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Cacti & Harmalas, any final word on safety? Options
 
Asher7
#1 Posted : 1/6/2019 7:22:33 PM

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At this point all I can seem to find is the occasional report about someone doing it without harm but I’ve never seen any actual definitive answer on whether it is safe or not. Safe or not, it doesn’t seem to be a popular thing so I wonder if there’s any reason behind that, like they have a bad reaction consistently when mixed. Anyone have facts that can lead to a solid ye or nay?

Would it even synergize and change anything or just lead to a more sedated cacti trip?
 

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RhythmSpring
#2 Posted : 1/6/2019 8:06:26 PM

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Good question. I think it's one of those things that depends on the person taking it. Are they healthy? Vibrant? Chronically sick? Fragile? etc.

During a time in which I was chronically ill with Lyme disease, along with a co-infection that impacts the heart very very negatively (babesia), I took a weak Peruvian torch extract (with maybe ~100mg mescaline?) along with about a gram of Syrian rue.

I had an intense day, filled with excitement and wonder, but by the end of it, I was feeling very drained and my heart was hurting and palpitating in ways that definitely worried me. I think it hurt for a couple days after that. But I recovered.

I think it's if you can stand it, it's safe, but it's not for the weak-hearted, especially in large doses. That's my guess, based on my experience(s) and reading reports / info on the net.

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Grows the once broken
 
dragonrider
#3 Posted : 1/6/2019 8:13:09 PM

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RhythmSpring wrote:
Good question. I think it's one of those things that depends on the person taking it. Are they healthy? Vibrant? Chronically sick? Fragile? etc.

During a time in which I was chronically ill with Lyme disease, along with a co-infection that impacts the heart very very negatively (babesia), I took a weak Peruvian torch extract (with maybe ~100mg mescaline?) along with about a gram of Syrian rue.

I had an intense day, filled with excitement and wonder, but by the end of it, I was feeling very drained and my heart was hurting and palpitating in ways that definitely worried me. I think it hurt for a couple days after that. But I recovered.

I think it's if you can stand it, it's safe, but it's not for the weak-hearted, especially in large doses. That's my guess, based on my experience(s) and reading reports / info on the net.


You mean weakhearted in the literal sense of the word? Big grin
 
Asher7
#4 Posted : 1/6/2019 8:38:09 PM

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Yeah like a bum ticker. I’ve had my heart freak out on herb before and that is plenty bad enough.

So, at the end of the day it’s not going to cause seratonin syndrome or some guaranteed contraindication? As long as it stays in the stressful but you’ll live intact category that’s all that matters for me. I will say you do get amped up and the salt content is through the roof so I was concerned it might unlock something that keeps your blood pressure and heart rate from exploding.

Does anyone know the details of how it affects the trip like slow it, or intensify, or adds another element overall?
 
Elrik
#5 Posted : 1/6/2019 10:03:33 PM

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For a 'final word on safety' what you want is an extensive series of double blind active-placebo-controlled human trials on diverse populations to evaluate the safety, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of harmala-mescaline interaction.
I wont see that in my lifetime, I only expect to live another 50 or 60 years Wink

What can be said is that, across the various ethnobotany/drug platforms and forums, dozens of people have reported using the combination and it would be radically conservative to say that for each report there are at least ten unpublished experiences. So at the very minimum, hundreds of people have done it without even counting more or less traditional cimora brews. People here routinely monitor medical publications for mention of psychedelics, no case report of a clinically significant reaction to mescaline+harmalas has ever been seen. Very few people who have tried it report any negative at all, and those that are seen could just as easily have been triggered by mescaline alone.
I remember one person say they combined harmalas, mescaline, and caffeine and had an unpleasant sensation of racing pulse rate and because of that were suspicious of harmalas. I can get that reaction just from combining a cup of coffee with one tenth of a dose of mescaline, no harmalas.
With hundreds, probably thousands of people doing it and no reasonably concerning reports of negative interaction and certainly no fatalities, I'm personally not worried.
I've done the combination something like 3 dozen times and never had any 'negative' effects that didn't also routinely occur when using plain mescaline, mushrooms, or pharmahuasca.

As to how it effects the trip. For me it increases the trip intensity by roughly 50%, like harmalas+375mg mescaline has the effect of 500mg and harmalas+more than 500mg mescaline is only for the experienced tripper. I've heard some others say it doubles the potency for them, so go easy the first time.
It usually shifts the visual aspect toward a somewhat more pharmahuasca or LSD patterning and coloring, which of those directions it takes seems to depend on the cactus used.
I have an uncommon, but not unique, idiosyncratic response to cactus tea. An active dose of cactus tea gives me an arthritis-like sensation in my joints and other connective tissues, I've mostly heard of this effect in old men but I'm still young Crying or very sad As a result I had to entirely stop taking cactus tea. However, under half of a dose of cactus tea taken with harmalas gives me a opportunity to gauge the potency of the cactus without experiencing much of the arthritic effect, so thats a positive. [Though, in current practice, I now only use orange or white refined mescaline. Neither of those produce arthritis in me, thank the gods.]
I've never had much cause but at times have monitored my blood pressure and pulse on pharma, mescaline, and mescaline+harmalas. Systolic, diastolic, and pulse can all be elevated proportional to the intensity of the trip but I've never seen a dangerous blood pressure or pulse rate. At most its the numbers I see while resting between sets while weight lifting, not surprising given how stimulating psychedelics can be to the body.
Um, what else. I've repeatedly tried including moderate-dose [150mg] THH•HCl with the harmalas and mescaline and then followed that on a subsequent occasion with an identical dosing minus the THH. I did this all the way up to 750mg white mescaline•HCl washed down with harmine solution [an advanced dose by any measure] and in those trials I did not see THH having any unequivocal effect on the trip. I have yet to try THH•HCl at doses of up to 450mg with mescaline+harmine but it is on my list of things to try before giving up on THH+mescaline entirely.
The last thing I can think of is more of an open question. On my new years dose I wanted to shatter my old reality so I could have a brand new reality for the new year. I had just finished a scopulicola extraction with the predominant european T. scopulicola clone, a species I had never tried in refined form, so I decided to wash 625mg of orange scopulicola•HCl crystal pills down with 200mg isolated harmine•HCl in solution and then at the 3 hour mark take a capsule containing another 200mg of harmine•HCl so as the mescaline peak was on the downward slope the second harmine dose would be peaking in my blood so I could smoke some DMT and blast off. Well I got to the second harmine dose and then never did the DMT because even without it reality just cascaded in on itself and shattered. I was my childhood self, I was my grandmother, I was a forest shining pearlescent rainbows from my leaves to sing light to the stars, I was a rainbow, and I was quite, quite fucked up Laughing
This trip was the most visual and the most color-centered mescaline/cactus trip I've ever had. I am now just vibrating with anticipation to find opportunity to experiment and attempt to discern if all that happened because A] unrefined scopulicola alkaloid is freaking phenomenal, B] harmala re-dose just before mescaline peak re-intensifies and re-tunes the mescaline in a remarkable way, or C] random chance and luck.
Is cacti + harmalas safe? You judge. Either way, I'll continue!

Its a brave new world, with such psychedelics in it. Cool
 
downwardsfromzero
#6 Posted : 1/7/2019 7:23:06 PM

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Elrik wrote:
I got to the second harmine dose and then never did the DMT because even without it reality just cascaded in on itself and shattered. I was my childhood self, I was my grandmother, I was a forest shining pearlescent rainbows from my leaves to sing light to the stars, I was a rainbow, and I was quite, quite fucked up

Thanks, reading this made my day Thumbs up

Judging by Tregar's recent thread on receptorome profiles and ayahuasca, THH + mescaline is pretty redundant so you might as well save your THH for somewhere it'll make a difference.




“There is a way of manipulating matter and energy so as to produce what modern scientists call 'a field of force'. The field acts on the observer and puts him in a privileged position vis-à-vis the universe. From this position he has access to the realities which are ordinarily hidden from us by time and space, matter and energy. This is what we call the Great Work."
― Jacques Bergier, quoting Fulcanelli
 
Asher7
#7 Posted : 1/7/2019 9:17:35 PM

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Yeah that was awesome. Bonus points for being the answer I was hoping for too.Cool

I’ll jot this down for sometime in the future.
 
Grey Fox
#8 Posted : 1/8/2019 3:56:54 PM

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Elrik you mentioned using the predominant European clone of scopulicola to combine with harmine. Do you have a photo or a link to a photo of that clone?

I am becoming more and more fascinated with scopulicola. I have a couple of plants that look scop but might also be pachanoi. The line between scopulicola and a fat pachanoi is very blurry in my mind. But regardless of how these plants are labelled, I agree with you that this type is very very nice.
IT WAS ALL A DREAM
 
Elrik
#9 Posted : 1/8/2019 6:27:26 PM

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Sure.
This is the clone I've seen circulated as scopulicola. Some people try to argue that scops are inherently spineless and therefore this variant is an example of a particularly short spined pachanoi, however lets look at the botanical definition of a scopulicola:
Quote:
Plants shrubby, branching basally with several erect colum-
nar stems, 3-4 m (9.8-13 ft) high. Stems cylindrical, 8-10 cm
(3.1-3.9 in) in diameter. Ribs 4-6, large, tuberculate, obtuse.
Areoles white, round to oval, 1.5-3 cm (0.6-1.2 in) apart.
Spines usually absent, sometimes 3-4, awl shaped, brown, to
1 mm long. Flowers borne near the stem tips, fragrant, white,
16-20 cm (6.3-7.9 in) long. Fruits green, 4-5 cm (1.6-2 in)
long.
In the plants I have large specimens do branch basally, the human-sized stems are 9-10 cm in diameter, they usually have 5 ribs but occasionally 6, areoles are white and round 1.5-2.5 cm apart, the areoles almost invariably have spines and the spines are brown and usually count 4 per areole, often one spine is shorter than the others or even virtually absent and rarely I see an areole with 5 spines. I've never seen flowers or fruit, unfortunately. I can carry a 20 kilo log without the spines piercing the skin of my hands, but if I pick up a pot and let the cactus lean against my shoulder the spines can scratch that more delicate skin uncomfortably. In the heat of summer they respond well to lots of water and fertilizer.
Elrik attached the following image(s):
200_8048.jpg (140kb) downloaded 258 time(s).
 
Grey Fox
#10 Posted : 1/8/2019 7:51:11 PM

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That plant looks very similar to Juuls Giant. I posted photos of Juuls in the Welcome Discussion sub forum if you want to take a look.

The plants I think of as scop or scop hybrids have more of that squared off, box-like look to the ribs.

The interesting thing about Scopulicola is that it was described by Ritter decades ago as a plant that grew wild in Bolivia, but more recent attempts to locate it in the wild have been unsuccessful. And plants that look very similar to it have turned up in shamans' gardens in places like northern Peru.

I still find it to be a somewhat mysterious species, and I still have trouble understanding if it is a distinct species or just a sub type of Pachanoi.

But regardless of all that I agree with you that plants like Scop and Juuls are very very nice for journeying with. The quality and profile of the trip is excellent in my opinion.
IT WAS ALL A DREAM
 
Elrik
#11 Posted : 1/8/2019 9:21:59 PM

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I should have noted that stem had been cut and aged on a shelf for 3 months, they are more plump when growing.
I agree that juul's and scop do have similar looking stems. Hybrids between the two look like classic short spined pachanois, the juul's seeming to give its spine length to scops more evenly matched spines.
 
Wolfnippletip
#12 Posted : 1/8/2019 9:35:43 PM

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Here is a pic of my Juul's/Scope hybrid:
Can you tell it's gotten more sunlight the last two Seasons? Very happy

Wolfnippletip attached the following image(s):
cactusjuulscope.jpg (160kb) downloaded 244 time(s).
My flesh moves, like liquid. My mind is cut loose.
 
Grey Fox
#13 Posted : 1/8/2019 10:13:48 PM

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Beautiful cacti Wolf.

Thanks for clarifying about the stem being aged Elrik.

I'm going to attach that photo of my Juul's here to make it easier to talk about. I'm at work so I cant take any new photos right now.

The plant on the right is Juul's Giant. The smaller plant on the left is of unknown genetics but looks like it might have some Scop genetics based on the rib shape. I also have another unknown plant that is similar to these but even more Scop-like in features.

Overall, this fat pach / scop type is excellent in my opinion. And speaking of harmalas and maoi's, even though I know the concept is somewhat unproven and controversial, I find it to be true that bridgesii has something "extra" to it that amps up the experience. Some bridgesii added to a tea that is mostly this fat, small spined type turns out to be outstanding!
IT WAS ALL A DREAM
 
Grey Fox
#14 Posted : 1/8/2019 10:41:06 PM

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Sorry I'm still trying to figure out the whole uploading protocol on this website.
IT WAS ALL A DREAM
 
Asher7
#15 Posted : 1/9/2019 3:09:05 AM

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Hard to believe that whole cactus runs on a single AA.

Since looking these cacti have stayed somehow off my radar. Are they similar to others in their care and growth rate? I have another cactus to potentially try and get now.Shocked Do you guys get your cacti to flower?

Tossing it over in my head, even with the delayed onset of mescaline the name of the game is neutralizing what’s in your stomach so the dosage schedule would stay the same as with dmt right? Wash your gut with harmalas and then passionately introduce the cacti tea. Thumbs up

Real quick, is vaping spice while partaking of cacti a good combo? Just speculating I could see how it might intensify and zoom in or I could also see it maybe not meshing so I don’t really know what to think.
 
Elrik
#16 Posted : 1/9/2019 6:07:33 AM

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If anything, my scops are easier than some other active cacti. They never get rot of any kind as long as I stop feeding them heavily before the weather gets cold. And in the summer I do feed them heavily, I have them behind my Peganum harmala plants for shade with the cactus pots half-planted in the ground and I just drench them with water and fertilizer and the harmalas can drink all the run-off from the cacti. Symbiosis Laughing
Gram yield of mescaline is lower than some others, but other attributes make up for it. Size, growth rate, effects, rot resistance. With that 0.6-0.8% yield isn't so bad.
Scopulicola would be a great beginner cactus, as near to fool-proof as trichocereus cacti get.
 
Asher7
#17 Posted : 1/9/2019 7:24:18 AM

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Do the effects differ than say bridgesii and if so how?
 
Grey Fox
#18 Posted : 1/9/2019 3:45:39 PM

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You'll get different answers and opinions to that question. To me bridgesii is intense and unpredictable, especially at higher doses. You are really in your head and visually stimulated. It can be hard on the body, with muscle cramps and lots of nausea. If you want inensity and to be challenged then bridgesii is good, especially when you up the dose.

Scops and fat pachanoi types are different. They bring euphoria, clarity, a sense of connectedness and healing. Bridgesii will knock you on your ass and make you sit or lay down for a long time. The scop types are more energetic and uplifting.

When you combine the two into one tea (say 2 or 3 parts scop to 1 part bridgesii by weight) you get the euphoric, clear, uplifting effects but the intesity and strength of the overall experience is amped up.

At least thats how it works for me in terms of making tea. YMMV.
IT WAS ALL A DREAM
 
Asher7
#19 Posted : 1/9/2019 6:10:44 PM

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Can you compare the scops to the average peruvian torch? I have no first hand experience but they are jotted down in my notes as, according to my reading, being the most relaxing and euphoric of the classic trichs. The scops though until now, I somehow just never noticed them so these are all new to me.
 
Grey Fox
#20 Posted : 1/9/2019 6:21:20 PM

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I dont have a lot of experience with Peruvian Torch so I cant speak to that.

With Peruvianus its really important to get plants with good genetics because not all of them are active and many are mixed with cuscoensis genetics.
IT WAS ALL A DREAM
 
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