Comment by quechimba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by quechimba | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't recommend anyone to smoke DMT or changa, it's way too strong and it's difficult to make sense out of the experience afterwards.

Ayahuasca is an amazing medicine. If you decide to do it, do it in the Peruvian Amazon, read the reviews carefully of each retreat center before you decide on which one to go to. Follow the diet and any other restrictions, this is especially important AFTER drinking ayahuasca. The shaman will tell you what to avoid and for how long. Don't use kambo, bufo or rapé before, during or after the retreat, it will interfere with the treatment. A lot of vendors in Iquitos will try to convince you that it's good to combine rapé with ayahuasca, but it isn't. Ayahuasca works best alone. Basically you should only be doing ayahuasca (and mapacho if you like to smoke).

It's a very powerful medicine and if you drink with someone with bad intentions it can be very dangerous.

I think, like all drugs, this is too broad a stroke. Instead I suggest you first look into your personal history with psychedelics, then do some research and ensure you dose properly (weigh yourself and use a triple point scale). Alternatively, DMT carts are much weaker and you rarely “blast off” with them. Yes, it is a very strong compound. But I have had some of the best experiences of my life on it. YMMV of course.

I have had great experiences smoking changa and having therapeutic breakthroughs in my understanding of my life, biases I was unaware of, and new perspective in approaches to tough problems.

I think the devil is in the dose.

Yep! I am a big proponent of drug testing/harm-reduction and dosage is a huge problem a lot of people face. With experience comes a good sense of what you can handle but for those new to this check out resources like Erowid (we love you).

Don't use kambo at all, period. That shit is seriously dangerous. Edit: had to google rapé. Don't use rapé either, which is just a name for nicotina rustica, a tobacco plant that has a lot more nicotine than normal tobacco. So unless you're a smoker already, it will just make you vomit a lot. And it could even kill you since nicotine is extremely acutely toxic.

And in general, I would recommend against travelling to the rainforest to take ayahuasca. It's not going to do anything for you that you can't do with some locally growing mushrooms, or a fitting synthetic drug(2c-b is very safe, for instance). You're much better off integrating and going through the experience with friends and family than a bunch of complete strangers.

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