Potentially deadly! Datura seeds for lucid dreaming?

[Schahin92]

So dear community.

I read a story of taking low amounts of Datura seeds around 1-3 or 1-5 to have instant vivid and lucid dreaming at night.

What experiences have you done and is it really safe? Could there be variying potencies that do induce delirium if the seeds are too potent?

 

[northape]

I've also been served toé (Brugmansia) in an ayahuasca brew in Peru.

Never drink with someone who serves you toé right away. It just shows that it was a ceremony aimed at foreigners, with a big woof to make it seem worthwhile. Toé is a highly advanced medicine, and a true healer would never dose you with it right away. It's a big giveaway that they were mostly after your money. It is a sad thing how aya tourism shapes the scene. Glad that you've made it.

 

[Jagube]

Never drink with someone who serves you toé right away. It just shows that it was a ceremony aimed at foreigners, with a big woof to make it seem worthwhile. Toé is a highly advanced medicine, and a true healer would never dose you with it right away. It's a big giveaway that they were mostly after your money. It is a sad thing how aya tourism shapes the scene.

Thanks for the warning. It was 16 years ago, so nothing recent. The place was recommended by some prominent people on a forum that doesn't exist anymore.
Some guests had completely dud experiences and left disappointed, so it must have been my body's quirky reaction to it.

 

[Animistic]

I might have recounted this on the forum before but worthwhile here I think in this context.

I've had brugmansia in Ayahuasca, it was under the guise of a traditional dieta (with an entirely different plant..). Without commenting on the validity of that, it was an incredibly intense experience. I drank toé Ayahuasca 4 times in 8 days and the effects were cumulative I would say and it's effects are not for the faint of heart and thats kind of an understatement.

I think the dosage was quite small however cumulatively it's effects built up. The most pronounced effect was the physical hallucinations it produces, think rotting flesh falling off a man's face right in front of me. The veil between imagination and reality fades and they become one and the same thing which can show one things about both that are "useful" in such a space and yet not necessary for most people. Imagine being granted the ability to manifest anything you can imagine. That might sound interesting until you realise the darkness that exists in the recesses of the mind. To be clear, I don't say that with judgement as bad, only to state the qualitative nature of the experience.

If you can't imagine what might go wrong if you were given the ability to manifest anything your mind desires then you'd be best going and understanding that long before you ever worked with Datura type plants. Not to mention the places that the Toé wants you to face - the darkest, gnarliest crevices. There is medicine in that but at what cost? I can easily see why people go crazy. It also makes the Ayahuasca last 12+ hours with lingering effects far extending the afterglow usually associated with aya.

Many people struggled (almost to the point of taking their own lives) when those particular facilitators added Toé to the brew and they eventually removed it. It broke the community they had going on and I think ego had a lot to do with that. Having had some experience of depersonalization/derealization in my late teens/early 20s which really stretched my mental capacities I think I managed okay in that experience, however it was torturous nonetheless.

The other way I've worked with Brugmansia is with a small plant that flowered not long after it rooted. Placed beside my bed it strongly affected my dream space for 5 consecutive nights. I am a fairly avid lucid dreamer, having naturally had the experience since childhood and yet for me it was a whole new level of unfamiliarity. I could not discern dream from reality, even when just a moment before I had been laying in bed thinking woah, that was intense. I'd suddenly find myself in another place entirely and think absolutely nothing of it. Occasionally I was dreaming that I was sitting in my bed chatting to my partner, only to wake up and realise she was asleep. The dreams were very solid too, a lot of the techniques I use to exit/discern dreams didn't work and kind of only intensified the experience which solidified the reality of hallucination. Sleep quality suffered significantly too.

Honestly even with it being "safely" beside my bed, no ingestion, it is not to be taken lightly. Having tried to replicate this since the first experience and didn't find much success at first. I have worked out that there was something special about this plant that once understood makes the lucid dreaming repeatable but that also means the toxicity is higher. Toé/Datura is NOT a toy! Much more suitable plants out there if exploring lucid dreaming is desired.

If one wanted to explore Datura, having it close to you at night while you sleep is maybe the only way I'd say is anywhere close to "safe" but I could see things going hairy if one isn't very grounded in reality to begin with. Ingestion is something I would be very wary of.

 

[Volshebnik]

Just to say that SWIM used datura in small amounts to help breathe better because of bronchitis because he didn't have any other medicine besides that. He used small amounts of datura 1 to 10 seeds for that and for lucid dreaming.

He also used it recreationally up to 30 seeds with alcohol just to add to the weirdness.

He also used weed occasional.

It went on for two or three months after and during which he started to have delusions but he didn't noticed. It culminated with stronger delusions and eventual diagnosis with psychiatrist.

He didn't feel like himself for next 2 years.

One guy on reddit tried microdosing datura in similar amount and reported more or less same onset of symptoms, within a month or two he developed severe psychosis. He also reported interestingly the same period of two years to feel like himself again same as SWIM.

Datura toxins accumulate in organism and need period of two weeks for a body to completely get rid off them.


IF YOU DONT WANT TO GO COMPLETELY BAT SHIT CRAZY DO NOT USE DATURA IN MICRODOSING WAY

 

[the_Architect]

I'll give a more general idea to you, @Schahin92:
To get lucidity in your sleep, you need a lot of acetylcholine in your system. For this, there are cholinergic compounds like Huperzine A or tobacco. Datura has tropane alkaloids that work the other way around; they tend to create a dream headspace with a lack of lucidity. Heavy doses of Datura usually lead to amnesia or a loss of memory of the experience. So you can easily deduce for yourself what Datura would bring.

This is very interesting, never heard or specific substance helping in lucidity in dreams.
Could you expand?
In what natural herbs or plants can we find those?
Lately I´ve been drinking syrian rue tea before going to bed... like a 2.5-3.5 gram tea with some valerian root too...

 

[northape]

This is very interesting, never heard or specific substance helping in lucidity in dreams.
Could you expand?
In what natural herbs or plants can we find those?
Lately I´ve been drinking syrian rue tea before going to bed... like a 2.5-3.5 gram tea with some valerian root too...

I don't know what more to add. Maybe the word visionary would have been better. Lucidity is a higher level of attainment, in my opinion.
What you do with huperzine A or tobacco is preparing your biological system for more clarity and visual representation in a dream.
By the way, raw rue tea has some acetylcholinesterase inhibiting properties too. You can read about the neurobiology of it, but that's just a Western perspective.
The East works with energies, and it may be easier to get some real effects that way. Dream yoga is a big part of Tibetan Buddhism, for example.

 

[Volshebnik]

I'll give a more general idea to you, @Schahin92:
To get lucidity in your sleep, you need a lot of acetylcholine in your system. For this, there are cholinergic compounds like Huperzine A or tobacco. Datura has tropane alkaloids that work the other way around; they tend to create a dream headspace with a lack of lucidity. Heavy doses of Datura usually lead to amnesia or a loss of memory of the experience. So you can easily deduce for yourself what Datura would bring.

I agree with those who say that datura gives lucid dreams because I tried it and it works.

What you are speaking of are high doses which are proven to lower acetylcholine levels in brain.
BUT
They are taking small doses and I remember reading about something, I can't remember its name, but small amounts of certain drugs can have reverse effects, than as you increase effects stop and than become normal as you up the dosage.

Search dose response reverse effect, or dose - response relationship idk.

Anyway tried to search for such effect of atropine and sure enough

The Effect of Atropine on the Metabolism of Acetylcholine in the Cerebral Cortex

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/bookseries/abs/pii/S0079612308625170

So you are both right. Yes datura helps with lucid dreaming in small amounts by increasing acetylcholine, but in large amounts it lowers it.

 

[Transform]

This topic is giving me brain ache
Maybe try sticking to the orthograpic protocol, "AChE", for clarity, please! Context won't always be your friend.