Second thoughts on harmalas

[dithyramb]

As a person who didn't even appreciate the sharp no nmt buffered dmt from phalaris brachystachys with rue, I can't say achieving the sharpest dmt effect is my aim. DMT by itself is cold and alien for me. DMT combined with all the other plant constituents of it's host plant, and rue, make for a humanly medicine, imho.

Yeah in the end it's about what we form our primary relationship with. If it's dmt, then all the power to you and don't let rue get in the way. If it's rue or caapi, then dmt comes second; it is there to enhance rue or caapi.

 

[TheGreenPhantom]

harmalas do tend to mute or blunt some of the effects of DMT ime. Rue and caapi are oneirogens more than they are classic psychedelics so that gets blended into the experience.

Even Ott noted that there seemed to be a Valium like effect with harmalas that blunted the tryptamines somewhat. It can for sure change the colour tone.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who's experienced this.

 

[northape]

We need to know what we're working with and our aim. I'm a rue drinker of many years now. My dmt doses self-adjusted in the process and are not the main focus at all. Yet I feel that this medicine fulfilled its purpose for the most part (rebalancing my nervous system). I'm much more interested in different medicines at this point (mostly going back to mushrooms). If I were living close to rue lands, I'd go deeper, but at this point I feel access to fresh material is a must. I'd make the same point about caapi and chacruna/chali.

Yes, you can work with dry plants and even ingest them in a city, but that's not going to reveal the full potential of the medicine. If anything, rue showed me an organic shamanic style of work and that's where I'm heading. I feel like I'm slowly graduating from dry plants altogether in favor of using living ones. Life force is a real thing no matter our beliefs. Yeah, rainwater brews brainwashed me real good

 

[Jamie01]

You can probly make pretty potent brews where you are northape with wild amanitas and psilocybes.. and you can most likely grow potent Phalaris in a pot if you move it somewhere in winter like a window or just harvest new seed each season.

I’m surprised no one has investigated peganum mexicanum. I looked into it like 15 years ago and there was no information…now-same story. Maybe it’s too rare in the wild I dunno but I can’t believe no one has tried it yet. Here you have a harmala containing plant closely related to rue, with traditional use in US and Mexico and yet you hear no mention of it.

 

[Jamie01]

Honestly I need to go for a drive inland one day to visit family and harvest more Russian olive. I feel like I don’t need caapi if I have access to Russian olive bark…another unlimited resource in this province no one in the “ayahuasca community” is picking up on.

I could drink a little olive bark brew, with some mushrooms…snuff a grass extract. I’m good to go don’t need mush more. I do have those acacia trees tho. Grow everything you can and learn what lives around you. I bet 50 more potent DMT plants will be discovered in the next few decades.

 

[dithyramb]

Russian olive does feel like caapi at first glance but it is different. İt doesnt turn on oral dmt for starters... This year I have started tasting Russian olive barks from different areas for the first time and I can say perhaps there are two general types, one more like caapi (diving into the darkness), and one not - very euphoric and stimulating. The "like caapi" type doesn't work for me, it just brings my traumas to the surface and leaves me wallowing and drowning in the mud. The other one works very well for me.

 

[northape]

You can probly make pretty potent brews where you are northape with wild amanitas and psilocybes.. and you can most likely grow potent Phalaris in a pot if you move it somewhere in winter like a window or just harvest new seed each season.

Exactly. I'm not that much into amanitas, but liberty caps are my first love. I'm a pretty stubborn person and was stuck in a rue & barks mode for years. Only when I left that bark train did things start to move again. It took almost two years to fix my psychological issues that barks never touched. Now it feels like other doors are opening for me and I can get out of my rue fixation too. Don't get me wrong, I love the plant, but it's not my main medicine for sure - something else is. Anyway, I'm more aligned with @universecannon's views when it comes to medicine use. It's not about how strong the dose is, but about the whole protocol. These substances are just one part of the key, imo.

 

[universecannon]

Exactly. I'm not that much into amanitas, but liberty caps are my first love. I'm a pretty stubborn person and was stuck in a rue & barks mode for years. Only when I left that bark train did things start to move again. It took almost two years to fix my psychological issues that barks never touched. Now it feels like other doors are opening for me and I can get out of my rue fixation too. Don't get me wrong, I love the plant, but it's not my main medicine for sure - something else is. Anyway, I'm more aligned with @universecannon's views when it comes to medicine use. It's not about how strong the dose is, but about the whole protocol. These substances are just one part of the key, imo.

I think that's more or less why harmalas, while still super useful in some ways, have taken a background role for me as a mild potentiating factor used in low doses instead of the main show. They simply do not result in the type of experiences I've been posting about recently, but in changa form or in low doses they certainly help a little. They just don't have that lazer coherence and effulgence that tryptamines and LSD can help bring in spades. That's not to say I haven't had illuminating experiences, or even life changing experiences with them, but they aren't particularly stable, coherent, or functional, not to mention the nausea/dizzyness. I do think long term use helped re-arrange the architecture of my thought in a more expansive/visual way though.

It took almost two years to fix my psychological issues that barks never touched

This might sort of relate to my experience to. On tryptamines the self reflection is far more intense and I was forced to really work through my own BS etc. With caapi or rue, even if DMT was involved it really kept a warm blanket between me and things I needed to face more directly - which was great at the time, because I wasn't ready to work through them anyways. But it ended up feeling like I was not progressing further.

Obviously that's not the case for everyone since some seem to have the opposite experience as these things affect people differently

 

[TransistorBass]

Drinking in China, where the author claims he needed to drink 70+ shots of baijiu before he actually fell in love with it...

I think I tried that in Japan with Saki, different types, Hot, cold with food, without food - Still Tastes weird! Just keep it for cooking now.

 

[Prima Materia]

It is possible to get very predictable effects from working with extracted harmala, especially if the product is well cleaned up.
Further taking the time to separate harmine from harmaline will also help because harmaline tends to be more heavy and dizzying in effects.

It is also possible to reduce the mixture of harmine and harmaline to harmine and tetrahydroharmine (only harmaline is being reduced to tetrahydroharmine). So even the separation step is not essential to make harmala extract into a 'better' product.
In my experience the harmine/tetrahydroharmine combination produces a very much desirable effect (in the context of harmala experience) and I prefer it over the harmine/harmaline combination.

I feel like there has been a subtle mood looming in the thread that it is somehow mandatory to take harmalas and after some individuals had discovered that it is indeed not mandatory they have felt a sort of liberation from this 'law' of harmala. Which is of course non-sense. It is beneficial to work with harmala alone to see, if you even agree with it and to establish how could you possibly use it and in what dosages - if at all. There is no need to use it.

The plant and it's active constituents are a very specific thing and they should be respected or understood for what they are not what one wishes are imagines that it should be.
Harmine is quite well studied for it's various healing effects, especially various cancers and diabetes, however not in the sense of clinical studies on humans but on cell lines in petri dishes. This is still very much valuable and also confirms that many of the traditional uses of the plant and it's alkaloids are justified.
There is one clinical study which establishes that a dose of up to 2.7mg/kg of harmine is tolerated very well in individuals - another advantage of working with extract, if you want more predictable effects and are not used to plant work.

In my own experience regarding vaping DMT, I actually prefer the experience with harmala in the mix because I prefer the seemingly slowed down version of the development of effects. Also what it adds to the experience is to my liking because I feel there is more complexity and seriousness in the experience.

For me combining harmala extract with P. semilanceata had resulted in a deeper experience especially regarding healing of my nervous system. I get the same from psilocybin alone but with harmala in the mix in went much deeper in the body - which makes sense in various ways considering what we know about how some beta-carbolines work.

This has probably been stated. It is not about what is better or worse or what one should do or not do. Explore your tools systematically, learn to use them properly and then employ them for your own benefit. The tools we have available are very powerful indeed and they demand respect and knowledge. Also with more and more studies published in the journals we are confirming this facts in scientific terms as well.

 

[dithyramb]

I'm all for harmaline. Without harmaline, the experience doesn't feel as penetrating, deep, and transformational for me. I have one rue strain that I Iike that is very low in harmaline, and it is very pleasant. But it doesn't deliver deep transformation. It delivers short term well being. The right strain with rue can have high harmaline and feel very clean and coherent at the same time. And a tiny amount of Russian olive added makes it very smooth and pleasant too. My approach is adding to a plant to enhance it through synergy, rather than subtracting from it with extraction.

 

[northape]

I subscribe to both western scientific and shamanic exploratory approaches. If you can marry them in your mind, you can do the same in reality. Imo, they are just worldviews, and I take from them what works for me. I do agree that harmaline gives a deeper and lasting transformation. This side of plant work is hard to put into words. It's not about an immediate effect, but how the medicine changes you long-term. Fresh rue seeds rich in harmaline produce a kind of experience with insights that go beyond the western alkaloid paradigm. That's when I turn to my shamanic worldview and try to describe it through that lens. Hope it makes sense. It's kind of hard to put it in a proper, coherent way right now. I'll ponder some more

 

[Panpsychic]

Regardless of strain, rue is about purity and purification, protection, transcendence, and truth.

Exactly this.

And all those go together and reinforce one another as they accelerate a path to transcendence.

I don't bother with DMT without a Harmala brew first. Why would I want a quick fireworks show when I can give myself more time and depth to participate in with the Harmalas first?
The ritual of consuming the brew then waiting 40 mins to an hour before smoking the enhanced leaf, is itself now an important practice that can be used for meditative practices or listening to the right music before partaking.

I would say however that sometimes the potentiation of the DMT with a good brew can catch one off guard. Just yesterday I had a good harmala tea with soft drink then barely took even a full toke of enhanced leaf and was sent straight to intensity of communion with depth of self.
It's serious work, it's not necessarily fun, and it's supposed to be that way with Harmalas.

 

[Jamie01]

It’s not just about DMT and fireworks. Maybe there is more there in the Fabaceae and Poaceae species than that. The places most heavily populated with tryptamines in the environment don’t necessarily have rue or caapi. Acacias don’t need these other plants to be great already, although some work fine in analogue brews.