Smoking Syrian Rue has a subtle calming mild effect. After many years of smoking Rue on and off and after using various methods to produce the smoke, I added a little information that could make it easier for someone to find it effective and not too cumbersome. A few facts to be aware of: first – only burn the outer skin from the seed then discard the pit. About half the alkaloids will become smoke while the other half melts and drains down the pipe. Using a torch lighter is better than a traditional lighter allowing you to get an efficient dose in 2 or 3 breaths rather than 5 or 6 ultimately making it much more convenient for regular use.
Ive used a tobacco pipe – then had to blow water through it to unclog it occasionally and the bowl is too large often causing waste. Additionally, removing the half burnt seeds from the unburnt seeds is messy and troublesome. A marijuana pipe will work but the short stem could allow the melted alkaloids to get into your mouth, and the taste is foul. This copper tube, with copper wire first burned clean then packed into the pipe to fill most of the bowl is the best Syrian Rue pipe ive ever used. It has a very shallow bowl. I only load a very small amount, one pinch at one time, after 1 good torch it i dump the seed. The copper wire catches the oils so after every 3 or for 4 bowls of seeds smoked turn it upside down and burn the copper wire clean. The oils that drain down produce premium smoke. This is a photo of the smoking device that after a decade of experimenting has worked the best for me. :
I was so intrigued by Syrian Rue that I experimented with many forms of extracting and ingesting it. I extracted the pure harmala freebase for the first time in 2014. I ingested, smoked/vaped, and used the harmala sublingually. I came to the semi-conclusion that eating whole syrian rue seeds or the prepared smoking extract were superior means of ingesting it. The pure harmala extract works sublingual after 15-20 minutes of holding it under your tongue. The smoke is effective for 30 minutes after the 2nd or 3rd large breath. Smoking 3 times in 30 minutes intervals with smoked DMT in between creates the effect which is Ayahuasca. Smoking rue every 3 hours builds a mild antidepressant effect. The duration of an oral dose varies depending on the dose size. Smaller doses taken over time is wiser than a large dose that can last for 12+hours because if your body rejects it that rejection will be less severe. Slowly build up MAO inhibition with small oral doses every 90 to 180 minutes. At that rate, the doses overlap and they build slowly. Alternatively, eating 1 large dose has an effect on the body that peaks 5 or 6 hours later. Take small steps until becoming familiar with the medicine.
Smoking the pure brown skin of the seed with the white core manually removed is something else that i had investigated. Pure rue seed skin burns unusual as smoke becomes smoother and more vapor like toward the last of the loaded pipe. As the pure Syrian Rue seed skin burns, it forms a crust shell around the underlying unburnt powder causing the flame to go around the seed skin powder without burning it so you must crush your smoking material after each hit. I have also discovered that a torch lighter works much better than a Bic lighter. After just 2 to 3 breaths a calm sense of well-being sets in, which makes for a great set and setting anywhere. After years of working with it, i prefer to scorch the seeds and dispose them. The powder can be capsuled, however after years of working with it, i prefer to swallow whole seed.
The smoke, or technically the vapor, is “better” than eating Syrian Rue and eating it is better than working with pure extracts derived from of it in my humble opinion. In the Tihkal for harmaline it mentions that the effects of pure harmaline by itself, differ from the effects of Peganum harmala seeds, just by themselves. “They are very different from one-another.” I concur with Shulgin’s observation, and add that the effects from the smoke are different than the effects from eating.
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To split the skin from the pit – grind the seeds against a metal screen to collect the brown powder that falls off. Sift the powder through a fine steel mesh kitchen colander to filter out chunks, stems, and other impurities. Lightly warming the seeds before grinding to make them fully dry them significantly simplifies the process. Too much heat during during toasting significantly reduced the effects when it was ingested. Warming merely dries the seeds which collect some humidity so that the outermost layer of the seed comes off with little effort. Do not burn the seeds – merely remove moisture. If the house smells wonderful because you have an oven full of seed, that’s too hot, you smell the medicine in the air.
The experience is similar but not the same between eating and smoking. The rapid onset of effect, at a good and proper dose can cause whats known as an MAOI twitch with a few good breaths, theory suggests this is from increased neuroactivity even neurogenesis. The overall effects are nice. Eating Syrian Rue at very high doses takes me to what i call “Rue Trails”. They are pleasant, hard to explain, and difficult to obtain without nausea. High doses are not the objective. There are no visual hallucinations from rue alone, even the “Trails” are not a state of hallucinations. Things appear slightly brighter.
I have found that using a small glass jar to grind the seeds against the screen colander will shave off the outer skin. The smokable powder is caught under the screen. If you don’t smoke, you can put that powder into gelcaps to consume it without tasting it. After the seeds have had most of the skin scraped off, the seed with some skin remaining is perfect for a water extract, which will almost thoroughly devoid the seed of all remaining harmala.
Alternatively, put the dry seed into a high speed food processor, then sift the powder from the pit.
In my earlier experiments with Syrian Rue I only drank it because the preparation is far easier than preparing the powder to smoke. Ultimately – I chose to scorch whole seed for simplicity. Smoking Syrian Rue has several advantages – the effect is immediate, dose is smaller compared to dose sizes required for effect via oral ingestion, and effects are shorter in duration than when orally consumed. Additionally, the dietary restrictions are more relaxed when the MAOI does not pass through the stomach. Smoke the Rue until feeling its relaxing effects. Smoking it multiple times in 20 minutes intervals causes the pleasant effects to be noticeable much longer after your final smoke.
Syrian Rue tea glows extremely bright under a black light, in fact it is so bright that even your urine and saliva will glow after you drink it. Your tongue and lips glow as well – only under a black light. That is Relatively irrelevant like the fact that Einsteinium glows blue in the dark.
Einstein has nothing to do with Syrian Rue, but he smokes a pipe and sticks his tongue out for pictures like I do. His pupils are suspiciously dilated. Dropout pupils open schools.
The smoked effect is different than the ingested effect. I expected that effectual difference was due to the difficulty in matching the inhaled vs. oral dose – however we are Re-Searching this and other mysterious questions.
Syrian Rue 