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Syrian Rue Tea report—slight effects, how to improve?

LimboWalk

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Brewing method:
6 grams(I felt like going higher) of Syrian rue seeds were ground into coarse powder using a hand-crank coffee grinder, then placed into a tea bag. About 125 ml of water was used to boil it for 10 minutes, repeated four times in total. The resulting brews were combined and reduced down to around 70 ml, used low simmer all the time, the end result brew was a orange-reddish color, During the 1st and 3rd boils, vitamin C tablets were added, totaling 439 mg. Before drinking, a small piece of ginger was eaten (heard it could reduce nausea and make vomiting less likely).

Experience:

1:40 AM
— Took the first sip of the Syrian rue tea, drank about ¾ of it.

2:30 AM — Almost no noticeable effects, so finished the rest. Then ate a small piece of bread and drank some water mixed with milk.

3:05 AM — Started feeling a bit dizzy (but not like alcohol drunkenness), though it could have been placebo. Arms and legs felt weak and soft. The dizziness/body weakness felt somewhat similar to being sick with a fever. At one point while sitting on the couch, my arms felt very heavy, and I just wanted to close my eyes and sink into the sofa without thinking about anything, BUTNOT LIKE very comfortable, I had to listen to music to stop the boredom

3:30 AM — Nausea became much stronger and I vomited. After vomiting I still felt dizzy and had a mild headache. Then I spent the rest of the time listening to music.

5:00 AM — Ate food.

6:30 AM — Went to sleep. Contrary to what some posts claimed about Syrian rue causing very good sleep, I actually had trouble falling asleep for a long time. Various memories and random thoughts kept surfacing in my mind. After finally falling asleep, I also woke up once during the night.

Conclusion:
Overall the experience was neither pleasant nor enjoyable. The physical sensations were not pleasurable either. There was none of the “euphoria” described in some posts. The five senses were almost completely unchanged. There were no changes in perception, cognition, sense of time, closed-eye visuals, or inner meaning/significance.

I also bought a UV blacklight flashlight. When shining it on the brew, the liquid glowed bright green. When shining the beam vertically into the liquid, from the side of the glass I could not see the beam penetrate the liquid at all. According to
Don't worry, the vit C won't harm the harmalas - I use it in the hope that it's going to boost the THH content of the brew. Besides the oxalate thing, excessive acidity can be harder on the stomach and may make it (even) less palatable.

Oh, and try shining a UV light on your brew. This can be helpful in determining whether later brews are worthwhile. I use a kids' "spy pen" light. The beam from the single LED will penetrate the solution to a distance roughly and inversely proportional to the harmala concentration below a certain threshold.

Once the beam gets more than about 5-6 cm through the brew, the harmala concentration has become too low to be worthwhile for anything much other than recycling into the next fresh brew.
this supposedly indicates a very high alkaloid concentration.

My Syrian rue seeds were bought from mainland China. I asked several sellers and they all claimed the seeds were grown in Xinjiang and were dried raw seeds.

At this point I’d consider the experience a failure. So What Might Have Gone Wrong? should I use a different brewing method? increase the dose amount? and I also made sure not to eat MAOI-interacting foods beforehand. Is it possible my Syrian rue seeds contained little or no harmine, harmaline, and other alkaloids? Or are the Syrian rue seeds grown/sold in mainland China fundamentally different from the Syrian rue described on Wikipedia and this forum?
 

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Well, reading your report, first thing that came to mind is : what kind of effects would you expect from rue tea ? Rue effects are subtle and one often needs time before understanding how it works. Nausea and vomiting is not surprising, rue is an emetic agent. Not to mention 6g is quite a high dose for a first time.
I don't know about Chinese seeds alkaloids content, mine mostly come from Morocco and they usually yield 5-7% alkaloids. I've only had once (in years) seeds that didn't contain any harmalas, I noticed it with astonishment during the extraction as no color change occurred from base/precipitation step. I had a bag left from this batch (fortunately I only ordered 2 of them), when I opened it I understood what happened : seeds were stinking moldy, they must have absorbed moisture for a while.
My general advice would be : go for lower doses and build your way up gradually while refining your tea recipe. 2-3g seeds is the usual beginners dose. 5g+ doses, when appropriately brewed, is considered a high dose. Also, unless you ensure you filter the brew well (coffee filter), crushed seeds might bring more gunk and stronger nausea. Tea can be simmered with whole seeds.
If you plan to explore the rue further, especially at high doses, extraction is a good option to leverage nausea and allows for more precise dosing.
 
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Well, reading your report, first thing that came to mind is : what kind of effects would you expect from rue tea ? Rue effects are subtle and one often needs time before understanding how it works. Nausea and vomiting is not surprising, rue is an emetic agent. Not to mention 6g is quite a high dose for a first time.
I don't know about Chinese seeds alkaloids content, mine mostly come from Morocco and they usually yield 5-7% alkaloids. I've only had once (in years) seeds that didn't contain any harmalas, I noticed it with astonishment during the extraction as no color change occurred from base/precipitation step. I had a bag left from this batch (fortunately I only ordered 2 of them), when I opened it I understood what happened : seeds were stinking moldy, they must have absorbed moisture for a while
My general advice would be : go for lower doses and build you way up gradually while refining your tea recipe. 2-3g seeds is the usual beginners dose. 5g+ doses, when appropriately brewed, is considered a high dose. Also, unless you ensure you filter the brew well (coffee filter), crushed seeds might bring more gunk and stronger nausea. Tea can be simmered with whole seeds.
If you plan to explore the rue further, especially at high doses, extraction is a good option to leverage nausea and allows for more precise dosing.
Thanks for the reply, well, I was expecting euphoria, super relaxing, anti-depression, inner visual kind of results.
 
Thanks for the reply, well, I was expecting euphoria, super relaxing, anti-depression, inner visual kind of results.
That's the kind of effects one could expect. "Euphoria, super relaxing, anti-depression" could come from even smaller doses. In your case, effects may have been overcome by nausea.
The inner visuals are a more tricky stuff, and often need higher doses. Don't expect sharp visuals like with "classical" psychedelics or DMT induced 4K visuals. They are more like (sometimes blurry) conscious dreams scenes.
 
Sounds like it worked to me.
Thought the same while reading, but at 6 g I expect some of the usual effects to be more prominent, like tracers for example.


Brewing method seems okay, maybe with a coarse grind it needs more time, presoaking the seeds might help.

And yes since the seeds come from a different area than commonly available, and depending on growing conditions especially if they're not wild, they might just be weak. Extraction will clarify this.
 
Quality of your seeds seems not great, that dose should be stronger.

But rue effects (except nausea, dizziness and heavy feeling) are quite subtle and needs experience from the user.
 
The most seeds I've had so far was about 1g, ground up and made into a simple tea swallowing the liquid and seeds - I get a light mood lift from this and maybe a little gas!

So far the most extracted harmalas I've taken is 100mg freebase as sublingual, this dose made me feel a bit nausea when I started hitting the DMT vape but if you move slowly and carefully its manageable and no actual puke! 50-60mg is enough harmalas for a nicely extended DMT session, I'm finding the harmalas can bring out a lot of emotion and tears but this is a good thing and I'd say lean into it.

I'd recommend the No Filter TEK - TEK - Speedy No-Filter Harmalas Tek (draft) if you want to try extracting the Harmalas from your seeds.
 
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