B.Caapi leaves as an MAOI

[macro]

After reading this thread and not wanting to hijack it:

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/inde...view=getnewpost

I'm curious as to any reports of people using B.Caapi leaves rather than vine sections as an MAOI. The little information I've dug up indicates that yes it can be used, but there's precious little on quantities used, as well as qualitative experiences (especially in comparison to P.Harmala and B.Caapi vine sections) Anyone got anything on this?

[Gunter]

I read somewhere that the leaves aren't used in the Amazon because of taste.

I also read that they vary a bit in chemistry as compared to the vine and vine bark.

[Pisgah]

I have absolutely zero bioassay experience on this one, but...

If you can potentiate the tryptamine experience by adhering crytalline extracts to caapi leaf and smoking it, well, I think there is cause to explore this medium further.

I'm thinking about engaging the dried leaves alone in a smokeable format after talking to fungal friends.

[Gunter]

I'd try the G&Z protocol of smoking about 45 minutes into it, if law and time allowed.

[planthelper]

yeah my friend used to use them all the time as his caapi was not producing fat stems yet.

16 fresh leaves was a standard dose, he never experienced nausea yet.

[folias]

it depends on the alkaloid content of the leaves which can be low (or high)

100 grams of leaves has been reported to work... but for the most part, the full power of the vine won't be in the leaves no matter how old the vine is!

Vine really needs to be 8 years + to deliver its full power in my opinion... although I have got very good effects from vine four years old, its not the same wisdom and breadth and depth that older vine has...

For young vine, you need to see the patterning in the vine cross section clearly, for it to be really useable!

I have had really good results combining leaves with really old vine from other countries...

Julian.

[planthelper]

dear julian, i've been thinking about your post on and off for quite a while now and decided to bump the thread...

the reason being, that to my knowledge 100g of caapi leaves is an extreem high dose which might have very serious effects. the danger is that the leaves might have hardly any grunt or might be very potent, one can't assume all leaves are the same!!!

i know two people who thought they were very close to death after consuming much larger than normal standard doses of maoi's in plantform.

safty comes first!

aya and maoi's are very powerfull substances, all i wan't is to avoid that some people think it's the same like with alcohol or mj, the more the better.

proly your threshold for those substances are very, very high, but again having one bottle of rum just for youreselfe the first time you drink would be not a good idea.

[Gunter]

What plants caused such adverse reactions and what were the doses involved?

[planthelper]

i don't recall more than that, friend no 2 said he had 30g, of what excactly, don't know, but it was only a maoi, either caapi leave, stems or rue seeds.

friend no 1 can't say how much maoi's and fresh viridis were used, but the maoi's used included fresh caapi stems, caapi leaves and rue seeds. believe me my friend prayed to be able to vomit and poked his finger down the throat, but to no avail. after 10 hours water was tried and tasted like acid, to swallow halve a cornchip was hard work and took 30 minutes. the next whole day a sort of hangover was felt, the liver did hurt. with a normal dose of maoi's, it takes only a very short time to be able to eat and drink and to digest proper again...

some how a hypertensive crisis might very well had been experienxed, difficulty breathing and anxiety...

Edited June 8, 2006 by planthelper

[Gunter]

I tend not to think of betacarbolines as MAOI's myself, they are so complex and have so many actions in the body. I think of them as having some maoi effects, but not as MAOI's. I found they can potentiate things (caapi etc is legal here BTW) at doses well below MAOI thresholds. I fear the rue because it has some alkaloids that are pretty nasty that aren't in caapi, I'd avoid taking large amounts of it. I have heard of people thinking they were close to death from vine alone though.

[mr toodly]

Yes. Bill Burroughs, for example, held that sufficient quantities of B. caapi (which he erroneously referred to as 'yagé') could kill.

[Gunter]

But since he also is one of the most common sources of bad information on the subject, such as the notion dried caapi doesn't work, only the fresh barks from caapi does etc, I have always been skeptical of his statements on the subject.

[mr toodly]

There is no doubt that the drug appendix in <i>Naked Lunch</i> is full of inaccuracies.

I simply thought I would put one face on this rumor you have heard.

But if I remember correctly, Burroughs offers an explanation for his claim. Whoever actually cares about this stuff should show what is wrong with it.

[folias]

Planthelper,

it just depends on the plant material....

I've been using 50 grams of potent vine leaf and rue and it hasn't been working sometimes!

100 grams of vine leaf by itself may not be enough to effect mao inhibition!

For the most part, I think the leaf is best combined with some decent vine... by itself, it just doesn't seem to have the oomph.

more than 400 grams of vine leaf or vine and then there may be difficulty...but I haven't noticed see any significant physical hazard in high vine ingestions...

Julian.

[Rev]

ill add that some people boil the fuck out of the material

hard boiled brews are more nauseating

presumably because more crud is extracted

or put in strong mineral acds like hydrochloric, or non volatiles like citric acid

it isnt necessary

traditionally most people dont use any acid

some dont even use heat

its better to use more material, simmer at lower temperature

and only use volatile organic acids like acetic

anyone used coca cola to brew?

i like the idea

but for the enormous amount of sugar

water + caffeine + phosphoric acid + carbonic acid

on the aya forums people reported good brews using phosphoric to acidify

caffeine as Ilex guayusa is a traditioanl admixture and many time i swear its a good idea as you 'nod off' drunk with visions

Edited June 9, 2006 by Rev

[tonus]

One other and I have been trying to suss out how to best work with caapi leaves on and off over the last year.

We had several different batches from 2 leaf sources. In total we drank 8-10 times.

Some of my research led me to believe that:

-Caapi leaf strength is more inconsistent than vine. I have drunk 60 grams which had the same effect as 100grams. I have also drunk 180 grams and had little to no effect. (The drink was like syrup though and this might have led to weird digestive effects). Results went from total immersion to little to nothing.

-Caapi leaf works better with tryptamine crystal than it does with leaf/bark tea.

-Effect of the caapi leaf, MAO potentiation, is shorter in duration than caapi vine.

After some initial excitement at the possibility of this being an easily accessible MAO, grows like a weed the further north you go, I feel it is too unreliable to build a good working relationship with. (Nothing more frustrating than having dud brews!)

Maybe the best use for caapi leaf is to mix it with rue, and thereby to take the edge off it. A possibility for use is to drink a minimal amount of rue, for potentiation, and then continuously top up with caapi leaf during a session. Continual top up would be required due caapi leaf's shorter duration. As Syrian rue potentiates for a long time, having it underneath the caapi leaf stops dud brew due to the lack of potentiation from dud caapi leaf.

The only use I have heard of caapi leaf in the Amazon is as a cleanser; part of the dieta.

[Rev]

looking at what u say i disagree about it being not so useful

its easy to test effective MAOi

take the first brew

wait 30-40 mins

smoke 20-100mg trytamines or some ch@nga

the combination is a novel approach to an old synergy

pioroa yopo is taken after chewing capi cambium bark

ott reports small amounts of oral beta carbs signicantly potentiate snuffed trytamines

its a small jump to oral beta carbs and smoked tryptamines

there are multiple unpublished trip reports

and see how deep and long it goes - duration is a good quantitative guide tho complexity = depth is a goou qualitative

fairly easy to gauge inhibition that way

you may even feel thats a session in itself and not need to have a brew

with any herb

the time of harvest means a lot

so does batch standardisaton

if you had say 800g of dry capi leaf and powdered it

and tested 100g and found tha effective then the rest of the batch woul beabout the same

no dif than any other herb in the mainstream trade

from looking at capi i think full sun grown late summer harvested leaf looks more potent

more orange staining and pigment. the vine stains orange. and is reputedly potent - 3 independant sources

shaded vine too is pale- in leaf and stem and weaker

in the flourescence test i saw very little activity in the leaf

but in solution it can appeaer bluish in sunlight

leading me to think harmine dominance or a compound with similar optical structure

Edited June 12, 2006 by Rev

[tonus]

looking at what u say i disagree about it being not so useful

with any herb

the time of harvest means a lot

so does batch standardisaton

if you had say 800g of dry capi leaf and powdered it

and tested 100g and found tha effective then the rest of the batch woul beabout the same

no dif than any other herb in the mainstream trade

The idea of standardization sounds good but with ayahuasca I feel the biochemical thesis can come apart at the seams a little. In my experience one can be blasted to hyperspace with a dose of vine and phlebo one week and the next week have 'less' effects with a bigger dose...of the same brew.

Ayahuasca is inconsistent in 'effects'...which one could subscribe to the idea that unique teachings are bestowed at unique times., or that maybe there are many more variables than quantity of alkaloids. Experience seems to bear this out.

I feel caapi leaf has this weird quality to it even more. With the same batch I drank 100grams of caapi leaf and had mild effects and a few weeks later drank 180 grams and had little to no effects. Similar effects have been reported by others. Although ayahuasca can be inconsistent in effects, more often than not some 'teaching/juice' tarries along and is disclosed through the experience. With caapi leaf, not only are the effects inconsistent to a greater extent to the tea in general but when it does seem to work mildly it lacks the depth of magic one wants from ayahuasca.

I was drinking brew with the caapi leaf where my friend used crystal. He had more positive results with crystal, full immersion on 2 occasions but very short lasting. My experiences lasted longer but much milder...with not much magic.

All a bit of a mystery.

I spent a bit of time and energy on working with this material as I thought it would be a great alternative for Australians to use instead of rue, which is not good in my opinion. In the end, although the research was important to me, I wasted a lot of good tryptamine material.

If there are possibilities of use with this material then we need further research. On aya.com people have talked about using leaf but no-one has come back with anything very positive to report.

You simply do not hear of people saying 'drank a mean caapi leaf brew and it rocked my world!' Be great to hear such stories though!

[hebrew]

If there are possibilities of use with this material then we need further research. On aya.com people have talked about using leaf but no-one has come back with anything very positive to report.

You simply do not hear of people saying 'drank a mean caapi leaf brew and it rocked my world!' Be great to hear such stories though!

yes it woudl be good to hear some more positive reports about leaf since it is much easier to collect leaf than vine.

however leaf is much more emetic than vine, if you can imagine that LOL

i have noticed that adding leaf to a brew with vine the purge was far more intense that the brew without the leaf

maybe this is just me or circumstance though?

tonus did you experience this also in your experiments?

maybe leaf could be combined with small amounts of rue to give the presence of caapi to the experience?

[hebrew]

welcome Tonus :D

nice first 2 posts

[macro]

If there are possibilities of use with this material then we need further research. On aya.com people have talked about using leaf but no-one has come back with anything very positive to report.

You simply do not hear of people saying 'drank a mean caapi leaf brew and it rocked my world!' Be great to hear such stories though!

I agree. Leaf is readily available. Good vine sections require growing for 3+ years at least. I guess it comes down to users wishing to have a more reliable experience and thus sticking with rue/vine. I notice some regret in your statement of losing some tryptamine material. ;)

[folias]

The thing is that when using leaf, I have generally found you have to use 3 grams or so of rue anyway, just to ensure MAOI inhibition...

As an MAOI, I don't think it is very effective, as a herbal preparation to add to brews to enchance the resonance and effect of plants, I think it is very effective... but in comparison to a vine that is 10 years +, caapi leaf is left in the dust.

However, some of the best brews I have done are combining the leaf with the old vine, the leaf seems to work on a much finer electromagnetic level, whereas the vine is very "boney" and IN, the leaf is more "OUT" and exteriorly focussed... taking the whole holographic imprint of the plant seems to help, using leaf and vine from the same plant is ideal I think...

I haven't noticed more vomiting or problems with digestion... on the contrary, vine leaf seems very smooth... I can concur with tonus, that alkaloid content seems to vary widely between plants, a good way to test the potency is just to taste the leaf for an alkaloid taste. Comparison between different batches tends to show what is strong, medium or weak....

The leaf seems to oxidise or lose its potency in some way quite quickly over time...

Julian.