blig-blug's Ayahuasca experience log

[blig-blug]

This is a continuation of the thread First attempt at low-dose Mimosahuasca, what went wrong? under a more fitting name to avoid confusion.

Four days ago, I again took Ayahuasca. This time, I have taken some days before even attempting to write about the experience, as it was quite intense and confusing. I'm still not sure I can say much about it in detail.

This time, I had 225mg harmala HCl and a brew with the equivalent to 2.5g Mimosa hostilis. My girlfriend also partook in it, having 200mg harmala HCl and 1.75g Mimosa hostilis (she seems to be very sensitive to it). We were in separate rooms, both of us in the dark, and had some previous agreements about what to do if any of us felt overwhelmed, and what to do once our individual experience was over.

As a little bit of context: I'm overly sensitive to any noise made by neighbors, due to some bad situations in my childhood related to similar sounds (and made worse by other events later). When they are particularly loud, I completely freeze, my heart rate accelerates and my stomach "jumps" and cramps. This happens very quickly, before I can react rationally. Usually, it takes me around 15 to 20 minutes to get out of that state, as my mind starts racing and I have to calm it down with various techniques. If the sounds reoccur, the situation can last quite a long time. All this situation sounds kind of silly, but it really affects me. I'm trying to do my best with it. Our top floor is our landlord's laundry room, and it's extremely poorly soundproofed, any step is heard as a loud bump. They don't go there that often, but when they do, it's the worse to me.

Well, this time, shortly after I had taken the Mimosa brew (which I did 30 minutes after the harmalas), someone started apparently cleaning out and reordering the laundry room on the top floor. That hadn't happened in a very long time, and it was extremely loud and persistent. The above mentioned reactions immediately appeared, and I knew I was in for a difficult trip.

What happened is that I felt all that freeze reaction, that physical anxiety reaction, stronger than I ever have before. At the same time, I was able to be weirdly detached from it all, observing it. Part of me was in fear and having a very strong reaction, and another part of me could just observe that without fear. The effects of Ayahuasca made the already loud sounds extremely loud, and I perceived everything shaking (which in reality was probably just a slight vibration). The Ayahuasca nausea morphed into the feeling of a burning ball in the top of my stomach, like a metal ball made of fear and anxiety. At one point, I thought "let's see how bad it could get", and the symptoms increased to the maximum. At the same time, I was calm in a sense and I could see that "the worse it could get" was bad, but not that bad.

Throughout all this experience, I barely had any visual effects, the somatic effects were predominant. But at one point, the noises stopped for some time and I saw a bright white light, and my whole body vibrated with pleasure, as if I were in a jhana state. I believe this is related to my focus being constantly redirected to my breath, at some points I was doing anapanasati meditation spontaneously.

At one point, I had the realization that part of the fear was related to not knowing who was upstairs, what was happening, and how long it would last. I saw that if I talked to whoever it was from a point of empathy, openness and vulnerability, the situation would likely improve. Logically, I had to wait to do that until the effects of Ayahuasca had almost disappeared. I had many mental scenes of me talking to different people in that way. They weren't fully visions, they were "enhanced daydreams", so to speak.

Once I was sure most of the effects had disappeared, I went outside and saw that the person above was actually my landlord (I had thought it was a different, unknown person for some reason). I talked to him about the noise situation (without mentioning anything related to Ayahuasca, of course, and without being too detailed), and he was very understanding and explained to me that actually his wife had issues with noise as well. We talked about some common interests, and it was a very good conversation. I think he appreciated it too, because we hadn't talked much before.

So that was my experience this time. Very different from what I would have expected, but I feel it was very productive and, in a way, very adequate for the moment.

My girlfriend apparently had a very deep experience. At the beginning, she saw a snake that came to her and "opened" her by taking something out of her body. She flied "like a bird" between several difficult moments in her life, reliving them. She also got several very clear messages about how to handle some situations. I don't know many details because it's her personal experience, but it seems to have been very helpful to her.

It's very interesting how the Ayahuasca experience is starting to feel like some kind of "school", with each experience being a lesson about a specific topic. I had read that from other people and I thought it was just a metaphor, but it really does feel like that. Also, I'm surprised to see how even in a difficult experience with very negative external conditions like this one, I still felt that a part of me was calm, out of any danger and could observe the situation and learn from it. This is definitely not how other psychedelics feel to me.

I'm going to continue taking the Ayahuasca "classes". Next time, I will take either 2.5g Mimosa again to experience it without that noise trigger, or 2.75-3g if I'm feeling particularly good. I may also redose after the effects are done, as this time I felt I could have gone deeper into a calm state after the very challenging and emotionally/somatically loaded first experience. My girflriend says next time she takes it (she may wait for longer than me) she will likely take 1.75g again, or maybe 1.5g.

 

[northape]

All this situation sounds kind of silly, but it really affects me.

Nope, it's not silly at all. I'm very sensitive to any noise from neighbors, too.
It's a nature of work in the city. It's not the best environment for medicine, but we work with what we have.

Well, this time, shortly after I had taken the Mimosa brew (which I did 30 minutes after the harmalas), someone started apparently cleaning out and reordering the laundry room on the top floor.

Welcome to medicine synchronicities. Stuff like this happens when one uses medicine.
Don't ask me how it works. I've seen lots of it though

We talked about some common interests, and it was a very good conversation. I think he appreciated it too, because we hadn't talked much before.

So it wasn't so bad after all. Seems like you took some gems home from your session.

So that was my experience this time. Very different from what I would have expected, but I feel it was very productive and, in a way, very adequate for the moment.

Nice attitude as always
Mature use of psychedelics tends to be beneficial, imo.

Best of Luck and hug your girlfriend. She seems like a fighter.
Good thing that you are doing it together.
It's very difficult to communicate such an experience to your partner otherwise.

 

[sutekh_77]

Hey @blig-blug, thanks for sharing your trip.

About the noise, ayahuasca makes me particularly aware of any random or strange noises, to the point if someone breathes more heavily next to me I often get spooked.

Random noises that you don't know were is coming from and what it is are the worst, I can get really paranoid with those. I experienced some wild auditory allucinations during some trips, literally hearing ghosts singing into my ears.

I have a pair of IEMs that are pretty good at noise canceling that I use when I'm tripping alone and don't want to make noise (I always listen to music during ayahuasca sessions), they are very comfortable and when you get use to them I almost forget that I'm wearing them.

 

[blig-blug]

It's a nature of work in the city. It's not the best environment for medicine, but we work with what we have.

That's how I'm approaching it too. Luckily, in a couple months it's very likely that I'll be able to be in a rural, mountain environment that is very dear to me and very adequate for this type of experience. Including some stone huts in the middle of the forest. But learning to row a boat means learning to row through both calm and choppy waters. Ideally, one would learn in calm waters first, but it is what it is.

So it wasn't so bad after all. Seems like you took some gems home from your session.

Definitely. I'm surprised about how there seemed to be a positive undertone to it all, even during the worst moments. It has not been like that to me with other psychedelics.

Best of Luck and hug your girlfriend. She seems like a fighter.

Thank you northape. My girlfriend is doing really well, despite her generally much more cautious nature, she seems to be very good at letting go during these experiences. She manages to do it much better than I do.

About the noise, ayahuasca makes me particularly aware of any random or strange noises, to the point if someone breathes more heavily next to me I often get spooked.

It seems to be the case for me too, and in this situation I would have already been having a bad reaction to the noise without any Ayahuasca. So it felt quite extreme.

I have a pair of IEMs that are pretty good at noise canceling that I use when I'm tripping alone and don't want to make noise (I always listen to music during ayahuasca sessions), they are very comfortable and when you get use to them I almost forget that I'm wearing them.

I will probably save for noise cancelling earphones then, it's a good idea. I was already using earphones, but they aren't particularly good and definitely not noise cancelling. My only potential issue with earphones is that sometimes I get paranoid that there's a sound that I'm not hearing (yeah, that's the whole point...), but I'm working on that too. And it's easier to deal with that than with the noises themselves.

 

[blig-blug]

Today I had Ayahuasca again. In hindsight, I changed too many factors at once:

• I had run out of harmala HCl, so I had 4g syrian rue seeds as a tea
• I took 2.75g Mimosa hostilis (last one was 2.5g, so this was not a big change, but still a change)
• I had it in the morning while fasted instead of in the afternoon some hours after eating
• I had some coffee around 1.5h before, whereas the other times if I had any caffeine, it was an energy drink and several hours before
• I didn't have any ginger

This time, I had a good environment (no noise). I was in kind of a bad mood, but just slightly. The experience started with a degree of nausea from the beginning, but not too much. After some time, I started getting some faint visual activity and I suddenly had that feeling of energy spreading through the body that indicates that the Mimosa is starting to have effect. However, with that energy it also came a lot of nausea.

The nausea increased and increased. Its effects brought many emotions and progressively reduced the visuals. Before they disappeared, I saw some interesting patterns, and they were blurry either completely or in some irregular, sharp-edged areas, or seen as through a peephole. The thought came to me that as I was not "clean" yet, I could not see the visuals "cleanly". Once the visuals disappeared, the nausea was extremely strong and came with many emotions of guilt, fear, and more. At one point, the thought that the nausea was "too much" came to me, but then I asked myself, "too much for what?", and I realized that it was "too much to not vomit". I realized I was fearful of vomiting and avoiding it. So I thought "I should go to the bucket and vomit" (the bucket was at an arm's length), and again the feeling of even moving being "too much". So it became clear that I was fearful and not letting go. In the end, I went to the bucket and as soon as my head was over it, I vomited. As I had not eaten anything, the vomit was liquid only, and it was difficult to get anything out.

After vomiting, I felt better, but still nauseous and with negative emotions and memories. I decided to go to another room that had sunlight. There, I could be more relaxed between waves of nausea, and had some productive thoughts and slight visuals, both with eyes open and closed. It seems to me that Ayahuasca visuals and visions need more skill and mental engagement than those of other psychedelics: I could get them when I was more relaxed, but I felt that the overly-rationalizing part of my mind got in the way often, and "aborted" image sequences that were tending to more full blown visions. And once a "thread" of visuals/visions was broken, it just didn't come back, until after some time I could get some faint visuals again.

After around 4 hours, the effects were more or less gone (except for some harmala effects, which are still ongoing 8 hours later), I felt much better in terms of nausea, and a sense of emotional relief and rejuvenation. I have had again some productive thoughts, the most relevant of them being that I should learn to let go and to vomit during the experience when needed, that I need to relax the analytical part of my mind (that is just trying to protect me), and that I still have a lot to "clean" from me before I get less physically challenging experiences.

Even though there is a clear emotional component to my nausea, I still think some of the changes I made this time may have increased them. The coffee was a very bad idea, and I won't do that again. The 4g of seeds felt much stronger than 225mg harmala HCl, so it could also be a factor. And I saw my vomit had "curds" of MHRB, so I may have gotten more sediment (the brew is running low), I have tried to mix it always and get from both the top and the bottom in other occasions, but it's a possibility.

Next time, I plan on having the same amount of Mimosa. If I do a harmala extract before, I will use the extract again, and if not I may use less rue seeds. Or maybe the same, I don't know yet, it's hard to know if that contributed to the overwhelming and persistent nausea this time or not.

It was again a productive (if challenging) experience, I'm glad I had it and I intend on keeping exploring and getting practice with Ayahuasca. However, I think it will be beneficial to avoid having this much nausea during the experience: I have had nausea during every experience, but this time it was really something else.

 

[northape]

It was Syrian rue seeds, for sure. I told you about it before: you're gonna purge.
Extract will always feel cleaner and dmt will usually dominate the experience.
But it's actually rue that provide even more healing.
Always do an egg-white filtering on your mimosa tea and have a 2nd dose ready.
Take the 2nd dose when you feel that effects of dmt start to fade away.

Syrian rue work starts with a purification stage, and it can last for years.
With time, you will have almost no nausea from it, but most give up long before they reach this stage.

You can continue with extract if it was useful for you. Rue seeds are always here if you want to go that route.
In traditional use, it's rue or caapi that produce the healing effect. Still, as you saw it yourself, it's a bit of a different ceremony.
Most of the healing goes behind the scenes. However, it could feel unproductive without direct insight and overwhelming nausea.
The work is being done, and your psyche getting purified. You'll know what is what with time.

Edit: Try not to use coffee before harmalas. It gives a very shaky feeling, and it's not productive at all.
4g of rue seeds would be closer to 300+mg of harmalas. Over 300mg of extract could give severe nausea too.

Just persevere and have patience.
Be humble with it all, and you'll be your own expert in no time.

 

[Sicho Naut]

Syrian rue work starts with a purification stage, and it can last for years.
With time, you will have almost no nausea from it, but most give up long before they reach this stage.

The work is being done, and your psyche getting purified. You'll know what is what with time.

Care to expand a little on this?
I've been working with rue daily (without DMT) for a while and the effects have been mostly wonderful-- grounding, superb for meditation and contemplation, excellent anti-depressant. But at the end of the day I sometimes feel an unpleasant kind of rush / bodily-emotional stress that sometimes correlates with strong and tenacious feelings of anger that have been hard to deal with.
(Edit: lately I've been upping the dose to 1,5-2g SR tea, twice a day. Too much maybe?)

 

[northape]

Care to expand a little on this?
I've been working with rue daily (without DMT) for a while and the effects have been mostly wonderful-- grounding, superb for meditation and contemplation, excellent anti-depressant. But at the end of the day I sometimes feel an unpleasant kind of rush / bodily-emotional stress that sometimes correlates with strong and tenacious feelings of anger that have been hard to deal with.
(Edit: lately I've been upping the dose to 1,5-2g SR tea, twice a day. Too much maybe?)

What I meant is that your body adapts to harmalas over time. They clean your physical & energetic systems.
Later on, you can handle higher doses without any nausea or purge.
1-2g of rue shouldn't give any discomfort if you have a clean diet. I'd say above 4g would produce a cleansing effect for most.
If you use it daily, be wary of your diet. Even if rue seeds are very safe, it's still a maoi. It can easily potentiate coffee or some other herb / drug you use.
From a shamanic perspective, your body becomes more open to energies. So you need to feel for yourself where this unpleasant rush comes from.
If you are sure of your diet and nothing interferes with rue, you can search through your mind and life for the origin of discomfort.

Harmalas open us up to the spiritual side of life. You can use it as a tool to clean all the stuff that comes up during use.
Rue has a very pure high frequency, so anything that doesn't resonate with it is quite visible (like depression, for example).
And you don't need dmt to get rue's benefits. DMT mostly lights up everything and makes it obvious.
I'd add that when harmalas and dmt dance well together, they create a true magic, that can't be reached by either alone.
That's just my opinion based on experience with medicine.

 

[blig-blug]

It was Syrian rue seeds, for sure. I told you about it before: you're gonna purge.

Yes, you did mention it would be easier. The difference was very noticeable.

Always do an egg-white filtering on your mimosa tea and have a 2nd dose ready.

I have done it, my Mimosa tea doesn't have too strong of a taste. What I will do in the next batch is to decant in the fridge, as some sludge remained and I think now that I'm drinking the last remaining brew, it has more sludge than at the beginning. I always shake it well before, but as it's a very fine sludge it seems to decant fast still.

Take the 2nd dose when you feel that effects of dmt start to fade away.

This time I was planning to redose, but as I was overwhelmed with nausea I decided not to do it.

You can continue with extract if it was useful for you. Rue seeds are always here if you want to go that route.

That's what I'm going to do for the moment. It was already being pretty challenging to me, as nausea brings strong pent-up emotions on me. I'm not in a hurry and rather prefer a slow and steady approach, so I'll take rue tea in the future, once I've learned to manage better the challenges that extract already offers. I'm also going to be drinking some rue tea during the week, both to get the benefits from it at lower doses and to reduce the side effects.

Most of the healing goes behind the scenes. However, it could feel unproductive without direct insight and overwhelming nausea.

It was still productive, but too intense in nausea for my current abilities to navigate it.

Edit: Try not to use coffee before harmalas. It gives a very shaky feeling, and it's not productive at all.

Yes, I drank the coffee out of habit and it was a bad idea. I won't do that again, that's for sure.

4g of rue seeds would be closer to 300+mg of harmalas. Over 300mg of extract could give severe nausea too.

I had been estimating 5% of harmalas, and so it would have been 200mg. That was what I thought. But it makes sense that it would be 300 or more, the harmala effects lasted for more than 12 hours in the end (that was quite nice, actually), while with around 200mg they stop way before. I was wondering if maybe something else in the seeds made it last that long, but if in your experience it's close to 300mg or more, it makes sense.

 

[northape]

I have done it, my Mimosa tea doesn't have too strong of a taste. What I will do in the next batch is to decant in the fridge, as some sludge remained and I think now that I'm drinking the last remaining brew, it has more sludge than at the beginning. I always shake it well before, but as it's a very fine sludge it seems to decant fast still.

I usually filter that fine sludge too. My tea is very similar to fine cognac, with a reddish tint.
If you make a batch of it, there is no need to worry about loosing potency.
This fine sludge is mostly tannins that bonded to egg proteins, imo.

I had been estimating 5% of harmalas, and so it would have been 200mg. That was what I thought. But it makes sense that it would be 300 or more, the harmala effects lasted for more than 12 hours in the end (that was quite nice, actually), while with around 200mg they stop way before. I was wondering if maybe something else in the seeds made it last that long, but if in your experience it's close to 300mg or more, it makes sense.

It's very difficult to judge how strong your seeds are. But from my experience, 4g often feels like 300mg or more.
For sure, there are other contributing factors at play when it comes to seeds.
300mg of extract should feel cleaner than seeds. It just could give similar intensity of nausea.
All I'm talking about is how it feels subjectively. When you know your seeds & extract well, you're going to easily do the same.

Now you have a fine Syrian rue session under your belt and know the difference

All the best

 

[Jamie01]

I definitely have less nausea with extract. Significantly less. I drank only real ayahusca from vine and leaf for a long time. Then vine and mimosa. Then I started brewing rue too. Back in the day on the ayahusca forums ppl were into collecting the sediment from aya brews after they sit and drinking that too. This, as well as just eating ground up rue etc would send me to the moon but I would have intense gastric cramps etc all night long.

I gave all of that up long ago for pure DMT/hatmalas. Much cleaner. It’s alchemy.

I do find that with frequent prolonged use you get used to it, but with that comes a tolerance and you loose the part of the harmala trip(when doses enough) that for me, is similar to Iboga. Whatever that tolerance is it fades fast.

 

[universecannon]

I definitely have less nausea with extract. Significantly less. I drank only real ayahusca from vine and leaf for a long time. Then vine and mimosa. Then I started brewing rue too. Back in the day on the ayahusca forums ppl were into collecting the sediment from aya brews after they sit and drinking that too. This, as well as just eating ground up rue etc would send me to the moon but I would have intense gastric cramps etc all night long.

I gave all of that up long ago for pure DMT/hatmalas. Much cleaner. It’s alchemy.

I do find that with frequent prolonged use you get used to it, but with that comes a tolerance and you loose the part of the harmala trip(when doses enough) that for me, is similar to Iboga. Whatever that tolerance is it fades fast.

Do you separate harmine from harmaline/have a preference?

 

[northape]

I definitely have less nausea with extract. Significantly less. I drank only real ayahusca from vine and leaf for a long time. Then vine and mimosa. Then I started brewing rue too. Back in the day on the ayahusca forums ppl were into collecting the sediment from aya brews after they sit and drinking that too. This, as well as just eating ground up rue etc would send me to the moon but I would have intense gastric cramps etc all night long.

I gave all of that up long ago for pure DMT/hatmalas. Much cleaner. It’s alchemy.

I do find that with frequent prolonged use you get used to it, but with that comes a tolerance and you loose the part of the harmala trip(when doses enough) that for me, is similar to Iboga. Whatever that tolerance is it fades fast.

Hello from old aya forums
Nice to see that some of us are still around.
Yeah, sludge from barks like mimosa & acacia is not very healthy, imo.
I always filter my teas to water like consistency. It's easier for the body this way.

 

[blig-blug]

I definitely have less nausea with extract. Significantly less. I drank only real ayahusca from vine and leaf for a long time. Then vine and mimosa. Then I started brewing rue too. Back in the day on the ayahusca forums ppl were into collecting the sediment from aya brews after they sit and drinking that too. This, as well as just eating ground up rue etc would send me to the moon but I would have intense gastric cramps etc all night long.

I gave all of that up long ago for pure DMT/hatmalas. Much cleaner. It’s alchemy.

I do find that with frequent prolonged use you get used to it, but with that comes a tolerance and you loose the part of the harmala trip(when doses enough) that for me, is similar to Iboga. Whatever that tolerance is it fades fast.

I intend to eventually try all of it (except drinking the sediment ). I will be performing my first harmala extraction this week or the next, and probably next month I will extract DMT. I'm not in a hurry, so first I want to get well acquainted with what I have been trying so far, which is harmala HCl and Mimosa brew with egg tek.

 

[dithyramb]

Care to expand a little on this?
I've been working with rue daily (without DMT) for a while and the effects have been mostly wonderful-- grounding, superb for meditation and contemplation, excellent anti-depressant. But at the end of the day I sometimes feel an unpleasant kind of rush / bodily-emotional stress that sometimes correlates with strong and tenacious feelings of anger that have been hard to deal with.
(Edit: lately I've been upping the dose to 1,5-2g SR tea, twice a day. Too much maybe?)

Rue without a ceremonial space, and especially if taken daily can easily generate anger at the energies around you. It's part of the psychic energy stimulation, or "spiritual character" of rue. I have experienced this countless times. There are rumors of taking rue for 40 days traditionally, but I am pretty sure that daily use for a long period in most likelihood is not healthy, and not just for the liver.

About eating rue, yes, it is consistently much stronger and more magical than drinking a tea, but I just find it too harsh energetically. It's a scattered (body digesting little pieces) energy vs the homogenous energy of a tea.

I was never called to make extracts. Perhaps Northape can comment on his experience of tea vs extracted harmalas.

 

[northape]

I was never called to make extracts. Perhaps Northape can comment on his experience of tea vs extracted harmalas.

I hinted about it in a few places here. It's never my intention to sway anyone into a particular way of medicine work.
Still, I find rue tea much more healing and deeper than extract. I like how clean and easy extract is, but it felt somewhat
unnatural to me. It's like you cut bits & pieces from rue spirit in order to conveniently activate DMT.
Spirit talk is not very popular here, but as someone who subscribes to this view, rue is much more than harmalas.
Even from a scientific standpoint, seeds contain lots of alkaloids.

It's a bit harder to begin working with tea and your body may need time to adjust.
However, if you ever want to dive deep it's a must, imo. Extract would never provide the same level of guidance and
protection as the full-bodied rue tea. In my case, rue told me to stay away from extract herself.
You can interpret it however you want.
Peace

 

[dithyramb]

Rue has various alkaloids other than harmalas, and also oils, and terpenes. My latest conclusion was that the physical vessel for the spirit is the oil, as this is the most volatile part and the fresh autumn seeds have a very vibrant and alive energy which is gone after a period of storage. An interesting data point is that later winter and early spring harvested seeds also carry a living spirit energy which goes away with time after harvesting, but they don't have the full vibrancy of autumn seeds.

 

[Jamie01]

Do you separate harmine from harmaline/have a preference?

No. I like to extract the fullest spectrum I can.

 

[blig-blug]

It seems like I won't have time to perform the harmala extraction before this weekend. In your experience, is 3g P. harmala enough for full MAO inhibition? I know seeds vary in potency, I mean on average, and this seeds do look potent. I would like to have less than the 4g I had last time as long as it will still be enough for a full experience.

 

[northape]

It seems like I won't have time to perform the harmala extraction before this weekend. In your experience, is 3g P. harmala enough for full MAO inhibition? I know seeds vary in potency, I mean on average, and this seeds do look potent. I would like to have less than the 4g I had last time as long as it will still be enough for a full experience.

I drank 3g for years and only later on increased my dose. It should be fine.
You can add 0.5g to your second dose of mimosa if you want.
Have a great journey.