Every now and then the topic of using brugmansia as means of potentiating ayahuasca pops up and also scopolamine is used by doctors to medicate nausea. Scopolamine is also very dangerous substance to play with, but all sources suggest that 1-3 brugmansia seeds should be safe.

I don't think I have the means to grow one myself, so I wonder: is it safe to order seeds online for this purpose? I believe these are perfectly legal, but I'm worried about the pesticides they often coat plant seeds with.

I'd like to have opinions on whether I should or shouldn't pursue this.

Thank you!

Is your intention just to trip harder, or do you have a specific purpose for wanting to work with brugs?

Also, are you familiar with how tropanes accumulate in the body? To be ultra safe, I would space each dose two weeks apart at minimum.

I have been contemplating working with Brunfelsia Grandiflorum for months. It contains tropanes, though in far smaller quantities than Brugmansia. Can also cause respiratory depression and make you foam at the mouth, so not to be trifled with.

I think a long, slow dieta with a large and consistent batch of plant matter is the only close-to-surefire way of not killing yourself or ending up in a psych ward (but again, no guarantees).

It's important with any kind of baneful plant to have a method of standardizing the alkaloid content. I know Datura can vary from leaf to leaf, or seed to seed, so traditionally the sanest method has been to take a large amount of plant material and make a salve. Topical is also safer with tropanes, but I'm not sure how this would work with Ayahuasca.

If you are purely after the tropanes, topical application in conjunction with vanilla Aya might be a method of harm reduction to consider. No idea about what an ideal timing of administration would be.

I am interested in the coumarins in Brunfelsia, so oral is the only way for me to go.

If I do it, I would stew up a massive batch of plant matter and freeze most of it. I would start with literally ONE DROP with a brew, and wait a minimum of two weeks before increasing my dose and trying again.

I'm also not interested in going as far as I possibly can with Brunfelsia - just a minimum effective dose to make contact with the spirit and see if he can help me with some CNS issues.

Realistically, we have our entire lives ahead of us - it is much better to approach these plants at a snail's pace and learn them intimately. IMHO the potential for harm to just dive in, even with a few seeds, isn't worth it. There are too many variables to just down a handful of seeds. Because the stakes are literally cardiac integrity and lesions on the brain, better to explore inch by inch.

There are some really sad stories on Bluelight and Reddit.

There are some intriguing ones, too, but ultimately - what is your purpose? I would make sure you are 100% firm in your business with these spirits, and approach with absurd reverence.

I think Peter Gorman's Ayahuasca In My Blood is also worth reading, if you haven't, for his advice about machismo and being (for lack of a better term) shit tested by the spirits. You need to be ready to stand at the gates of hell, scream your name and your purpose. If you aren't that confident, don't pull the trigger.

The purpose would be to fight nausea. I don't know if brugmansia is best for the purpose, but it has some tradition going together with ayahuasca, so that got me interested.

I wasn't aware of the tropane accumulation. Thanks for pointing out!

Though I have no idea when it becomes a relevant problem.

A scopolamine plaster would probably be very safe way to achieve this, but I have no legit reason to ask for one.

Topical use is probably safest, but I wouldn't like to make large batches of poisonous stuff. There's a risk in the batch making too.

Brugmansia is well worth growing if you can protect it over the winter. This year I've had 3 flushes of increasing numbers of blooms, currently there are over 64 trumpets on one small bush. In the evenings the scent is heavenly - almost too much - and the presence the tree has is alone something quite special.

It's possible to save up the leaves that the plant drops, and/or the flowers, in order to make a standardised extract. Be careful when powdering the leaves: when I swept out my conservatory last spring a lot of dried leaves had accumulated and they crumbled rather easily. The dust that was raised from the sweeping made me feel somewhat odd for the rest of the afternoon (no hallucinations though).


MMM - is there not a possibility that Brunfelsia coumarins might also absorb transdermally? They'll be fairly lipophilic compounds so a Brunfelsia salve might also be worth a try. Another possibility is perhaps to make a mildly alcoholic drink along the lines of balché, similar to the way coumarin sweet woodruff is used in alcoholic punch (Maycup).

Have you familiarised yourself with the toxicity profile of the Brunfelsia coumarins, scopoletin and aesculin? Both of these are quite widely distributed in temperate plants, by the way.


https://www.rain-tree.com/manaca.htm - suggests to me that the effects you might be seeking from the Brunfelsia will be a combination of the immunomodulatory alkaloids, the vasoprotective effect of aesculin, and the antirheumatic effect of scopoletin.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41762775

Disclaimer for the general public: Brunfelsia is also listed as having caused fatal poisoning.

Enjoy Brugmansia for its flowers and their heady perfume.

Reminds me of a random fact: pupil dilation from Datura dust generated during corn harvesting is called Cornpicker's pupil.

There are two other plants that, for me personally, have always been very effective against nausea.

The first one is ginger. Ginger is as far as i'm aware completely safe and without serious side-effects.

The second one is cannabis. Cannabis ofcourse, is a psycho-active itself, that has a very powerfull synergy with all of the serotonergic psychedelics. I personally like this synergy, but many people find it too unpredictable and powerfull.

I have taken cinnarizine once with ayahuasca, expecting a brugmansia-like potentiation, and the effects where extremely unpleasant. Breathing became very hard, as if a pregnant elephant decided to spent the night, sitting on my chest.
So i personally would avoid all antihistaminic drugs with ayahuasca.

Brugmansia is, as we all know, a pretty dangerous plant to experiment with. But it is possible though, to use it as an aya admixture in a way that is relatively safe.

The ones you can buy in gardencenters are usually brugmansia arborea, brugmansia aurea, and brugmansia suaveolens.

These plants all contain tropanes, but the concentration in the leaves is not very high.
If you soak one small leaf in an ayahuasca brew that is still warm, but not very hot, some of the alkaloids will get in your brew, but by far not enough to do any harm (to an adult of average weight anyway).

The danger lies mostly in the use of seeds, roots, and larger quantities. And in regular use that causes tropanes to accumulate in the bloodstream.

Pushing boundaries with these plants, and experimenting with larger quantities, is likely to at some point, result in something realy bad.

The first noticeable side-effect is a dry throat. Difficulty urinating can also be experienced with relatively small doses.

These effects can already occur when doses that are by far not dangerous yet, are taken. A dry throat is no immediate reason to panic.

Blurred vision is definately a sign of intoxication though. But even blurred vision does not automatically mean you are in the danger zone yet. It is to be avoided though, and definately a sign you have taken way more than needed.

The moment you start to feel your muscles getting weaker though, that's when you definately should call the emergency line. If you have trouble lifting an object like a teapot or a bottle of water, you are in serious danger and mere minutes away from a delirious state or losing counsciousness.

If blurred vision or a dry throat occur only minutes after ingestion, that is also a sign you're in serious trouble. It would normally take about an hour or so before these milder side-effects are first experienced.

I would disrecommend taking these plants anyway, but if you would decide otherwise, these are the things i can say from personal experience.

Not trying to be pedantic, but is there any evidence of this? As far as I know, there is evidence for impairment after clearance of the alkaloids. But I am not aware of any references for tropanes accumulating in the body due to irreversible antagonism or a long half-life or something.

What do you say, is there a good source for scopolamine (for the purpose of nausea reduction) besides growing brugmansia or the dreaded datura yourself?

I'd love to take up gardening, but can't really do that except for some vegetables in the countryside during summer 🙁

Maybe take a look at a local gardening store, butcher the plant and make salve for topical use? Have to be really careful with the dosage though.

Thank you for the answers and the precautions.