Palstapeelo, the above article is the only scientific article on Calea I am aware of, and it does not speak much about the health effects. I have read many reports and there seem to be little health effects. When taking concentrated Calea pills or the extract I notice no side effects at all. I usually take them right before bed. I have taken them without sleeping and have noticed very minute effects. Although smoking Calea I find to be strong on my lungs and does give me a effect I can feel that is more pronounced. I don’t really like smoking Calea and have not tried it since my first experience. The pills work continually good for me, with great effects.
Bottom line is I also watch what I eat and like to stay healthy but I don’t worry about Calea, only from my experience. Of course, whom is going to be taking Calea for months on end? I don’t underestimate Chontal Indians, I am sure they have a sense for pharmaceuticals, as most indigenous peoples do. Most indigenous people use powerful psychedelics with caution and respect, but they do use them.
Also traumgänger, if you try smoking Calea with a vaporizer let us know how it goes. I would think this may be a great way to smoke Calea. It may also be much smoother on the lungs. I have not heard of anyone doing this with Calea. I may try this next week if I get my pipe, so I will converse. Although I don’t much like smoking the stuff, but I will experiment.
I’m not sure of the herb you are looking for?? I just use mint to diffuse the taste, although I have heard of some different concoctions. You know some mint herb may work really good with Calea! If ANYONE has tried this please let me know, because mint works great but how about herb mint, or plant mint? Or spearmint? Interesting, you know what also may work with the tea, you could use some coffee creamer with the tea to dilute the concotion. Some Irish cream may work, although it may amplify the taste as certain foods do, I found this out the hard way!
I got my calea form basementshaman.com, 2 ounces of the herb and an ounce of liquid extract. of the two nights that i did do it, i did experience an increase in the number of dreams i did have, and were slightly more vivid than normal, yet not lucid. my theory is that calea enhances what dreaming ability YOU ALREADY HAVE, so know that when going in…
i’m eager to try both the pills and the smoking blend, which is blended with several other dream enhancing herbs.
tonight i down the rest of the extract bottle and smoke a cigarrette, 2 before bedtime, 2 upon waking up for back to sleep method.
I’ve smoked calea z with a vaporizer. It was smoother on the lungs but it actually tasted worse than a calea cigarette (but better than the tea). The effects are comparable if you, as Davion mentioned, keep going until you feel the effects.
What I don’t know is how efficient this is as some herbs (like salvia for example) have a much higher burning point than weed, which is very low (the reason you can vape it at all). Salvia can’t be vaporized effectively as the vaporizer doesn’t get near hot enough. Pot can. Calea seems to be somewhere in the middle from what I can see…
I’ve also tried drinking it in a tea with fresh mint. It killed the smell but not the taste. Didn’t seem to add much to the experience, although I’ve had some success with mint tea on its own. I would recommend keeping some mint tea on hand to chase the calea tea with–but mixing them together won’t accomplish much.
I also tried smoking calea with a vaporizer.
It worked quite good, imho nice taste, and easy to inhale.The only problem is that it takes a lot of time to consume a larger dose…
I’ve had the most success drinking calea tea and smoke a calea cigarette. When you drink the tea you can feel the effects of calea setting in right away. However the taste is unbearable… The only way I could get it down was by having a grape in my mouth and chewing it while I drank the tea.
One note about making the tea… Don’t boil the water. I’ve made the tea a few times and when i jsut simmered the calea I had a nice effect, but when I boiled it I had none. They may be because the active constituents (which i don’t know if any one knows what they are) could be evaporated in the steam.
One suggestion I might have for people who have either A. Bought calea and found it to bitter to ingest and don’t enjoy smoking, or B. people who have the extract and would like to get a better effect: For those of you who can’t stand your raw calea, get sme really big capsules and do it that way then try drinking hot water! Maybe cocoa. I know this isn’t the same as making the tea, but it may be something about either the temperate, the water or the temperature and the water that bring on the effects of the calea, because honestly for consuming the ammounts of calea that some of you did in one night you should be lucid and on the moon. I experienced the same things you described drinking the tea with far far less than one gram of raw leaf.
I wanted to try it out. I got some “25x extract capsules” since I was informed this is what most customers recommend. On the packet it said “x25 extract (1g equivalent to 20g dried herb)” so 1x20=25. And dosage “500mg to 2500mg (1 to 7 x 340mg caps). These mathematics make no sense! Is this a dream? Apparently not.
I couldn’t find any information about how long it lasts. A few hours? All day? Several days? And does the amount change this? Does a large amount last longer than a small amount? And some people were claiming you need to take it for five days in order for it to build up enough to have an effect. Confusing!
My original plan was to take a few capsules and then smoke the contents of one of them. (And also taste it to understand what people were saying about that!) But I started carefully just ingesting two capsules the first night and then increased it to three on the second night. This is what I experienced so far…
Day 1: I woke up in the middle of the night needing to urinate. At this point I had dreamed but had no memory of what the dream was about. Then later I had another dream which I remembered. I normally enjoy my dreams but this dream was just boring and miserable. While it seems I had opportunities to become lucid I never did, I was just tediously going along with the dream. This dream recall was lower than what I have been experiencing lately. I woke up very tired and with an annoying headache.
Day 2: I fell into a deep sleep which lasted all night and woke up with no memory of any dreams at all. Again I was very sleepy and had a headache. I tried to sleep again but was too uncomfortable.
In my experience a headache is the result of either a drug being too weak and wearing off or being far too strong and as part of a “hangover”. Have I been taking too little or too much? According to the dosage instructions I started with a low dose then had a medium dose, but people can be more or less sensitive to such substances.
I had wanted to give it a decent experiment but so far it seems to be having the exact opposite effect of what it is supposed to, which others claim can produce memory of FIVE dreams per night, which are longer and more vivid, with some being lucid. I will try smoking it at some point, but I am not sure whether to only take one or two as I proceed, or keep increasing the dose. People say you need a lot, but taking more so far seems to be worse.
I’ll report about future experiments, but my experience so far is that they are good sleeping pills but TERRIBLE dreaming pills!
On the third day I only took one capsule, and the result was still the same: I fell into a deep sleep, woke up once to urinate, and after both awakenings I had no memory of any dreams at all. At least there was no headache this time.
But now I am concerned about what was said about it building up in your body. Is this going to completely suppress my dreams for weeks now? It seems like this is a PRACTICAL JOKE to play on dreamers! That’s my personal experience of it anyway.