DOSE:

repeated

oral

Ayahuasca

(liquid)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

This was my first experience with the peganum harmala / mimosa hostilis preparation, and I used it twice over a 48 hour period. Proceeding with caution, after reading every trip report that I could find, I decided on an initial dose of 2 grams of peganum harmala (PH) and 4.5 grams of pure powdered mimosa hostilis (MH) root bark. My second dose would be 2.2 grams of PH and 5.5 grams of MH.

Extraction method :

The PH seeds were folded in a sheet of thick paper and pounded with a hammer until thoroughly crushed, then placed in a small glass jar. To this I added the juice of a lemon and a little water. The mixture was stirred and the jar was placed in a pan of recently boiled water, in the hope that the mild heat would aid in the extraction. Meanwhile...

4.5 grams of pure MH rootbark powder was placed in a small stainless steel saucepan, to which the juice of a lemon and some water was added. This was brought to the boil and simmered at a high heat for approximately 20 minutes. Taken off the heat, the mixture was rested for 10 minutes so it would cool and to allow solids to settle to the bottom of the pan. The liquid, which was a deep purple colour, was slowly drained off into a seperate glass jar. More lemon juice and water was added to the solids remaining in the pan and the mixture was boiled, rested and decanted in the same way, twice. After the third and final boiling, the remaining solids were placed in a coffee filter and squeezed into the jar containing the liquid from the previous extractions, then discarded.

Once this process was complete, the peganum harmala mixture, which was a dirty yellow colour, was also placed in a coffee filter and allowed to drip into a seperate jar, before squeezing the last of the liquid out of the filter. I now had 2 glass jars containing a yellow liquid and a purple liquid. These were covered with clingfilm (saran wrap) and placed in the fridge overnight for use the next day.

Experience 1:

The combined liquids from the mimosa hostilis extraction were placed in a stainless steel pan and boiled until reduced to a small amount of liquid.

Aware of the dietary dangers involved with the use of MAOI's, I had a light breakfast of rice and beans and fasted for the rest of the day. I was alone in my house, which is in an isolated location in the countryside. As it began to get dark, I drank the peganum harmala mixture, with some trepidation. It simply tasted of lemons and was easy to drink. 25 minutes later, I felt quite relaxed and at ease, and drank the mimosa hostilis liquid. It tasted foul, beyond expectations. Bile and tannin, the aftertaste was as if I had already vomited. At first I thought it would be no problem to keep it down, but after little more than 10 minutes I went outside to vomit. This didn't take long and I was glad I hadn't eaten since breakfast.

As I walked back into the house, my body felt light and I was already beginning to feel an alteration in my perception. I sat down and relaxed, and very quickly became aware of a new level of detail and complexity in the textures of the objects in the room and the room itself. Knots in the wooden beams of the room became eyes, the mortar between the large stones that made up one of the walls started to take on the appearance of vines, that slowly grew and moved, wrapping around the stones, which themselves were beginning to look like things such as the face of a sloth, or a human jaw, or a skull. I couldn't believe that this initial preparation was actually having the effect I desired! As the visual effects deepened, I realised that my ego and normal state of mind was completely intact, I did not expect this mental clarity. Parts of the room began to vibrate and shuffle around, there was a distortion of 3d space and I felt that the room was rocking side to side like a ship on the sea, at which point I remembered to close my eyes.

On the back of my eyelids, I began to see some sort of tube, a corridor, hands were coming out of it beckoning me in, but I decided I didn't want to go that deep. Out of the tunnel emerged a totem like figure that looked like an extremely simplified sculpture of a mother-figure, cradling a child in her arms, and I felt that I was being comforted, I had a sense that I was being shown what I can only describe as the maternal love of the universe itself. I felt completely at ease. This vision gave way to another, which felt like a complex, patterned, vaulted ceiling, which completely surrounded me, and had various passageways leading elsewhere in it. I opened my eyes and felt that I had peaked and was now coming down. The open-eye visual effects faded quite quickly, leaving me feeling calm and mildly euphoric.

The experience lasted a mere 45 minutes, leaving me amazed and at the same time slightly disappointed that it ended so quickly. It had been a visually stunning trip, yet my mind retained complete clarity of thought.

Experience 2 :

The next day, I used the same extraction procedure as above, but increased the dosage to 2.2 grams of peganum harmala, and 5.5 grams of mimosa hostilis. The liquids were not left overnight in the fridge this time, and were drunk within 5 hours of preparation. Again, I had a light breakfast and fasted all day. This time, I was not in a great frame of mind, and was quite depressed after a conversation with a friend earlier in the day. I was alone in the house again.

As it was getting dark, I drank the PH liquid. This time I added a teaspoon of sugar because I had used a little more lemon and it was excessively bitter. 25 minutes later I drank the MH liquid. I had reduced this extraction further than the last time, so there was a scant few millitres to drink, and I thought that perhaps this time I wouldn't vomit. I was wrong, and after 10 minutes I went outside to purge. As I was throwing up, I was already beginning to hallucinate and I could tell this was going to be a deeper experience.

Once I was back indoors, I lay in the same place as the night before and relaxed, looking at the walls while some music played. The textures on the wooden beams of the room began to take on the appearance of hieroglyphs, but these were incomprehensible to me and I focused on the stone wall which had been so interesting the night before. Again, vines and creepers, undulating and wrapping around, but this time the visions were so much deeper and intense. I had a vision of a chameleon on a branch, sipping liquid from a flower, this exchange between these entities seemed to have some sort of spiritual significance. As I watched this scene, it gave way to visions of some ancient South American culture, temples and peoples, scenes like you might see in a tapestry, depicting some sort of story. This was becoming extremely intense, and I was nervous, and started to think I had taken to much, I didn't know what to expect of this drug and I was alone. This nervousness began to compound.

The vines in the wall, which until now had merely been contained within the surface of the wall, began to take on a three dimensional nature. Tentacles sprang out into the room, touching objects such as a chair and my leg and little sparks of electricity were produced, sparkles of light randomly came into existence momentarily before disappearing. The highly decorative carpet on the floor was liquid and made up of several layers of colour flowing at high speed. I was now getting scared. The open-eye visuals were becoming unbearably intense and hectic.

I closed my eyes, and this time I saw images of organic looking membranes, pulses of energy flowing between them. I became aware of a buzzing sound which was increasing in volume. I put my hand on my forehead and felt that I was dripping with sweat, despite the room being rather cold. As I placed my hand on my forehead, I felt like I had opened a conduit, I saw fast moving tunnel burst from my hand and it felt as though my brain had been connected to another point in space, and at the other end aliens were waiting. They made metallic squealing sounds and seemed to be very happy about this situation, and I had the sensation that they were sending probes back through this conduit into my brain, I was seeing this in a very visual way, seeing these probes which were a mixture of physical and mental penetration right into the depths of my forehead, and I wanted it to stop.

I opened my eyes for a brief second, terrified of what I might see, and as I closed them again I began to see incredible visualisations of the music I was listening to. This was fantastic and very satisfying, but soon gave way to the vaulted ceiling space that I had experienced the night before. This time I felt the distinct presence of an 'otherness', I felt as if it was trying to show me things, tell me things, again I heard squealing sounds not unlike metallic whale songs, but the flow of information was too intense, with my eyes closed or my eyes open it was all too much, it was becoming unbearable. I started to see doors opening and black silhouettes of human figures walking towards me.

At this point I was very frightened, so I opened my eyes and turned on the television, and tried to speak to some friends on IRC. I felt as thought I was past the peak, approximately 50 minutes into the experience. I was agitated and scared and was still experiencing vivid open eye hallucinations, but nothing on the scale of what had preceded. I got up to make a cup of tea, set the fire in the fireplace, went to the bathroom - moving around and focusing on a task helped bring me out of the experience, but as soon as I stopped and relaxed for a moment the hallucinations began again.

I watched TV for around an hour, this time I was experiencing unpleasant alterations of thought and a depth of introspection that I did not enjoy. This was nothing like the mental clarity of the evening before. I went outside to smoke a joint, at which point I realised I was down, and I had survived, and began to feel a slight sense of euphoria. It had been a real journey.

Summary :

With both doses, the effects took hold within 10-15 minutes of ingestion of the mimosa hostilis liquid. The peak built rapidly over approximately 30-45 minutes, and in the case of the larger dose, slowly declined until baseline at approximately 2 hours into the experience. On both occasions mild euphoria was felt as an 'afterglow'. The higher dose was extremely overwhelming, and I was not in the right state of mind to enjoy it, consequently it became a bad trip.

The things that surprised me the most, was that rather than just 'pretty patterns' or breathing walls, the visual hallucinations, closed and open eyed, seemed to have actual intellectual content to them, and I felt a distinct sense of the presence of an 'other', I felt like I was being 'shown' things, but the experience was so intense that I couldn't take it all in. Aside from feeling particularly terrified, I found both these trips to be a valuable experience, one which I will gladly repeat.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 53486
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 6, 2007	Views: 19,434
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Huasca Brew (268), Syrian Rue (45), Mimosa tenuiflora (74) : Alone (16), Retrospective / Summary (11), Combinations (3), General (1)