The Entheogen Review׃ Vol. 16, No. 3 (2008)

THE ENTHEOGEN REVIEWVolume XVI, Number 3 Autumnal Equinox 2008 ISSN 1066-1913

The Journal of Unauthorized Research on Visionary Plants and Drugs

CONTENTS

Where is God in the Entheogenic Movement? 73

Ann & Sasha Shulgin Speakin Discussion with Earth and Fire Erowid, Part Two 79

Jungle Spice Mystery Alkaloid(s) of Mimosa Root-bark 87

Cactus Updates 109

Book Review 111

Events Calendar 112

Remembering Thomas Lyttle 113

Bibliography 114

Errata:Errata:Errata:Errata:Errata: In the previous two issues of The Entheogen Review, a mistake was madewithin the header information, and the issues were presented as Volume XVII (17),when they should have been presented as Volume XVI (16). (The correct volumenumber was, however, included on the front covers of those two issues.) We aresorry for the mistake.

Disclaimer:Disclaimer:Disclaimer:Disclaimer:Disclaimer: Information presented in The Entheogen Review comes frommany different sources and represents the opinions and beliefs of a highly diversegroup of individuals. The Entheogen Reviews editors assume no responsibility forthe accuracy of any claims or representations presented in the text, illustrations, oradvertisements of this journal, nor do they encourage illegal activities of any type.Manufacture, possession, or sale of a controlled substance is a crime that can resultin a lengthy prison term and significant fines.

Statement of Purpose:Statement of Purpose:Statement of Purpose:Statement of Purpose:Statement of Purpose: This journal is a clearinghouse for current dataabout the use of visionary plants and drugs. Think of it as a community of subscrib-ers seeking and sharing information on the cultivation, extraction, and ritual use ofentheogens. All communications are kept in strictest confidencepublishedmaterial is identified by the authors initials and state of residence (pseudonym orname printed on request only). The mailing list (kept encrypted) is not for sale,rent, or loan to anyone for any reason.

Submissions:Submissions:Submissions:Submissions:Submissions: Your input is what keeps this journal alive. Dont hesitate toshare your experiences, inspirations, and questions. Confidentiality respected;after transcription, all correspondence is shredded and recycled or incinerated.Although we may edit for brevity or clarity, keep those fascinating letters coming in!

Subscriptions:Subscriptions:Subscriptions:Subscriptions:Subscriptions: $25.00 (USA), $35.00 (foreign) for one year (four issues).Cash, check or money order made out to The Entheogen Review should be sent toTER, POB 19820, Sacramento, CA 95819. Please notify us if your address changes.

Back-issues:Back-issues:Back-issues:Back-issues:Back-issues: A limited supply of back-issues of The Entheogen Review areavailable. See www.entheogenreview.com for descriptions and prices.

Copyright 2008 by The Entheogen Review. Nothing in this journal may be reproducedin any manner, either in whole or in part, without written permission of the editors.All rights reserved. All advertising and advertised products void where prohibited.

The Entheogen ReviewThe Entheogen ReviewThe Entheogen ReviewThe Entheogen ReviewThe Entheogen ReviewThe Journal of Unauthorized Research

on Visionary Plants and Drugs

Editor:Editor:Editor:Editor:Editor: David Aardvark

Technical Editor:Technical Editor:Technical Editor:Technical Editor:Technical Editor: Keeper Trout

Copy Editor:Copy Editor:Copy Editor:Copy Editor:Copy Editor: E.V. Love

ContributorsContributorsContributorsContributorsContributorsJames OrocFire Erowid

Ann ShulginEarth ErowidSasha Shulgin

EntropymancerKeeper TroutDavid Arnson

David Aardvark

Design & LayoutDesign & LayoutDesign & LayoutDesign & LayoutDesign & LayoutSoma Graphics

AddressAddressAddressAddressAddressThe Entheogen Review

POB 19820Sacramento, CA 95819, USA

WebWebWebWebWebwww.entheogenreview.com

Front CoverFront CoverFront CoverFront CoverFront CoverMimosa tenuiflora root-bark from Mexico

Photo by Fork, 2008

Back CoverBack CoverBack CoverBack CoverBack CoverMimosa hostilis in flower, Maui, Hawaii

Photo by dcopeland, 2003 Erowid.org

VOLUME XVI, NUMBER 3 AUTUMNAL EQUINOX 2008

73THE ENTHEOGEN REVIEW, POB 19820, SACRAMENTO, CA 95819-0820, USA

Where is Godin the Entheogenic Movement?

by James Oroc

Ironically, I have discovered that the greatestproblem that this investigation presents is whatto do with my conclusions, now that this bookis nearing its natural end. For I have come torealize that I am writing about the most diffi-cult and controversial subject in the history ofhumankind: the existence of God, and our abil-ity as humans to be able to know or directlyexperience God.

As I have enthusiastically expounded myideas over the last few years to those close tome, I have come to realize that the whole con-cept makes a lot of people very uncomfortable,even hostile. The word God creates such im-mediate emotions, often negative, in this mod-ern age. I can remember back to my pre5-MeO-DMT days how skeptical and derisive I wouldhave been, if I had been blindly presented withthe bulk of these ideas. Direct experience is thehighest of all ways of gaining knowledge. Sosaid Swami Rama, and I have to agree with him.Experience is the only path to understanding.Explanations just wont do.

James OrocTryptamine Palace:

5-MeO-DMT and the Bufo alvarius Toadforthcoming June 2009, Park Street Press

In recent years I have slowly but steadily re-immersed myself in what some might call the en-theogenic movement. Now, Im not exactly surethat this is what it should be called; its a move-ment that doesnt have an official name. Neverthe-less, I have noticed one curious thing common toall of the different facetsscientific, social, andeven spiritualof this enigmatic movement. Youhear a lot of interesting facts and speculations aboutchemistry, cluster headaches, ayahuasca shamans,neurobiology, aliens, elves, and the impending Endof Time. But you hardly ever hear any mention ofthe word God.

This seems rather strange to me when consideringthat the word entheogen means God generatedwithin. So we have the word God used within thedefinition of the movement, but near silence aboutGod from within the movement itself. The reasonfor this seems obvious; as I noted in the quote thatstarts this essay, the word God can make peopleuncomfortable. It is one of the few words left thatstill has any power. But thanks to medieval Chris-tianity and modern science, it mostly has a nega-tive connotation amongst societys intellectualcommunity. I believe this presents a problem forthe entheogenic movement, because it makes itharder to discuss (or even know) what it is thatthe movement is trying to achieve.

But I should back up a bit. I have spent a good partof the last four years writing Tryptamine Palace.Writing this book has largely been my reaction toan overwhelming spiritual epiphany that I had thefirst time I smoked 5-MeO-DMT. Despite being aconfirmed atheist at the time, during this voyage Icame to believe that I connected with a force that Ican only describe as the transcendental experienceof God. This was not the Christian God, of course,but rather the God perennial to mysticism: the voidthat is a plenum of conscious, omniscient love. Ican assure you I most definitely was not expectingsuch an encounter at the time.

Tryptamine Palace is the story of my quest for a firmerunderstanding of what it was that I experienced,and how I was able to experience it. During mysearch, I read a vast number of books on psyche-delics, Eastern religion, philosophy, and anythingelse that might help provide some clues. It waswithin the literature on quantum physics that Idiscovered the concept of an underlying energetic


74 THE ENTHEOGEN REVIEW, POB 19820, SACRAMENTO, CA 95819-0820, USA

scaffolding for the universe called the zero-pointfield. I traveled to Burning Man, to India, and evenwent to the Sonoran desert in search of Bufoalvarius. By the time I finished my book, I had man-aged to find a lot of answers that satisfied me, al-lowing me to believe that there is both a spiritualand a scientific explanation for God.

My spiritual epiphany on 5-MeO-DMT directed me back into theentheogenic movement. What Ihave found is that this movementparadoxically consists of a largenumber of people embracing as-sorted New Age philosophies inan attempt to explain their psy-choactive drug experiences, anda much smaller backbone of sci-entists, chemists, and pharma-cologists engaged in research thatis often counter-productive totheir mainstream careers. Whilethere are a smattering of ayahua-sca and peyote churches, as wellas the Council on Spiritual Prac-tices1 (which is dedicated to pro-moting the idea that direct expe-rience of the sacred can be ac-cessed through the use ofentheogens), such organizationsare rarities; they appear to me to be regarded al-most as throw-backs within an otherwise mod-ern movement. Even mysticism itself, comes off assome kind of dirty word, despite the fact that ourcurrent use of entheogens is clearly a continuationof this historically ancient philosophy.

These days, God is often dismissed as an antiquatedidea. Our inherited intellectual resistance to theword God is so great, that the closest some peoplewill come to addressing it is by calling themselvesagnostic. I am no more immune to these inheritedprejudices than anyone else. For example, at theWorld Psychedelic Forum in Basel, there were asmall number of priests and nuns in attendance.During the course of the week, I had the opportu-nity to speak to many of the people there, but Ididnt bring myself to approach this singulargroupa fact that I now greatly regret, for I am

sure that I would have been interested in theirpoints of view. But the intellectual and moral aver-sion I have for the Christian Church is so over-powering, that it kept me at arms length from theseindividuals, despite the fact that we were presum-ably there as a result of the same phenomena: ourdirect experiences of God.

Thus, I have come to realize thatthe face of our entheogenic com-munity is not so different fromthat of mainstream society; thechoice appears to lie betweenconventional science (the cult ofreductionist materialism) and asteep dive into unproven NewAge philosophies. We seem tohave become more interested inhow many psychoactive drugs canbe invented or experienced, thanwe are in defining which onescan truly be characterized asentheogens. I hear a lot of com-pounds being called entheogensthat I personally feel dont war-rant such a classification. By mydefinition, an entheogen shouldbe able to produce the mysticalresult of a transcendental union-with-God. (This is not merely

feeling close to God, or having a heightened ap-preciation of ones humanity or of the natural en-vironment.) If a compound cant do that, then itsnot a true entheogen. And the more often it is ableto allow this transcendence, the more powerful anentheogen it is. The problem with this point of viewis the simple fact that not many compounds canconsistently produce such a result, and none areguaranteed to do so.

But a lot of people are still interested in psyche-delic drugs, so perhaps we should admit that theentheogenic movement is actually only a splin-ter group of the psychedelic movement. One likelyreason that entheogen has been so widely adoptedby proponents of such drugs is the fact that itthrows a cloak of obscurity over the taboo topic ofpsychedelics: enthusiasts may not be as interestedin finding God as they are in staying out of jail.

Even mysticismitself, comes off assome kind of dirtyword, despite the

fact that our currentuse of entheogens

is clearly acontinuation of thishistorically ancient

philosophy.



Furthermore, once the term is understood bymainstreamers, it can add an air of respectabilityto the dialog. Images of freaked-out 1960s youthare less likely to spring to mind, when the discus-sion appears to focus on community-based spiri-tual groups making positive changes in the world.Mainstream respectability is clearly a goal for somepeople in the movement, who put a great deal ofeffort into obtaining government approval for theiractivities. Yet within such a matrix, science stilltrumps spirituality. For example, in 2008 I was toldthat the Multidisciplinary Association for Psyche-delic Studies would only allow lecturers to speakon topics related to scientific studies about psy-choactive compounds in its dome at Burning Man.No mystics allowed. Apparently mystics can knowonly about God, but nothing about science. MaybeEntheon Village, where the MAPS camp is based,should consider changing its name! Burning Manas a whole isnt much better. We build a temple inthe middle of the playa each year, but if you searchthe hundreds of thousands of words on the Burn-ing Man web site, youll find scant appearance ofthe word God. (Although there are various reli-gious groups represented at Burning Man, theylargely keep to themselves.) So it seems that evenat Burning Man, which many participants wouldargue is one of the most open-minded places inthe world, you cant talk about God without freak-ing people out. What is going on here?

I dont believe this has always been the case in theentheogenic movement, but I think one has to goback to a time when they were all called psyche-delics for this to be true. Aldous Huxley had nofear of discussing the transcendental experience ofGod even before he discovered mescaline and LSD,because thats what he was looking for; his lastbook, Island, wholeheartedly embraces the spiritualuse of entheogens. Albert Hofmann mentions hisrelationship with God in his book LSD: My Prob-lem Child, and he presents his scientific argumentfor Gods existence more directly in his bookInsight Outlook. R. Gordon Wasson, Huston Smith,Alan Watts, and other old-school authors in thefield had no aversion to eloquently expounding onthe meat of the matter: the transcendent union-with-God.

Perhaps its a generational thing. The psychedelicauthors that followed these elder statesmen havelargely avoided any direct mention of God. Self-transforming machine elves, alien abductions, plantteachers, the Mayan calendar, even the absurd ideathat smoking DMT is somehow going to bringabout a fundamental change in the nature of real-itysuch concepts are fair game; but avoid talk-ing about God, because you end up sounding odd,old fashioned, and will generally weird people out.This situation results in the paradox of one of theforemost champions of the word entheogen,Jonathan Ott, stating in an interview for The En-theogen Review that he has no belief nor disbeliefin God. Or Sasha Shulgin describing himself in aninterview as agnostic, despite the following state-ment that kicks off the book PIHKAL:

I deem myself blessed, in that I have experi-enced, however briefly, the existence of God.I have felt a sacred oneness with creation andits Creator, andmost precious of allI havetouched the core of my own soul.

Even the Peyote Way Church, a devout state-sanctioned religious group in Arizona since 1978,recently removed the of God that appended theirchurchs name, in order to make agnostics and athe-ists also feel welcome (Hanna 2008). If nothingelse, such situations illustrate the strange contra-dictions that can pop up, when one chooseswhether or not to use the word God.

Contemporary conventional scientists have thesame issues. Albert Einstein, Sir Arthur Eddington,Niels Bohr, and Werner Heisenberg all had theirmystical sides, but discussion about the nature ofGod among scientists virtually stopped after WorldWar II. Maybe it was due to the unholy slaughterof the two great wars only about twenty yearsapart, and the sustained genocides by Stalin andHitler. Or maybe it was due to the fact that theUnited States unleashed the forces of hell into theworld at Hiroshima and Nagasakiacts of terrify-ing aggression (made possible through scientificadvances) that our society has never really pro-cessed. I think there can be no doubt that thosetragedies severely affected our confidence in Godfor if there was a God, why would it allow such



things? As the next generation grew up knowingthat they were just one itchy trigger finger awayfrom annihilation, science became the more pow-erful concept. In a post-WWII society, the twin tow-ers of Science and Industry were whole-heartedlyaccepted as substitutes for Religion.

But ironically, that same science was responsiblefor reintroducing experiential spirituality back intothe Western world, since with the invention of LSD,millions of people could now have direct knowl-edge of transcendent states. When just a few yearslater humanity saw the first photographs of theearth floating in space, the realization began tosolidify that we are all indeed one. Issues likehuman rights, sexual equality, ecology, and worldpeace dominated a generation. But our own spiri-tuality was too damagedfraught with propa-ganda and contradictionto be of much use to us.After John Lennon pointed out that the Beatleswere more popular than God, they went off to In-dia and sat at the Maharishis feet. Our new soci-ety invested itself in a thousand different philoso-phies, turning its back not only on mainstream re-ligion, but also, to a degree, on mainstream science.A New Age dawned: one where the channeledmissives from Pleiades became as credible to somepeople (and were received with more interest) asthe results from the Hubble telescope.

Mainstream science and the entheogenic move-ment both ended up suffering the same predica-ment: they no longer have much room left in theirranks for a discussion of God. Existentialism hascome to reign so supreme, that some in our ownentheogenic movement will explain away transcen-dent union-with-God experiences as a by-prod-uct of consciousness. And science tells us that con-sciousness is just a by-product of matter. So it goes.We break the sacred compounds down, looking atmolecules and receptor sites in search of an an-swer based on the scientific belief that the physi-cal nature of the compounds causes their entheo-genic effects. Most scientists give little attentionto the possibility that entheogens, rather than pro-ducing particular states of consciousness, may in-stead operate by allowing us to access a broaderband of consciousness. (And virtually no scientistsare willing to discuss the possibility that they can

allow us to access God.)2 Its no wonder that peopletoday are more interested in MDMA than 5-MeO-DMTthey just want to get high so they can es-cape their random, pointless lives. There seem tobe very few people willing to go out on a limbwithin the entheogenic movement to tell anyonethat they can find God.

I belong to a group of scientists who do not sub-scribe to a conventional religion but neverthe-less deny that the universe is a purposeless ac-cident. Through my scientific work I have cometo believe more and more strongly that thephysical universe is put together with an inge-nuity so astonishing that I cannot accept itmerely as a brute fact. There must, it seems tome, be a deeper level of explanation. Further-more, I have come to the point of view thatmindi.e., conscious awareness of the worldis not a meaningless and incidental quirk ofnature, but an absolutely fundamental facet ofreality.

Paul DaviesThe Mind of God: The Scientific Basis

for a Rational World (1992)

Yet this position is beginning to change in themainstream sciences. It is changing because we areundergoing a massive paradigm shift in our knowl-edge of the universe. And the cause of this para-digm shift is exactly where mainstream science andthe entheogenic community meet. It is changing,because the new scientific paradigm that will cometo dominate the direction of knowledge in thetwenty-first century is one that no longer recog-nizes the primacy of matter as the stuff of our real-ity. Rather, it recognizes that consciousness and in-formation are the precursors of existence. Or as theastrophysicist Sir James Jeans wrote in The Myste-rious Universe the universe begins to look more likea great thought than like a great machine.

This revelation is not news to the mystics, for thishas been a perennial intuition in mysticism sincethe beginning of language. And the primacy ofconsciousness clearly lies at the heart of theentheogenic movement. But there is no doubt thatthis is a revolutionary transformation of scientificbelief, as it opens up some obvious spiritualpossibilities: for if consciousness is primary, then



human consciousness is not its only form. Someform of consciousness must have been around sincethe beginning of time, long before we arrived onthe scene. So perhaps our consciousness is simplya limited form of that consciousness, after all.

There are a host of other factorsin this scientific reappraisal ofthe possibility of God (or someform of higher consciousness):the zero-point field, the specula-tion that we occupy a flat uni-verse, the increasing awarenessof universal constants, the under-standing of how finely tuned forthe creation of life our universereally isdiscoveries like theseare challenging reductionist ma-terialism,4 and there are toomany to detail here. Science isincreasingly at war with itself,as the old guard of the old para-digm dig in their heels and tryto shield themselves from an ava-lanche of data that is provingthem wrong, just as those whobelieved that the Sun revolvedaround the Earth came up withincreasingly complicated at-tempts to explain away the datathat confirmed Copernicusshypothesis.

This fact is neatly demonstrated by the recent pub-lication of a couple of books by two scientists whooffer radically different points of view. In 2006,noted biologist Richard Dawkins released his bookThe God Delusion. The same year, respected astro-physicist Bernard Haisch took the polar oppositeapproach in his book The God Theory: Universes,Zero-Point Fields, and Whats Behind It All. Dawkinsbook has been by far the more popular, with world-wide reviews and over a million copies sold.Haischs book received much less fanfare. But if youcompare the two, you quickly realize that Dawkinsbook is full of tepid ideas, surprisingly little hardscience (other than extrapolated Darwinism), anda tone that is brimming with righteous anger. Incontrast, Haischs book quietly and soberly takes

the mind on a journey through some amazing newscientific discoveries and important transcenden-tal concepts.

I find it interesting that this shift in the mainstreamsciences seems to be coming at about the same time

as I have been witnessing a shiftwithin the entheogenic commu-nity. People I have met clearlywelcome the return of experien-tial spirituality to their lives, butthey want to be able to believe inthe validity of it, and science cur-rently forms the foundation formuch of our belief system. Nev-ertheless, a number of people arebeginning to have faith-basedtransformations of their lives dueto their experiences with entheo-gens like 5-MeO-DMT, DMT, andayahuasca. These experiences areso powerful, that the people whohave them no longer fear the so-cial stigma of talking about theirpersonal relationship with a tran-scendental God. These experi-ences are so real, that those whohave them are willing to take thepromotion of divinity back intotheir own hands. I know, becauseI am one such person, and I havebeen meeting more and more ofus as I travel the globe.

The driving force behind this transformation isdescribed within the concept of liberation theol-ogy, which explains that a true faith-based spiri-tual epiphany creates a social and political trans-formation in an individual that cannot be ignored.This transformation creates a contemplative activist;Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa,Thich Nhat Hanh, and the Dalai Lama are all ex-amples of contemplative activists. These contem-plative activists have been some of the most effec-tive agents for encouraging the liberation of indi-viduals and systems in all of human history,(Cairns 2001) since in liberation theology, [t]hereis not first the mystical and then the political.The political is of the substance of the mystical.

Nevertheless,a number

of people arebeginning to have

faith-basedtransformations oftheir lives due totheir experienceswith entheogenslike 5-MeO-DMT,

DMT, andayahuasca.



(Lee and Cowan 1986, in Cairns 2001). By experi-encing the full reality of God, these individuals havefound the inner strength to set about changing theworld.

So perhaps there is still hope for our society to re-discover God. As science turns toward an under-standing of the primacy of consciousness, I thinkthere is one area where both society and sciencecan agree: the use of entheogens is a very effectivetool for both exploring consciousness and for re-appraising mystical states. The realization of Godbased on a scientific understanding of how-this-could-be-possible would be a radical transforma-tion of our own understanding, and it could pro-duce enough contemplative activists to bring aboutthe massive societal shift in awareness that human-ity may need to survive the twenty-first century.But to do this we must confront our own preju-dices about the word God, and we must rescue itfrom the tyrannies of its recent history. If there isone group in our modern society that should be ableto embrace a new concept of God, it is those withinthe entheogenic movement. It is high time for usto open up both our hearts and our minds, to letGod back in.

1. The Council on Spiritual Practices published two ofmy favorite books on this topic: Entheogens and theFuture of Religion and Psychoactive Sacramentals. The CSPwas also one of the sponsors of the John Hopkinspsilocybin study, which provided scientific evidencethat psilocybin can produce complete mystical experi-ences that can have profoundly positive life-changingeffects.

2. Rick Strassman is somewhat of an exception on thiscount, in that he has suggested that it may be the pro-cess of DMT being released by the pineal gland thatallows the human soul to enter and leave the body(Strassman 2001); however, this does not relate directlyto Godit only relates to the idea of a soul.

3. Stanislav Grofs work is the main exception to this,though his revelations are often cloaked in heavypsychiatric jargon. Alex Grey also champions this idea,but because he is an artist, scientists may be inclinedto explain away his views as artistic metaphor.

4. Reductionist materialism is the belief that things canbe broken down into smaller and smaller parts to ex-plain how they operate, and that matter forms the basisof reality.

JOIN EROWIDand receive a copy of the 24" x 36"

Visionary Synthesis poster depicting

Sasha Shulgins lab, exclusively avail-

able as a membership gift. Tendrils

of ivy frame the labs window to the

left, counter-posed on the right with

the laboratory door ajar to its al-

chemical interior. The pair of photos,

taken by Michael Rauner, evokes the

balance between the plant world

and the world of chemistry.FOR MORE INFORMATION, SEE

www.erowid.org/donations



Ann & Sasha Shulgin Speakin discussion with Earth and Fire Erowid, part two

Adapted from an interview recorded at Mind States Costa Rica, June 15, 2007

Fire: Have you ever done a sweat lodge?

Ann: No, Id love that.

Earth: You people are from Northern California,right?

Ann: (laughs) Have you done that?

Fire: Weve done two sweat lodges.

Ann: How is it different from an ordinary peyoteexperience?

Earth: Well, without the peyote. We did just thesweat lodge, with the heat, and the unpleasantness,and the singing (laughter)

Sasha: You can probably use your imagination forthe rest of it.

Fire: Its an endurance ceremony. Theres a prac-tice of sitting with the heat

Earth: Its really, really hot.

Fire: Its very interesting.

Earth: And they dont let you leave. Theoreticallyyou could leave, but youd be a big wimp.

Fire: (laughs) Its peer pressure.

Earth: Yeah, I think that it is a lot of peer pressure.Sweating, like in a sauna, but for two hours

Fire: three hours.

Earth: It felt like forever.

Ann: But what does it do to you?



I remember adidgeridoo perfor-mance in Jamaica,where I really hadmy consciousness

altered, justlistening to that.

Earth: You sweat.

Fire: Its a bit of a meditation. In the way thatsitting for three hours anywhere, not reading orentertaining yourself in some other way is a bitof a meditation. Then add in changing physicalcircumstances.

Ann: How do you feel when youcome out?

Earth: Very soft. Like jelly orsomething, poured into what-ever I was. For four or five hours,until I went to sleep that nightafter my sweat lodge experi-encesI felt like I was onMDMA.

Ann: Really?

Earth: I felt love for the world.I felt so good. Everyones sogreat! It was very pleasant, ex-cept that the experience was notpleasant. However, it was morethan just the feeling of being glad to be done withsomething unpleasant, definitely. I felt cleansed,and moved, and tired, and

Fire: connected to the people who had been partof the ceremony.

Ann: Wow!

Earth: The ceremonies that we took part in, whichwere both led by the same person, included con-tent that was part of his tradition. There was oftensinging, and the person led chanting. Fairly innocu-ous Native American stuff.

Ann: Was it rhythmical?

Earth: Very rhythmic.

Ann: Was there any drumming?

Fire: I cant actually remember.

Earth: There was a beat. It might have just beenclapping, but there may have been a drum. It hasbeen a while.

Ann: I remember a didgeridoo performance in Ja-maica, where I really had my consciousness altered,just listening to that. Do you think that the rhythmis the reason that you have the alteration?

Fire: I think that it is a combina-tion. The ceremony itself, thefocus, and the physical conditionsare clearly playing into it, thechanting

Earth: It felt like entering into awaking dream state. In a lot ofways I think of visionary sub-stances as catalyzing wakingdream statesa kind of soften-ing or breaking of the veil be-tween consciousness and thesubconscious in some ways.

Ann: Yeah, okay, right. A little bitof a sort of telepathic feeling?

Earth: It definitely felt as though the group hadmerged in some way. Like I was aware of the peoplearound me, yet it was darktotally dark.

Ann: Which gives you a good clue that you dontneed drugs to get into that sort of a state. One dayI met a lady standing in line to get tickets for some-thing. She had just come back from the Peace Corps.We got into a discussionit was a long, slow lineabout different cultures. I remarked, just casually,that every culture in the world seemed to have aplant that could be used for alteration of conscious-ness. She had been, I think, in Kenyawhereverthe Watusi live. So I asked, What do they use?She said that its pretty well desert and theres noplant. But if youve seen them in documentaries,they are tall and thin, and they leap up and down,and the hair on their headdresses sort of swirlsaroundand she said thats the way that they gointo an altered state. I said, Oh my God.

Fire: That sounds like a lot of work.



Ann: But thats the way that they do it. If youhavent got a plant, you use what youve got. It wasvery interesting.

Earth: There are definitely quite a lot of traditionaldances that intentionally create an altered statethrough physical duress, exhaustion

Ann: Yes.

Fire: Are there any classic visionary states of con-sciousness that you havent ever had, which youwish that you had had? Out-of-body experiences,or

Earth: entity encounters, auditory hallucina-tions

Sasha: People often say, you should have tried this,you should have tried that. But my main interest isnot in exploiting a drug and getting all of the pos-sible effects out of it; rather, it is keeping my liverin reasonably good shape and making new drugs.Thats my main contribution: new things.

Earth: How is your liver, by the way? Have youhad it tested?

Sasha: Its in good shape.

Ann: Its a Zinfandel color.

Sasha: Thats why I stick to inexpensive Zinfandels.Actually, whats that thing with the five-letter lastname that I get the Burgundy of? Carlo Rossi. Mar-velous stuff. Ive been following that now for sev-eral years. Four liters used to cost you $12.99. Fourliters is now $7.99. Gas prices are going up per gal-lon, wine prices are coming down, and I am kindof interested to see

Fire: Wine-powered vehicles?

Sasha: No, what do you call this thing2012the Armageddon day, Timewave, whatever it is. Theprice of gasoline and wine may become the same.

Earth: The heralding of the Apocalypse.

Sasha: Theres only a couple of things wrong withthe Carlo Rossi $7.99 per four-liter thing. Thatsless than $2.00 a liter, which is okay. The thing is,if you get the Cabernet, or you get the Merlot, orsomething, its yuck. But if you get just the plainBurgundy, which doesnt mean much other thanthe fact that it is red, then it is rather okay. I had anice experience at the Bohemian Grove a coupleor three years ago. A very good wine expert cameout with some $30 or $50 bottles of wine to havethem tasted and compared, and I just happened tohave a little bit of the Carlo Rossi $7.99 per four-liter thing there. While he was preparing some-thing else, but he had one sample ready to go, Iswitched glasses with him. He came back to trythis, and made a comment. His face went into astrange place, and with a hint of curiosity he said,This particular bottle has a slightly different bou-quet than the one I am familiar with. Then hegave quite a complimentary series of comments,and I decided not to tell him that I had switchedwines, as a courtesy. But the other disadvantage ofthe Carlo Rossi is that, usually when you buy acase of wine, you get 10% off. A case of four-literbottles is four bottles, and you dont get 10% off.So you lose a little bit there.

Fire: Back to any other types of effects that youhavent had

Earth: Alien/entity encounters? Have you evermet a DMT elf? One of Terences friends?

Sasha: DMT is not a warm thing to me. Ive tried itabout half-a-dozen times. I find myself lying backin bed, completely stoned, completely in a strangeplace, asking myself, Why am I doing this? I mean,it is a ridiculous statement, but I dont get positivefeedback, as many people do. I just dont get that,and I have not explored it any more since.

Fire: I assume that you get visuals.

Sasha: Oh yes. But so what? Theyre not excitingvisuals. Theyre not interesting. Theyre just there.I would rather use my energies and time on newthings.



As soon as he hasfinished the book heis working on now,we are going to puthim in the lab and

lock the door.

Fire: Is there a particular material that you feel hasthe most interesting visuals?

Sasha: What are the visual situations with theflies? How many people have experience with 2C-B-fly, for example?

Ann: None?

Fire: Nobody raised a hand.

Sasha: This is a series of com-pounds that were worked out inPurdue by David Nichols group.How many people have evenheard of flies? Okay, quite a few.They have flies, which are tworings, one up, one down, on ei-ther side of the benzene ringwith a bromine down here and atwo-carbon chain up there. Thenthere are what I call the pseudo-flies and the semi-flies. So youhave semi-flies, pseudo-flies,flies, and dragon-flies. They areall simple compounds with a little ring plasteredonto the side, looking like the wing of a fly. An-other with a ring plastered on the side here and onthe other side, but they are plastered at eight-oclockand at four-oclock, so they are opposite one-an-other, and those are the pseudo-flies. You have onewith the ring plastered here and here, so they areopposite one another, so they are the regular flies.And if they are made aromatic by taking out acouple of hydrogen bonds, you call them dragon-flies. The ones that were most explored by Nicholsat Purdue are the flies and dragon-flies. They aremore active than the bare 2C-B itself. 2C-B-fly isabout twice the potency of 2C-B, perhaps of com-parable duration in time, and the erotic is everybit the sameeven better. But the dragon-flies havenot been talked about much. They are apparentlyquite a bit more potent. The potency is less than amilligramyou are down in the multi-microgramlevels. So this is a weird little simple molecularstructure that has the potential for a great deal ofexploratory research. I can see putting a trifluro-methyl group in the four position, putting a nitrogroup in the four position, all kinds of neat things

in the four position, and all of the compoundswould probably be comparably active, and new, andas dragon-flies could very well be active in themicrogram level. Its a whole area to be exploredthat has not even been touchedI love it!

Ann: As soon as he has finished the book he isworking on now, we are going to put him in thelab and lock the door.

Sasha: Theyll bring over foodtwice a day I think. Of course,if I am experimenting with newthings, I dont need food, do I?

Earth: Leg irons. Hes a trickyone. Locking the door might notbe enough.

Ann: Two or three months in thelab, I think its about time. A lotof stuff needs to be worked on.By the way, I would like to makea request of anybody who wouldreally like to be of tremendous

help to Sashaand especially people who knowhow to get onto Internet medical sites. I think thatthe only real hopeand I think that it is a realhope for the macular degeneration that he is suf-fering from, which is what they call the dry type,for which there is no present medical helpis stemcell research. I think that stem cell research is go-ing to be the answer. I know that it is starting witheyes, because there is some sort of retinal work that,at least in animals, has been successful. If you findor hear of any research involving eyes and stemcells, please let us know, so that we can see if wecan sign up for it. Otherwise, this is a very annoy-ing thing to have happen.

Sasha: It is so maddening not to be able to hit letters onthe typewriterto miss them by about two inches.

Ann: Its not good for lab work.

Fire: Two inches, here or there, how important canthat be, really? (laughs) Switching gears a bit, arethere any decisions that you have made aboutpsychoactives in the past, that in retrospect, you



thought were very bad decisions that you regret-ted making, which you think that other peoplecould learn from? So not just, I shouldnt have triedthat 4-acetoxy-MJP-something that no one elsewould ever try. Are there ways of using psychoactivesthat you have learned are better or worse?

Sasha: I have to kind of skirt around the questiona little bit, because I dont really look for ways touse psychoactives. My dream is still creating newones, and letting others work out the combinationsand the set-up. The one thing that I have done isput a lot of the ideas where I have made two orthree things here, and I would love to make twelvemore around the outer edge there, and I have notdone itbecause there are other things that I wantto do also. But in writing up the commentaries forthe books, I often tell what I have done and whereI would have gone if I had had the time. And otherpeople have exploited that nicely. For example, thewhole 2,4,5-world, Im pretty convinced is paral-leled by a 2,4,6-world. Of the ones Ive explored,some were potent, some less potent, but all inter-esting. Theres been dozens in the 2,4,5-world, butmaybe only a half-a-dozen in the 2,4,6-world. Ithink that whole area could be explored very richly,and there are a lot of things to be found out there.This is the value of the commentaries in the lastpart of the second half of the books.

Fire: So you are aware of a few substances that otherpeople have made because of commentaries inPIHKAL or TIHKAL. How many would you say thatthere have been?

Sasha: Well, there have been a lot of them. For ex-ample the whole 2C-T world. I took it up to 2C-T-22 or -23. Its now been taken, in Europe and onthe East Coast, up into the 30s. People just keptgoing up, adding different marvelous groups on thesulfur and giving these creations the next num-bers. But this is your territory. You probably have alot of the 2C-Ts up on your web site, dont you?

Fire: Yes, but nothing in the 30s.

Sasha: They exist out there. If folks want their nameattached, that can be done. But if they dont want theirname attached, it could be posted anonymously.

Fire: Certainly.

Sasha: But the information should be up there.

Fire: Although there is hesitation on the part ofsome people to want things published if they arenot yet illegal, if those people are intending tomarket them.

Sasha: Thats right.

Earth: Do you have any hard lessons that you havelearned, Ann?

Ann: The more I hear about people experiment-ing, the more I believe in sitters. Having a sitteris very, very important. Theres so many people whohave taken a lot of drugs, and they feel that theycan handle anything. But you dont know whatmight be around the corner. Anything might beunexpectedly rough, or worse than unexpectedlyrough. Like the ayahuasca experience I had. Its re-ally funny looking back. You go to a special placewhere they do ayahuasca, you have an evening ex-perience, then you sleep, and then you have anexperience in the daytime. I think thats usuallythe way it goes. Sasha and I had a perfectly niceexperience the first and second time. I think wedecided it was not going to be the greatest thing inthe world for us, but it was pleasant enough. Sixmonths later, we did not hesitate when we wereinvited to come and do it again. We knew thepeople conducting the ceremonythey wereamong our best friends. We knew a lot of the peoplewho were in the group. It was a small group. Andthe second time, with the same people conductingthe ceremony, just the sound of the dry palm leavesrattling was the most amazing experiencesort ofholophonic. But the second time, we were verycautious about the level we took, because we tendto be very cautious anywayeven if weve takensomething before. So we took a low amount. I thinkit was the same as we had taken before. We werenot going to go higher. And this time, I had to trynot to get run over by a fast-moving train. It wasall lights and noise and it was coming at me. Thiswas the first time in a long time that I began to bescared. I think of myself as pretty experienced. Butholding on for dear life, trying to not get run over,



was not a very pleasant thing to go through. I didnthave any of the vomiting, or diarrhea, for that mat-ter. That was perfectly fine. But the train justwouldnt stop. Then a voice came into my head andsaid, Dont come here again. And I thought, Oh,I can see why you might suggest that. (laughter)Sasha was having an equally bad time, but with acompletely different kind of visuals, and he men-tioned a little bit of that. We both agreed that wasnot pleasant to go through. But we were withfriends, and we decided the next day, when every-one was having their daytime experiences, that wewould take a teeny little tiny bitless than half ofwhat we had taken the night beforeso that wecould at least participate with the group. And herecame the train again. It was just as nasty, and I wasjust as occupied with trying to stay alive.

Earth: Maybe you should have listened to thevoice? (laughter)

Ann: Wait a minute. The only difference is that itwas a shorter duration. Sasha was having, I think,an equally bad time. So the voice came back, and itasked, Didnt you hear me the first time!? I havenot taken ayahuasca since, and I am not going to.

So I think you have to be careful. There are somepsychedelic drugs that are not your ally. Its yourown chemistry. 2C-B-fly, to me, is one of the great-est things that has ever happened in the psyche-delic world. But I do not know a single other per-son who has had the same results that I have had.So I have stopped explaining why its the greatestdrug in the world, because I think I may be one ofthe only people who has that reaction to it.

Fire: Because of something in your brain.

Ann: You just can not forget that drugs are differ-ent in everybody, with the possible exception ofMDMA.

Sasha: We had a somewhat similar negative insome people thing with the Pachycereus pringlii. Wegot a sample from Baha, California. The extract ofthe cactus had been put into four containers. Therewere twelve of us at the experiment. By threes, wetook the contents of each container. All of the

people who had the contents of the second andthe third container had to go downstairs becausethey were violently ill. Fortunately only one ofthem had diarrhea, and he locked himself into thebathroom. Each of us had different medical prob-lems. The other six people had marvelous experi-ences. It all came from the same cooking of the samecactus. So we decided that maybe something hadgotten into those two containers, that was not inthe other two. I took a sample from residues in eachof the good and the bad containers, to run massspecs on them. One of the people there was a bio-chemista bacteriologistand he took samples torun bacterial growths, to see if something wasgrowing in one of them and not in the other. Weboth came up with blanks. No explanation at all.Ive looked at the contents of the Pachycereus pringlii,and theres no trace of mescaline in there at all.But there are a lot of isoquinolines, and there are alot of interesting small and not-active phenethy-lamines. So Im pretty convinced thatIll call itcactuhuasca maybethe isoquinolines inhibit thedestruction of the phenethylamines that are oth-erwise not active, and that the cactus is active butnone of its individual components are. So thatsstill being explored.

Ann: That brings up another cautionary thought.Wherever you are taking a drug, whether you havetaken it before or not, make sure that there is adoctor on callsomebody who knows about psy-chedelics and who can come over pretty fast. Andmake sure there is some kind of sedative on hand.For instance with this cactus thing, I had an ex-tremely rapid heartbeat, which was a little scary,and it happened to be in a house where there wereno sedatives I could use. There was a Chinese herb,which didnt do that much. You need somethingthat can smooth down the body if it is overreact-ing. You need something for the stomach, in caseyou have unexpected cramps or nausea. Be sure thatthere are the basic remedies available. It doesntmatter if it is the most familiar material to you ornot. Because sometimes things happen that youdont expect.

Fire: Agreed. When you said having a sitter, oneof the things that occurred to me is that it is sur-prisingly difficult to describeobviously not to the



people who are here, but to the eighteen-year-oldswho make up a not insignificant portion of thepeople who visit Erowid, for examplethat it isworth their while to have somebody not be trip-ping. How do you describe to them that having asitter is useful enough that somebody should bemissing out on the fun? Its tough. Its like a desig-nated driver, which is also difficult to adequatelyconvey the importance of to eighteen-year-olds.

Ann: If not, then natural selection comes in again.You dont want it to be your kid who is selectedout.

Earth: Heres a thought experiment for Sasha

Fire: given two piles of 2C-B. Lets just imaginethis in a world where it was legal, although thatdoesnt matter for the question. One pile you made,and one pile was commercially produced by a labsomewhere. They have been tested and identifiedas both being pure 2C-B. Do you have a connec-tion to the one that you synthesized? Do you feelsome sort of bond, an emotional connection

Earth: a preference?

Ann: A fatherly glow?

Sasha: Well, I know how I assayed its purity andits identity.

Fire: Lets say that you assayed the purity of bothof them, but one of them was the one that youmade. Is a pure chemical a pure chemical, and youdont care at all?

Sasha: It definitely would not matter. I can not seewhere it would matter if it went through my crite-ria of identity and purity. They would be inter-changeable.

Earth: And for you Ann? If you had two piles of2C-B, one that had been produced by Sasha, andone that had been produced by Sigma. Sasha veri-fied that they were both identical. Do you have afeeling about that?

Ann: I know there are a lot of people who havetaken MDMA that they thought was made by Sashaand not by someone else, and they felt that it hadan extra something-or-other. I think out of polite-ness, I might take the Sasha-made one.

Fire: You dont want to make him feel bad.

Ann: Well, I mean, you know loyalty. (laughs)But I wouldnt worry about there being any realdifference. Except I dont put down people whodthink that there is a difference. Because there issomething in the spirit of the personSasha wouldnever say thiswho makes something, and someof that spirit does, perhaps, go into the materialthat emerges. In a lab, the people who make mate-rials very often dont careits just part of theirjob. And you could argue that maybe there is some-thing that is missing from that, which is presentin the other.

Sasha: This answer has absolutely no scientificmerit whatsoever, but its believable. (laughs)

Earth: It sounds like the two of you have a littledifference there.

Ann: Oh yeah, sure.

Sasha: Not serious.

Ann: Well, I dont know (laughter) We manageto tolerate each others idiosyncrasies.

Earth: Are there visionary artists, or particularpsychedelic artists, whom you like?

Ann: Mati Klarwein is my favorite. He died a fewyears ago, and he is amazing. Theres a little bookcalled Inscapes: Real-Estate Paintings. He paintsbushes, and rocks. In one bush you can see theBuddha face emerging. I stare at one of those paint-ings, and I go into what we call a plus-two. Itsjust extraordinary. Looking at the Klarwein paint-ings is an inexpensive way of turning on. Thatsmy feeling about it. What about you?

Sasha: Very much so, but also Id mention MartinaHoffmann.



Ann: Martina Hoffmann, and Robert Venosa. Ter-rific work. But also the art of Van Goghtake alook at his paintings and you will see the psyche-delic experience without question.

Sasha: As he got older in age, they became quitedifferent.

Ann: Yeah. The trouble is, it was an agonizing ex-perience for him. But his consciousness was defi-nitely he was seeing the energy in trees. Hecouldnt have painted them that way if he hadntseen them, or felt their life energy. And there aresome other artists who were living during our time.Morris Graves, who did strange birds and strangetrees. I remember the title of one of his paintingsis Little-Known Bird of the Inner Eye. He was a prettyturned-on artist, too.

Earth: If you could pick one currently Schedule Idrug to make legal, where would you start?

Sasha: Just one? Or can I have the whole works?

Fire: Just one, but who knows what happens fromthere. Maybe the choice would be because that drugwould then break down the legal system into some-thing more rational. A lot of people would pickCannabis, because there are so many people whoalready use it.

Sasha: I think the idea of Cannabis may be a goodone, because there is increasing understanding ofits medical validity, and it is more widely acceptedin state law than any other drug. I wonder if thatmight not be an easy way of breaking the tightlock on all drugs by the federal governmenttotake one that has already some body of approval.That would be my guess offhand.

Ann: Without question, MDMA. Because that, asfar as Im concerned, has proven itself to be anextraordinary therapeutic drug. Theres nothinglike it. So that would be my choice.

Sasha: On the other hand, with the MDMA Ihave just been reading over some of the reports ofdeath due to this, death due to that, death due tothe other probably ten or twelve causes of death

of young peopleusually between seventeen andtwenty-one, somewherethey are publishing pa-per after paper after paper of lethality in the scien-tific literature. And this is an inventory of thingsthat it would be very hard to have to battle against.These papers often start with the phrase, This is adrug that has a general attitude amongst the usersin the street of being without risk, but in truth ithas very serious risks, and some of them lethal.Heres another example. Then they present theirpaper. I can give you a dozen examples.

Earth: But you get to be God in this little fantasyworld, so you can just choose which one to makelegal. You dont have to worry about all of that.

Fire: Lets imagine that youve finished the Psyche-delic Index, and you magically have the time andenergy for some other really large projectit couldtake twenty years. What else would you do? Maybethats to go off and do something completelyunrelated to chemistry, I dont know

Sasha: If I could get this book done and get thatout of the way and I had a number of years aheadof me, I would be back locked in that lab that en-tire length of time. I want to get back into reallycreative work.

Ann: I used to paint a great deal. Id like to take uppainting again, if I had the energy and the time.And Id like to get Book Three done. And Id like togo horseback riding and learn hula dancing.

Earth: Are there any questions or issues that youthink are really important that never come up ininterviews?

Ann: No. I think some of the best questions thatweve ever had have been asked today. We haventbeen asked once, Whats your favorite drug?Thats so nice.

Earth: Let that be a warning.

Fire: And thank you very much!



Jungle SpiceMystery Alkaloid(s) of MIMOSA Root-bark

by Entropymancer

The following has been edited, condensed, and annotated by The Entheogen Review. Although the resulting article remains much longer than anything we

have previously published in a single issue of ER, the information within it is representative of several categories of content regularly featured in any givenissue. From questions and speculations about chemistry, to hyperspatial maps, to network feedback, extraction processes, analysis reports, and botanical

musings, theres something here for almost everyone, including a mystery that we are hopeful some ER readers might help to solve in the future.

We first heard about the isolation of what was thought to be a potent novel tryptamine from Mimosa tenuiflora root-bark from an informant in Canada inFebruary of 2004. This informant had experience smoking pure DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and bufotenine, and he felt certaindue to the potency and dramatic

quality of effects he experiencedthat it was none of these compounds; but he did describe the effects as being tryptamine-like. We were thereforevery excited to discover the article reprinted below, and be made aware of the latest findings in this area. Although we feel that the information in this

article is fascinating and begs further investigation, we are unsure that the explanation for the variety of experiences reported is due to some novelchemical(s) in every case presented. Most people who have smoked pure DMT a hundred times know that they can have 8090 similar experiences,

with the remaining 1020 of them being all over the board: entirely lacking colors, becoming threatening/terrifying, insanely intense, strangely realistic,or presenting most of the other aspects attributed in this article to jungle spice. Several of the accounts included below are contradictory in describing

the effects of jungle spice. And comparing effects without knowing weighed dose amounts is also problematic.

Many of the texts used in this article were sourced from web postings; as such, the finer details of linguistic expression were often ignored in the originals.We therefore made the choice to substantially edit these texts for clarity, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and length. We feel confident that we have

retained the relevant content and flavor of the original accounts, but have placed these texts within paraquote marks to make it clear that they arenot direct quotes. Those unfamiliar with web-based psychonautic acronyms will benefit from knowing that SWIM stands for someone who is not me.

It is also worth pointing out that the term spice by itself is frequently used on-line as a synonym for DMT. Due to the large number of web-based textsincluded, we have employed a superscript numbering system to cite these, and one can refer to the bibliography to locate URLs where most of the

verbatim accounts can be found on-line. The original version of this entire article, which includes a couple more extraction techniques, some TLC specs,and several useful color photographs, can be found at: entheogenreview.com/junglespice.html. Eds.

Jungle spice is one of several names applied to anintriguing and potent psychoactive extract that canbe isolated from some Mimosa spp. root-bark.2,3,11

Synonyms include jungle DMT, red spice, red DMT,dark spice, and dark DMT. It is the alkaloid frac-tion obtained from the aqueous basic phase of anextraction by pulling with xylene or toluene afterDMT largely ceases to be pulled by an aliphatic hy-drocarbon solvent (naphtha, heptane, etc.). Thisproduct usually also contains at least some DMT,in addition to one or more alkaloids of apparentlynovel psychoactivity; some extractors choose toremove the DMT in a hot naphtha wash to obtaina pure jungle experience, while others use thejungle spice/DMT mixture as it is.

Several compounds can be isolated by extractingthe aqueous basic phase with xylene or toluene.9,15

Which compounds are isolated may depend onthe source and botanical identity of the root-bark,conditions of cultivation/harvest, and various pH,temperature, and airflow considerations through-out the extraction process.2,3,18,20 Based on theirphysical properties, we can classify three distincttypes of material that can result from the xylene/toluene pull: a red/brown crystalline goo, a tanwaxy material, and a yellow oil.

Some have suggested that the mysterious psycho-active component may be yuremamine, a novelphytoindole isolated from Mimosa tenuiflora stem-



behind a red solid that is insoluble in the naphtha.This red material has been isolated both by acid/base extraction and by straight-to-base extraction(Noman 2008).6,15,16,18,20

The crude extract is a mixture of compounds. Inmost cases, pulling the alkaline aqueous phase withxylene extracts a bright yellow color into the sol-vent, and the red pigment isnt seen until the sol-vent is evaporated.18,22 When the DMT and otherimpurities are removed from the crude extract viaa warm wash in an aliphatic hydrocarbon (naph-tha, heptane, etc.), several extractors report thatthe recovered DMT crystals remain stained yel-low.11,14 This yellow fraction of jungle spice that issoluble in warm naphtha could be several differ-ent things (see Yellow Oils).

However, some people obtain an explicitly browngoo from the xylene pull, with no indication of redcoloration whatsoever.11,16,18 Although this may ap-pear similar to the crude red/brown goo on initialinspection, exclusively brown extracts appear toyield a different product, distinct from the redmaterial (see Tan Waxes). Lighter tan waxy speci-mens have been obtained after a brown goo waswashed with hot naphtha.18

While the red material may be a mixture of mul-tiple alkaloids, it also seems plausible that the redmaterial might have essentially the same chemicalcomposition as the tan waxes, with the addition ofa small amount of a red pigment thats responsiblefor the differences in color and consistency betweenthe red and tan materials.

Tan Waxes

A xylene pull of a basified acidic extract of thismaterial yields a crystalline slightly orange waxysubstance that smells of tryptamines and glowsorange under a blacklight.

Archaea11

Ended up with tan waxy non-oily stuff that isstronger than hell (1020 mg) and terrifying.Its not just residual DMT, its too strong for that.

Noman18

bark (Vepslinen et al. 2005).13,18 However, thisspeculation appears unlikely based on yurema-minesinstability at lower pH and its speculated instabilitywhen exposed to heat (Vepslinen et al. 2005).18

On-line threads discussing jungle spice containposts claiming that the chemical kokusaginine islikely responsible for juremas reported oral activ-ity.1,8,11,18 These posters generally (mis)cite an is-sue of The Entheogen Review (J.S., OR et al. 1999) toback their claims. Based on physical descriptionsas well as reports of its effects, it appears that thecompound that some people have wrongly calledkokusaginine is identical to the tan waxy material,which is usually described as being very hard.11,12

Particularly with this fraction, its been reportedthat as the chemical ages, the stuporous effects dis-sipate, and are replaced by a novel and fully psy-chedelic activity profile (Delafonze19 2008;Toresten 2008).14,15,19

Red/Brown Crystalline Goo

After doing two pulls with naphtha I did twopulls with toluene, evaporated the toluene, andwashed the solids with naphtha, which made themdark red.

Entheogenist6

The jungle spice I got is just like a piece of a redcrayon. After evaporating off the solvent, it lookedlike crystals on the dish. But when scraped up, itall stuck together to make this waxy homogenousstuff. It has a strong smell of indole when burned,but otherwise it has an odor similar to DMT, butwith a fruity kind of a smell.

QuantumBrujo6

SWIM succeeded in pulling the red spice. Its adark, deep crimson color, almost the color of driedblood.

Spicemeister11

The red/brown crystalline goo that one can findpictures of on-line are what I think of as junglespice, but washing this goo can yield a diversity ofproducts. As the above quotes indicate, in somecases washing the dark gunk with naphtha leaves



The tan waxes are obtained in the same way as thered material above: an aqueous hydroxide solutioncontaining Mimosa root-bark alkaloids is extractedwith several volumes of naphtha until no moreDMT is pulled. The spent solution is then extractedwith a few volumes of xylene or toluene to obtainthe crude jungle spice. Washing this crude mate-rial with hot naphtha yields a waxy solid, thatranges widely in color from extraction to extrac-tion (Noman 2008), appearing light yellow/orangeto tan to brown.9,11,16,18 This material has also beenisolated from both acid/base and straight-to-baseprocedures (Noman 2008).11,18 The reported phar-macological activity of this material suggests thatthere may be more than one compound here. Tanwaxes are the fraction of jungle spice that are mostfrequently reported to change in psychoactive ef-fects over time, indicating that some chemical re-action (presumably oxidation) is occurring.5,9,19

Yellow Oils

The material that was evaporated out of thefiltered xylene defat of the powdered root-bark wasa yellow creamy color prior to purification, and atranslucent orange, almost oily residue, whichwould not dry to a hard substance.

Lycaeum Member20

Its yellowish. Even a yellow crystal. Smells thesame as DMT, with a musty overtone.

Heyoka10

After two recrystallizations on the DMT thatcame out with the jungle spice, SWIM tells me it isirretrievably stained yellow and resembles egg yolk.

Spicemeister11

This is by far the most ambiguous fraction thatcomes out of the xylene/toluene pull. Some yellowoils isolated from Mimosa spp. have been speculatedto be plant fats, and another fraction is suspectedof being an oxidation product of DMT.1,4,10,18 WhenDMT is extracted with xylene/toluene or diethylether (without using naphtha first), it also tendsto come out with a bright yellow-orange discol-oration.5,9,11,18,22

The most substantial evidence that there is morethan one compound in the yellow oil is the am-biguous solubility of the material. Yellow oil is sepa-rated from jungle spice based on its solubility innaphtha, while at the same time a yellow oil canbe removed from DMT (extracted by standardstraight-to-base methods), due to its insolubilityin hot naphtha. Clearly these must be differentyellow oils.

To further complicate the issue, its difficult to iso-late the yellow oil on its own. Many people doingotherwise normal extractions report obtaining ayellow product when the naphtha pulls areperformed using heat.1,10,18 The resultant yellowcrystals are sometimes reported to be qualitativelybetter in effect than pure DMT (delafonze192008).10.22 Also, when washing the crude junglespice extract with warm naphtha, some extractorsreport that any DMT they recover from this pro-cess is strongly yellow-colored, and that this pig-ment seems impossible to remove by typical puri-fication methods. Unfortunately, I havent been ableto find any experience reports using such yellow-stained DMT that specifically resulted from thisprocess.11,18

Investigating the possibility of the yellow oil be-ing DMT-N-oxide, I found a paper reporting theisolation of this compound from a methanolextract of Acacia confusa (Buchanan et al. 2007).However, the paper didnt provide any descriptionof the physically observable characteristics of thecompound (such as color), it only gave the mea-sured NMR data. Someone with access to protonNMR spectroscopy who obtains a sample of yel-low oxidized DMT could use this NMR informa-tion to conclusively establish or refute the identityof this material as DMT-N-oxide. TLC analysis men-tioned on the web of whole and purified extractsof Mimosa root-bark described DMT-N-oxide as ayellow oil, but I have been unable to corroboratethis description in the published literature.4

Looking at Radio879s LC/MS of a crude xylene pullof jungle spice reveals a peak at 205.1 m/z, whichcorresponds to the expected molecular ion of DMT-N-oxide,15 so it seems like a pretty good bet that



this chemical is generated as a side-product of theextraction process, although it may exist in the root-bark as a trace component, as there is a barely per-ceptible peak at 205.1 m/z in the paper reportingthe characterization of yuremamine from stem-bark(Vepslinen et al. 2005). Its also possible that thistrace peak was an artifact of the isolation processas well. [DMT-N-oxide certaily could be psychoactivewhen smoked (Shulgin 2008), and it should be simpleenough for experimentalists to make some and try it.DMT-N-oxide forms by the action of hydrogen peroxideon DMT: 50 mg of DMT dissolved in 2 ml of ethanol istreated with 2 ml of hydrogen peroxide; after two hoursat room temperature, crystallization is induced by add-ing ether and chilling; the granular DMT-N-oxide isremoved and recrystallized from ethanol-ether. Eds.]

General Comments on Colored Spice

The old-school heads at the festivals keep talk-ing about red or orange DMT from back in the day,and how strong it was. Im wondering if that old-school DMT was actually just a mixture of the twospice alkaloids in one product, because as far as Ican tell, pure DMT is white or clear crystals.

Anonymous18

I have had the orange DMT that Terence McKennaand old heads speak of. It was different than the snowwhite DMT people extract these days.

Anonymous18

No. Theyve never had the current forms of col-ored DMT back then. These new forms are the mostridiculously potent DMT SWIM has ever smoked.Since 1999, there have been the red (also calledpurple by some), yellow, orange, and white spicesavailable at music festivals. These have been keptunderground until recently. At the last SCI showsin Red Rocks, CO, all colors were available, beingoffered quite openly. You could smell that sweetplastic smell every few thousand feet while walk-ing the lot.

Anonymous18

There has been a great deal of discussion about yel-low DMT and orange DMT, some of which hasbeen reported to produce effects different than

white DMT.3,5,10,11,18,21,22 These colored materials arereported by some to be more potent than regularDMT, and by others to be less potent. There areseveral factors that can lead to yellow or orangeDMT. The discussion will be organized based onthe reported origins of the colored crystals.

Old Spice

The yellow oils oxidize to a ruddy-orange colorwhen stored at room temp for a month in a metalcontainer. This is not good to let go any further.Its degrading as the color goes yellow to orange.I have thought that this aged yellow DMT, whichbecomes orange, looks how McKennas DMT musthave: a reddish and smelly mix of oils and clearcrystals. But beware! It keeps oxidizing and defi-nitely goes off. It becomes blackish-rusty-red andsmells different. When this happens, it does notlaunch youyou get dragged behind the hyper-space shuttle. Bleah!

El Ka Bong9

The simplest form of colored DMT may come fromsamples that were originally white. As thesesamples age, they turn yellow, then apricot, andeventually become orange and waxy over time.10,12

There is substantial disagreement over the amountof time it takes for this process to occur.10 Somepeople report a change in color after several weeksto a month, while others have samples over a yearold that remain without discoloration.10,12 One po-tential variable is the type (and amount) of impu-rities present in a sample. This is corroborated bydifferences in the DMTs shelf-life positively cor-relating with differences in the clean-up processused when extracting it; multiple samples thatturned color rapidly with age had not been washedwith ammonia or bicarbonate, while the samplesthat remained white for over a year had.10 This mayindicate that either residual hydroxide from the ex-traction, or perhaps some trace phytochemical thatthe alkaline polar wash removes, is responsible forthe change in DMT as it ages. Anecdotal reportsindicate that higher temperatures speed discolora-tion.5,12 It is unknown whether other environmen-tal factors, such as exposure to oxygen or moisture,also play a role in the rate of degradation.



Since white DMT can turn orange over a period oftime, it is tempting to consider the discolorationan oxidation product of little consequence. Unfor-tunately, it may not be quite that simple, since wevealready fingered a yellow oil as the most likely can-didate for the simplest DMT oxidation product(DMT-N-oxide). The orange color must come fromsomething else.

When stored at room temperature for a long pe-riod of time, a small amount of the DMT may be-gin breaking down into DMT-N-oxide. This DMT-N-oxide is now also being exposed to environmen-tal conditions for a long period of time, and it maybegin breaking down into another degradationproduct, which is either deep orange or red. Thisshould mean that starting with a crystal contain-ing a trace amount of DMT-N-oxide will more rap-idly lead to the material turning orange. This ex-planation is consistent with observations that havebeen made on yellow oil, but it remains a specula-tion. It is also possible that the orange/red degra-dation product forms independent of the yellowoil; there isnt enough information to draw any hardconclusions. (Anyone want to run TLC, GC/MS,or LC/MS on old orange DMT that started out white?)

To the people smoking it, what any discolorationdoes is a more important issue than what it is. Comb-ing through anecdotal reports on the issue, therelargely seems to be a consensus that as the DMTturns orange over time, it becomes qualitativelydifferent in terms of the experience, but it is notany less potent at first. Then gradually, the sampleloses potency and it eventually becomes qualita-tively unpleasant in effect.12,18 Smoking very oldDMT has been compared to smoking the residuethat collects inside of the DMT free-base pipe.5

[Dark DMT (including pipe residues) can have a morethreatening feel, but this could be reflective of an in-crease in pain from smoking breakdown products likeskatole, which is demonstrably harmful to lung tissues;the oppressive feelings that can arise may simply bedue to ingesting something that the body recognizes as apoison while coming on to a sensitive altered mind state. Eds.]

Synthetic vs. ExtractedWhen talking about DMT from the 1960s, 1970s,and 1980s, its important to recall that were likelynot talking about the beautiful snowflakes ofDMT that any Joe Blow can extract these days fromMimosa tenuiflora/M. hostilis root-bark. It was onlyin 1996, within a review of a Botanical Preserva-tion Corps seminar in Palenque (which appearedin the summer issue of The Entheogen Review), thatdosing specifics for M. hostilis root-bark as anayahuasca analogue were first reported in print(Forbidden Donut 1996), although Jonathan Otthad hinted that the roots of this plant might be agood choice for such purposes a couple of yearsearlier in Ayahuasca Analogues: Pangan Entheogens.And most extraction processes posted to the Inter-net in the mid-1990s were geared toward obtain-ing a smokable DMT-containing goop. There isnta lot of clear information on whether the DMT cir-culating in previous decades was of synthetic orextracted origin. [While this is true, one can speculatefrom the preponderance of published synthesis proceduresin the underground literature (Brown & Associates1968; Superweed 1969; Darth 1977; Smith 1981) andthe dearth of published extraction methods in the un-derground literature, that most DMT available betweenthe 1960s and the 1980s was synthetic. Our discus-sions with underground chemists support the conten-tion that the vast majority of commercial DMT prior tothe 1990s was synthetic, as does the fact that the vend-ing of DMT-containing botanicals to the psychonauticmarket only began in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Eds.] These are important considerations, as theinitial purity and the chemical properties of thecontaminants may be key factors in determininghow the material ages. The discussion within thisarticle assumes that most of the currently avail-able DMT has been obtained via extraction pro-cesses published in the last decade.

Evaporated MaterialAnother common form of colored material resultsfrom people evaporating off their nonpolar solventinstead of freeze-precipitating.1,22 The yellow pig-ment contained in DMT that has been extractedwith an aliphatic hydrocarbon and collected byevaporation is most likely inconsequential traceimpurities, such as plant fats. It is reportedly



harsher to smoke, but roughly the same potency aswhite DMT.1,22 This yellow fraction can be removedby recrystallization.18 There is no indication thatthis sort of discolored DMT contains any uniden-tified psychoactive chemicals.

However, it appears that there is another form ofyellow material that can be obtained by evaporat-ing off the solvent, depending on the evaporationconditions. People report a much more oily yellowproduct when the solvent is evaporated with highairflow from a fan, particularly at warmer tempera-tures.1,18 Others have obtained yellow crystals bymelting off-white DMT in an attempt to do asolvent-less recrystallization (see Preparation ofYellow Spice). Yellow crystals obtained in this fash-ion are reported to be qualitatively different thanplain DMT, and slightly more potent (Delafonze192008).1,22 Based on this information, it sounds likethese methods are producing DMT that containsthe type of yellow oil that may be DMT-N-oxide.

Alternate SolventsHeptane and naphtha have not always been thesolvents of choice in DMT extraction. Some olderextraction processes recommend ether or dichloro-methane (DCM), or aromatics like xylene andtoluene18,22 (and decades ago, extractors might haveused benzene as their nonpolar solvent). All ofthese are effective for pulling DMT, but they areless specific and also pull other fractions. All havebeen reported to yield yellow or orange DMT.3,11,18,22

Xylene and TolueneBoth of these solvents are known to pull a mixtureof DMT and jungle spice when used on a nonpolarsoup thats been largely exhausted of DMT, whichwas extracted with an aliphatic hydrocarbon.6,15,18

Its therefore reasonable that they could be used asthe primary extraction solvent to pull a similarmixture that contains a great deal more DMT.15,22

One experimenter did just that:

SWIM decided to extract 100 grams of Mimosahostilis root-bark (MHRB) with xylene and evapo-rate, just to see the difference between this processand a naphtha/freezer precipitation. After collect-ing three xylene pulls he had about 130 ml of piss

yellow xylene. He evaporated it off to leave a cir-cular pattern of yellow spiky crystals.

Oh my god! SWIM just finally sampled thisbatch and for the first time in almost a year, its thereal deal. He has been searching and searching forthis. SWIM tried just about every known vendor ofMHRB and it was all the same: not what DMTshould be like. So he e-mailed a little-known ven-dor asking for a sample, and received 100 grams.He finally got a chance to extract, and holy shit ishe satisfied. Entities, geometry, self-transformingmachine-flowers. Blown away.

He will always extract the same way from nowon: pull with xylene and evaporate all the waydown, wash with ammonia, and blast-off. 22

Although we cant rule out the possibility that theremay have been something idiosyncratic to the spe-cific root-bark used in the above description, thisreport supports trying xylene as an extraction sol-vent if youre looking for an orange material thatmay have something that white DMT lacks. An-other extractor also obtained an orange materialusing xylene as the extraction solvent, and had asample analyzed by LC/MS, which allowed for somediscussion of the identity and abundance of othercompounds extracted by this solvent15 (see MassSpectrometry Analysis).

Ether or Ether/HeptaneExtracting with ether, or a binary solvent of ether/heptane (8:1), invariably leads to product with ayellow discoloration.11,18 Since the ether is evapo-rated off, its not surprising that the product is yel-low, as one might expect plant fats or other impu-rities to extract into the ether. On the other hand,ether/heptane is known to extract a brown waxycompound along with the DMT, so its possible thatthe yellow color in ether extracts is a trace amountof the jungle spice fraction. Based on reports ofether extracts smelling strongly floral, its alsopossible that ether is extracting some skatole (seeGC/MS Analysis). While ether, dichloromethane,and aromatic solvents have all been reported to pulljungle spice, ether is the only one of these solventsnot reported to produce orange crystals when usedalone as an extraction solvent. This is particularlyinteresting when one considers that ether is also



the solvent associated with the hard tan wax extract,and has never been reported to extract a red productwhen used as a solvent to obtain jungle spice.11,18

Dichloromethane (DCM)Recommended by some older extraction techs,recent literature suggests that using DCM as adefatting solvent may allow for the formation ofN-chloromethyltryptamine, a chemical of unex-plored pharmacology (Brandt et al. 2008; Buchananet al. 2007). It is possible that this compound mightform when using DCM as an extraction solvent.Orange crystals that result from the use of DCMcould be colored for the same reason that the or-ange crystals result when DMT is extracted by xy-lene. Theres also the possibility that the color re-sults from a pigment pulled specifically by the DCM.

DMT has been found to be reactive toward DCM,either during work-up or long-term storage therein,which led to the formation of the quaternary am-monium salt N-chloromethyl-DMT chloride(Brandt 2008). N-chloromethyl-DMT chloride isunlikely to be psychoactive based on its presumedlow bioavailability; potential toxicity concerns areunknown. One extractor decided to perform someexperiments to establish whether the orange colorwas extracted from the plant, or whether it mightbe the rearranged N-chloromethyl derivative. Af-ter obtaining an orange material from a Mimosaroot-bark extraction with DCM, he tried extract-ing Psychotria viridis leaves by the exact same pro-cess, and found the result in the latter case to bepure white DMT.1 This result strongly indicates ifN-chloromethyltryptamine and/or N-chloro-methyl-DMT chloride do form via the use of DCMas an extraction solvent, that they are not respon-sible for the resultant color when Mimosa spp. root-bark is extracted, and that the color is due to thesolvents lower selectivity (as compared to typicalalkane solvents), resulting in the extraction of somecolored compound from the root-bark.

Odds and EndsAs the mention of Psychotria viridis above alludesto, other plants are commonly used as DMT sources.DMT-containing Acacia spp. can yield an orange

crystalline product on extraction, for example.While some of this color could be due to plant fats,Acacias have a diverse chemistry, so it is possiblethat some of this color could come from other al-kaloids (Buchanan et al. 2007).18 Some of the colormight even come from 5-MeO-DMT, which is sub-stantially more potent than DMT by weight. Fur-ther, a colleague recently encountered some brightred DMT that had been extracted from a species ofPhalaris grass (Anonymous 2008).

I have seen two unrelated references to a purplespice. One was accompanied by a blurry photo-graph showing unmistakably purple material. I can-not conceive of this coloration having come fromany of the botanicals discussed above. Until someexperiences are reported with such material, itsprobably best to recrystallize any such spice onehappens to run across.

Infrequent references to green spice are a mys-tery I think that I can solidly put to rest. It is onlyknown to have been isolated by evaporating thesolvent to collect the material, and it has only beenreported in cases where the extractor used unsa-vory brands of naphtha (like Sunnyside). In one ofthese circumstances, the extractor evaporated afrom-the-can sample of the solvent and discoveredthat it left a blue residue. Thus, it appears that greenspice comes from yellow material plus a blue non-volatile solvent additive. Long story short: avoidgreen spice like the plague.

ExperiencesBelow is a collection of experiences that people havehad consuming jungle spice. The reports do notallow us to paint a conclusive picture about theactivity of the materials, but they have value in pro-viding evidence that there appears to be an as-yet-unidentified psychoactive compound (or com-pounds) at work here. The sheer volume of reportsdetailing different or more potent effects at lowerdosages than are used with ordinary DMT is strongevidence that there is an unsolved piece in thispuzzle.



Smoked Red Crystalline Goo

Easy does it; 1015 mg ofthis stuff is insanely potent andjust a bit more scary/intense thanDMT. 18

I took three full tokes fromthe red oil. The effects were a lotlike regular DMT, but there wassomething different. It seemed tobe missing the loving presence.The other place hallucinationwas there, but the colors werenotor at least they were verydark and dull. My friend and Iboth felt like we would muchrather stick to the regular, defin-able, loving, white DMT (Warren-Saged 2008).

There is a distinct differ-ence between DMT and the redspice for me. When smokingDMT, I want to smoke as muchas possible. But after a few puffsof the red spice, I was completelyrevolted. The anxiety and inten-sity of DMT was not present, butit was very odd and frightening.Its flavor was a spicy barbecuesauce, which was tolerable. Theeffects of it were much moresubtle with an easing in insteadof a blast-off. The room becametwisted, grotesque version of it-self, something out of The Night-mare Before Christmas. It felt like agraveyard that I was alone in (ina bad sense), but then some be-ings started to appear. They wereblack, fuzzy balls of energy, aboutone-and-a-half feet tall and one

foot wide. They were very frien-dly, and investigated me likechildren might do. However, theexperience made me draw up intomyself, and I was quite dissatis-fied with the feelings. Subse-quent DMT use, about a half-hourlater, brought me to a bad part ofthe city, with clown beings ofintense negative emotions andideas who did not like me at all.(They were in no way jester- orjoker-ish.) They also beat up myGuardian, when he tried to pro-tect me from them. 16

This red jungle spice isthe best thing I have ever seen.Terence McKenna must have beensmoking the jungle spice think-ing it was DMT. Ive smoked a lotof DMT and read a lot of TerenceMcKenna, and I had never seenanything like what he describes.But from two tokes of this redjungle spice, I had his trip wordfor word. This stuff is so muchbetter, stronger, deeper, moremeaningful, and more pleasant touse than DMT. I smoked it withmy eyes open while watchingShpongle. The stage began tomorph, and suddenly a self-trans-forming machine elf ripped thestage in half and jumped out todance on top of the ravers. Hewas made out of what appearedto be glossy molded plastic (likea kids toy), and he was extremelycolorful, changing shapes anddancing. This was with my eyesopen. I had my rational mind in-tact; I knew I was at a Shpongleshow smoking jungle spice. Yet Icould not believe my eyes. I evensquinted at the stage in disbelief,

trying to make things return tonormal. If you smoke it with youreyes open, it completely trans-forms reality before your eyes.This is absolutely the most amaz-ing chemical I have ever encoun-tered. I pas

Documents

The Entheogen Review׃ Vol. 16, No. 3 (2008)