5 ms·

The classical comparison that comes to mind is this: LSD is like walking through the doors of perception. DMT (as in ayahuasca) is like being shot out of a ca

• wavefunction 10y ago
  According to my friends and everything I've read on the subject, the cannon effect is achieved when you smoke DMT. Ayahuasca is DMT + MAOI inhibitors and is more like the usual experiences of orally ingesting LSD, psilocybin or mescaline.
  • azernik 10y ago
    Plus fantastically uncomfortable physical side effects, and on the positive side an experienced spotter to help you along.
    • monktastic1 10y ago
      Depends. If the MAOIs are extracted from the caapi, leaving out the other alkaloids, even the uncomfortable physical side effects can be avoided.
      • Nursie 10y ago
        Ah but that's working around the 'plant spirit' and all that other stuff, you won't have an 'authentic' or 'real' experience and the hipsterswill laugh at you....
        • chillwaves 10y ago
          What's the point of the tone of your comment? Some people would find the processed drug to lack the "authentic" experience of what is found in nature. Doubt anyone really cares. Sounds more like a caricature to me.
          • Nursie 10y ago
            I'm sneering at people who make themselves sick unnecessarily by drinking random plant-juice with a side-order of woo rather than a proper preparation that would give the same effects without the discomfort or other risks, all in the name of 'authenticity'.
      • azernik 10y ago
        A lot of the physical side effects are inherent to MAOIs - they have crazy interactions with all kinds of stuff present in most people's bodies. (Hence the psychedelic interactions with DMT that produce the "ayahuasca" effects, and hence the long and hard-to-follow list of things to avoid for 1 or more weeks pre-trip.) There's a reason why MAO inhibitors are so rarely used in psychiatry. High efficacy, but the side effects are nasty to deal with.
  • aaroninsf 10y ago
    More like, certainly... but I'd say, on a radically different level. It's a very powerful thing, much more of a tool for personal discovery than anything remotely like a recreational or party drug. Source: first hand. :)
    • stcredzero 10y ago
      What did you discover?
      • throwanem 10y ago
        Well, that's the trouble with "personal discovery" - it tends to be personal, and insights thus derived to lack general applicability. Speaking for myself, on the rare occasions in my life when I've taken a psychedelic (LSD or psilocybin, never DMT as here), I've found the experience useful simply because such a radical change of perspective offers access to insight which might not be available in a more ordinary frame of mind. Such insight is, in my experience, occasionally of value. Of course, such insight is, also in my experience, much more often the kind of thing that makes sense only in hindsight and with the benefit of confirmation bias, which is to say, it doesn't make sense at all. I think it's very easy for people to make too much of experiences like these; to be taken out of the world, as these substances do, can be wonderful or terrible or both at once, but I can't imagine a case in which it could be neither, and our culture doesn't really provide a good conceptual framework for dealing with wonder and terror. And I know with certainty that it's very easy to talk such an experience to death; in the case where it does offer beneficial insight, such insight is generally of such an intimately personal nature, and so inextricably bound up in one's unique and individual experience of reality, that to try to make it comprehensible to others is often to make it incomprehensible to oneself. At the very least, you want to let it settle a good long while, and integrate into your personality if it's going to do so, before you try to elucidate it to someone else - and, beyond that, there's a very solid point to be made that, if it really is going to change you, it'll do so in a way that doesn't need to be explained to anyone. Whether any of what I've just described has any use to you, I have no idea, and this is the kind of question you could ask five people and get twelve answers in any case. But maybe it's been worth your while; in any case, I hope it has. I'm happy to answer any further questions it might elicit, although of course I can't promise those answers will be any more useful than this one has been.
  • apathy 10y ago
    I've only ever smoked it... No other frame of reference.
• cnp 10y ago
  > The whole enterprise seems very poorly thought out. That depends on which circle you sit with. Some of them are straight up dangerous (meaning, whoever is running it has not been through the proper training), while others are incredibly well-organized and safe. And "freak-outs" are oftentimes the point, not meant to be suppressed or dealt with, but guided through by a competent shaman / group. You get to a certain level of understanding when pushed a bit beyond your comfort zone, and that can be difficult sometimes.
  • apathy 10y ago
    Right, but if people are getting stabbed it's generally time to put an end to the offending freakouts.
    • zardo 10y ago
      One locus of the universe puts a "knife" between the "ribs" of another. The second locus transcends material existence and returns it's material to the whole which it was never really apart from. It's all fine.
• rubicon33 10y ago
  Just curious - Why would someone on SSRIs not notice a thing? Forgive my ignorance but... Aren't those anxiolytic? Does that somehow prevent ayahuasca from functioning?
  • rosser 10y ago
    Why would someone on SSRIs not notice a thing? In the case of ayahuasca, quite possibly because they're dead. You don't mix SSRIs and MAOIs unless you have a very good idea what you're doing, and even then probably not without a reasonably well-equipped clinic to hand. Serotonin Syndrome is not something to fuck around with.
    • spangry 10y ago
      Not that I'd advise anyone take the risk, but there are lower risks associated with mixing SSRIs and MAO-B inhibitors (like ayahuasca). It's the older class of anti-depressants which are both MAO-A and MAO-B inhibitors that you don't want to mix with SSRIs (and lots of other things too). MAO-A oxidises/metabolises seratonin, noradrenaline and dopamine, whereas MAO-B is mostly just dopamine. MAO-A inhibition also causes the 'cheese effect' (consumption of tyramine causing hypertensive crisis). As an aside, it's a real pity that the side effects of MAO-A inhibition loom so large in people's imaginations. They're extremely effective anti-depressants and many of the risks can be easily mitigated, but GPs and even shrinks are now too afraid to prescribe them.
  • jaggederest 10y ago
    Most psychedelic drugs operate through the serotonin pathways. SSRIs cause downregulation of postsynaptic serotonin receptors, meaning the effects of things like LSD and MDMA are reduced.
  • MichaelGG 10y ago
    Some folks have reported SSRIs dampen psychedelic trips. But maybe there's something more with the MAOIs in ayahuasca? Seems rather overhyped, with emphasis on "natural" and "discovered by ancients" nonsense. In reality MAOIs are rather dangerous.
• hosh 10y ago
  You're making an assumption that "freakouts" is necessarily a bad thing. Freakouts can have some severe material consequences (including as we saw, death), but antipsychotics do not necessarily help. Humans have a normalcy bias such that, anything that is unfamiliar are to be considered with caution, fear, and even anger. There's a tendency to use antipsychotics to get someone to a state of what's considered "normal", but "normal" does not always mean healthy. The shamans who are trained in the jungle and work with this stuff uses a variety of methods to work with those kinds of episodes. These are not fun, and they aren't really safe either. Some of the groups in the US are not trained or equipped to deal with it, and the more responsible ones will refuse to let someone drink if there are prior cases of psychotic breaks. I do remember in one ceremony, one of the persons there went off on a journey. This was a group I don't usually participate with. To me, it wasn't unusual for someone to go into an episode like that. I've seen it happen in others and in myself. (And granted, I have heard of those who go somewhere and never come back but I have not seen it directly myself). What was unusual in that case was that there no separate room set aside. Usually, the energies being whipped out of a person like that is intense enough to start inducing things in other people. What it usually induces is fear (fear of the unknown). As people started to get more and more uncomfortable, their own consciousness transmits feelings of judgement and censure ... which does not help the situation. Ayahuasca is tricky like that. She'll allow situations like that to arise, and see if you're going to be mindful of things; or to facilitate an empathy exercise where you feel what it is like to be on the other side of those judgements. Freakouts like that can happen to anyone -- and likely, the more rigid, the more closed-minded, the more judgemental you are, the more likely it will be your turn next.
  • apathy 10y ago
    Once upon a time I took everything under the sun. I don't judge people for doing the same. But if you're claiming to "guide" people through a trip with potential for physical harm (and in an inustrialized, urban environment, that's pretty much all of them), you're goddamn right I'll judge you if you fuck someone up. If a hospital pulled this shit and didn't even try to mitigate potential harm, they'd be shut down. Would you claim it should be otherwise? People certainly have out of body experiences in the ER on a fairly regular basis... So, no, I don't take issue with people using hallucinogens. I used a ton when I was younger and had a vanishingly small number of bad trips. The part I take issue with is where people get irresponsible. Humans are pretty fragile (stop by the ER some time, they can survive a lot, but not everything). I judge those who won't take care of each other.