got 9g of harmalas from myh last extraction on 200g of seeds and that was seeds from the persian market here not even an entheo vendor. There is no way IMO that your seeds alk content are as low as your yields suggest. Everything I have heard, read and experienced with harmel seeds would suggest that you just did not pull all the alkaloids. I have done the same thing when I first extracted rue, and later when I refined parts of my tek with the same seeds got much much more out of them.

Some people do have more trouble getting the visionary effects from harmalas alone. There is also some sort of reverse tolerance as well. I remember when I first started to drink ayahuasca. I drank without admixture at first and I got really sick the first time with only 20g of caapi. I was dizzy and could not coordinate my movements very well and felt like puking for about 2 hours. I just lay there in bed. I did have dreamy visions though. I drank weekly and after a while I got over the side effects(or tolerant to them) and at the same time became more sensitive to the visionary and healing effects. Now I can drink 100g of caai with admixture and not even get as sick usually as I did at first, and when I vomit even then I dont feel bad I just need to purge.

I drank ayahuasca weekly for more than a year before having rue though, other than years back before ayahuasca I had rue once and did get very sick..so maybe that is why I dont feel like rue is more toxic than caapi or anything really..maybe I was already acustomed to the harmalas by the point I started to work with rue. I work with rue and caapi alot and often together in ayahuasca brews and both are very visionary and theraputic for me even when I dont use any admixture.

It is sort of weird how harmalas work..they are NMDA antagonists for one, so you have to sort of learn how to make use of the dissociative state in order to have the visions. Try 100mg next time and you might find that the nausea is alot less and you can drive yourself into a medative state then.

Yeh I guess I can't argue that, it was obviously quite a poor yield. I'm just intrigued as to what happened, whether the extraction from the raw material was significantly incomplete, or if it was all lost during the workup

Yes, this is what he intends to do. Your work and experience with harmalas is quite interesting. At this point in time his primary interest however is simply determining (or accustomising to) a dosage which will be sufficient for MAOI inhibition, for the purpose of consumption with spice.

Perhaps he could consider a regular low dosage as a means of exposing his body to harmalas. Perhaps 50mg once a week or something similar.

Cheers.