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Spiritual Pharmahuasca
Pharmahuasca (Syrian Rue & DMT)
Citation:   Sherlockalien. "Spiritual Pharmahuasca: An Experience with Pharmahuasca (Syrian Rue & DMT) (exp71353)". Erowid.org. Jun 26, 2009. erowid.org/exp/71353

 
DOSE:
T+ 0:00
2 g oral Syrian Rue (tea)
  T+ 0:35 200 mg oral DMT (powder / crystals)
BODY WEIGHT: 70 kg
So yesterday´s experience was incredible!! 2g of rue and 200mg of pure crystals. Here´s the trip report. It is long but I think you wont regret reading it.

Prologue

Yesterday I decided to take pharmahuasca consisting of extracted DMT crystals and some Syrian rue. I embarked on this experience with a question to be answered: ´Can pharmahuasca be as deep and spiritual as it was for me with the real ayahuasca?´. To help bring about a proper setting, earlier during the day I went to a friend´s house that participated with me in this ritual some months ago and had recorded the singing of the shaman, so I put the icaros in my ipod. I made my room nicely organized, and put a couple of candles around.

The Rue episode

After a light early dinner, I waited a few hours for the digestion, and started preparing the Rue. I put the 2 grams I had inside 2 layers of ziplock and mashed it for a while with a hammer (the first ziplock ripped open, so it was good to use 2 layers). Then I boiled it with some lemon-acidified water for 15 mins, and after tried to filter the solids with a coffee filter. That was a big no-no, as the coffee filter clogged and then ripped. So I collected the solids stuck to the broken filter, put it all back in the pot with some water, boiled again for 2 mins and this time I ripped some old shirt, attached to a glass with some rubber band and used it as a filter. Now it worked.

Then I came across a problem nobody tells you on the net: How the hell do you take out the rue powder stuck to the filter?! So the best way I found was to put some water in a small deep bowl (like those cereal bowls), immerse the filter in the water and shake a bit. That all was sort of funny, the situation of improvising, it was all a bit messy but I managed it. So I boiled again with lemon water and separated the solids another two times, discarded the solid and put all the liquid together (which by now had become 2 glasses full). Then I boiled it all down to about 100ml and added some honey as advised on the internet.

The ipod freeze, 23:23 and the Rue tea

So I had decided that I would start the experience by ingesting the Rue at exactly 23:23. It was still a few minutes to go, so I made a bit of stretching and quiet straight sitting, to relax my body. When it was about 5 minutes to go, I decided to listen quickly to some music on my ipod before I go down to get the tea which was in the kitchen. So the moment I press play, it freezes. So Im like ´wtf, not now please!!´. So I know there is a certain code to reset the ipod, but I didn’t remember it, so I run down to the computer, turn it on and ask the modern oracle how to do it. So I make the code and the ipod unfreezes EXACTLY as the clock turns 23:23. I run to the kitchen, get the tea and gulp it down. Pretty peculiar haha.

In 25 minutes or so I feel a bit of light-headedness and body feeling, sort of like the onset of an LSA trip. At this point I start preparing for taking the crystals

Banana Crystals and the beginning of all

At first when I planned on taking the crystals, I knew they were quite harsh (put a bit on the tongue and you´ll see what I mean), and this is not because they were impure or with NaOH remains from the extractions, as I had washed them with sodium carbonate AND recrystallized them. So anyways, my initial plan was to mash a bit of bread, put the crystals on top, bit more mashed bread on top and swallow the improvised bread ´capsule´. When I made a test-try without the crystals, it was hard swallowing it, bread gets stuck in the throat, so I had to make another way. I decided to mash some bananas and make the same, but of bananas, figuring that it would slide down easily and the crystals would still be ´protected´ from touching my mouth/throat.

At 00:00 I take 200mg of crystals divided in two ´bites/gulps/banana capsules´. I lay down on my bed and wait for the onset, listening to some icaros.

The Trip

It took 40 minutes to start, which made me apprehensive thinking I had done something wrong, that the rue wasn’t enough, or that the banana had somehow messed it up. I said to myself (or to the dmt) ´come on, im not afraid, come on´. And boy, did it come.

The first tripping moments had to do with my vision. I could force my eyes to turn the typical closed eyes phosphene imagery into seeing scenes and scenarios, like landscapes, roads, forests and so on. First this was very light but then started increasing and the scenes got more and more realistic. This came together with a very heightened perception of the icaros. They were incredible! I could feel the power of the shaman again, reminding exactly how it was when he was singing next to me in the ritual months ago. I felt the wise science behind the sounds, how perfect they were and how they really match the DMT experience, the repetitions, the patterns.

Until this moment, I had felt no nausea, but then it did come. It wasn’t so bad, it was more like a feeling of having a ´thick´ stomach (hard to describe), having something ´stuck´. It is sort of like the feeling when one wants to burp but its stuck and doesn’t come out. At this point the air was feeling very thick too, like when one opens the eyes during a smoked DMT trip and the air is ´filled´, and not empty.

It was late, and I had woken up sort of early, so I was tired. When I layed down, sleep began taking hold of me, so I had to sit up in bed to fight it off. When I stood up, this ´thick nausea´ began again, so I kept alternating between the two, stuck, sort of like the ´short-blanket syndrome´ (pull at the top the feet get cold, pull at the feet and the top gets cold). Now mind you, this seems like a negative thing, but I felt, like I had learned in the ayahuasca rituals I had done, that this was a part of the whole point of DMT: To take me out of the comfort zone, to make me face weakness and difficulty, so I can ´stand´ it and get stronger.

The trip started getting very very strong, overriding my tiredness. This meant I could lay down without a problem. Listening to the Icaros was amaaaaaaaaazing, but I decided that I should go another step and be in silent for awhile. This proved to be a good experiment. I started having the most incredible auditory ´hallucinations´. They were sounds of the ´other side´, so to say. Imagine playing the keys of the piano from the lowest tone to the highest tone in order, and back. Now this would be a ´linear´ order, sort of ´horizontal´, like the piano is. So imagine the same, but instead of a ´linear horizontal´ scale change, a spiral sound. This was what I heard. I heard the sounds of spirals, fractals, futuristic sounds, bleeps and blops, bubbles and moving balloons. It was as if one could decode all the imagery of a smoked DMT trip into sounds.

This brings me to another point. I was having a trip of the same level of a smoked 50mg DMT trip, except instead of 300km/h, it just as intense, but at 50km/h. This meant I could carefully examine the visuals and the sounds.

Then a very very weird feeling started to arise in me. I started feeling the whole mystery of the DMT, connecting it somehow to the ´dead´ world. It wasn´t ´evil´ in any way, but it was quite humbling. It was just so beyond our level of consciousness, and I couldn’t help but get the feeling it had something to do with death (maybe mckenna was onto something when he called it an ´ecology of souls´ . The sounds and visuals showed me this somehow, as if the whole existence was made of spirals, vibrations interacting with each other. It´s like those images in movies when a camera stands still in a city and it goes fast forward, and one can see the ´after images´ of all the people passing by. So it was as if the trip was showing me this, but instead of a city, all life, and instead of fast forward, both forward and backwards (like the piano thing I said, going up and down the scales, evolution and involution).

This all lead me to start thinking about death more, visualizing it. Suddenly I was imagining people, but in special my wife (im only 23 but im married), and I thought of her death, and it hurt me so much. I cried, thinking of how hard it was to ´let go´ of the attachment of living. This continued for a while, visualizing loads of people that I know, but specially my family and my wife, and I cried about the transitory nature of life and existence. I thought of my death too, and this was hard, imagining the last breath, letting go, releasing attachments, being engulfed by the ´other side´.

We are like birds in a cage, that even when set free, still hesitates going out. The same for us, no matter how ´enlightened´ and ´unafraid´ one says he is about death, there is always a hesitation, a difficulty, but what I came to learn is that we tend to ´pile up´ on this initial worry with loads of unnecessary fears, and that the key is to just do what one has to during life, be productive, give back to the world, have no ´debts´ with existence, and then there is nothing to fear. I don’t think I worked out completely my fear of death, as this is a process that goes on until the day it actually happens, but I am slowly dealing with it each time better, and in the very least it´s a reminder to make my life worth living. I also thought of being even closer with my wife, valuing her more, helping her also make her life worth living. This all lasted quite a while, and it was one of the strongest parts of the experience.

Now the funny thing was that I suddenly had the taste of DMT in my throat (even though it went down smooth because of the banana when I took it, didn’t really touch the throat). The perception of this taste wasn´t simply a usual perception, it was as if I was observing a holography of the DMT molecule in my mind, where I could see it perfectly, feel all it´s properties, taste, smell, consistence and so on. It started feeling quite harsh to the stomach, actually. When I take ayahuasca, it is very strong, but, maybe because it comes with other substances, it´s as if it is somehow ´protected´ or ´encapsulated´ by the whole liquid. The pure crystals seemed way too harsh, somehow ´caustic´ to the stomach (and as I said, it was a very clean pure one, so it wasn’t because of remains of caustic soda). I could feel the pain of my stomach, and I must have been making some funny faces at this point. I only had water next to me, and it didn’t help.

I desperately needed something like a juice. Then I thought that the best, actually, would be some açaí I had in the fridge (açaí is a vitamin rich berry from the amazon. It comes in the form of a frozen pulp, and you put it in the mixer and you eat this frozen thick consistence yummi ´juice´ with a spoon). It felt like it was the only thing that would help, but the thing is, I was completely loaded, I was so under the influence that I couldn’t really open my eyes, everything was overlayed with dmt-like visuals, the air was thick, I was sensitive to light, I could barely move. Also, I live in a reasonably big house from my grandma, so it was a long way to go, through a big corridor, go down stairs, pass next to the living room which has a weird mirror wall, then into the kitchen, and I still would have to break the pulp, put it on the mixer and so on. Way too much for a person in my state. So I stayed there, suffering in bed, working over the idea of going down.

Eventually the need for açaí made me overcome the inertia. So I went down slowly most of the way with my eyes closed because it was hard to keep them open, and I started making the açaí. The problem was, I hadn’t properly attached the mixer ´top´, so loads of açaí, which is purple and stains shirts and so on very easily, flew out and made a mess. Now imagine me in that state, having to clean the kitchen and all.

Appart from that, normally one mixes açaí with a bit of water, but sometimes I mix with milk. This time I mixed with milk, and when I took a sip of it, I was totally disgusted! Milk felt completely wrong, and I don’t mean just in that situation, but in general. This realization came in many different levels. First it was a ´moral´ level, imagining us humans ´stealing´ the milk of another animal to drink (AFAIK we are the only animals that do that). The milk I drink was organic, but still it didn’t feel right. Also I imagined the secretion of this milk in the cow, as if I could imagine the glands producing it, and I can tell you it wasn´t very pleasant to ´taste´ cow glands haha. Also, it just felt wrong in general to the human body, as if it´s tolerated and somehow digested, but it´s not meant to be, the body doesnt want it.

This also made me start questioning my whole position as a vegetarian, trying to respect nature, how hard it starts becoming. I thought about it´s not enough to just not eat meat, but how agrotoxic-filled vegetables, milk-stealing, etc are also nasty. I thought of vegetarians, how usually they define themselves as such, as if it morally excuses them in life. But in fact, it´s so much more complex than that, as the milk example I mentioned, or for example how even if one doesn’t eat meat, still so many of the products we use are involved in animal testing (for example, procter and gamble, a big corporation, owner of Duracell batteries, Gillette, Oral B, Pampers, a dozen of shampoo brands, etc, is known to do very nasty animal testing). So this showed me how it´s a very complex and deep issue, and how I definitely don’t have clear-cut answers to it. I know I will always have some sort of cost to the planet, one can´t be ´footprint-free´, but I realized once again it´s my duty to try to diminish that and be aware of things I buy/use as much as possible, respecting all different levels of life.

Anyways, I still needed to drink something, so I found some watermelon and made a watermelon juice. Then I went up, and at this point finally the trip was diminishing (3:30 hours after I took). I layed in bed, reviving what happened in my mind, imagining making this trip report and thinking of recommending to anyone who decides to take pharmahuasca that they should definitely have some nice juice next to them hehe

The answer to my original question: Yes, in a proper set and setting, pharmahuasca can be as deep and spiritual as normal ayahuasca. (but if possible, a real ritual with ayahuasca is definitely recommended).

This was a very deep experience, unexpectedly so. Now once again Im gonna try to put things into practice. Hope you all enjoyed reading

Exp Year: 2008ExpID: 71353
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 26, 2009Views: 20,967
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DMT (18), Syrian Rue (45), Pharmahuasca (822) : Alone (16), Relationships (44), Difficult Experiences (5), Preparation / Recipes (30), Combinations (3)

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