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Comment by josh2600 | Hacker News Reader

I have friends who have done both Ayahuasca and DMT. Ayahuasca seems to be much longer acting and more intense when administered correctly (but a lot of it seems to be set and setting). DMT has two variants, the n-n and the 5-meo. Friends report the n-n to be much more visual and the 5-Meo to be more physical. 5-Meo has been known to cause seizures at high doses.

I think both of these compounds raise your blood pressure a lot. That’s not good for a lot of existing conditions.

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People I know who have done Ayahuasca seem to me have had adverse effects on their mental health. Not the one timers, but going regularly. It’s subtle, but it seems to me they got worse regulating their emotions and rationality. Unfortunately this study is based on respondents so unlikely to uncover such a pattern.

I have also observed this.

Interesting. I wonder if it is being studied as well.

DMT and 5-meo-DMT are fundamentally different experiences, phenomenologically they're further apart than LSD is to Psilocybin.

If you're listing those two together you better also list 5-MEO-DiPT, 5-MEO-DALT, 5-MEO-AMT, 4-HO-DMT, 4-HO-MET, 4-HO-MIPT, etc. there are many many in the tryptamine family with fundamentally different subjective experiences.

https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Tryptamine_(compound) https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Substituted_tryptamines

5-meo-DMT is indeed a tryptamine, and related to "DMT" (n-n-DMT, the DMT everyone means when they say DMT).

But it's no more a "variant of DMT" than Psilocin (4-HO-DMT), or more exotic ones like 4-ACO-DMT

Set, setting, and the presence of a maestro. Sounds like fiction but there are lineages and training for working with the plants, and people capable of directing other people’s processes and experiences - in a repeatable manner, with awareness of others’ concrete experiences.

Taking the tea in the absence of this is a completely different experience.

Having a capable maestro in the room is like having a doctor in the ER - vs having only the patients getting high on whatever they find.

In the shamanic marketplace, how do you determine who's a real doctor and who's a quack?

In western medicine at least there are requirements of strictly documented education and training at accredited schools, ethical standards and review boards, and professional, monetary and criminal penalties for misconduct. Even then scammers, incompetent, and malevolent doctors slip through the cracks.

There's virtually no accreditation, professional standards or penalties for misconduct in the underground shaman scene, where anyone can hang up a shingle claiming they are a shaman with a long lineage, and where consumers tend to be pretty gullible and naive, and have little to no way of verifying if some self-styled shaman's claims are credible.

This is not an area of purely academic concern either, as some self-styled shamen have raped and tortured people, for starters.. and it's not uncommon for a shaman to fly in and do a one day ceremony then disappear, leaving very vulnerable people who've just been through a profound, possibly life-changing experience with absolutely no support.

This is the big question. My unironic answer is that there are no shortcuts.

Start your relationship with this practice 15-20 years ago when the ratio was much better, spend time in the Amazon close to the roots of the lineage and build distinctions and understanding.

Second best thing is to know someone who did, and has remained connected through ongoing practice and dietas.

I wish there was a fast and reliable way but there’s so much money to be made and so little understanding that yes, this is a serious issue.

One more thing regarding the article - there’s no “one” ayahuasca tea. Every brew varies - sometimes even when made by the same people in the same place. And, the clear liquid in the article photo is definitely not aya :)

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