I think it obviously depends on what do you expect?!!!?

Do you want more focus,clear mind?Do you want more activity in your brain?Do you want a so called "Psychedelic Meditation".

Your best bet is to start doing meditation as often as you can than try psychedelics, if you are more spiritually inclined.


But really you could just experiment with as much as you can, experiment with different altered states, experiment not abuse

Was going to mention binaural beats, isochronic tones, light and sound entrainment and the like, but I figured I have spoken enough about those subjects on other threads, and they are not drugs. OP specifically asked about drugs, so I didn't bring up the joys and meditative benefits that can be had by directly manipulating one's brainwaves...

I think I'm going to try harmalas first,
I've tried them before and I remember just being really relaxed.

I also want to try mescaline, and salvia, and then maybe low doses of oxycodone or codiene to see if they have any beneficial effects.
I'll just have to give everything a try and see what's best for me.

I actually find harmalas to be pretty stimulating...and quite long lasting at that.

100mg rue alkaloids and I can still feel some residual effects on the third day. Sleep is impacted for the first day. BUT I am typically much more sensitive than others with my dosing so your milage may vary.

Peace

One ice cold beer at the end of a hot sweaty day .

Damn right.

Ananda bosman has talked about this. Harmalas produce an alpha rythm in the brain, they bring the brainwaves to a coherant state of 8 hertz(which is also the schumann resonance)..so that all other waveforms in the body are sort of gathered into some kind of golden mean(according to bosman)..he claims this is a state of "coherance" and that when you add other plants to the mixture it also brings that wavelength into coherance and this is why caapi or rue can act as a translator..

He claims that after taking harmine you can have increased rem sleep for up to a few months and the brain produces more pinoline. It is some kind of like neuro feedback loop that takes place for a period of time after taking the harmine.

IME something like that does seem to go on.

Harmala´s do definately cause a shift in brainwave patterns, automatically causing a meditative state, synchronising the brain hemnispheres. Teanine (green tea) also does this, but without heavily affecting all kind of abilities like motorics. You can savely partake in traffic after having drunk green tea.
Iboga also has these effects on the brain, in a subtle way when microdosed and ofcourse in a much more extreme way when taken in larger amounts.

I find many hallucinogenic´s like LSD not very meditative. Some people claim that LSD has virtualy no effect on the left brain hemnisphere, so if that is true it is also not likely to cause the synchronisation of the brain hemnisphere´s that is typical for the meditative state.

This idea of ananda bosman has also come to my mind though: some hallucinogenic substances seem to dramatically increase feedback-loops in the brain, so you may expect this to cause some kind of brainwave interference. Especially when you´re in a dark place with little sensory stimuli, you may expect brainwaves to cause interference patterns with themselves. If this is indeed true, than you could maybe expect some sort of brainwave oscillation to take place, leading to indeed a higher level of brainwave coherence, just like oscillation contributes to the coherence of lightwaves in a LASER.

I think so as well Jamie. I don't believe the psychedelic state is as simple as a tryptamine binding to the 5HT2a receptor. Obviously that does happen, but to me it really feels like my brain get's set into some sort of resonance state.

I have been able to hold onto freebase visions for up to 30 minutes with meditation(20mgs). But I know for certain that if I had opened my eyes at anytime after the 10 minute mark the visions would likely be gone when I closed my eye's again. This alone tells me there is something more going on.

Great point Joedirt. With meditation you can actually extend an ayahuasca journey, not by minutes but by HOURS! Towards the end of my time with it, I was holding a full blown peak state for 14-18 hours, on a dose that would perhaps last 6 hours without meditation. I would drop out of silence for an hour, do some real life things that needed a mundane brain, then drop back into a full blown "I can't see my hand in front of my face but damn there's a frickin anaconda in the room" state for many more hours.

I feel that most of this psychedelia is not to do with the tryptamine/5HT action but actually has a lot to do with the 'crystal palace'/amrita; the psychedelics opening the channel for it to flow. Here's an excellent resource on this subject - Biology of Kundalini - The Crystal Palace and a quote from the article:




Likewise harmalas feel like they open the channel heavily. If alcohol is a social lubricant then harmalas are a meditative lubricant. And yes it's all about the resonance. Once you keep this soliton reverberating through your mind, it's easy to keep adding mind-momentum to it bit by bit in very much the same way a wheel needs a big push to start moving but can be kept going onwards for eons with lots of little pushes.


I'm way too sensitive right now to ever trip again but harmalas bring one straight back to those peak experiences. Once the channels are carved, the rivers flow on and on. Cultivate an awareness of this 'amrita' and psychedelics feel like a pair of old shoes.


Moments after taking kava, my mind will suddenly just clear out by itself. No active meditative effort required. Give it a go, thus far I find kava is the best for inducing silence while harmalas are excellent for going deep within to those mindblowing places. Valerian root and kava synergise pretty damn good as well, valerian is also a great tool. I have not yet tried the other herbs mentioned like wormwood or calea in any reasonable doses however so I can't really say kava/valerian is better or worse.

sedative/hypnotics, of course. duhh