I'm so happy to have found this community! This is my first post.

I brewed 50g powdered b. caapi bark alone (several extractions) and drank about 3/5 of it alone. It made me feel a little stoned and gave me heightened sensitivity to sounds. A week later, I brewed 25g dry chacruna leaves and combined it with the remainder.

A friend who participated in a traditional ceremony in Brazil said they had multiple doses spaced by about 40 minutes, so I divided mine into three.

After the first, I felt some nausea, which passed, and then had some very nice effects: the room was glowing and the music felt very immediate. I was looking forward to the second and third doses, but from then on it was downhill. The other doses did nothing (except more nausea). I also had pretty bad diarrhea for the next few hours.

The obvious thing to try is increase the amounts. I'll use an entire 50g caapi and at least 50g chacruna (or even 75g?).

What about this dividing it into doses idea? Is it better to down it all at once?

Any other suggestions?

Hey xanthozylum,

welcome! And thanks for your first post!

I am not sure whether there really is a better or worse approach. As your friend indicated, 'topping-up' is quite common in ceremonial contexts (although I would be interested how this was handled in traditional, indigenous settings). I think the reasoning here is to give participants a chance for a 'smoother' and more controlled entry. And this is reasonable IMO, especially for less experienced users. And usually, the consecutive doses will have an effect (even though maybe slightly less so than when drinking everything at once due to some tolerance building up).

That said, Aya is a mystery. The same doses can be quite different in intensity on different occasions. And it can also be the case that doses don't do anything (even the initial ones) - you might just have encountered such an occasion.

I would suggest you simply experiment a bit more. If you feel that your first dose did not get you far enough, maybe increase it slightly the next time? Or have another try with consecutive doses and see whether your experience will be different.

As I mentioned, I do not think that there is a right or wrong approach. But for what its worth, I personally tend to not redose too much as I feel that taking a psychedelic initiates some kind of 'journey' or 'narrative'. And I tend to try to just let that journey unfold, as opposed to altering it via another dose. Now the exception here is when taking caapi/rue and potentiating this with (separate, vaped) dmt doses. I enjoy doing this as I feel it leaves the caapi 'journey' intact, while just lighting it up again a bit more.

It's different. I think 10 doses of 5g caapi has the same cumulative effect as one dose of 50g. It's just as hard to do, for different reasons.

Take your time, if you need to. There is no rush. I think there is some wisdom in being tentative. But there's also wisdom in going all in. It's just a different experience.

Thanks to both of you for the suggestions

I'm learning that "doing online research" is not sufficient, you need to "research" on yourself as well to find out what works. Looking forward to this journey!