Dreamlike Sequences

In the 1960s Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo carried out a series of experiments using pure harmaline taken intravenously. He reported its effect in his book The Healing Journey as producing vivid mental imagery which took the form of dreamlike sequences accompanied by physical sedation and nausea. His subjects, all drawn from an urban background, often described the same jungle imagery of snakes, vines, jaguars and birds that native ayahuasca users reported. Other researchers since Naranjo have concluded that the beta-carbolines when taken orally do not produce a psychedelic state except at near toxic doses. Instead they seem to create a hazy, dreamy mental state along with an uncomfortable lethargic condition closer in effect to tranquilizers than psychedelics.

In, Neuro-Alchemy: Beta-Carbolines as Potentiating Agents, by J.B. Fleming