blig-blug's Ayahuasca experience log

[blig-blug]

Log update:

A few days ago, I had 3g mimosa and 2g rue tea + 75mg harmala HCl. The reason for that latter mixture is that that was all the harmala HCl that I had left (I have just finished an extraction so now I have more), but I wanted to reduce the rue tea dose as much as possible after last time. It may have been a little on the low end. Also, this time I filtered the mimosa tea through a coffee filter, as it was the last that remained of this batch and there was a lot of fine mimosa powder sludge on the bottom.

For the first time, I didn't experience any nausea whatsoever. I believe this is related to the lower amount of rue tea and having taken harmalas during the week, but probably the biggest effect is having filtered the mimosa brew (I was actually shaking it the previous times to mix the sludge). I also didn't take any coffee or caffeine before, which obviously had not been a good idea when I did it, despite my high tolerance to it.

The visual effects were quite subtle but definitely present, mostly in the way of morphing CEVs and some simple patterns. They were more beautiful and calm than the other time I had significant visuals (probably due to having no nausea), although much more subtle. Physically, I felt extremely relaxed. From time to time, a wave of energy came to my body and my vision (with closed eyes) turned a very clear white. This is very similar to my experience of jhanas (but I wasn't meditating). Music appreciation was very increased, and music seemed sometimes to physically massage my ears. Walking was surprisingly easy, I felt off-balance but without any dizziness, I felt like I was very light, almost floating.

This experience had less insights than others, felt more superficial. But I just let myself enjoy it. After my last two experiences, it was a good change, it was good that for once it wasn't challenging. It's interesting that towards the end of the experience my mood went down (opposite to my previous experiences), however at the very end I had again a good afterglow. I felt relaxed and renewed for the rest of the day, and the couple following days too (helped by continuing to take harmalas).

My girlfriend had 200mg harmala HCl and 1.75g mimosa. She seems to be having very intense but very therapeutic experiences, with abundant internal hallucinations, going back to different moments in her life and reliving them, with some changes. She says it's helping her a lot.

Next time, I'll probably have 3g mimosa again (with 250mg harmala HCl) and redose if I'm feeling like it. When redosing at the comedown, is the effect stronger due to the leftover effects from the previous dose? For example, if I dose 3g and redose again another 3g at the comedown, is the second dose likely to be stronger?

 

[northape]

Next time, I'll probably have 3g mimosa again (with 250mg harmala HCl) and redose if I'm feeling like it. When redosing at the comedown, is the effect stronger due to the leftover effects from the previous dose? For example, if I dose 3g and redose again another 3g at the comedown, is the second dose likely to be stronger?

Yes, 2nd dose is usually stronger, but it depends on how much harmalas are in the system at the moment.
Like we discussed in the other thread, half-life of oral harmalas is around 3h.
I used to redose after the purge from the 1st dose. 1st dose for me is just to get into medicine space and clean my body.
2nd dose is where the real work starts. I'd add some harmalas to the 2nd dose too.
You can do 200mg extract & 3g mimosa for the first dose and 50mg extract & 2g mimosa for the second.
You need to experiment and find the right amount for yourself.
Best of luck.

 

[blig-blug]

Yes, 2nd dose is usually stronger, but it depends on how much harmalas are in the system at the moment.
Like we discussed in the other thread, half-life of oral harmalas is around 3h.
I used to redose after the purge from the 1st dose. 1st dose for me is just to get into medicine space and clean my body.
2nd dose is where the real work starts. I'd add some harmalas to the 2nd dose too.
You can do 200mg extract & 3g mimosa for the first dose and 50mg extract & 2g mimosa for the second.
You need to experiment and find the right amount for yourself.
Best of luck.

Thank you for your answer. I have been meaning to redose but in my previous experiences I was feeling done with it for the comedown, so in the end I didn't. We'll see what happens for the next one

I'm glad I asked whether the second dose is usually stronger, because otherwise I would have redosed with the same amount, and as you know I want to handle dose increases very carefully and slowly.

 

[northape]

It all depends on your body and how fast it metabolizes harmalas & dmt.
Very difficult to give any advice here. You need to experiment and see for yourself.
But I'd make the 2nd dose a bit less than the 1st one, and add some harmalas.
Go slow and be safe

 

[doubledog]

Same for me, second dose is lower than first, as first one is still working when next dose is ingested. Harmalas did their job already after first dose, so you do not need that much.

 

[blig-blug]

Log update:

Some days ago, I had 250mg harmala freebase (made into a salt just before drinking it) + 3g Mimosa hostilis. I redosed with 50mg harmala and 2g mimosa around two hours later.

I wanted to experiment with higher harmalas, and thought 25mg more was just a small increment. However, the harmala effect was much stronger than last time. I think it's probably related to it being freebase instead of HCl, as there are more alkaloid molecules per miligram in the freebase. The Mimosa was from a new batch that hadn't had time to decant well, and so it upset my stomach.

This was the most intense Ayahuasca experience I have had so far (not the most difficult). It was more visual and my mental state was more altered. The nausea was manageable and I felt quite comfortable physically in every other respect. I noticed that at some points I was "waking up" from internal visions and couldn't remember well what the visions had been, some of those times I could not remember it at all. The experience felt somewhat unfocused, as the thought and visuals came one after the other in an erratic manner, without an overarching topic. So this experience was not "about" anything specific.

In The Antipodes of the Mind, Shanon states that drinking Ayahuasca is a skill to be learned, and that usually one needs practice to go deeper into the visions and make them more stable. So I will have to practice that, because currently the internal visions "break" and it feels like I lack focus. It's interesting that my girlfriend has been getting very stable visions with a common topic from day one, and keeps doing so.

I'm going to mantain a similar dosage. For the next time, I will have less harmalas for the first dose (200mg freebase) and more (80mg) for the second, as the second dose felt somewhat weak. I have now decanted well the mimosa, so that aspect should be better too.

 

[northape]

The Mimosa was from a new batch that hadn't had time to decant well, and so it upset my stomach.

Yeah, decant and filter your mimosa tea as much as possible.
I think the sludge should be discarded. It gives heavy & muddy experience, imo.

In The Antipodes of the Mind, Shanon states that drinking Ayahuasca is a skill to be learned, and that usually one needs practice to go deeper into the visions and make them more stable. So I will have to practice that, because currently the internal visions "break" and it feels like I lack focus.

It takes time, but you'll find your sea legs for sure. Even more important would be to be present.
It could be difficult at higher doses, but I think you develop your capacity to be aware each session.

A few times my short term memory stopped working, and I was just present to insanity & confusion of that state.
I think every session is valuable. You get to know your medicine more and how you respond to it.
You can try to do it in one dose as before. Maybe it will provide a more seamless experience.
All the best

 

[blig-blug]

Even more important would be to be present.

I agree. Some experiences ago I realized that my analytical mind was getting in the way. Constantly analyzing whatever was happening instead of just letting it happen and saving the analysis for later. I can stop that tendency to over-analysis when I'm meditating, but not during the experience, and my sati is not strong enough yet to be able to meditate during the experience. It's also probably a form of resisting the experience by some part of me that is scared of losing control. But I'm finding that with Ayahuasca this is much less of an issue than with LSD, with LSD the over-analysis sometimes really took over, particularly during the come-up.

I forgot to mention that this time I vomited after the second dose, but it was a choice I made. Before the other experience where I vomited, I never realized one can actually choose to vomit when feeling nausea. All my life I had thought it's purely involuntary (I mean vomit in general, not only during Ayahuasca). Now I realize I was just resisting it until it became overpowering, and that my mind associates vomiting with something very negative and with bad consequences.

So this time I waited until the effects from the second dose were clear, and then decided to vomit without waiting for the nausea to be overpowering. It's the first time in my life I have vomited in a calm state of mind and observing the process. It was not pleasant but it was interesting and helpful to start teaching my mind that there's nothing wrong with it. And as always I felt much better afterwards.

 

[northape]

and my sati is not strong enough yet to be able to meditate during the experience.

I like how Tibetans present us as body-speech(energy)-mind system.
So it goes from low to high: from physical body to something as subtle as mind.
My understanding of what we do in a medicine session is that we're guiding the energy through our system.
So the easiest way would be body movements or asanas / kriyas. The next level of work is pranayama or singing.
Guiding energy only using your mind would be the highest level of medicine work.
And yes, your sati should be developed to a very advanced level for this to happen.
It's just how I understood it, but maybe you could find some pointers here.

I forgot to mention that this time I vomited after the second dose, but it was a choice I made. Before the other experience where I vomited, I never realized one can actually choose to vomit when feeling nausea. All my life I had thought it's purely involuntary (I mean vomit in general, not only during Ayahuasca). Now I realize I was just resisting it until it became overpowering, and that my mind associates vomiting with something very negative and with bad consequences.

So this time I waited until the effects from the second dose were clear, and then decided to vomit without waiting for the nausea to be overpowering. It's the first time in my life I have vomited in a calm state of mind and observing the process. It was not pleasant but it was interesting and helpful to start teaching my mind that there's nothing wrong with it. And as always I felt much better afterwards.

See, you learn something each session
Now you can see why ayahuasceros would say: “Hold your brew”.
At some point, you are willingly holding it and working through the nausea to let medicine do its work.
I think all bodily functions could be controlled. It's just a matter of awareness and wisdom.
Why give a gun to a monkey? When we're truly Human, maybe Nature would give us more control.

 

[blig-blug]

VIII log update:

Dose: 220mg harmala freebase + 3.25g mimosa. Empty stomach.

I just had this experience this morning. It has been an interesting one, because it cleared up for me the reason I have had some experiences that, while intense, seem of low immersiveness with black/grey subtle visuals that disappear easily and my analytical mind getting in the way too much.

After having the mimosa 20 minutes after the harmalas, I went to my usual darkened room to lie down for the experience. This time the harmalas had been quite fast to "hammer me down". I lied down in the darkness and experienced psychological effects, with the usual enhanced introspection etc. My visuals were of a similar fashion to the last time, albeit weaker (which made sense because the harmala dose was noticeably lower). This time, I tried to quiet my mind and it did result in the visuals becoming more clear and stable, but they still disappeared easy. I observed that they seemed to require a lot of "mental input", it felt that I had to consciously sustain them or else they would disappear. This is very different to my experience with other psychedelics, where at a sufficient dose the visuals come without any kind of perceived effort to still the mind and sustain them. I also had again sudden very immersive visuals where I suddenly saw an extremely realistic scene with more clarity than I would see it in real life, but they only lasted for a few seconds. In general, I observed once again that I had to manage to sort of "fall in a trance" for the experience to develop. Throughout the experience I had moderate nausea, present but manageable.

I was quite surprised at how relatively shallow and weak the experience was for the dose. I wondered if maybe having decanted the brew had made it much weaker, or maybe the harmalas were too low. Once most of the effects (except for the physical harmala effects) had subsided (after two and a half hours), I waited and after some time came out of the room to slowly go back to normal reality. I opened this very forum and was surprised at how difficult it was to read anything as compared to other times, something felt off. Then, after twenty minutes just laying down there without doing anything, I decided to lay on my stomach (so far I had only been on my back and sides) and suddenly got some chills and some faint visuals. While faint, they were somehow more clear than any I had had so far. Then more effects started coming, physical, psychological and visual, and once rainbow-like colored visions with a lot of light appeared, it started to become clear that this was not just a "last wave" but actually the first wave of DMT. Unfortunately this all happened quite fast and caught me unprepared, I wanted to go back to the room but there was no way I could move anymore. Then I had the strongest experience I have had so far with ayahuasca in every respect. I contemplated different memories from my childhood (I was surprised I was able to picture a 3D map of one of my childhood homes, while my usual memories are just certain scenes), many abstract visuals and contemplated how extraordinary it was that there is something at all instead of nothing, that there have been, are and will be uncountable lives in the universe of uncountable beings, some very much like me, some extremely different. The nausea grew a lot throughout this, but I couldn't really vomit. Deep breaths helped me, and I found that (at least, apparently) I could stop after the out-breath for a long time, with no apparent need to breathe in. That made the nausea much better, but I got worried that I would "forget" to breathe in and die. In retrospective I don't think that's a possibility, so I will experiment with that the next time.

The experience was very positive, strong, immersive and beautiful, and has left me feeling renewed (during the experience, it was at points as if a light was purifying me internally). Now I realize that every time I have had those gray, fragile visuals with experiences that require a kind of voluntary trance to become more immersive, that was the effect of the harmalas only, with no DMT. Particularly, now I think that in my last experience I had not experience anything but the harmalas when I redosed, and vomiting meant I didn't absorb much DMT at all (luckily, because it would have been 5g total with very high harmalas and I don't think I'm ready yet for that). I plan on testing a high dose of only harmalas to confirm this, but I have little doubt. Every time I have experienced the DMT has been much more "classic psychedelic" that the other type of "faint" experience, and this time the dose has been significant enough to leave little room for doubt.

I'm glad of how positive the impact of ayahuasca is being in my life, and how I'm learning little by little how it works for me. Next time, I'll repeat this dose and wait for the DMT to actually have an effect before thinking that the experience is ending.

 

[Skr9]

Yes, 2nd dose is usually stronger, but it depends on how much harmalas are in the system at the moment.
Like we discussed in the other thread, half-life of oral harmalas is around 3h.
I used to redose after the purge from the 1st dose. 1st dose for me is just to get into medicine space and clean my body.
2nd dose is where the real work starts. I'd add some harmalas to the 2nd dose too.
You can do 200mg extract & 3g mimosa for the first dose and 50mg extract & 2g mimosa for the second.
You need to experiment and find the right amount for yourself.
Best of luck.

Thanks so much for the valuable info

 

[northape]

Then, after twenty minutes just laying down there without doing anything, I decided to lay on my stomach (so far I had only been on my back and sides) and suddenly got some chills and some faint visuals. While faint, they were somehow more clear than any I had had so far. Then more effects started coming, physical, psychological and visual, and once rainbow-like colored visions with a lot of light appeared, it started to become clear that this was not just a "last wave" but actually the first wave of DMT.

Sometimes DMT gets trapped and a bit of food helps to activate it. I don't remember the physiology of it, but it has something to do with gallbladder.
Laying on your stomach, most likely mechanically stimulated the same pathway…
I usually add a teaspoon of honey to my mimosa tea (1tsp for a 300ml batch) and it seems to help with absorption.

 

[blig-blug]

Sometimes DMT gets trapped and a bit of food helps to activate it

I had read about that, but as the experience was strong in some respects I didn't think it could be just harmalas. Looks like I was wrong and harmalas alone can be more powerful than I thought even at moderate doses!

 

[northape]

I had read about that, but as the experience was strong in some respects I didn't think it could be just harmalas. Looks like I was wrong and harmalas alone can be more powerful than I thought even at moderate doses!

Most likely it was a mix, but some DMT was trapped.
Try adding a bit of honey to mimosa, or eat a teaspoon after your tea.

The nausea grew a lot throughout this, but I couldn't really vomit.

This kind of nausea could be from high intensity of DMT.

Deep breaths helped me, and I found that (at least, apparently) I could stop after the out-breath for a long time, with no apparent need to breathe in. That made the nausea much better, but I got worried that I would "forget" to breathe in and die. In retrospective I don't think that's a possibility, so I will experiment with that the next time.

Yep, breath holds help a lot. You can try ujjayi breathing too.
When DMT is active, you can hold your breath for a long time.

Good progress

 

[blig-blug]

Most likely it was a mix, but some DMT was trapped.

I'd say that either all of it or most of it was trapped, that's for sure. I'll have a pure high dose harmala experience at some point and I'll see how similar it is.

Try adding a bit of honey to mimosa, or eat a teaspoon after your tea.

I'll try that, thanks for the tip. Honey is a good idea, if it works well for me I may even look into some medicinal honey with calming effects that could be helpful for the experience.

You can try ujjayi breathing too.

Very interesting, I didn't know of that technique. I'll look into it.

When DMT is active, you can hold your breath for a long time.

Do you think one actually can hold the breath for a longer "wall clock time"? Or is it for a long time as it is experienced? As time becomes so changing in its speed, it's hard to know.

 

[northape]

I'd say that either all of it or most of it was trapped, that's for sure. I'll have a pure high dose harmala experience at some point and I'll see how similar it is.

Do a high dose of harmalas but don't go beyond 300mg. It should clear all doubts.

I'll try that, thanks for the tip. Honey is a good idea, if it works well for me I may even look into some medicinal honey with calming effects that could be helpful for the experience.

Good idea. Do some experiments and see how it works for you.

Very interesting, I didn't know of that technique. I'll look into it.

Yeah, just simple pranayamas are enough. You can just follow your breath or follow it through the central channel / spine.

Do you think one actually can hold the breath for a longer "wall clock time"? Or is it for a long time as it is experienced? As time becomes so changing in its speed, it's hard to know.

Tough to answer, and I never checked it against the clock. DMT produces a long natural pause after the out-breath.
I'd guess that it's real and produces a similar state to a yogic samadhi, when your breath can disappear.