DOSE:	15 g	oral	Mimosa tenuiflora	(tea)
	4.0 g	oral	Syrian Rue	(tea)
	70 g	oral	Banisteriopsis caapi	(tea)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

a comparison of experience between caapi and syrian rue, a common analog. my experience with the vine itself is limited. (any 'experience', use, claim of ownership or possession, etc. of any entheogens alluded to in this post of course occured only in a dream or where legal.) i have only used the vine a handful of times, and they were all of the same vine, a large chunk of red caapi about 4 inches in diameter obtained from maya. So I'm going to relay three or four experiences had with either rue and caapi so you can see how the experiences have been different for me.

I began my experiences with rue. i had not yet stumbled across the aya forum, forums.ayahuasca.com, which has much more info than erowid (although i was later pointed there by Z, the same friend who gave me the cosmic serpent and my first half eighth of little helpers.) the instructions for brewing I found on erowid were rather confusing, and all involved rue; I searched other places, but found only the same three recipes. So I bought some rue and some mimosa, like the instructions said; sometime later, we began brewing.

My experience of this first brew of the dozen or so following it was the strongest, most fulfilling, and most "ecsatic". It was also the qualitatively "worst" brew I had ever concocted; we used an exorbitant amount of lemon juice, and the rue wasn't ground properly or filtered properly so there were chunks of seeds floating in the tea. After drinking, I originally thought nothing was happening. An hour and a half into it, the two friends I drink with were both feeling mild effects; I felt absolutely nothing after recovering from the initial nausea induced by the tannins and other goodies in the mimosa and rue. I decided it wasn't going to work; from what I had read, this was very common. Having been fasting all day, I was starving, and went to the kitchen to eat. I put a huge amount of butter on an english muffin; not having done all the research I should have, I also ate a chunk of parmesian cheese. I was standing in the kitchen, finishing my cheese when all of a sudden it hit me, hard, and feeling that tryptamine rush I hurried to the couch. Looking around, z and j were getting hit by the same wave of energy as me; I could feel the tensions between the three of us, and they both ran outside and began to purge, quite hard. "that was strange", I thought, and began watching the room come alive. The previous owners of the house had been a nice gay couple, and their furnishings hadn't yet been removed; the room was full of tacky neons and other colors and patterns that became quite a feast for the eyes. I went into it deeper and deeper. The lights were on, and i went back and forth between keeping my eyes open and closing them until I realized it made no difference. At some point I turned to my two friends, sitting in chairs on the other side of the coffee table, and managed to eek out "this is the hardest I've ever tripped." Then I said, "not really", understanding that I had seen all of this before with the little helpers, in other lives, other places; my friends laughed, having been in similar states themselves and understanding the constant irony of such a voyage.

Everywhere I looked there were vines, seeds, plants; since then I have looked at plant life in a whole new light- specific kinds of plants, leaves, etc always trigger emotional reactions that I can't quite turn into meaningful cognitions, but I know they're there somewhere, and someday I'll get to them again. This altered the way things look while on entheogens for every experience since then; what were once geometric shapes and patterns are now vines, flowers, and seed pods, no matter what plant/chemical I am working with at the moment. The lesson revolved around life and death, mostly; every now and then I stumble across the notes I wrote down right after the experience and then promptly lose them until they turn up again in some weird place and time. What was perhaps most important out of all that was imparted to me was the power of life over death, mental over material, etc. while they need each other to function and exist, the mental completely guides the material, we can quite literally do anything, if we only understand how to do it. The material is 'fake'- it isn't what is really going on; what is really going on is the thought matrix we use to construct and guide the material world.

An important note- while I say information was 'imparted to me, in no way can I say that I felt there to be an entity imparting this information to me. The idea of having a relationship with these substances did not seem strange; I had already built up a relationship with our little helpers, and always felt they were telling me things. (incidentally, they were angry with me at the time, and just consistently telling me that they had given all they could give and it was time to move on and look elsewhere.) Yet when I was told these things, I did not actually feel that there was an entity there doing the telling; the plants were giving me messages, but my thoughts were all very much my own. At the time, I felt that people who talked to entities and whatnot just didn't get it; that they were on some lower level of awareness, unable to see things as they truly are, and interpreting reality as all these entities. I no longer feel like this at all.

I quickly learned to guide myself through the voyage; how to direct my thoughts properly. If I thought too much, about things to deep, I would be quickly overcome by nausea; I had to walk a fine line, pushing into the nausea when needed and pulling back when needed. Eventually, I decided to bite the bullet and let myself go all the way. I purged, and it was like nothing I had previously experienced- only once before had I purged before from an entheogen, and being unable to handle the soapy alkaloids of morning glories is not at all the same sort of experience.

I have not been back there since. I have had purges of similar quality, but have not fully entered that reality for several years, except in those brief moments in which I am purging.

I had two other experiences with rue worth noting. One I quote from a post on the aya forum: 'underdoses don't bother me much any more. i was in the woods once, having dreamed i drank a brew from about 4 grams of rue and 15 of mimosa. nothing was happening except horrible nausea. i was ok with it for about an hour; but eventually, i got upset. i was bored, felt like i was wasting my time. 'fuck this,' i said to myself, 'this is a waste of time. i wish i was doing something else.' so, 'fuck you,' she said, and i began wringing myself out into the bush next to me, some of the most intense vomiting i've ever done except for that time i drank all that cough syrup. i stopped vomiting and started smiling, a big grin across my vomit encrusted face. 'not yet,' she said, and i began vomiting once again. This was the first time I actually felt I was in direct communication with the plants. I was not simply being shown things, I was having a conversation. It was with what was distinctly female, not only did she demand respect, she didn't like the cold, (we were sitting outside in the fall, and even though we were bundled up and brought blankets, the cold couldn't be kept out,) she was definitely a she, and she knew exactly what I needed to break through all of my crap.

I had one other intense experience with rue. Me and Z and a friend of ours from high school went back up to z's parent's country house. We all drank the tea, and it did nothing; our friend fell asleep, me and zach desperately tried eating butter to no avail. (i've since decided that fat might help kick in the dmt, but eating it is silly . . . J once stared at us during a ceremony with such a 'what the hell are you doing, that's so silly and disrepectful and pointless' look in his eyes that I realized how silly it was and have never done it again.) our friend went home the next morning; deciding to try again, me and Z took the leftovers from the night before and began brewing. we must have done a total of 7 or 8 washes by the time we drank. We boiled it down to two doses. We approached this much more seriously than any previous time; we focused our intent much more carefully, blew lots of tobacco smoke over the brewing tea, asked the spirits for assistance, and carried out the ceremony itself in complete darkness. We both quickly felt that tryptamine rush kick in. The trip was quite intense for me; it certainly wasn't happy or ecstatic, but I can't say that it was a 'bad' trip. All I can really say is that it was very strange. I could feel the presence of 'others' in the room, I could feel every expression on z's face; the one thing I was learning was that things are much much stranger than I could ever possibly imagine and that I knew absolutely nothing. I couldn't handle the intensity and vomited in about half an hour; with the experience fading away, I went into the bathroom to evacuate my bowels. Z began calling my name, so I hurried up and went back out to the living room. Z was engaging in conversation with an entity, a representative of a group who were in the room. the entity made it clear that he wasn't omnipotent and not always correct; he didn't answer anything alone, but would take each question to the group and then return with an answer. It told him a number of things- 'the plants and the seeds are fake'; 'you and [health] and your father and john lennon are all the same person,' (z's father was the keyboard player for the plastic ono band); 'you might lose your pinky finger'; most distressingly, 'kiss the children goodbye'; and most significantly (for me) '[health] is the kind of person people spend their whole lives writing books about.' Which I'm still not sure how to interpret; thats some heavy shit. They also told z that they had a lot to tell me.

Most of the times we brewed with rue, it didn't 'work'. I bought a whole lot of caapi this summer, as I felt it was time to really get to work and do things properly. We have brewed with caapi a few times since them; we have also incorporated another member into our small circle.

(A short interjection: I have had a LOT of bad trips. I no longer actually think of them as 'good' or bad', mostly due to that day in the cold where I first met the lady. I had already been having lots of bad trips the first time I drank the tea, but there was not a hint of sadness, fear, disconnection, or anything else in that trip. And I haven't been back there since. They have been slowly getting better, as I've mentioned in other threads. With aya, however, I have never had a bad trip in the way I have with 5meo or the little helpers; I have certainly had very sad and strange experiences, but have never been faced with the hopelessness and vanity that I have oft battled. Vanity in the sense of 'vain', both meanings- I have never seen such beauty as I have in what are at the same time the absolute worst moments of my life, always self-centered and blind; but also vain in that life was all so pointless, wasn't working out no matter how hard i tried . . . )

our ceremonies are much more serious now. Much more attention is payed to the brewing process, the ceremony is always conducted in complete darkness, etc. the caapi has never 'not worked,' for all of us; usually, the rue would only work for one of us, while the rest would just have to sit there sad.

The first time was with 70 grams of caapi and 10 of mimosa. (as an aside, the mimosa I have right now is of terrible quality; don't buy from bouncing bear!!) I wanted to go light on the mimosa so the experience would be much more caapi-centered; I wanted to experience the caapi, not the admixture.

The first difference noticed was the level of intensity with which the trip kicks in. with 5meo or with a rue tea, I have always felt a very strong tryptamine rush; all of a sudden there's a rip, a crash, and it has kicked in. after a time I became very scared of this, and was unable to handle it, mostly because of stupid attempts at transcendence with 5meo. With caapi, no such thing has so far happened. It comes on very slowly. As soon as I begin drinking, I begin feeling it, and an hour or so later I'm there. There is no harsh transition. Furthermore, I can feel the effects of the caapi; although I always felt that it was the rue communicating with me, not the mimosa, I never felt any effects from the rue itself other than nausea.

Once it kicked in, I lied down. (I don't do this any more.) Nothing was very intense; I was very sad, but not for any of the usual reasons. It wasn't a personal sadness- the world just felt very old, tired, and stuck; the static nature of civilization was wearing down. radiohead's 'life in a glass house', (a really really sad song with clarinets and stuff,) and a very sad song I had written on the piano a month before were going through my head the entire time. I could hear the world; that strange oscillation always in the background of all my trips, coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I could feel presences in the room, interestingly, the most prominent one distinctly male; lady aya, in this circumstance, was a wise but sad old man. I felt and heard a zing; the spirits, who I have still not met, were letting me know they were there. They zoomed by a dozen or so times; sometimes it seemed like they didn't just fly by, but flew in. There wasn't much nausea. it was there, but not to the extreme of the rue experiences; it didn't override the rest of the experience and I didn't have to 'battle' it so much.

The other experiences have been similar.

So the major differences, as I have experienced them-

Rue was female, caapi is male;

Rue is mostly only an maoi, while caapi has qualitative effects of its own;

Rue brings it on in a very intense fashion, while caapi is slower, smoother, perhaps more experienced/wiser;

Rue oscillates wildly between being really intense and not working at all, while caapi always works, but not in such an intense way;

the times rue did work, usually we used more efficient than normal brewing methods- way too much acid, or a rediculous number of washes or amount of time spent brewing. perhaps the caapi would be stronger, but it doesn't need to brew for 14 hours or taste like lemon juice to work;

when using rue, the most we ever used was 5 grams, and usually it was only 3; with caapi, you aren't restricted by the toxins found in rue and can use much larger amounts;

Less importantly, taste- caapi is still very bitter, but it smells so nice and isn't nearly as rough as rue.

So the experiences have been kind of odd. I haven't had a 'breakthrough' with the caapi yet, even though I've been drinking 70 grams of caapi and about 15 of mimosa. Yet I do always feel more aware, more 'connected'. Rue just kind of opens up the floodgates, while caapi seems much wiser and more experienced; less erratic and more sure of what it is doing.

It also seems to have opened up a much deeper world, one with more facets than that of rue. Its obvious that there's much more going on; not just a feeling that the universe is stranger than I've ever imagined, but how this directly affects me, particularly while dreaming. Its added a whole new twist; set and setting aren't enough any more- there is much more to it than my own mindstate.

I think perhaps part of the reason I haven't had a 'breakthrough' yet is due to the wisdom and compassion of the caapi; I haven't broken out of that bad trip cycle yet, and caapi wants to help. It doesn't want to just open the floodgates; it doesn't want me to get thrown into something I can't handle that will turn me away from the path. My girlfriend, the newest member of the circle, tells me that there is always an old, dark entity behind me, working hard to protect me during dreams. At first she wasn't sure whether it was sinister or helpful, but subsequent experience made her decide it was there for good. Perhaps this is the male entity I have been sensing?

I still haven't really met an entity; sensing, feeling, responding to, are one thing; actually conversing is quite another. They say they want to talk to me, and I want to talk to them, but I haven't yet. Someday . . .

In the end, caapi is clearly 'superior' to rue. Although it hasn't shown me as much, it still seems much wiser, more steady and evenhanded. I've been considering using the manske method to defray the cost of the caapi, but haven't yet; when (or if) I do I'll report on that. I've also only used mimosa, and not very good mimosa, which at least alters the taste of the tea if not the entire experience. I also will say that brewing methods/etc may have altered the qualitative feel of each of these experiences, but we have had a set method for some time which always works for caapi but rarely did for rue, even though it felt (and feels) very right and correct. the dosage has also varied between the rue and the caapi; while the amount of mimosa has generally stayed the same, we use 70 grams of caapi, equivelant to twice as much harmala/harmaline as in the dose of rue we were using. this could very well make a difference as to why the rue works better with a crazy amount of brewing, while caapi doesn't need it; in terms of the intensity of the rue trips, however, i can't see how this could be the cause- if anything, the caapi trips should be more intense.

These are only my own experiences. when looking around on the internet, you can usually only find recipes for rue and mimosa. When looking to buy, I opted for the rue even after finding a caapi recipe because its so darned cheap. But there certainly is a difference between the two.

Exp Year: 1997	ExpID: 38373
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Nov 23, 2004	Views: 37,967
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Banisteriopsis caapi (169), Syrian Rue (45), Mimosa tenuiflora (74), Huasca Brew (268) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Entities / Beings (37), Mystical Experiences (9), Difficult Experiences (5), Preparation / Recipes (30), Retrospective / Summary (11), Combinations (3)