TAKING VERY LOW DOSE KAMBO INTRANASALLY (SNORTING)
Exact Method Explained
UPDATE (Feb 2013): The warning posted by KP, about the fact that snorting kambo can lead cause what the Indian's call "frog's disease", is one that should be considered.
UPDATE (May 2013): The following information about catching frog's disease from snorting/sublingual kambo was posted by Galega:
Frog disease is a viral type illnes that cannot be gotten rid of. It is unknown to the outside world. Amongst other things, it can apparently weaken the heart muscles and cause cardiac arrest and have some effects on the brain - he described it as 'eating the brain'!. Indians who snort snuff with kambo in it do so only very occasionally and always in conjunction with heavy kambo sessions so the live kambo acts as a kind of anti venom/viral. Even so, it is still considered risky he says and only for those with strong hearts and systems (eg, regular kambo users). His view is that kambo taken orally could also cause the same problem.
I have just tried some very low dose (1 mg) intranasal kambo (that is, kambo powder snorted up into my nose), and it worked very well.
Here are the details of the method I used to take kambo intranasally. It is described step by step, so that a beginner might follow it.
I bought a kambo stick from Maya Ethnobotanicals. This kambo stick is a flat and thin piece of wood, about 2 mm thick, 25 mm wide, and around 110 mm long. This wooden kambo stick is wrapped in a dark brown corn leaf for protection.
This stick had the kambo substance — that is, the dried slime from the skin of the Phyllomedusa bicolor frog — stuck to it all along one of its flat sides. The kambo substance itself looks like a thick layer of clear vanish on this piece of wood.
I scrapped off about one sixth of the kambo substance from the side of the kambo stick, by means of a sharp knife. I weighed the kambo I had just scrapped off using a digital scales, and it amounted to around 80 mg (which means in the whole kambo stick, you get about 6 x 80 = 480 mg of pure kambo).
I then finely ground up the kambo I had scrapped off using a mortar and pestle (it was already powdery after being scrapped off the stick, but I wanted the powder to be as fine as possible, to ensure good absorption when snorted into my nose).
A full kambo experience (which is always accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea) will probably require slightly more than 15 mg of intranasal kambo powder (see Romanesco's posts earlier in this thread).
However, I want to use a very low daily kambo dose of around 1 mg. This is a very small quantity to measure accurately, even on a digital scales like mine that measures down to 1 mg. So, to my 80 mg of kambo powder, I added 4 x 80 = 320 mg of an inert "filler" powder. I used a vitamin powder I happened to have as my filler powder. I tested this vitamin powder in my nose first, to make sure it did not sting on snorting it (don't use any acidic-tasting powder like vitamin C as a filler, as acidic powders will sting like hell in the nose). Something like glucose powder would work too.
I thoroughly mixed my 320 mg of filler powder with my 80 mg of kambo powder to make a weakened kambo mixer. With my mixture, 5 mg of the mixture powder contains 1 mg of pure kambo.
I weighed 5 mg of my mixture powder on the digital scales, to get a dose of 1 mg of kambo.
I then simply used a drinking straw to snort this 5 mg of mixture powder into one nostril.
Within about a minute, I started to feel tingling effects in my nose. After around 2 minutes or so, my face and all the skin on my body went bright red, as blood was flushed to the surface. (This red flushing of the skin looked very similar to a "niacin flush", if anyone is familiar with that). My heart rate went up a little, but not that much. There was no dizziness. There was no face or throat swelling at all. The effects lasted for less than 5 minutes, before the flushed skin and the raised heart beat went back to normal. It was an extremely mild experience, and it evoked no fear or apprehension at all. Anyone could do this very light dose.
At this very low dose of 1 mg of kambo, I only felt only the very slightest sense of nausea, and I had only a very slight sense of rumbling or movement in my bowels. But I was nowhere near getting sick, or needing to defecate, both of which normally happen on a full dose of kambo.
No mental state changes occurred at all during my experience: I remained calm, focused and unchanged mentally throughout. That is to say, there were no psychoactive effects at all.
My nasal cavity was very slightly sore afterwards, for several hours; but was fine by the next day. I have read elsewhere that people snorting kambo sometimes find it burns the nose a little. At the very low 1 mg dose I used, the soreness was very slight, but I expect higher doses of kambo may produce a little more nasal soreness.
What I am going to do in the near future is try a slightly higher intranasal dose, but I have no intention of doing a full kambo dose just yet.
The reason I am trying out kambo is that I hope it will treat my chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Kambo has significanlty improved Jox's chronic fatigue syndrome: see
Jox's forum threads on how he used kambo to treat his CFS. So I am hoping kambo will also help my CFS.
What I plan to do is take a very low kambo dose (1 to 2 mg)
each day, rather than the full kambo dose that Jox regularly takes
once every 7 days, in order to treat his CFS.
I am hoping my very low dose daily kambo regimen will effectively treat my CFS.
If this very low dose kambo regimen does not improve my chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms, then I will try going up to a full dose taken once a week, as per Jox. However, I will still probably use the intranasal method for taking kambo, even for the full dose, as the intranasal approach seems really quick, easy and straightforward to do. But if this full dose intranasal method does not improve my CFS either, will I then consider using the burn method.
One final point: I tried taking very low dose (2 mg) kambo sublingually (under the tongue) on several occasions, but this did not work at all. So for some reason, it seems the mucous membranes of the nasal cavity absorb kambo rapidly and effectively, but the mucous membranes under the tongue do not.
——————————————————————————Safety Warning——————————————————————————
Warning: There have been accounts of incorrect use of kambo leading to death. To quote a Machineri Indian: "Our healers know how to use the frog's secretion. Now, it is being used in other places incorrectly, and this has led to the death of patients." Reference:
here.
This should sound a
strong warning to anyone considering experimenting with alternative routes of administration of kambo: you may be entering uncharted and risky territory.
Though I have been unable to find the particular details on why these deaths occurred, my guess is that
these fatalities may have been caused by accidentally administering too much kambo.
Anyone who is going to experiment with alternative routes of kambo administration, such as the intranasal route, should buy a
sensitive digital scales that measures down to 1 mg (= 0.001 grams) before they begin any experimentation, in order to measure doses accurately. You can buy such a scales for as little as $15.
If you don't feel confident about your ability to precisely weigh out tiny milligram amounts of kambo in an accurate manner, then you should not experiment with alternative routes route of kambo administration.
This is because, when using alternative routes of administration,
there may be a very real danger of an overdose of kambo if you do not measure your kambo dosage precisely, using a sensitive digital scales that can weigh down to 1 mg.
Kambo contains the highly potent opioid compounds dermorphin and deltorphin. Dermorphin is 30 to 60 times more potent than morphine when taken orally, and 200 to 300 times more potent when taken intravenously. (As little as 200 mg of morphine can be fatal.)
Just 1 mg of intravenous dermorphin will kill you instantly. Reference:
Exotic Frog Drug Boosting Racing Horse’s Performance.
One might assume that the potency of dermorphin taken intranasally will be somewhere in between its oral and intravenous potency; so one might hazard a guess that intranasal dermorphin is say 100 times more potent than morphine. Therefore, as a rough guess, perhaps around 3 mg of dermorphin taken intranasally would kill you instantly. This is just to give a very rough idea of how tiny the lethal dose of dermorphin is.
I could not find any figures for the percentage dermorphin content of kambo, but if we knew this, we could work out what the lethal dose of intranasal kambo is, from the dermorphin perspective at least.
If you read
this account by a person named "SuperJunky" injecting himself with pure dermorphin, you will see he used a tiny dose of 100 micrograms of dermorphin, and found this was as powerful as heroin. Dermorphin is extremely potent stuff.
The deltorphin component of kambo is another issue, as are its other active constituents.
So be very careful with measuring out your kambo doses, if you decide to experiment with taking kambo by alternative routes, such as the intranasal route.
Remember, when you are using the normal burn method of administration of kambo, this
burn method has a built-in safety mechanism, in that each burn area will I think only absorb a limited amount of kambo. So I would think you cannot easily overdose with the burn method, because the total kambo dose administered is related to the number and size of the burn areas you make and use.
By contrast,
if you are taking kambo powder by alternative routes, such as snorting it into the nose, there is no safety mechanism at all that prevents you from taking too much kambo, because everything you snort into your nose will be absorbed by the nasal mucous membranes. So it is entirely up to you to precisely measure the dose you take, and make sure you don't administer yourself a lethal dose.
Therefore, it is crucial to weigh the exact amount kambo powder in milligrams before you snort it.
It may well be that doses of 50 to 100 mg of kambo powder taken intranasally might be a lethal for some people. But this is purely a guess, because we don't know the lethal dose of kambo; we need to find some reliable info on this. It seems that 15 mg of pure kambo powder taken intranasally is a tried and tested dose for one person: Romanesco has taken this 15 mg dose level several times intranasally (see his posts on page 1 of this thread). But going much beyond that dose is probably not advisable.
This reference provided by KP on page 1 of this thread says the Kaxinawa Indians snort Kambo as a snuff, but the this reference does not provide dosing information.
Finally, if you are going to experiment with alternative routes of administration of kambo, such the intranasal method, remember to observe the normal preparations before taking a full dose of kambo, which requires being on diet without solids or salt for at least 12 hours. Reference:
Kambô, The Spirit of the Shaman.