6 ms·

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 mo

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.

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.