DOSE: T+ 0:00	1.58 g	oral	Syrian Rue	(extract)
T+ 1:30	4 hits	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

127 lb

I've taken tryptamines many times, but before trying tryptamines with a MAOI, I decided to try inhibiting my mono amine oxidase without the accompanying presence of any tryptamines, particularly with the help of the well known MAOI peganum harmala (syrian rue). Besides, the rue is conjectured by some scholars to be a candidate for the Soma praised in the Rig Veda. Not everybody agrees with Wasson's hypothesis that Soma is Amanita Muscaria. This and other reports of the entheogenic potential of MAOI brought my friend and myself to try opening up the entheogenic potential engendered by the inhibition of our own MAO.

Prior to eating the rue, my friend and I observed the diet restrictions for MAOIs for almost four days.

The beginning of the ritual was at night, around 11pm, a vigil. Myself and a friend put an extracted form of the rue (4x - 1 gram extract = 4 grams of seeds) into pills and took our doses, mine being slightly larger than that of my friend. About an hour and a half later, we both felt calmly at ease, an otium not very different from that experienced with any entheogens. Like Huxley said in the Doors, there seems to be plenty of time. This calm was very oceanic, in the sense of being encompassed by something at once caring and dangerous, but also in the more literal sense of feeling my own movements, my proprioception, to be part of the waves of the moving world or moving earth, as if gravity was pulling us down and also up and side to side.

So we sat around for a little while, just sitting. I experienced some nausea, although my friend experienced none, and decided not to fight it, so I went to the bathroom the vomited. This was possibly just sea-sickness, or I may not have observed the diet restrictions closely enough. I felt much better after purging, and again, I understand why purgation is central to the entheogenic experiences engendered by peyote or ayahuasca, and although psilocybin mushrooms don't necessitate vomiting, I can see why healers like Maria Sabina encouraged it.

At this point my friend and I smoked some high quality cannabis, which was most definitely working in synergy with the MAO-inhibition. We sat and talked, noticing that our hearing was becoming more sensitive, and our vision was becoming more sensitive; in other words aural and visual hallucination. We both agreed that our sense of touch was becoming much more ambiguous, making it wonderfully difficult to distinguish oneself from the environment, similar, in a way, to dissociative anesthetics like DXM, nitrous oxide, and ketamine.

Around 1:30, we didn't want to remain upright, so we lied down. With eyes closed, it was easy to let my body dissolve into the oceanic undulations that encompassed me, dissolve into meanings and senses, plans and memories, flights of reverie, and the usual signs of the ocean. The buzzing of my circulatory and nervous systems was becoming louder and more intricate. With the help of tryptamines, or simply a higher dose of the MAOI, I’m sure this buzz opens up into the voice of speech, the logos.

Just as easy as it was to get swept up into trance, it was still fairly easy to concentrate and speak, although what was spoken of became more sacred and archetypal. For the next couple of hours this trance state continued, and I found that as my consciousness wandered, my chronic back pain was completely absent. I can see how the rue can be a powerful friend for those seeking entheogenic entrancement and/or shamanic healing.

Around 3:30 I began to sit up again, to feel my body become 'mine' again, but it was a day or two before my chronic back pain came back, and it still isn’t quite as bad as it used to be. I went to bed around 6:00, and had no trouble falling asleep. From what I’ve felt of it, Syrian rue and MAOIs in general are most certainly entheogenic, although I’m sure is potential lies far beyond what I’ve described here.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 38821
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 11, 2007	Views: 31,371
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Syrian Rue (45), Cannabis (1) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Glowing Experiences (4), First Times (2)