Materials and Doses

Myron: I'm interested in the different chemicals that you've run across. What kind of significant differences, if any, do you see among the different agents?

Jacob: We have a spectrum of materials that we use. They've been screened out. I've tried many of them, explored many of the new ones that have come out. I'll list the ones that are most suitable for a group trip as far as we're concerned. There are many more but most of them will do the same thing as these do and most of them won't do as well as these do.

One of them is LSD. Everyone first has an individual trip with me which establishes their LSD dose level. Other materials we use are the Psilocybe cubensis mushroom, dried. And mescaline - we don't use peyote. MDA. Ibogaine. Harmaline - we call it yagé. It's the active ingredient of yagé, that's the harmaline hydrochloride.1 MDMA, Adam.2 I have not adopted 2C-B. It just doesn't seem suitable for a group trip at all. Or DOB or the TMA series. TMA- 23 is the one that was thought best for an experience.

Myron: I'm surprised that DOB hasn't worked well.

Jacob: We've tried it, and some of them will say, "Yeah, it was a nice trip but I get more out of ___ or I'd rather have ___." It doesn't do anything more for me than one of these others. I like to keep it down to just a few.

There's the psychedelic trip and the psychoactive trip. The psychedelics are the acid, mescaline, psilocybin. Visions and hallucinations and things like that. That's what characterizes the psychedelics. These three are psychoactive, but there are other psychoactives that are not psychedelic - MDA, harmaline, and ibogaine. Some people see colors and some visions on those.

Harmaline

I would put that in the psychedelic one rather than just the psychoactive one without the psychedelic because we don't take it alone, nobody takes it alone. It takes a helluva lot to turn on and you get so God-damned sick if you took enough to turn on that it's horrible. We take it with acid or psilocybin and it puts a new dimension on the acid trip. Very primitive, you get right down to the primitive side of yourself. The men who take it find their real masculinity and the women who take it find their true femininity. As a matter of fact, some Indians when they take yagé and they have their religious ceremonies, the men take it separate in their own hogan, and the women take it separate in their own hogan. They do not mix, because for the women, it's a woman's medicine, and for the men it's a man's medicine. Same medicine.

Myron: On the psychoactive list, would you put MDMA on that list also?

Jacob: Yes. That's Adam. Right. It's not a hallucinogen. The hallucinogens give visions, colors, and new dimensions to all of the senses, like hearing, vision, music - you know, music is a trip - and that's for all three of those. Hallucinations are very characteristic of course with eyes closed or eyes open, it doesn't matter. That's what I meant when I said visions. In some ways, people will say that they have a more spiritual trip on the hallucinogens because they see very important visions, spiritual visions in some sense to them. It's all an individual experience and their own reaction to it. The most popular one for that is psilocybin. It's a more spiritual trip. People will say that, although they'll also say that it's a spiritual trip on mescaline and acid. Now we'll go to the others, like MDA.

Myron: Just before we leave that, there's another thing. I don't know if you've read much by Gerald Heard. He talks about analytical thinking versus integral thinking, and with the hallucinogens, and maybe this is what you're calling visions, too, somehow you seem to jump up to a higher level of understanding where things seem to fall into place and relatedness more clearly.

Jacob: Oh, yes. That happens definitely on the hallucinogenic trips. Very clearly. That's part of the transformation.

Myron: Higher conceptualization?

Jacob: Conceptualization - most people would object to that, because it's not a conceptual process.

Myron: Maybe realization.

Jacob: Realization. Experiencing in a new dimension. And, coming out of a very deep level of feeling. I prefer feeling to emotion, although emotions will accompany it. Crying and things. Again, the word that I would use now is a realization of the truth. THE TRUTH. God's truth. Not the one we think is truth. Not of the mind. It's of the Self. The soul. Everything you see that you experience you experience with a whole new configuration.

MDA

Psychoactive, very clear, answers questions, MDA clarifies your life, puts everything in a correct perspective for you, tells you what you are doing that is satisfying, what you can do that will be more satisfying. You come out with a good feeling about yourself. It helps you to see all your difficulties in a different light, and they cease to be difficulties. You become aware of the fact that everything is happening just exactly the way it should be happening, and you're doing everything you need to do. Just relax and go do it! This is pretty characteristic, at least with the first trip with MDA. Subsequent ones, too. It's a great experience for relating people to each other - yeah - you have a good feeling about yourself and the world around you. It brings you into the experience of the moment. That's the greatest material for learning that lesson. There's nothing but the moment, and that experience brings it home very well.

I remember one trip that I had, every time that I'd get anxious the trip would tell me, "Everything is in this moment, nothing exists except this moment. There you are. This is what exists." Every time I would get anxious I would say, "Hey, wait a minute! I'm anxious! What was I thinking about just then?" What I was thinking about was before or after or about to or whatever. I wasn't in the moment. I said, "See, you're not here in the moment." I'd look around and I'd experience with my senses and the anxiety disappeared. It's a great lesson to have. That's MDA.

Ibogaine

Ibogaine is something else. It's similar. All of these have certain qualities that are common to all of them. Also, no hallucinations. It's a heavier trip. A deeper and a longer trip, and for many people it takes longer to turn on. It's a very profound trip for everybody but people experience it differently. Some people love it, they love the lessons that they get from it. Some people find it a very painful experience. Those who find it painful are the ones who have not been confronting what Mr. Ibogaine is handing them and have been trying to avoid it.

You asked me once before something about confronting blocks. This is a place where people will confront blocks, as a matter of fact, if they have been unwilling to accept them or believe them or often try to deny them. A truth that they're trying to deny. Mr. Ibogaine won't let you do that. You can fuck it up if you want to. But nobody wants to. You have a great respect for Mr. Ibogaine. You experience it. Great respect. You listen to it. You may not do anything about it but you'll know that this is true. This is so. Yeah.

MDMA

And then of course MDMA. Beautiful trip. Just full of beauty and love and good feeling and acceptance of your self and realization of your own perfection in such a way that you say, "I don't think I ever want to put myself down or find myself wrong, because I'm not wrong. I'm being guided all of the time." It brings that into an experience.

Jacob: Nobody can come to the group trip until they've first had a trip with me. I've already established the level it takes for them to turn on with acid. All first trips are acid. Even if they've had 500 acid trips before that. Suppose they have a full trip on 250 micrograms. All right, then 250 is their dose level. It could be more. I generally start at 250 unless I have a reason to think that they're more sensitive and don't need that much.

Sometimes 250 isn't enough, I'll give them another 125 micrograms. If that isn't enough I'll give them another 125. I keep building it up gradually until they really are turned on. They may have to have 500 to turn on. Some people have to go up to 750 to turn on. Hard heads, I call them. If they started out at 250 and ended up with 500, I'll call their base level 375 micrograms, halfway between 250 and 500 because by the time I gave them the second booster they've already dissipated a certain amount, they don't need more. That's the base level, and the base level for acid in general becomes the thing that I compare all the others with.

When they come in for the group trip we talk and decide what they're going to take. They want to know what's available, what kind of trip it is, what happens on a trip. They don't know what to do because they haven't had any experience with it. I generally suggest a second one to try. They may want to have another acid trip or they want to have a psilocybin trip or something like that, because they've heard about it. We'll talk about it and we agree on a format, and I decide on the dosage they're going to have, because I have something to compare it with and they don't have.

Frequently now, more frequently than anything else, I suggest MDA for the second trip. I tell them, "It's a very different kind of trip. It's not like your other one was. It's also a very, very good trip for you." And they say, "Okay. I'll take your word for it."

If they take 250 micrograms of acid to turn on we start them on 150 milligrams of MDA. Most of the time that's enough. After an hour, if they're not turned on, I'll give a 50 milligram booster. Most of the times that'll turn them on. If it doesn't turn them on in thirty minutes I'll give another 50 milligram booster. On this trip they'll establish their base for MDA. There are variables between people, you know, and also variables with the same material with the same person from one time to another. But this is the general picture.

Okay, they've had that trip. Then they come in and want to try another, a different kind of material. I'll suggest either psilocybin, which is hallucinogenic, because a lot of them love the visions and things like that. Or mescaline. Ibogaine is much later. I like for them to have that after they've had the others. Ibogaine is about the last one I have them try. It's a progressive, one, ibogaine. Each trip brings you to another level.

Myron: How much psilocybin do you give?

Jacob: Three grams of the mushroom is equivalent to 250 micrograms of acid. If they took 375 micrograms of acid, we'd give them 4.5 grams of the mushroom.

Myron: It's a pretty direct correlation?

Jacob: Pretty direct. Yeah.

Myron: And how much mescaline would correlate to 250 micrograms of acid?

Jacob: Most people don't really turn on with less than 500 milligrams. We don't do mescaline very much because it's very expensive and they seem to get as much out of the acid or psilocybin as the mescaline. Nothing special comes to them on mescaline.

MDMA

The first time they take MDMA I give them 150 milligrams. Sometimes that does it for them. If it doesn't, then I give them a 50 booster. After that we establish their base. Then I know that it takes 200. The maximum I'll give is 300 although there's one person who takes 300 and a booster of 200 after he's started coming down. It doesn't hurt him. Doesn't hurt his heart or anything like that. I don't feel comfortable giving them more than 300. If they haven't turned on I say, "You take what you've got and that's it." And you know, when they find out they can't have a booster they lay down and the sons of bitches they turn on! (Much laughter.)

I've had quite a thing about this business of boosters. I've had lots of hassles about it, because they want to really blast through. Sometimes they'll get close but they can't get through and they want to blast through. They think more medicine will do it. I tell them this every time we have a session, "More is not better. Lay down and stay down. No wandering around, because as soon as you start to be functional you detract. You've got to get into your ego to be functional. Lay down and have your whole trip and when you're all the way down, really coming down, then you can get up and walk around. Or if you have to go to the bathroom one of us will help you go to the bathroom." Or something like that. That's very important.

Harmaline

Harmaline goes with either acid or psilocybin. I generally give them 125 milligrams. I used to give them 250 milligrams and they'd get pretty damned nauseated by it. The 125 milligrams is sufficient for them. This is a psychoactive material but it's not psychedelic, and this amount does not add to the base level. They would take their normal amount of acid and just add this which does not increase the activity of the other psychedelic. It's just an auxiliary, and brings a different dimension to it. Some people would prefer 250 milligrams instead of 125 milligrams of the harmaline. Those who have trouble with nausea take it anally.

Myron: You just put a capsule up their rectum?

Jacob: Yep! You just say, "Squat, find your asshole, put the capsule right up your asshole, shove it up as far as you can. Go like that." (Demonstrates.) That always gets a nice laugh.

Ibogaine

Myron: That leaves ibogaine, then.

Jacob: This we have to explore to find the right dose. If I'm not sure how much it takes to turn them on, then I give them three capsules. A capsule is 75 milligrams of ibogaine, the active ingredient. It's a half gram capsule, it's a pretty big capsule. But the active ingredient is 75 milligrams of ibogaine. I give them three. That's about 225 milligrams. If they don't turn on after an hour or hour and a half at the most, we give them a fourth one, and they'll turn on with that. Few of them need more than that. It's hard on the body, too. I don't want them to take more if they don't need it.

They've established their bases. If they didn't turn on with three then I know that four is necessary. Sometimes I give them four and it was much too much and they know it. I mean they had too much. It was the proper amount according to the way that I grade it but it was too much of this particular medicine for this particular person. Next time I'll give them three. Some people do two. Some people get a little trip on one. Very rare, but they do. A mild trip. That's the idea.

Myron: Don't some people want to start with one and work their way up?

Jacob: Not any more. I used to do that. I tried it a couple of times, it doesn't work. I start with three. If three's too much you go back to two the next time. If three isn't enough then you go to four this time and you start with four next time.

I have a record of what everybody's taken, and how many boosters and how long into the trip they had to have the booster. It helps me to determine what to do. They learn themselves what their schedule is.

Okay, that's it for materials and dosages and kinds of trips.

NOTES - Chapter 5:

1. Harmaline is called yagé in error. It is not the active ingredient in yagé. DMT and/or other tryptamines are. See Ott. Pharmacotheon. Kennewick, WA: Natural Products Co. 1993, page 260. footnote 3.

2. The code name "Adam" for MDMA was a term coined by Jacob.

3. For a description of these compounds, see Shulgin, A. T. & A. Shulgin, PIHKAL, Berkeley, CA: Transform Press, 1991.

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