Just signed up this evening and slogged my way through the questionnaire. Just wanted to say howdy to the other members here, drop a brief introduction thread, and then I'm taking my arse to bed.
Back in 2004, I started a thread on conspiracy forum called 'Tryptamines and God'. I won't say which forum as that is usually a taboo subject, but if read it aloud, it rhymes with 'rats'. That for me was the real beginnings of my research into entheogens and their spiritual/theological implications for our species. For me the most interesting aspect of this subject is the endogenous tryptamines, in particular melatonin and serotonin. When I realized that our entire neurology is based on tryptamines and psychoactive beta-carbolines that really got my attention.
Prior to that, I had had several experiences with various psychoactive substances, and some really profound experiences during meditation, never realizing the connection between the two until years later. Unlike alot of my peers who were using these substances recreationally, I found myself absolutely fascinated by the experience and vexed by what I considered to be a wholly familiar sensation similar to deja-vu and I realized there was something very important underlying the giddiness, awe and angst that accompany those first few steps into this world. I have now spent about thirty years of my life researching and learning all I could about psychedelics, both endogenous and otherwise and I'm honored to have finally joined this forum. I'm looking forward to participating here, and hope I can learn something and perhaps offer my knowledge as well. The Nexus has been an amazing resource, and I've lurked about for years and finally decided to take the plunge.

I've also got one hell of a green thumb, and have amassed a great collection of interesting plants as well over the years.

I wanted to post a thread on my recent experience with Calea zacatechichi, but decided just to add it to this one instead. I started a couple of these from seed about six months or so ago, and with the onset of winter they were grown primarily in a south facing window with additional lighting provided by 5000k 100 watt equivalent led. They were slow growing at first until I finally figured out to up the humidity by placing them in a 3 gallon glass jar and they pretty much took off after that. Over a period of about a month or so, I collected enough leaf material and did the research sufficient to feel comfortable trying it out.

One of the more interesting things I had come across when reading up on Calea was that you could apparently ask the herb a specific question before going to sleep, and the answer would often be revealed in the dream you had. Recently I had a pretty catastrophic spinal injury from nothing more than coughing and sitting down at the same time, and found out after my first surgery that my back was arthritic, with prior fractures and extensive ossification between my L5 and S1 where the fractures had grown together crooked... in other words I had a really bad back lol. When trying to come up with a question to ask of this new entheogen, I figured I would ask it why my back was so bad at such an early age.

The tea was somewhere between extremely bitter and near death experience in terms of taste, and in all my years of experiments with various herbs, I have yet to taste anything quite as foul. I had also rolled a cigarette of it and smoked it just before going to bed that night. As I laid down and got comfortable, I remembered to ask my question, fairly skeptical of this herb as the tea and smoke had only produced a very mild euphoria and I was not expecting it to work on the first night as I had read it must be used for several nights in a row to get the desired effects. I drifted off to sleep, pretty much expecting nothing significant to happen.

My dream that night was one of the most realistic dreams I had ever had, and I can recall even now the smells and physical sensations as though it was a real experience. I dreamed I was in Boot Camp again and we were running bare footed through a wooded area and for some reason, the ground was covered in splinters which kept getting stuck in my feet and could not keep up with the rest of the group. When we got back to the barracks, we were all sitting around talking and I was pulling the splinters out of my feet and I told the other guys about my back surgeries and was showing them the scars. One of the guys there who was sitting next to me looked at my back, then looked down at my feet and asked "You have flat feet?" I nodded and he said "That has ruined your back."

I woke up immediately after that and was just so completely stunned by the apparent answer I had gotten and the intensely realistic nature of the dream I had just had, that I couldn't go back to sleep. C. zacatechichi absolutely works, and the information on the actives in it seems obscure and poorly studied at best, but the experience I had on a couple of grams of it was pretty amazing. Whatever is going on with this stuff, I'm willing to hazard a guess that it synergises with melatonin which might explain why it produces it's more profound effects when you are sleeping, does anyone here have more information on how this stuff works? In all fairness, I was also taking a 10mg Melatonin supplement and due to my pain management Dr. Nazi's strict enforcement had recently quit smoaking marijuana which can also increase dream activity but there's something pretty profound going on with Calea and I'd love to know more about it.

I was digging around trying to figure out what was going on with Calea zacatechichi, and aside from a cocktail of terpenes and flavonoids, there is apparently an 'unknown alkaloid', C2 iH26Os (couldn't figure out how to type subscript on here so forgive my poor chemistry symbol there). I'm still absolutely blown away by the experience I had with it and am wondering if anyone else on here has any clues about what exactly is active in this entheogen. If it's the alkaloid, I'd be really keen on getting an isolate as the taste of this stuff is somewhere between bitter and near death experience, but based on what I've read, it's likely to end up being a combination of constituents. There are other medicinals/entheogens in the Asteraceae family so it was surprising to see so little knowledge about this one. Maybe it's just a cultural preference for entheogens that work when folks are awake.

https://issuu.com/jimmyp...aft--psychotropic---/128

Hi=) thats a pretty crazy dream! loved it. And yeah, that stuff is undrinkable as tea, but ok smoked. Please keep up the thread if you continue working with dream herb. Its very interesting! Ive worked with it, but dont remember any causes. The 10mg melatonin sounds like a pretty good combo with that.

It might be a little subjective for some of the more science leaning folk, but I wanted to also mention that upon waking from the dream I described, I got the distinct impression that someone had been in the room, very similar to the feeling one might get when they think someone has been in their house for example. Nothing nefarious or menacing, and it's difficult to explain this, but was definitely part of the experience and seemed really similar to what some people describe as a 'visitation' sort of dream.

Also in the way of introduction, I wanted to brag about my garden

So far I have managed to include Acacia madenii, Acacia simplex, Acacia burkittii, Acacia accuminata, Acacia obtusifolia, Acacia confusa, Mimosa hostilis, Justica pectoralis, Argyreia nervosa, Rivea corymbosa, Various Philaris, Banisteriopsis cappi, Banisteriopsis muricata, a couple of different Trichocereus and other cacti, a couple of different Ipomea, Punica granatum, a couple different rubiaceae, Calea zacatechichi, Leonotis leonaurus, Passiflora incarnata, Artemisia absinthium, Mitragyna speciosa (Rifat), Desmanthus illinoensis, Desmanthus leptolobus, Nicotina Rustica, as well as a lemon and lime. Also have a pretty good collection of fruits and berries, medicinals, a regular vegetable garden and some houseplants and flowers that my wife won't let me 'replace' with more interesting stuff lol. I've got a few others, but it's late lol.

I've given up on carnivorous species and Peganum, and would still like to get ahold of some of the more rare acacias like colei and particularly phlebophylla to try to help rebound it. I've sourced some colei and will likely get some seeds soon, but finding phlebophylla seeds is particularly difficult. I'd love to get a Diplopterys cabrerana as well, another notoriously hard to get one.

I've put alot of thought into maybe one day going into business selling plants, but a recent and pretty serious spinal injury has me somewhat disabled so I'm not sure what direction I'm going with that now. My wife works a full time job and I don't have the umpfh I used to. I live in zone 7b, so if I were to get serious with it I'm probably looking at having to get an industrial size greenhouse at least. Keeping one of those up without more help is pretty daunting so at the moment I'm just a gardener with a fascination with entheogens. The legality of selling plants of this type would keep me awake nights as well, but it's always been a dream of mine.

Anyways, I'm twitchy. At one point in my life I was an aspiring literature major, but opted instead to become a father and husband. I raised three kids, and eventually ended up getting into independent film and glass blowing finally as a career. I've walked the earth 45 years now, the last twenty or so I've spent researching this fascinating subject which has brought us all here I guess. When I'm not watering plants, I try to do a little fishing, enjoy comedy and history, and I read incessantly.

Just had my second really positive experience with Calea z. last night. I went to bed really late, morning actually, and before I laid down I had smokes two large cigarettes of dried Calea, weighing a couple of grams each, and ingested some finely chopped fresh Calea, probably weighing somewhere around two grams. I was not physically able to ingest the fresh material directly as it's so utterly and intensely bitter tasting that as soon as it hit my tastebuds my body literally rejected it by not allowing me to swallow it. I finally wrapped it in a rice paper and washed it down with some cold water, which worked pretty well. The fresh herb is apparently very effective compared to the dried as for two night previous I had consumed the dried leaf in the same amounts with little effect.

As soon as I got comfortable and closed my eyes, I noticed a significant uptick in the typical phosphene activity one normally sees when their eyes are closed, seemed at least doubled and a great deal more in motion than normal and I was deeply asleep within a few moments and as far as I can tell, started dreaming pretty much right away.

A little background is probably needed to explain the significance of this extremely realistic dream that followed... My wife and I have been discussing the idea of getting into growing rare medicinals and entheogens professionally, basically taking my hobby to the next level and hopefully helping to bring light and health to the world. It's always been a passion of mine and hopefully soon we will be coming into a modest sum of money which might actually make this a real possibility. God knows that industrial size greenhouses aren't cheap though, and it's a risky decision for people of meager means so it's something we are having trouble deciding on and we've spent the last year or so debating on whether or not to take this huge step.

Last night, within minutes of falling sleep, I was standing outside of a large greenhouse with a really good friend of mine who passed away several years back. He was a grower, a damned good one, who grew some of the most beautiful marijuana I've ever seen, and did so for decades long before there was any talk of legalization or specialized seeds from suppliers. He was telling me that it was a really great idea and something I should do.

During this conversation, he reached up to the roof of the greenhouse and showed me some really ingenious idea he'd had for opening and closing the top sections of the greenhouse for venting without having to fool with rolling up the sides. Unfortunately I can't recall the mechanism he used, but the concept was pretty stunning and it seemed to be designed like no other panels I've ever seen... it really was genius and completely foriegn to me otherwise, so I know it's not from my own subconscious. There was another person there, I think his son, who I haven't had much contact with in a long time who seemed interested in helping.

Again, this dream was hyper-realistic to the point of remembering smells and sensations and after I woke up, I again got the distinct feeling of a presence that I experienced before... to the point where I actually had to walk around the house to assure myself that the doors were still locked and no one had been there. I'm convinced that I talked to my old friend last night, completely convinced, though I have no rational explanation for this aside from the 'lucid dream' experience.

I knew that I was dreaming this time as well, which was really profound in and of itself, but I was so interested in what was being said and actually talking to my friend again that I forgot any notions of trying to control the dream or change anything. Another stunning Calea experience, for sure. The dream was very realistic, relevant, and advisory in nature and though I struggle to recall all the details, it seemed to reveal some genius device that solves a common problem with greenhouse setups of that size that I simply could not or would not have had the knowledge to have come up with on my own.

Calea is the real deal. I've read so many stories of folks trying it and it not working for them but in my experience, it's actually pretty amazing. I don't think it works if you have marijuana in your system though. I've tried it now pretty extensively over a period of about a year and when I have been smoking herb, it seems to be completely without effect for a couple of weeks afterwards. It's my opinion that this has to do with the short term memory process, but I'm largely ignorant about how the cannabinoid receptors really work or what Calea z. would have to do with this. If you're going to try Calea, it may require giving up marijuana for a while. If it wasn't for my Nazi-esque pain management Dr.'s objections to marijuana then I don't think I would have ever paid Caela any mind. I've yet to experiment with titrating the dosage up, and I've noticed that fresh Calea is almost certainly more potent. Anyways, that's the news.

Edit: I think alot of folks try Calea z., expecting to get a buzz of some sort. It doesn't really work that way, in my experience. If you are really in tune with your mind and body, you might notice a slight euphoria but no more than what you might expect to get from taking some deep breaths and oxygenating yourself. I'd be willing to bet that most of the failed experiences you read about with this entheogen are folks that either smoke marijuana in the weeks before, or are expecting to feel something more akin to an inebriation or high from it. It seems really odd to be taking a potent psychedelic and not experience any sensations at all from it, but if you're planning on trying it, trust the medicine, it's working...
Also wanted to know if anyone here knows anything about the maximum dosage range, LD50, any of that stuff?