Other Botanicals.

[Guest]

don't get me wrong namkha, the dried goo will 'work' perfectly if you don't mind smoking chlorophyll. i find that dmt itself has a nasty plastic taste, which is bad enough without the extra 'freshly mowed lawn' taste along with it, dmt is not aromatic like thc. you'll want to do your best to make the hit as pleasant as possible because you are taking that taste with you into the trip and it often makes the subjective difference.

i've never seen this goo dry to a crystally resin, it's entirely possible that the alkaloids will form a carbonate salt with atmospheric carbon or something, but i'm pretty sure they will stay in freebase form (not water-soluble). the purpose of the acid in the process is to convert to the alkaloids to a stable, water-soluble salt form, hence the crystals. the best acid to use is hcl because the resulting dmt hydrochloride salt is marginally more potent than say, dmt citrate (citric acid). if you don't want to use hcl, white vinegar (water+acetic acid) is a good substitute because like hcl it's volatile and the excess will evaporate from the final product, unlike citric acid. acetic vinegar gives you dmt acetate.

if you don't want to bother with all that, then by all means smoke the raw goo. at least try a simple extraction, it's well worth it. bear in mind that phalaris also produces some 5-meo-dmt which is more potent than dmt, that's why the goo works. if you're using another plant as source material, forget it, you'll have to do an extraction.

the reason i wont do ayahuasca is because it contains an maoi (monoamine oxidase inhibitor) which is not something i'm interested in. i'd rather reserve dmt for smoking, and for longer trips there's always san pedro and shrooms.

 

[Guest]

I can't argue with any of that. But what is it that you don't like about MAOIs? I appreciate they have their risks, and all the precautions are a pain etc.

Had a vial of Harmine HCl once, and smoked a bit straight, only experience of an MAOI itself. Horrible taste, but it had a pretty pleasant effect. Also took some kind to potentiate some alpha methyl tryptamine ... obscure as fuck

Point being - yes, harmines etc. are an integral part of the ayahuascasa experience, but I don't think there is anything negative about them, they contribute a lot of the "force" of the brew, the bodyload, some of the positivity, and a certain narcotic effect too - and they are integral in its character and the way it works -

one thing I would say is that in my experience of ayahuasca, it has a didactic intensity that I don't think could be surpassed, and it is totally direct, unrelenting ontic force as it were

that is not to say that I think ayahuasca is a substitute for common sense, or for being mindful in the mundane day to day

I didn't see anything in it to do with rituals etc. though Santo Daime seem alright

Namkha

 

[Guest]

very good points, nothing i can argue with either.
i have neither time nor inclination to actually grow the necessary syrian rue, and admittedly, it's also out of ignorance that i don't trust maoi's.
the way i see it, i can either inhibit the metabolism of every monoamine naturally present in my body (as well as the ingested dmt), or i can simply take 4-ho-dmt in the first place.

like you said there are risks and body load involved, and when i say things like "medicine" and "journey", it's in jest - i'm not a believer in tradition, or some kind of ancient, tribal, medicinal wisdom, 'obscure to modern science' twaddle, i just think it's a dodgy practice that's all.

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

one thing to be kept in mind regarding Yage/Ayahuasca, is that preparations of it are a varied as those preparing the brew. the age of the plants used, the place they grew, the ratio of gastric acid inhibitors to dmt, other ingridients added, brew time, etc... all have a very strong influence on the final brew. most likely, all recipes of it that are public domain are incomplete versions of the traditional brews, completed through trial and error but not completed to their original forms, these recipes are well guarded and no anthropologist (not even McKenna) was able to get one from anyone in the amazon. this still remains true even if we are able to make brews that are "psychedelically" active.
peace.

edit: another thing is that not all of the brazilian ayahuasquera churches serve the same brew. in Colombia, some taitas ('shamans') have started to take their own brews into the cities, making massive ingestion ceremonies with the ' little brothers ', or city modern people. they don't teach people the preparation btw.

 

[Guest]

Hey PVR -I'm not aware of Amazonian shamanic traditions (which are broad and varied no doubt) having any alternative to the Banisteriopsis vine as the basic ingredient in Ayahuasca (or whichever of its many names you care to use)

As far as I am aware, Banisteriopsis is not just central to the brew, but central to the myths, concepts and practises around the brew - iconographically, medicinally, metaphysically etc.

To the best of my knoweldge, the variations arrive in what is then added secondarily: e.g. Justicia pectoralis (DMT cont., , also snuffed); often various Solanaceous plants such as Brugmanisia species, but the principle of the basic vine and then it's admixtures remains the same across the Amazon, I think... I'm no expert, but this is the impression I have from the reading I have done (Schultes, Shanon, Narby etc.)

SatGhost, I hear what you are saying with psilocybin - I would happily stick with Shrooms for the rest of my life; though I also can't deny that Ayahuasca has a certain awesome force of its own, Shrooms are closest to my heart, without a shade of a doubt - laughter, sex and insight, pretty fundamental I reckon

Namkha

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

Namkha, hello, you are partly right, sure, the vine we all know is the main ingridient, but the way it is used is very varied, from quantity added to ratios of other plans, ammount of water, brewing time, all these affect the final product. it is well known that there are different brews made for different occasions,differing intensities etc... for example, the taitas in Colombia give a few drops of a special Yage prep. to new born human babies, etc...; also, in Venezuela, Yopo is DMT active, these are seeds that one person shoots into another person´s nasal cavities. There´s yet one more Yopo preparation, which becomes a dust, more ingridients are added, and medicine men use it to be able to SEE the diseases and to give them materiality and extract them from the patient in real time... but this is a whole diff. subject.
peace!

 

[zamalito]

First off I wanted to clarify on the Khat (catha edulis). The main ingredient is cathinone (beta keto amphetamine), not to be confused with methcathinone (cat a chemical drug). As the leaves dry (powdered form) the chemical turns to the ephedrine like cathine which is closer to sudafed like you said since all primary amines with a ketone group in the beta position are unstable and must be turned into secondary amines to be stable (methcathinone).

As usual paz is correct. Ayahuasca forms vary greatly from just being ayahuasca (which varies much in chemical ratios) to haveing various quantities of dmt and or 5meo dmt.

 

[zamalito]

Also somalians and ethipians consider khat worthless (and it is) unless it is within 24 hrs off of the plant due to the fragile nature of it's alkaloid.

Also the whole nature of ayahuasca is forming two or more plants that lack oral activity on their own. Schultes mentions this in great detail and I do not see how you could've read schultes and not learned this.

 

[Guest]

Hiya - easy now etc.!

Zamalito, at the risk of sounding like a prat, I do have a copy of Schultes' Plants of the Gods here, and there is nothing to the effect that "the whole nature of ayahuasca is forming two or more plants that lack oral activity on their own." (the only discussion I have read to that effect is Shulgin's in Tikhal)

If you have P of the G then there is no real need for me to quote it back to you, but to say that the defining ingredients for brews of the "Ayahuasca" type (originally meaning, after all "Vine of the Soul" in Ketchua, sharing in that language the same name as the B. vine etc.) are, as Paz said, vines of the Banisteriopsis genus, esp. B. caapi, and B. inebrians, but also on occasion other large forest vines/lianas from the same botanical family

As the paragraph subsequent in Schultes then begins: "Many plants of diverse families are often added to the basic drink..."

I would seem also that the names given to the brew, such as "Ayahuasca" can be the same as that for the B. vine, as with the Kechua, or refer to effects specifically produced by the vine eg to the vomiting effects ("Yaje" and others)


At the risk of being a pedant, PVR, Yopo is not a kind of Ayahuasca, and although I believe Anandenanthera itself does also contain a quantity of MAOI , as well as DMT analogues, the plant and its uses and culture are treated as wholly separate from those of the Ayahuasca brew by Schultes

Also, you say that: "most likely, all recipes of it that are public domain are incomplete versions of the traditional brews, completed through trial and error but not completed to their original forms, these recipes are well guarded and no anthropologist (not even McKenna) was able to get one from anyone in the amazon. this still remains true even if we are able to make brews that are "psychedelically" active."

I see that stament as more indicative of an atttitude, than of any objective state of affairs - it is fairly usual to encounter such assertions in this kind of context i.e.
in the context of tradtions employing "priestcraft" of one kind or another, be it Buddhism, or Shamanism, or whatever -

typically authentic practices, preparations, experiences and sources are always described as being at one step removed from us, in some idealised place or time, usually in some imagined past, or, as in Christianity, in some invisible authority... with Buddhists it would be "... of course, back when Sayagyi was teaching twenty people a day would become Arhants, now in these unfortunate and impure times few even become Sotapatis etc. etc."

PVR I am not having a go, but still, I think it is a point worth making - perhaps one of the key ideas in Blake e.g. Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Haughtily yours,

Namkha

 

[zamalito]

Namkha you deserve an apology by me. Not only did I not fully understand what you were saying before spouting off an insult but I did not fully realize that what I was saying was demeaning. That said I wanted to post my apology before posting a more well researched response because I felt you deserved it as soon as possible.

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

Hello Namkha,

um... well, i never said Yopo was a kind of ayahuasca, i said Yopo was DMT active, so as to establish that in the Amazon the range of plants is so amazing that it is hard to know what are the exact ingridients the brew made by certain people who gave it to certain researchers had. I happen to have been born and raised in a country that owns extensive amazonian and andenean territories, and since i was a lad, i felt a nostalgic curiosity for all the "tribal knowledge", so inevitably, i ended up researching the now called entheogens.
The entheogen most common around here is psilocibin mushrooms as well as san pedro; what is interesting about them, as well as with DMT-active brews, is that the "trips" can be guided, and the specific preparations are made with certain objectives in mind, lets call these Ontological objectives to be more specific. admitting that plants have a spirit, certain mixes and preparations will give the human guide (in the vulgar called the 'shaman') an affinity with these nature spirits to transport those involved in the 'in-takes' to the proper objectives. when this is not considered, the 'trips' are opened to anything, that is, all is possible, the way up is the same way down... this explains why in modernity the ignorant use of these plants have led many into undesireable states. The Mamos of the Sierra Nevada De Santa Marta in Colombia have spoken clearly on the issue. This includes the mis-use of Cannabis as well.

Sorry if i am going off-topic, but i feel that the only way to properly explain why the recipes are a well guarded secret go beyond a mere superstition or as a simple idealized abstraction as you have suggested.

anyway, always good to discuss this type of things. be well man.

btw zamalito, if i start to usually be correct, we're going to end up in big trouble lol.

one love!

peace.

 

[zamalito]

Here's a quote from page 166 of the botany and chemistry of the plant hallucinogens by schultes.

"although b. caapi is used normally, b. inebriens, b. quitensis, and tetrapterys rnetzystica have all been reported as sources of the drink"

Which shows that the drink and plant are separate entities. Again I am very sorry for being rude. I like discussing schultes and while its no excuse I just had 3 days with no human contact so maybe that explains it.

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

50 lashes for zamalito to absolve him for his terrible sin against namkha !

 

[zamalito]

Hehe wouldn't be the first time

 

[Guest]

you weren't that rude, were you Z? lol

anyhoo, I see your quote above re. the different species from the Banisteriopsis genus above as kind of confirming my point:

namely that the basic defining features of "Ayahuasca brews" in Amazonian shamanism is that they are made using vines/lianas of the Banisteriopsis genus, or on occasion vines from the same family as Banisteriopsis:

note that, as you say, Tetrapteris and Mascagnia are used on occasion, and both are lianas from the same botanical family as B. caapi

This is all getting a bit academic, but my point is that the "ayahuasca brew" is a type ( variable, but consistent) and that, so far as Amazonia shamanism goes, use of the basic vine ingredient can reasonably be seen as the defining feature - I am not aware of any other type of plant being substituted in that role (whereas a wide variety of plants will be used as an admixture)

n.b. how fundamental the imagery/trope of the coiling vine and its variants is culturally (cf. Narby, Harner etc.) etc.

so I guess my point is that the "Ayahuasca" phenomenon is highly varied, but that the variations occur within consistent parameters - of which the use of the B. vine type as the basic ingredient is just that, the key feature

PVR - I must have misunderstood what you were implying re. Yopo, apologies, and I take your point re. native use of entheogens, but I must confess that I remain thoroughly sceptical re. some claims to priveledged knowledge made by some indigneous peoples/practioners... don't get me wrong, I remain open to the possibility that some such genuine traditions do exist

but in my experience of traditions such as Buddhism, e.g. Tibetan Buddhism, I have found that charlatanism is rife, even at the highest/most seemingly authentic levels, and I would say that I have found that often sociological thought will provide the most thorough understanding of the machinations of hierarchies of knowledge, not taking some of the claims made by the traditions at face value

I don't deny that there may be many genuine ayahuasceros out there, but even if there are, what could we expect of them? To what extent is the knowledge they offer "liberating" or "healing", and if these ayahuasceros themsleves are not exemplary individuals, then why are they worthy of our respect or deferrence?

For what it's worth, from my experience over the years of investigating what might loosely be called "Wisdom Traditions", a thoroughly sceptical attitude is healthiest, lightly tempered with a bit of respect of course

Namkha

 

[zamalito]

I think part of the problem is that tryptamine containing plants are much much more frequent than maoi containing plants. However its definitely not like what I said about not seeing how anyone who's read schultes could see otherwise. Many of the true ayahuasqueros considered caapi as several distinct species based on various traits like the number of rings in the vascular(?) construction of the vine. Another part of the problem is I think we're making generalizations. For example in brazil they make a drink that always contains jurema (mimosa hostilis) and frequently contains caapi but not always. This could be considered a type of ayahuasca that doesn't always contain caapi. Or it could be considered a different entity altogether depending on how you lump the cultures together. At the same time there are quite a few indigenous groups who make the more common p. viridis b.caapi drink that don't call it ayahuasca. Also in markets caapi is sold for various medicinal purposes as something totally different from ayahuasca. I don't know if you've read much Mckenna (terrance I've read very little dennis) though he's a bit of a romantic he also makes a lot of the mysticism and how the chants, the environment, the gathering of the plants and the preparation are all crucial to the experience.

I was looking through Lost Amazon (schultes photography of early amazon expeditions)at the book store (I ordered this book 3 times through amazon and still don't have it) this book sends chills up my spine.

This is slightly off topic but do any of you guys know where to get the cielo cultivar of ayahuasca that schultes revered so much. I used to have a source (cielo-herbals.com) but they stoped carrying it.

My first experience with ayahuasca (cielo cultivar) was nuts. I made a light mixture of p.viridis b.caapi and heavy on the jurema. After brewing and preparing all day I probably made enough to last me 5 yrs or have one really odd up party. I ended up throwing most out after a week when I felt it had probably spoiled. Anyway when I started to feel it. I put on this cd I bought used called time machines. It had credited shulgin along with members of a group I'm really not into named coil. Anyway the first track I think is titled telepathine and the second is 5-meo dmt there's like 3 more also (I think psilocin, hecate and another shulgin pea ). The disk is supposed to facilitate time travel under these substances. So I start playing the disk. Right I hear the disk start. It seems the first song just ended but the next song doesn't start. So I go check the cd player to see what's up and the disk had finished. Then I look out of the window and its light outside. My girlfriend comes down the stairs after waking up knowing that I'd just done some weird experiment and I saw some weird experiment.

I had literally traveled in time. It was the oddest thing and was fairly coherent through the whole thing.

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

Namkha, i would agree that comming close to this type of information with a healthy portion of skepticism is a very good thing, even wise. But still, my point isn't to establish some kind of authority which holds the one and only true recipe... on the contrary, i said a couple of times that there are as many ayahuasca/yage recipes as there are people brewing it, and that the traditional brews (which do exist and are passed down from generation to generation within certain ethnias) are not what we posses as 'ayahuasca recipes'. adding certain elements or not adding them, cooking time, ammount of each ingridient, and as zamalito points out by paraphrasing Mckenna, also the 'ritual', chants, etc... all count in providing specific functions, or as i said, in helping us arrive at certain objectives. now, whether these objectives can be considered lofty, teluric, foolish or wise, would just corroborate that the use of entheogens is always linked and driven by more than just a specific recipe.
do you see the implications of this?

wow zamalito, that's a good story, one of the things that interests me is the way entheogens affect so shockingly the sensual perceptions we have learned to trust so uncritically. might have to see if i can find some of those songs!

one love!

 

[Guest]

heya, yeh - interesting stuff

PVR, don't get me wrong, I wasn't meaning to sound critical in a negative way, or to disagree with you particularly - I totally agree with you regarding the "Ayahuasca" tradtions being very diverse, as everything in life is, and that there are plenty of "exceptions to the rule" etc. ... after all, a lot of the kind of generalisations I am trying to make are a species of laziness

my personal experience of Ayahuasca ("Daime") has only been via Santo Daime, in London... the main SD people there are very sound, and there are regularly a lot of characters from Brazil around, though I would be very interested to try the brew in other contexts

someone previously was asking about getting hold of Caapi, Chacruna etc. - a company called Deva in the UK have a range of ingredients from Ecuador, Peru, Brazil etc. if it is of any use to people (http://www.deva-ethnobotanicals.com/products.php?id=5)

Cheers,

Namkha

 

[Guest]

Hi everyone,

I'm a daily visitor of the ICMforum. Most of the time unlogged, covered in silence.
These african threads are amongst a few others that I daily up-date (with great love & a good spliff ).
I thank you all for being ...uh...yourselfs & sharing your thoughts, experience and adventures with MJ & the other plants of the gods. I have a daily inhaling-experience with MJ for more then 20 years now. Those other fine botanicals are used less frequently by SWIM, but also loved.

I drop in cuz I recently heard about something new from our brotha's from Down Under.
Them Aussiie psychonauts have a -secret- recipy for a smokeable ayahuasca; called CHANGA.
The main parts would be :
- an extraction of acacia(tree), containing n,n DMT or depending of the kind of acacia DMT and/or 5-meo-dmt;
- Caapi leaves;
- Blue Lotus flowers;
- and ???
This stuff got my attention cuz a guy in my area told me his trip rapport on this and it ended with the conclusion that he had enjoyed one of the most beautifull and intense experience ever. The guy is a real psychonaut, so I think this means really something.

I hope this was a newbie. If not, do you have more info and/or experience ?

Keep on doin' your thing, the good thing ...

Love & Respect,

_ ° 0 _


@PVR : are you the one I did reply on about Lowryders, this on the subforum SOuth America on OG ??? I have to mention I had a different nick those days.


To all, sorry for my poor english and my lazyness for not using a dictionary, .