Poll About Ayahuasca

[Nestito]

You have to eat a low tryptophan diet to avoid serotonin syndrome. Caapi is a MAOI inhibitor. His other book "Intelligence in Nature" is interesting too, slightly more reality based.

i wonder how they get away with it then.

the diet aspect of it has been heavily discussed on other forums and remains quite inconclusive. clearly, SSRIs and other 'medications' are definitely a huge no-no. Caapi is supposedly a reversible MAOI inhibitor (RIMA) and the dietary restrictions regarding tyramine are mainly tied to irreversible MAOI inhibitors. some have intentionally eaten foods that should be avoided to prove a point without ill effects, and others have had reactions.

all that being said, better be safe than sorry!

and sweet, i've come across that book, but haven't read it. thanks for bringing it up, i should soon!

 

[Waynish]

I became very interested in at around 2007. After reading dozens of books and listening to thousands of hours of audio recordings I went down to find some in late 2010 and early 2011.

I found lots of cultlike activity. The retreat centre I was originally supposed to go to had a situation where they were keeping a girl drug for weeks while trying to get money out of her. She suspected people are planning to rape her. I was looking to meet up with somebody who had gotten out of that situation in Lima before I set off. She was Alaskan and from family with a history of “shamananism”, one of the most lucid people I met in those circle while there.

I ended up drinking it twice. Once with a western guy in a loft in Lima and then I went into the upper Amazon with an indigenous curandero. I was supposed to stay there longer and drink more but I had been there for 6 days, was being left for long periods without water and so on, decided to leave before things became problematic. The only concern was getting payment.

Stuff makes you have some very weird experiences. My experiences were more synesthetic than psychedelic. The different senses tended to get their wires crossed, time became warped. I did have some strong visions but they were more dreamlike and realistic. The only strong visual experiences I had were catalysed by tobacco smoke.

The physical sensation was extremely unpleasant in both cases, like having half a flu.

Most of the people I met in those circles over there were completely detached from reality, suffering from severe mental illness, probably largely induced from the substance in my opinion. It was extremely sad, especially the couple people are met when young children.

I don’t believe Ayahuasca is a useful medicine. I really wanted to believe that when I went there. I think along with most of the heavily promoted psychedelics its primary function is to make people more suggestible so that they can be more easily manipulated, whether that be for political, cultural, monetary or sexual reasons by the local current or the military-industrial complex.

I later found out that probably upwards of 95% of what I read in all of those books, many of them published by universities, some of them quite expensive, was complete nonsense. As was almost everything to come out of the many Esalen recordings I listened to.

I think I got away pretty lightly. My stubborn streak and demand for evidence of claim was probably the only thing that separated me from the train wrecks I saw in Peru. There was no sense to any of the visions, the experts insisted on trying to project some sort of story onto them after I had reported them, when I wasn’t convinced the only response was to try some more.

I put all of the positive things that people say about Ayahuasa down to suggestibility of the individual which is amplified by the substance.

Thanks for sharing. Erowid is cool, but a well written out translation of a psychedelic experience is always fascinated to read, despite how many I've had myself. I realize it might be personal, but maybe you could describe the visions a bit and why you believe them to be incoherent. It is interesting to me what people interpret as signal and noise internally.

 

[Sucrates]

i wonder how they get away with it then.

the diet aspect of it has been heavily discussed on other forums and remains quite inconclusive. clearly, SSRIs and other 'medications' are definitely a huge no-no. Caapi is supposedly a reversible MAOI inhibitor (RIMA) and the dietary restrictions regarding tyramine are mainly tied to irreversible MAOI inhibitors. some have intentionally eaten foods that should be avoided to prove a point without ill effects, and others have had reactions.

all that being said, better be safe than sorry!

and sweet, i've come across that book, but haven't read it. thanks for bringing it up, i should soon!

Isn't the difference between a MAOI and RIMA just how long the effect lasts (effectively)?

Making basic 2 ingredient ayahuasca is a relatively labor intensive process. Often other things are used to create fakahuasca which may not have MAOI or RIMA effects. The most potentiation of the effects I experienced were with addition of another MAOI (tobacco). Though of course tobacco is extremely complex too.

 

[Sucrates]

Thanks for sharing. Erowid is cool, but a well written out translation of a psychedelic experience is always fascinated to read, despite how many I've had myself. I realize it might be personal, but maybe you could describe the visions a bit and why you believe them to be incoherent. It is interesting to me what people interpret as signal and noise internally.

Clearest visions were of a giant spider with neon legs and a woman's head, looked a little like Sarah Palin. Curandero morphing into a cat/man hybrid for a few minutes during a cloud of tobacco smoke. I don't remember anything else visual clearly though I had a strong sensation of telepathy in the first experience, with the guy who was there. I suspect we either had a vocal conversation or I imagined both parts and there was no conversation. The other thing I remember clearly was the shape of a room warping to become longer and rounded. That effect held relative to the room (not my head) as I moved around it.

You could build any sort of freudian/jungian/new age nonsense out of those parts but I have no idea how you could justify it reasonably.

 

[Waynish]

Reporting back after seeing a bunch of people vape pure DMT. All of them seemingly got high serotonin side effects for 3 days after.

 

[southcesar]

I would be curious to know what Ray thinks about Ayahuasca. Has anyone ever asked him?

Bump

 

[Matt C]

I did it in 2011 in the Amazon jungle of Peru and then again in 2015 after reading about it and also the Peruvian/Incan culture for years prior.

Great experiences, ones I'll never forget and it's the same for the very small group I did it with.

Some of these comments here making broad assumptions about something they haven't tried is pretty disappointing. Shout out to the first commenter that considers shamanic people passing on a tradition from their ancestors "losers".

 

[Herbie]

I did it in 2011 in the Amazon jungle of Peru and then again in 2015 after reading about it and also the Peruvian/Incan culture for years prior.

Great experiences, ones I'll never forget and it's the same for the very small group I did it with.

Some of these comments here making broad assumptions about something they haven't tried is pretty disappointing. Shout out to the first commenter that considers shamanic people passing on a tradition from their ancestors "losers".

Yeah good to hear it was positive. Western people dont have anything of cultural value to hand down unlike shipibo Indians for example. Saying vomiting is from being poisoned, I'm not sure. I experienced ayahuasca as going through the body and gathers toxins, could be serotonin and brings it to the stomach and then vomit it out as a purge.

I went to the Amazon in Peru as well to an ayahuasca retreat and had extreme experiences.