DOSE:

300 - 500 mg

oral

Syrian Rue

(extract)

BODY WEIGHT:

175 lb

I ordered 96% pure full spectrum Peganum harmala extract from a vendor from whom I'd gotten a 10x extract which didn't seem to have any effect. Because of this, my hopes were not high that this extract would work either. I had expected it to look similar to harmaline or harmala freebase, but it came in the form of a brown powder similar to the previous extract. I tasted a little bit of it and it was slightly bitter. I really didn't think it was full strength if it was even Peganum harmala at all.

This all led me to start with a pretty high dose of 300-500mg. My goal was to try it once at a dose that I would be sure was effective and then toss it if it didn't do anything. I shouldn't have done that.

I mixed the powder into a glass of water and drank the entire thing in a few seconds. It didn't really have a taste. The time was ~3:30pm.

At 4:05pm, there were clear and strong effects and I was slightly worried that I had taken too much. Everything sounded muffled and tinny. I felt definitely off baseline. Time was slowing down and then speeding up back to its normal rate of flow. Vision was fairly normal, but it was difficult to focus on things and there was some flickering and haziness.

I realized that if this stuff was actually as potent as labeled that I was in for more than I may have bargained for and should get prepared. I prepared my bed in case I want to lie down and filled a water bottle. I headed out to the couch and placed a trash can next to me in case there was nausea. That was a good decision.

When I walked to the couch, I noticed that my coordination was lacking, as if I were very tipsy. I walked carefully and braced myself against the walls. At one point, I stumbled into a potted plant on a stool by the window and almost knocked it over. I barely managed to avoid falling.

I lay on the couch with my head propped up on some pillows and closed my eyes. I saw little beads of red light forming on the inside of my eyelids and as they increased in number and filled the visual field, they immediately faded and were replaced by stunningly clear and coherent closed eye visuals (CEVs). I could picture anything or anyone I wanted. I called up faces of family and friends and each were clear and accurate to real life.

I noticed that if I allowed my eyelids to open ever so slightly that I could see through my eyelids into a room. After staring into the room for a few seconds, I realized with a jolt that it wasn’t the room that I was sitting in. It was my parents' living room, though the perspective from which I was observing was the same as if I were lying on their couch. I opened my eyes to make sure that I was not hallucinating and the real room came back into focus. I did this a few more times throughout the experience and I always returned to my parents living room and it looked exactly the same.

I experimented with trying to visualize different scenes. Scenes were created as quickly as I could think of them and generally lasted for 5 to 10 seconds. A recurring theme in the visuals was 3D objects and visual effects. I could create scenes with 3D geometric shapes and circle them and transform them in realistic ways. I could create reflections, shadows, and smoke simulations and they all held up, though inspecting them closely was difficult. I began to wonder what exactly human beings are and if we have absolutely no idea what we are dealing with. Each of us has a brain which is able to simulate reality instantaneously in ways that go beyond what our most powerful computer systems would be capable of in a thousand times the amount of processing time. Can computers create a completely original, complex, and beautiful piece of artwork with touches of humor and emotion? Maybe they can, or will be able to one day, but we can in about a tenth of a second just by setting the intention. What are we?

I was often surprised by the narrative structure of the visuals. I would be looking at imagery only to see that it was all connected and had a point, which was often connected to the things I was thinking about. For example, I would get a scene with my father waving to me, shaking his head, and then turning away, only to realize that I was anxious and thinking about my family judging me and turning away from me for a while till I change my psychedelic lifestyle.

It became completely clear that my thinking and emotions were effecting my visual imagery to the extent that if I wanted to know how I was feeling, I only had to pay attention to the visuals . I also had a few times where the visuals seemed to be ahead of my willed thinking. I would think: "Show me..." and then would begin seeing Greek statues, before having completed my request for what would have been Greek statues. It was as if part of me knew what I was going to ask for before I did.

There was also a lot of beautiful and humorous imagery. A lot of random friends and family members embracing and sharing good times. I saw a young girl approach her grandmother and give her a hug. I couldn't help but smile. Once, I asked to see the faces of my family again and each of their faces flashes one at a time before my eyes. I wanted to see them all together, however, and when I made that request, I saw my family and relatives seated around a table together all smiling and laughing. The humor came into the visual imagery in ways that I can't quite describe. I'm not sure anything was objectively funny. One time, I remember laughing at an image of 3D text which was scrolling across my visual field because I had been thinking about something related and the last line of text was XOXOXOXO. I realized for the first time why this refers to hugs and kisses, with the X’s being arms enfolding one another and O’s being mouths kissing. Then I looked it up and found out that actually the X’s refer to kisses and the O’s to hugs. So much for that realization!

My hearing was still impaired. There was a buzzing and vibrating at a frequency that at each peak would cancel out incoming audio signals making it hard to hear. It wasn't terrible, but made listening to anything unpleasant.

My thinking was reasonably clear, though my short-term memory was much degraded. I could hold onto about 10 seconds of information at a time before losing track. I wanted to watch YouTube videos to distract myself but for a while found this impossible.

The nausea kicked in somewhere about the 2-hour mark. I threw up several times and felt better. I noticed that the anxiety was directly proportional to the nausea to the extent that thinking negatively could make me have to throw up and throwing up could transition me from highly anxious to slightly euphoric. I threw up several times in quick succession every 30 minutes to an hour for maybe 3 to 4 hours. It was horrible, but at some point I simply accepted it and moved on.

The most difficult part was the boredom that set in after maybe the 3-hour mark. The visual imagery was still stunning, but it was repetitive and each scene only lasted for up to 10 seconds. Even though each scene had an emotional point to it, I couldn't maintain interest. I'd seen images like it before and would again. The insight wasn't poignant enough to keep my attention. I wanted it to stop but there was nothing I could do. I tried music, I tried random YouTube videos, I tried to take a shower, but nothing really made it better. After about 4 or 5 hours I could tell I was hover the worst of it and that it was going to be mostly a waiting game.

After 6 hours, I was back enough to be able to listen to some YouTube videos (mostly Brandon Sanderson writing lectures which are excellent) and passed the time till midnight when I set the intention to get to bed. I had a lot of trouble in making myself get up from the couch, and it wasn't until 12:30am that I got up and got ready for bed. I made it in bed around 1:00am but realized I had forgotten to brush my teeth which I really wanted to do after all of the vomiting. I got back up and noticed that I still had some visual distortions. I brushed and got back to bed. I lay awake for several hours not really aware of much but not sleeping. I fell asleep between 3:00 and 4:00am and woke up at 9:00am feeling a bit tired and still slightly queasy. I got up at 9:30am and made a light breakfast which I was able to handle. After taking a shower, I felt mostly back to normal, though still lethargic and a bit out of it.

I think by tomorrow I'll be fully back to normal.

In summary, I wasn't as careful as I could have been and took more than I would have liked. It was interesting, but far too intense and so nauseating as to be completely unenjoyable. I have no desire to ever experiment with harmalas again. In this regard, I'm glad I took this high a dose because it means that there's probably not anything interesting left to explore with this substance and I can file it away and move on.

Exp Year: 2021	ExpID: 115498
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 26
Published: Jun 17, 2021	Views: 4,055
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Syrian Rue (45) : General (1), Alone (16)