So answer me this.

If you extract the alkaloids from Caapi

Then you extract the alkaloids from Rue.

And now you have two (hypothetical) piles in front of you, the first from the caapi:

A) 100mg of harmala, 100mg of harmaline and 100mg Thh

in the second pile from the rue you have:

B) 100mg of harmala, 100mg of harmaline and 100mg Thh

You are trying to tell me if you will notice a difference because between those two?

There is simply only these compounds plus b-carbolines as suggested (which don't really make a difference).

This is like trying to say, I have two identical pieces of blue sticks of wood, this stick has more of an aspect of the other stick in it. So stick A really has stick B's aspects to it whilst stick B doesn't really have Stick A's aspect to it.

They are the same compound! It is just the varying degrees of the content of each Harma,harmaline,THH that makes the quality of the trip slightly different. You can't say that there is an inherent difference in them. It is as unjustified as saying there is spirits in alkaloids.

There is no contradiction. If the vascine was psychoactive it would be a contradiction. A full rue brew contains all the alkaloids that extracted harmalas have, there is no psychological differences apart from the nausea it induces, that is why I suggested that you extract it to remove the vascine. The other compounds including tannins etc. are not psychoactive, that is the reason why people extract harmalas otherwise there would be people bragging about "jungle harmalas" lol

Becuase that is the minimum amount required to have full MAO inhibition. The more you take the more sedated and nauseous one may feel.

Well from my experience from reading lots of posts of people describing their brews... the general consensus is when someone is talking about ayahuasca they are talking about a brew from the vine, when talking about pharmahuasca they are talking about a brew from rue. Rarely do people refer to pharmahuasca as extracted alkaloids even though that is what the wiki says, they just say 300mg harmalas + DMT.

Because there is not other compounds that are psychoactive in a rue brew that would contribute to a difference between extraction harmalas and a rue brew. The difference is the sickness. Also, there is a difference between a medium dose and a high dose which could contribute to a difference between a strong rue brew and a medium dose of extracted harmalas.

This isn't so much of a problem between you and me as it is a problem of everyone just throwing terms around and not have a definitive definition...

here is the verdict though: https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/Pharmahuasca

"Pharmahuasca is a pharmaceutical version of the entheogenic brew ayahuasca. Traditional ayahuasca is made by brewing the MAOI-containing Banisteriopsis caapi vine with a DMT containing plant, such as Psychotria viridis. Pharmahuasca refers to a similar combination that uses a pharmaceutical MAOI instead of a plant. "

So I wouldn't think harmalas are a pharmeceutical MAOI, would you?

Just for the record though, the only difference between caapi and rue is that the harmala ratios are different. That is what is responsible for the qualitative differences. Betacarbolines are not psychoactive and wouldn't make a difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-Carboline
https://www.dmt-nexus.me...&m=548087#post548087

Wikipedia is not God

Full brew (full spectrum) vs extracts: theories mean nothing compared to experiences, one can debate all day and collect easily contradicting views faster than the speed of light and then what to believe? There's only one way to know how it is for you specifically, and you know that way

Harmaline and THH are harmalas.
I suspect you have a little persistent thinko-error to switch the word harmine with the word harmala?

In your last quote: why would you consider the 2 ratios the same? It's not like that at all just as you say in the first quote. Sounds like a hypothetical trick as a skew attempt to equalize things that are IMHO definitely not equal.

As a point worth mentioning: those bottles of vine extract of which is said things like "We have used 10 kg of vine to make this bottle", the ratio's of such bottles or natem, things made in SA: you can be pretty sure they refer to fresh wood weight, not dry.

Yes, sorry you are right. I was confusing the word harmala with harmine. Lol

the rue content is:


Harmane, 0.16%[34]
Harmine, 0.44%[35]–1.84%[34]–4.3%[36]

The coatings of the seeds are said to contain large amounts of harmine.[7]

Harmaline, 0.25%[34]–0.79%[35]–5.6%[36]
Harmalol, 0.6%[36]–3.90%[34]
Tetrahydroharmine, 0.1%[36]

Total harmala alkaloids were at least 5.9% of dried weight, in one study.[34]

Vasicine (peganine),[18] 0.25%[35]
Vasicinone,[18] 0.0007%[35]

the caapi content is:


Harmine, 0.31-8.43%[2]
Harmaline, 0.03-0.83%[2]
Tetrahydroharmine, 0.05-2.94%[2]

source: wiki

Nobody said it was, it is however a supreme source of factual knowledge. In fact nearly ALL content on their is supported by documentation of some kind and is highly moderated. I know this because I have made some outrageous claims of conspiracy theories on there and they were taken down in minutes.

You misunderstand me. They we saying that the experience doesn't matter about the alkaloids and that it is about caapi spirit. I tried to show that this is not the case by displaying how if you compared the same doses of the alkaloid from both caapi and rue how the experience will be the same. They weren't just saying that caapi feels different to rue, they are going beyond and implying spiritual aspects. And hey, that is fine to have those opinions but I am just saying that factually and scientifically that is incorrect.

Thanks for clarifying.

Now for the presence of non psychotropic elements (on their own) that are typical for full spectrum brews, e.g. tannins, it is easy to say they have no influence but harder to prove.

Just like synergistic effects sometimes outclass the sum of elements: the strict linear proportional thinking is alluring to be the Truth by default, yet as everything affecting everything in a body things are sometimes more complicated than simple straightforward linear logic. So I would be careful to think only in terms of summing of separated effects. For example a non psychotropic element might enhance the effectiveness of a yes-psychotropic element, like a promoter. I cannot readily prove that, yet you are invited to disprove any of such possibilities.

If one (or more) non psychotropic element is/are anyhow able to pave the way for a psychotropic element(s), then it already starts to make a difference further than just causing some sickness. This way a full spectrum can differ compared from ideally extracting same amount materials.

Same wise some non psychotropic elements might dampen or mediate the psychotropic elements.

I feel more inclined to believe things matter than that things cannot matter each other, so it feels very natural for me that full spectrum is different. My subjective experiences confirm that.

Just my 2 cents, fwiw.

IMHO you are mistaken about nomenclature.

The nomenclature is not exactly set in stone and discussions about it are restarted about every two weeks it seems. The main sides in the discussion seem to be orthodox traditional ayahuasca fundamantalists on the one extreme end and utilitarian pragmatists on the other end of the spectrum.

To the pragmatic, any composition of MAOI and DMT constitutes 'an ayahuasca' in general. For further elucidation, if necessitated by the context, more specific terms can be used to refer to the exact constitiuents of the potion. Many names have been suggested and employed, such as 'mimohuasca', 'ruehuasca' or 'harmalaya', but none are standardized. It seems that the term pharmahuasca when used to describe a composition of precisely measured amounts of purified MAOI and DMT, regardless of their plant or synthetic origin, is the most descriptive of all the 'anahuasca' subclassifications.

With the puritan orthodoxy, while at the surface their terminology appears to be soundly uniform, there is actually a lot of hidden vagueness and ambiguity as to what constitutes a proper and true 'ayahuasca'. Are only fresh vines allowed or do dried and or pre-powdered plants, or even extracts, also count? What subtypes of Banisteriopsis Caapi are allowed, and what about other related species of Banisteriopsis? Can it be prepared in anyone's basement, or must it be cooked and drunk in a rain forest, while singing the right chants and incantation? Must there be a shaman present, and does the shaman have to be from the amazon basin? Can the shaman be an, albeit properly trained, westerner or do only shamans with a shamanic lineage spanning countless generations qualify? Must there be a purge? Is mapacho an essential prerequisite?


I'd really like you to qualify your above use of the word 'aspect'. It is very unclear to me what exactly you are trying to define with your use of that word.

Whatever the definitions that you use, the constituents of rue and caapi are generally not exactly the same. Even different batches of rue seeds will have varying compositions of alkaloids and with caapi it is even more variable, as there are many different strains of caapi with very different composition. Some caapi material contains a lot of THH, some contains hardly any at all. See for example this caapi analysis thread, or study the seminal Callaway paper from 2005.


FYI, there are green apples, red apples, yellow apples and a lot in between. Some apples could be said to have 'an orange aspect'. Of course that does not make such apple 'an orange' (whatever that may mean, in turn.) Anyone making a serious attempt to describe the difference between apple and orange would use properly qualifying and objectively distinguishing terms
instead of vague and useless words like "aspect".


A word is a word, a tautology is a tautology, suggestions of meaning are just suggestions that lack substance.


Obviously caapi will not contain these amounts of harmaline, but it is not certain to contain such amounts of THH either. With rue, similarly, it is unlikely to contain such amounts of THH and the relative amounts of harmaline and harmine will vary between batches. Please study the links I gave above to see that you cannot say such things in general about caapi and rue.


These compunds are the beta-carbolines.


The alkaloids are the spirits. That is not just my opinion, it is in fact what indigenous shamans are reported to have said upon being presented with the extracted and purified alkaloids from their brew. Some time ago, Snozzleberry posted a video of a presentation he made in which he he played a recording of a well known entheogen researcher who claimed this.


Do you have a reference for your claim that vasicine is nausea inducing? AFAIK vasicine is an uterotonic, ie. it affects the female uterus and can in high doses provoke an abortion in pregnant females. I was not aware of any observations of nausea caused in males.

Raw rue seeds contain many more constituents than these alkaloids and tannins, all of which could cause naausea. In any case, a strong dose of pure harmaala aklaloids will cause symptoms of nausea in most people, although the specific dose dependence may be personaal.


Well my experience from reading these forums is that there is not a clear consensus, and if there is one, it certainly isn't what you describe above. I am quite certain that on this forum pharmahuasca generally means extracted and purified maoi + dmt.


Quoting wikipedia can be a nice gesture, but it should never be considered as proof. Wikipedia gets it wrong in many places. It should only ever be used as a starting point for research, never as a conclusion. Always follow the primary references and thoroughly check those. In wikipedia's defense, at least they do have a clear policy of requiring references. I believe that somewhere in the nexus attitude it says something similar about backing up claims with proper references.


Clearly, wiki does not reflect current and common usage of the term. But just theoretically, if my doctor prescribed me some harmine produced by Merck or Pfizer, then it would clearly be a pharmaceutical MAOI. In fact, a century ago, harmalas were one of the first medicines used for sufferers of Parkinson's disease.


This statement is not correct because both plants contain more chemicals than harmaline, harmine and tetrahydroharmine. We do not know all of the effects of all of these substances. Furthermore, the ratios vary between members of the same genus or even subspecies and between different batches of the same species.


This statement is not correct because it is very hard to make objective statements about qualitative differences in experience. One, because experiences are very subjective. Two, because many other objective factors also influence the subjective experience.


This statement is not correct because it is simply wrong.

aya - a brew made of the ayahuasca vine and maybe other plants

pharma - extracted harmalas and extracted DMT

Ayahuasca= Any brew that contains (at least) Ayahuasca vine

Ana-huasca= A brew made using analogue plants, ie Rue and Mimosa.

Pharma-huasca= extracted harmalas, or moclemebide, etc, and extracted dm.

So some say that unlike with vine, where raising the dose past the point of full maoi has it's benefits at the cost of body load, rue is different.

They say that rue is only worth raising to the point of full maoi at most, and anything past that contributes only body load with no added benefits......is this true?

Is it really something else in the caapi other than the harmine, harmaline that makes raising the dose past the point of full maoi more worthwhile that doing so with rue?

And all of the above can be called 'an ayahuasca'.

When the use of material from the Banisteriopsis genus is to be emphasized, it can be called 'traditional ayahuasca'.

Oh. Bother. I just hope we do not have to reiterate the discussion in this thread all over again?


Ah, I just found back the talk that I remembered. It is at the start of this thread: Kitchen Chemists & Capitalism: Questioning Psychedelic Dogma and the Exceptionalism of Ayahuasca. The 'spirit' part starts at 14:00 minutes approximately. It's a good talk, worth listening to in its entirety too.

I completely disagree.

The reason there's Ayahuasca/ ANAhuasca/ PHARMAhuasca, is so that we know what we are specifically referring to.

Apart from appearances, it's a fact that Caapi isn't the same as Rue, because the plant is a lot more than harmalas, and also they are in completely different proportions, to the other. Now when we just talk about Caapi: Extracted Caapi Alks appear to have different potencies and feelings to that of boiled Caapi, i read on this forum somewhere. This a subject of confusion, pointing to the possability that there are other factors in vine that add to the experience, such as tannins, etc, so perhaps the 'spirit' or 'feeling' of Caapi may not just refer to Caapi Alkaloids.

Ayahuasca is any brew that contains the Ayahuasca vine. If it doesn't it can't be called Ayahuasca.

Let's look at various arguments to prove that Ayahuasca is more than 'extracted Alkaloids':

Whilst there are times when people have given Curandero's spice to smoke, and they have said it had the spirit of Ayahuasca, i feel this is wrongly interpreted. I think they said that the 'visions' were similar to Ayahuasca, but that's where it ends, (because Ayahuasca is all about the VINE). Seriously, you cannot really compare the two because whilst there are some visual similarities (because dm is also used in Aya brews), they are not the same. Ayahuasca traditionally isn't so much about 'visuals' anyway, and traditionally it wasn't used as it is today ( Again because Ayahuasca is all about the VINE). Now the modern/current 'scene' seems to be visions orientated to appease the requirements of 'visions hungry', Westerners. Sometimes i feel that highly specific questions are asked, but misinterpreted by these Curandero's. Anyone who has tried both will say they are not the same.


Now lets imagine for a moment that if some curandero was given a Rue based brew over a Caapi based one, they 'might' say they have the same spirit, but seriously is he meaning 'feeling'? People often call Caapi, 'La Madre', because the spirit often appears in visions like a woman. This doesn't appear to be the same with Rue. Again, You don't need a Curandero to tell you that!

Finally, Jonathan Ott reckons that extracted Caapi Alkaloids is where the Spirit is, but really he needs to instead try to emulate it with extracted/synthesized harmalas from another source, in the same proportions, to see it that really is the case.

Whatever, many people have their preferences, but Rue and Caapi are said to feel different. They have a different balance of Alkaloids which (if they are the spirits?) should alone be enough a reason to not call them the same thing. For instance Rue contains little THH, and also a fair bit of Harmalol. Caapi contains more THH and no Harmalol, i believe. Rue also contains Vasinine, or whatever. There is simply enough differences in Alks alone, without mentioning tannins, etc, to be specific about calling one Ayahuasca, and another Anahuasca.

Rue isn't an Ayahuasca!

"People often call Caapi, 'La Madre', because the spirit often appears in visions like a woman. This doesn't appear to be the same with Rue."

I beg to differ. I've encountered "mother Aya" using Rue, no doubt about that. But you don't have to believe me, just saying it's been my experience. I remember one time specifically i saw a vision of a brown skinned older woman who did seem motherly yet shamanistic, and i remember she had some sort of bracelets on her wrists, and at one point i heard her voice and she told me to just lay back, close my eyes, calm down/relax/let go and let her do her magic/healing, at which point my hands started hovering over parts of my body and i could definitely feel something going on like a change in energy or something. Aside from that, "mother Aya" has definitely played an on-going role in my experimentation, and i have hardly worked with Caapi btw (only taken it a couple of times, i mainly use Rue).

Also, for me it's definitely nowhere near about the visuals/visions, i don't even get visuals/visions from Rue and Mimosa or Acacia most of the time, though Acacia does at times seem a bit more visual than Mimosa i've noticed. For me, it's all about feeling and understanding.

Personally though, i say why choose one or the other when you can mix both the Caapi and Rue in balanced proportions and have the best of both worlds?