DOSE:	30 g	oral	Banisteriopsis caapi	(plant material)
	30 g	oral	Psychotria viridis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

112 lb

I bought my Ayahuasca pack online. It contained 30g of Psychotria Viridis (Chacruna) and 30g of Banisteriopsis Caapi, and it cost €20.

PREPARATION

I started by tearing and crushing the leaves in a big-ish bowl. It sort of hurt my hands after a while, and my pestle and mortar didn't seem to really help until the pieces were a lot smaller.

When they were broken into what I considered small enough pieces, I filled a saucepan with about 500 ml of bottled water and added the juice of one lemon. I added the plant material, gave it a good stir, brought it to the boil then turned the heat down a few notches so that it was still continuously boiling, but not too vigorously.

The instructions said to boil it for a couple of hours, but someone online told me to boil it for one hour. So I decided to go for 1.5 hours per boiling. Well, I checked on it after around one hour and thought, 'hmm maybe I should finish it now' but then decided to just leave it for about 10-15 minutes more. Well when I came back to check on it the water had COMPLETELY evaporated and I got not even one drip from the plant material.

For my second boiling I used a little bit extra bottled water, around 1 litre, the juice of half a lemon and little bit of vinegar. Boiled for around one hour. I continued like this for 5 boilings in total, straining the plant material and collecting the brown water each time in the bowl I started with. The water I poured onto the plant material started to become much clearer on the 4th and 5th boilings.

I then mixed all my brown water and put it back in the saucepan, brought it to the boil and let it evaporate to approximately 1/4 of the original amount (which was around 1 litre).

And now it's sitting in a large mug with a small chopping board over it keeping the steam in, cooling slowly, waiting to go into the fridge overnight for when I drink it tomorrow! More to follow...


EFFECTS

So I drank my Ayahuasca on Friday night (I'm writing this on Tuesday) in my bedroom, with my boyfriend as my sober person. I hadn't eaten anything for well over 12 hours. It was possibly one of the most difficult and disgusting things I have ever had to drink. It tasted extremely bitter, and I had to keep stirring it before I took a drink because there were lots of little brown grainy bits at the bottom, which gave it a horrible texture and made it more difficult to swallow. I sweetened it with a little bit of honey, but it was still incredibly bitter.

It took me an hour or more to drink, because the instructions that came with the pack said not to drink it all at once if it is your first time, as your body then has to adjust to the full amount in one go, and can make nausea worse. It also took me so long because I almost gagged every time I drank some, and had to wait a little while before taking more as I didn't want to throw it up before I had even finished it.

I think I started to feel weird about 45 minutes to 1 hour after I started drinking. I couldn't drink the last little amount because of how disgusted I was, and also because the grainy bits were a lot more concentrated at the bottom, and I knew it would make me vomit if I tried. I don't know if this made the hit of the effects any less strong, but of course that's possible. I think maybe I should have boiled it down to a slightly smaller amount, to make it faster and easier to drink.

The first visual changes I experienced were quite similar to that of mushrooms. I started to see a green-ish tinge to things, then slowly but surely things in my room became distorted and were moving slightly. I lay down and closed my eyes, and saw some pretty great closed-eye visuals. Kaleidoscopic patterns and shapes were all over the place. Facing the light bulb in my room seemed to make them stand out more clearly.

My thoughts also started to get more and more crazy, and mixed up. If you've tripped before, you'll understand how hard it is to describe. If not... well, basically I was just thinking in a more intense mindset. When I thought of my troubles, I did become worried, but then I just kind of thought, 'not now.. don't think of this now, enjoy this trip.'

I was talking to my boyfriend and sometimes I felt a little bit freaked out because he was sober and he was joking around with me like we always do to each other, but I started to take the things he said more seriously and kept telling him to stop. I remember at one point I looked at him and his face seemed orange, with Indian-style patterns adorning it. He looked like some kind of Aztec statue of a god, or at least that's what came to my mind at the time.

After a while I started to forget I was even tripping, and didn't freak out anymore. Then I would remember, but it was better and I didn't feel scared or freaked out about it. Listening to psychedelic trance and ambient music was VERY pleasant, but it didn't seem to have any effect on my visuals the way mushrooms can.

Soon, maybe an hour or so after I started feeling the first effects, I sat up and said, 'I need to throw up!!!!!' and gagged over a basin, but didn't vomit. Then I started to feel the need to go to the toilet, which made me kind of freak out because I'd read that diarrhea was possible, but nausea and vomiting were more common. My mum was taking a bath at the time, so I couldn't go to the bathroom to do the business. This made me REALLY get scared. I was asking my boyfriend what the hell was I going to do, and he suggested just going in the basin. I was thinking 'I can't go to the bathroom because my mum will know I'm tripping, but I can't do it in this basin because it'll be so embarrassing!! But I NEED to go, and what if I take a shit in this basin, and then need to puke?? It'll be so awful puking into a shit-filled basin! But what if I'm puking in the basin and then shit myself at the same time??'.

My boyfriend was just telling me to go in the basin, and laughing, which made me very paranoid and I even started to cry slightly, but I actually think my eyes were just watering a lot more than tears of sadness. So I basically felt like I was going to explode out of every orifice if I didn't do SOMETHING and fast. So.... the feeling of needing to excrete being the dominant feeling, I just had to squat over the basin, and excrete. It's hilarious thinking back on it, but at the time I was really freaking out, my boyfriend was laughing and I was yelling 'stop laughing at meeee!!'

After I cleaned myself up.... I lay back down on the bed and felt SO much better. Before the purge, I felt like my mind was in a moment of absolutely pure insanity. But afterwards, everything calmed down and I could enjoy myself again. I started to get cold shivers, so I got under my blankets and immediately the shivers stopped. I felt incredibly happy and comfortable, and was able to joke and talk to my boyfriend, but my visuals seemed to be decreasing. It was only around 2 or 2.5 hours since I felt the first effects, and the instructions that came with the pack stated that it would last approximately 4 hours. They continued to decrease, but I still felt good.

This was basically the end of it all. I think I probably made the brew weaker by accidentally boiling away all the water at the beginning, and also maybe because I left a little bit of the brew at the bottom of the mug.

From this experience I think I can safely say that I will NOT be trying Ayahuasca again, unless I'm with an experienced shaman, or just someone with many years of experience, who would know exactly what amount of plant and vine should be used for my body weight and my previous experiences etc. I just really didn't enjoy drinking the brew at all, and it's not something I'd like to endure again any time soon.

The trip wasn't exactly what I expected (even though I don't usually go into trips expecting anything, as from past experience I've learned that trips usually give you what you DON'T expect), as in, I didn't go into an entirely different world, meet any of the 'entities' I've read about, have any spiritual epiphanies, or really get any intense open-eye visuals. Of course this could all be down to preparation and dosage.

I would definitely try smoking extracted DMT though, and I'd recommend trying Ayahuasca only to people who have had psychedelic experiences before, but I wouldn't go into it expecting it to be as fun as mushrooms or acid can be. It's a serious drug, and it is wise to do a lot of research on it before trying it.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 56246
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 10, 2007	Views: 15,097
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Ayahuasca (8) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Preparation / Recipes (30), First Times (2)