Snozzleberry,
Ok, I’m giving up this point by point discussion as its becoming tiresome and going to try and just cover the territory. I think much of this communication may represent some form of misunderstanding.
I’m not trying to set my personal awareness as a metric for human knowledge, I’m just stating my experience and understanding at the time. That’s it. Nothing more. Just saying what I experienced and understood at the time. Do you understand that? Good!
When I say “Only in Australia do you have trees which contain pretty much DMT”, I am saying only in Australia do we have the ability to compare different acacia trees or MANY sources of DMT. Sure, you can compare Tenuiflora to Psychotria Viridis, but in Australia we have a few other species which are rather pure sources of DMT which gives us an ability to make comparisons people from other countries would have difficulties. Understood? Good!
Like I said, it was news to me my claims were widely contested (which I still do not believe), I will make sure to bring the evidence to the table in the future and hopefully end this sort of redundant discussion.
I have never discounted that people smoked DMT with MAOI’s, I was aware of Gracie and Zarkov’s work for sure. It was however pointed out that Gracie and Zarvov did not smoke the Ayahuasca at the same time as the DMT. And I have never said that smoking DMT with an MAOI was something I started. Of course I was aware of the McKenna’s smoking ayahuasca vine wth the mushrooms. I was ALSO aware of an Australian researcher who was smoking MAOI’s and then taking DMT orally.
I’m saying the whole package was a new development and a new creation. And that was when Changa was born. I don’t define changa as smoking ayahuasca vine or an MAOI and THEN smoking DMT. It is a mix with the ayahuasca vine or leaf and other herbs in the whole package and that is what defines it.
For your information, the article about the origin of Changa which is in my book I was asked to write in the EGA journal by the editor of the journal, Des Trammachi, an academic who wrote his phd thesis on DMT.
Academia.edu is a place to share and follow research.
independent.academia.edu
For the record, Nen has said nothing to my face about me not inventing Changa. At EGA in 2011 as I recall, he credited me with switching a lot of people on. Since then I aware he has associated with people who seem to have a hatred for me that borders on psychosis.
I’m very much concerned about the obtusifolias as well on the far north coast of NSW as well. My response to that article that you and him wrote some time ago, was like a kick in the guts that lasted a few hours. I wrote a document in 2002 saying, guys! We need to grow these trees, we need to grow these plants! Only in the last few years have people been really rising to the challenge. I am not a grower, it is not my story, but I have distributed many thousands of Acacia seeds all around the world.
I think its very important to be clear about what changa is and what Changa is not.
Changa is not people smoking Ayahuasca vine or MAOI’s and then smoking DMT.
Changa is not people putting DMT onto a herb or herbs and then smoking those herbs.
Changa IS the BLEND of Ayahuasca vine and herbs into which DMT is infused.
I too tend to think it was obvious progression, and agree that at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who did it first or who popularised it. But at the time, a lot of people were skeptical or “didn’t get it”, so it wasn’t obvious to them at all, and many people were skeptical the ayahuasca would have any effect at all when smoked with the DMT at the same time! Ott was one of those people.
Again, I’m having difficulty with this conversation, because you keep saying that people were smoking MAOI’s separately and DMT before me and that was Changa? And I’m saying, I was aware of people infusing DMT into herbs and also had some awareness that people had experimented with combining DMT with an MAOI. (But not in the same package mind you)
What is also significant is that I observed that the combination of admixture herbs are activated by the DMT and the ayahuasca. So each herb you use in changa is of vital importance.
Neil Pike in this article, mentions smoking DMT infused into herbs and seems to think this is changa. I only heard of people infusing DMT into parsley or marijuana, not a blend of herbs. The only guy using a blend I heard about was the guy smoking DMT with Mullein and Mint. I’m not saying that I what knew is the end all and be all, only that is what I heard about at the time.
Peter Stafford mentions that some people use herbs as a carrier to DMT in his psychedelic encyclopedia (page 330), but he even suggests steeping the herbs in water so that the aromatic flavoring is absent. The three herbs he mentions are parsley, Marijuana and Red Raspberry leaves, but not any kind of combination where the effect of the blend of herbs is considered paramount. He suggests using one herb, not a blend of herbs, as the herb is simply considered a carrier of the DMT, a convenient way to smoke it.
So I do dispute that smoking “mixes” containing DMT were popular at the end of the 21st century, as Neil Pike says. Such smoking “mixes” might have been something to pop up on occasion around Nimbin or the hills of Byron in the mid to late 90’s, but “popular” may be stretching it. It was easier to just sprinkle DMT on your cannabis joint, which is something that I know was relatively popular at the time. My earliest experiments were of sprinkling DMT on ayahuasca vine joints btw!
When I came on the scene in 1999, DMT itself was very rare. Even in 2003 at intra cortex festival in far northern NSW, I met one American girl who had difficulty even finding DMT to buy!
I maintain that I am the inventor of combining DMT with Ayahuasca vine and other herbs in a blend. There is no historical record of that occurring before me. Sure, other people may well have done that before me, but they didn’t give it a name or apparently see the need to share it with the world.
And that’s an important differentiation, I saw the value of this blend and proceeded to spread that idea throughout the world.
Regarding your views on molecules. One could argue science is the development of knowledge, for science to progress, transform and evolve its understanding of the world (which it must do), there must be a flexibility to test hypotheses. I consider it unscientific to simply maintain the status quo of scientific evidence, as science is actually a method, not a description of reality.
We may have different ways of approaching reality here. I maintain my own views, thoughts and perspectives based upon my own experience as being primary, not external and objective experiments to rely upon what is real or evident in my understanding of the world. I don’t expect anyone to believe what I say, I’m only reporting what I believe to be the case and what I believe to be true.
Nen888,
Yes, but the concept of smoking an MAOI and then DMT is not the same as smoking DMT infused into herbs including ayahuasca.
There is a big difference.
As for standing up, and shouting out “it was me! It was me!” I only did so after 6 or so years and then very gradually came out of the closet.
“nen888” said:
a lot went on in the entheogenic world before 1999, it just wasn't as internet connected then...the main criticism i hear within Australia of you is that you promoted changa like it had never existed before (that delivery method) in a very public (i.e. at trance festivals) and self-promoting way, creating a commodity scale that seriously threatened trees in the wild...
that's the main and repeated criticism i hear, of those who are critical...that you created a marketing vehicle, not that there is some problem with smoking harmalas+dmt, as people had already started doing this..
Ok, so you’re essentially saying I created changa
I guess it is the old differing point of view, that of Aldous Huxley and Tim Leary. With me being in the Tim Leary camp. A lot of people have been critical of my actions from day dot.
Like I keep saying, it is only in the last little while you have said that people smoked harmalas and DMT previous to changa coming on the scene.
“nen888” said:
the core of this aspect of the discussion, is that the principle of harmalas to modulate dmt was well established before your deciding to name this changa and promote your particular blend..this shouldn't be taken as some kind of personal attack, it's not..
I don’t disagree with that, except I would say it was hardly well established. It appeared more experimental to me.
As for the old guard being against me, I heard from our mutual friend K in the very early naughties, that there was a guy fantasizing about cutting off my fingers and then fantasizing about killing me.
And then we have your friend W, who has consistently appears to be hatefully against what he thinks I represent in the most irrational and crazy way and telling lies and false stories about me to other people. This is not conspiratorial stuff, but simply what I have experienced. At times it has all been quite intense and crazy.
Anyway, that’s all I have to say about all this at this point.
