brother i do hope you find fruits to your endevours , whatever it is that you're looking for , reading your posts and threads makes me realize you're trying each and every stressful activity possible , sometimes i think you might be wanting to develop super powers , i dont know if its the best approach

i do feel you're thirsty for something , may you quench this thirst without hurting yourself , just be safe , some information you do bring is helpful yet i only feel you're over-exerting yourself

just be safe

Hey Trav I think you should give this some consideration. I have personally found that over using psychedelics does indeed cause bipolar swings in me. It alway's start with a huge manic swing and then as it fades it over compensates to a slight depression. Using once a week or less doesn't seem to have this effect, but I'd be very curious as to Jamies thoughts since he did a lot of caapi for a year. It sounds like he did have some manic episodes. I do not have a link for it, but this has been my personal experience. Better to err on the side of safety IMHO. Every bodies body chemistry and mental state is different.

Peace

EDIT: I just noticed that part about brain damage. I'm pretty sure that is what Trav was referring to and not the manic phase part. There is no evidence that I've heard about long term brain damage. Mood swings yes, permanent brain damage...probably not unless you have really REALLY overdone the dose.

"but I'd be very curious as to Jamies thoughts since he did a lot of caapi for a year. It sounds like he did have some manic episodes"

There are too many factors. One is that I am prone to OBE's and other weird things happening to me at night. It has happened pretty consistantly my whole life..durring this time it got more intense and weird in ways I have never described here because it is not believeable.

I was already diagnosed with adrenal insufficiency and b12 deficiency before I ever even drank ayahuasca once..and then I chose to go vegan..and then raw vegan. My doctor also thought my mineral balance was all wacky or something. I was spending like 10 days at a time living on nothing but fresh fruit and vegetable juices. Often I would not be able to sleep at night and just astral project or something for hours at a time.

I thought the sun was beaming information into me to activate or upgrade my DNA. Maybe I was manic. I was sane enough to know that this stuff was all insane and so I could just laugh about it while it was still going on. This was not like, I had some delusion thinking this was going on. This stuff was just what I expereinced just about every single night for months on end. As you can imagine I did not get much sleep at all.

I was beamed up onto space ships(something that happened earlier in life without psychs as well but not like this).

This happened even on days I skipped harmalas..and some days my "microdose was only like 5mg or so sublingual. It was not large doses. It was doses that for many people would not register.

By adrenals went to complete shit..like hardcore adrenal burnout to the point where I had panic attacks and couldnt get out of bed in the morning. I had to sleep in the middle of the day. I had to eat every hour. I dont even want to know where my b12 levels got to.

I stopped dosing harmalas and drinking ayahuasca for months and only smoked DMT like once a week. Still it did not change my situation. The ONLY thing that changed my situation was changing my diet, eating meat every day and other animal products and taking vitamine B supplements and herbs to fix my shot adrenals. Within a week things were getting way better.

Minxx also started to get run down as hell after 7 years as a vegan and was having panic attacks for some time and was to tired to get out of bed, and she was not microdosing anything..which also got better pretty much instantly when she started to eat animals and take herbs and supplements..so I am hesitatnt to say much of this was due to my daily harmala microdosing. Whatever it was I dont wish to repeat it(although I really think I was experiencing some other level of reality so it was interesting). Personally I think it was due to my adrenals just getting worse and worse from being vegan(which also led to severe nutrient deficiencies), making me unable to sleep at night so I was naturally sleep deprived for months..and that combined with my natural susceptability for OBE's and other weird states at night just sort of compounded into this extended experience I had where I was pretty much living some kind of weird transdimensional life and instead of sleeping at night I would have OBEs(that term does not do it justice)..but it was more from just being so run down than anything else. I really have no idea what microdosing harmalas contributed to that.

I have been using melatoning a couple nights a week and haveing a full entheogenic experience every 5-7 days and I dont have any of those things happening to me any longer.

I am pretty certain none of that would have happened to me had I not been vegan, aftwer already being run down and sick and spent more time focussing on rebuilding my adrenal functions etc in the first place.

So..maybe I was manic..but I never got any brain damage. It did however make me highly highly skeptical of people who think some kind of shamanic break from reality is a fun way to spend some time.

I'm pretty sure none of that what have happened to you if you hadn't lived on ayahuasca! LOL

In all seriousness about the vegan diet. I think in terms of reduced meat consumption. My diet is not a religion to me though it does have spiritual implications. We have talked about this before though and I think we largely agree. It's not like you are signing up in support of factory farming and other atrocities. Eating meat is not as aweful as some raw vegans make it out to be, but you can certainly live and thrive very well on a greatly reduced meat diet. Been going on several years for me now and every check up I'm in tip top shape.

BTW thanks for sharing your experience. You are one of the few people I know that has done it for that long and that consistently.

Peace

^I think the main thing the harmalas did was make it even harder to sleep cus I mostly microdosed later on in the evening and then went and meditated..but harmalas can make it hard to sleep for me I notice. So that likely contributed to more sleep dep..I felt like I got 2-3 hours a night max for months. Now I sleep 8-9 hours every night usually and can tell that I need it.

In reguards to meat..I dont need to eat it daily any more. At first though my body really needed it to ground or something. I would crave it like crazy. I ate fish every single night and chicken once a week or more for a while..and after a while I stopped feeling like I needed it so much..but I still feel like I need to eat at least 1 or 2 eggs a day and I usually eat some raw dairy. I could probly make due as a vegetarian if I wanted to. I usually eat a bit of meat but not always.

Yeah man harmalas are quite stimulating for me. I used to wonder how you slept taking them at night...now I'm know!

Most people call me a vegetarian and I refer to myself as one to keep things simple, but I will eat fish a few times a month though usually in the form of fresh raw sushi...I actually find a full half piece of salmon to be quite stimulating as well. Fish oil pills as well. I swear I think Omega 3's have some serotonin signaling, but that is speculation on my part. And on even rarer occasions I will still have a turkey sandwich from panera bread, but that is actually far and few now. I like it less every time I do it. I just don't like mammal flesh so much these day's...strange because I used to pride my self on grilled burgers. lol My how life changes.

Also being a vegetarian that usesmilk and dairy is FAR simpler than being a healthy raw vegan. Raw is something I'd like to try for a month along with juice fasting (which I will never water fast again now that I've juice fasted). But I couldn't survive as a pure raw vegan. I like cooked food to much and we are all going to die of something. I just want to be healthy until that day comes. If I feel overly toxic from a weekend of partying or something I'll usually juice fast (real green vegetable juice juiced at home .. in the summer from the garden). I'll do that for 1-3 day's and feel 10X better. But I don't try to survive on it, though I would like to try a 30day fast at least once.

I dont believe cooked food is bad anyway..I would not worry about that. The nutrients in many plant foods are more bioavailable when cooked. The only thing I wont eat cooked is dairy. I still know that I respond best to raw cultured dairy.

The best thing I think people can do once they are on a whole foods organic diet and clean water is to learn more about harvesting wild foods, and growing their own food in soil that they bring back to life with seaweeds and rock dusts to bring the mineral content back up. You can eat all the organic, raw, vegan or w/e food you like but if it is store bought it is likely grown in mineral deficient soil. Organic ferts etc dont fix that..rock dusts and seaweeds fix that, and then add compost to that so you have the proper living bacteria to feed on the minerals present so that its available for the plants, and then you when you eat them.

Even learning just 2 very simple to find widespread herbs like wild dandelion and nettle, and adding them into your diet in salads and teas etc would probably help so many people get vital minerals into their bodies.

A supermarket only diet, reguardless of what kind of diet can always be improved.

This is getting off topic..sorry OP.

Good point about the soil

While cooking can make the nutrients in some foods a bit more bioavailable, its also been shown in many cases to destroy a good amount of Vitamin C, phytochemicals, essential fatty acids (especially if its not an oil), and in many cases create some pretty nasty toxins such as HCAs, AGEs,PAHs, and acrylamide, some of which have been linked to all sorts of health problems. I also saw one study showing that cooking can cut flavanoid content by 50% or more depending on the method(steaming hardly damaged them though). A lot of nutrients destroyed by cooking actually increase our bodies ability to absorb nutrients. Then there is also digestive leukosytosis- basically the immune system responds to the ingestion of cooked food as if it is a threat. Although that is debatable for some reasons depending on interpretation, i think it is telling how our bodies respond in that way.

I'm not saying cooked food is always bad, i just wanted to be clear that there is legit reasons why me and others eat mostly raw foods. Some foods are better cooked, no doubt. I just think people should experiment with many things and eat what they thrive best on.

This is also relevant.'In 1950, Dr Mananore Kuratsune, head of the Medical Department of the University of Kyushu, investigated the diet that was given to the prisoners Japan took during the last world war. This diet, consisting of around 800 calories per day per 70 kg of body weight, was well under a half of the daily minimum that is recommended to maintain health. The good doctor and his wife ate a raw version of this diet and both remained healthy but when they switched to eating the diet in cooked form all the symptoms of malnutrition that devastated the inmates of the Japanese camps rapidly showed themselves. These included oedema, vitamin deficiency and physical collapse. They were forced to abandon the experiment because they became so ill.'

leukocytosis was only observed when something like less than 10% raw food was consumed with the rest of the cooked food I think..and the effect was pretty minor anyway. Some claim boiled water does the same thing once you reach it's "flash point"(Whatever that means, ask David Wolfe?) but I am not too sure how people come to that conclusion.

"This is also relevant.'In 1950, Dr Mananore Kuratsune, head of the Medical Department of the University of Kyushu, investigated the diet that was given to the prisoners Japan took during the last world war. This diet, consisting of around 800 calories per day per 70 kg of body weight, was well under a half of the daily minimum that is recommended to maintain health. The good doctor and his wife ate a raw version of this diet and both remained healthy but when they switched to eating the diet in cooked form all the symptoms of malnutrition that devastated the inmates of the Japanese camps rapidly showed themselves. These included oedema, vitamin deficiency and physical collapse. They were forced to abandon the experiment because they became so ill.'"

Vitamine and mineral deficiencies etc can take some time to manifest. It might have happened to them anyway. There are people for instance who go raw vegan, beat cancer and feel great for years and then suddenly go rapidly downhill and end up with neuropathy from severe b12 deficiency.

Minxx is also another example of a person who lived 7 years as a raw vegan and thought she felt great and was on the best diet ever for her..and then crashed super hard and went down and down and rebounded only when she tried eating different things..so saying someone ate raw food for a while and then ate some cooked food (while maintaining a diet that is known to be too low in calories) and then got some deficiency is not much to go on. It is not something I would extrapolate much from.

the best supporting point I can think of for eating raw food is the bio-photon levels. You will never get that with cooked food..or even dehydrated food. Bio-photons seem important..so I would not want to eat a diet that contains no fresh raw food every day.

"Its not something I would extrapolate much from"

But I'm not. That study wasn't intended to be the main point of evidence for my post, the list of things cooking is known to often destroy/create in food was. That study was just one case of peripheral evidence that supports and expresses that information. Deficiencies may well have surfaced eventually during that long experiment, but the fact that they did so the moment they switched to a cooked version of the diet is unlikely to be a coincidence imo considering how we know cooking can kill off a ton of nutrients and create many different kinds of toxins.

I'm not saying and have never said people don't get deficiencies on a raw food plant diet. People get deficiency's on pretty much every kind of diet there is. There is just so many factors that go into that. I know countless people who eat a vegetarian or vegan diet and seem to have deficiencies of all sorts... just like i know countless people who eat meat, paleo, standard american, and all sorts of other diets who also seem to have deficiencies of all sorts....And then there is my old friend mike who eats taco bell every day and seems to be as healthy as a horse

I also know people without any apparent deficiencies who have been basically "raw vegan" for 25+ years in some cases, and people who have eaten a crappy standard american diet for even longer than that and don't seem to suffer from any problematic deficiencies either. Like i said, sooo many factors play into this.

I don't think it's that cooked foods are bad. In fact for some foods (like broccolli) it does release more nutrient.
However, you can't get nearly the nutrient density from cooked food as you can from raw food. I believe that was universecannon's primary point. To that I don't think there can be any doubt. This is why juice fasting is such a great idea....for short spells at a time. I can't comment on longer spells because that depends on all sorts of other factors for the person leading up to the fast.

Also it's not surprising to me that many people go raw vegan and beat cancer only to get deficient later. Any sort of raw vegan diet is likely FAR better than their prior toxic diet...at least for a time. As I understand it, it is possible to not only live, but thrive on a only raw vegan diet permanently, but it takes diligence and a willingness to eat certain foods to get vitamins...like sea vegetable. Also there damn sure isn't one size fits all when it comes to diet. Evolution may very well have deemed that certain people require meat to live. Not for me to say, but I do know this. We as a race of people on this planet can, and are morally obligated to treat the animals of this planet FAR FAR better than we currently do.

Peace.

The brain damage occurs if a person stays in mania. That's the effect of mania, it induces degeneration in the brain due to oxidative stress/inflammation as far as I am aware. Either way, neurons die and receptors fry and that's the effect of such a state and its sheer intensity.

Found a random link talking about it and mentioning a psychotic patient of Strassman - http://www.singingtothep...nd-transient-psychosis/




It is not a direct effect of either the tryptamine or the ayahuasca. We already know these regenerate receptors and resensitize them if anything. The effect occurs and prevails long after these have left the body.