2009
10.01

Japan25

Sorry, America – Iron Man is reality, he was built in Japan and not by Tony Stark either.

Hybrid Assistive Limb is by no means a new invention. 14 years in research and development this “cyborg-type robot that can expand and improve physical capability” has been around for almost five years now.

In the video footage making rounds in the net, the robotic suit that looks like some pieces of Star Wars Stormtrooper uniform fused with some funky Tron-type lights is worn by a normal man and enhancing his strength considerably.

Professor Sankai , the honored inventor of the suit and the leader of the development team claims the suit can make a human being at least five times stronger than he or she is capable of without it.

Genius as the engineers behind this exoskeleton may be, it sure sounds like they skipped a few marketing classes. The acronym and the market name for the contraption is HAL – reminder of the mutinous and murderous computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

And guess what they decided to name their company? What better than Cyberdyne, another homicidal computing system responsible of the genocide of the most of humankind in TERMINATOR movies?

When visiting Japan, we tried to get one of these absolutely bashment exoskeletons for a little test drive, but no luck. Well, the next time around they will probably be more common and more widely available…

HAL facts

2009
09.30

doll

“The Zone is not a territory, but on the contrary, a trial, which one either passes or fails. Everything depends on self-dignity, on how far one is able to distinguish between the important and the transitory.”

- Andrej Tarkovskij, STALKER

Madventures started the Russian journey driving to Ukraine.

In Ukrainian language “Chorno” means “black” and “byl” means “pain.” The word put together – Chernobyl – means Wormwood. In the bible, the Book of Revelations speaks about a falling star, which made the waters bitter and killed many men.

That star was named Wormwood.

Growing up in Finland, right next to the Soviet Union, Chernobyl disaster was something that couldn’t be dismissed. This wasn’t just another headline you could sweep under the carpet to make room for the next catastrophe. It wasn’t your regular apocalypse.

For once, we were living right next door to hell, waiting for that radiation cloud to rain some death on us all.

This was back in 1986, when the nuclear war seemed like an actual possibility. Yes, kids, there were times like that back when dinosaurs walked the earth. How funny then, that the radioactivity did not come from the bomb, but from faulty engineering and human lapse of judgment. Well, not funny hah-hah funny, but you get the point.

But even with that personal point of view to what happened back then, it was the visit to the actual power plant and the ghost town of Pripyat all these years later that really brought home the magnitude of the incident.

Picture the street where you live.

Go ahead, take that mental snapshot.

Now start toying with the image. Apply some cracks in the pavement. Trees growing through the asphalt, nature taking over the abandoned buildings, rusty husks of cars left behind by their owners. No people on sight. Wild animals run the alleyways. A deer walks through the unhinged front door of the house across the street.

Everywhere, flora and fauna have reclaimed the spot of land that man once tried to take over with concrete and steel, in vain.

This is your home and you will never return.

For the 50 000 souls who used to call the town of Pripyat their home, the image is reality.

The population left in a hurry, many leaving their personal belongings behind. Radioactivity tends to do that to a person.

Explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant reactor number four made sure they will never return, not if they value their life. Quite unbelievably, some of the older residents of Chernobyl exclusion zone have gone back to the land of their roots, now tainted by the poisonous gamma rays. They drink the water, farm the land, eat the berries and live with the consequences.

That’s what it means to call a place home.

Two workers died in the actual meltdown of the reactor, 28 firemen succumbed to the acute radiation sickness during the first three months following the accident. Thirty is still the official death toll given by the authorities. In reality, no one really knows the number of fatalities caused by the radiation released into the atmosphere and the subsequent fallout.

The liquidator groups, those sent to clean up the mess, were dealt the most raw deal. In this group of 600 000, the effects of the fatal subatomic particles endure to the present day and in future generations.

Radioactive iodine 131 effectively targets the thyroid. Thousands of people who were infants at the time of the disaster have contracted the thyroid cancer as a result of the burning reactor’s large releases of the radioiodine.

In the villages along the rivers that flow through contaminated lands, many of the young suffer from brain tumours. Newborn babies with assorted anomalies develop mental handicaps when – or if – they grow older. Some of the kids stop growing at a very young age and there has even been cases reported where adult persons’ skeletons and bodies incomprehensibly started to shrink.

These are the children of Chernobyl.

The question remains – could many tragedies have been prevented, if the evacuation had started immediately after the explosion, instead of authorities attempting to conceal the nature of the disaster and stalling for time for more than 24 hours?

R & T

Further reading:

Pripyat.com

2009
09.29

Hentai Top Ten

Japan08

Don’t get us wrong.

We dearly love Japan and it is most definitely not a land of perverted, profane and borderline pedophiliac. But then again, it can be that too.

10. PANTY FETISISHM

Popular urban legend claims that once there were vending machines in Tokyo that sold packaged used panties. True or not, we know for quite sure they don’t exist anymore. How do we know? Mainly because we used all our resources looking for them.

Panty fetish is one of the most well-known sexual perversions in Japan. We personally know a few of the sniffers and have even smuggled some of the said contraband into the country for the local connoisseur in our time. The sniffer in question wanted to stress that normally he preferred panties that had belonged to the people known to him, but paid us for our troubles anyway.

He could also smell and tell how long since the panties were worn by their previous owner. Take that, oenophiles!

9. EMETOPHILIA

After the Purga in Amazonian jungle, it was refreshing to be at the receiving end of the Roman shower once we got to Japan.

The odd thing about the experience (well, other than the obvious) was the gas mask worn by Riku. It was a product of Finnish Army, bought from Tokyo’s many army surplus/weird paraphernalia stores. How did the masks end up there? Someone in Finland making a bit of side business? It smelled like napalm, so it was used as well and had seen some serious action.

Anyway, if a beautiful Japanese woman hasn’t regurgitated at you, you haven’t really lived.

Not that we are in rush to try that again anytime soon.

8. OMORASHI

Omorashi is a common fetish in Japan and a form of softcore voyeur porn where pleasure comes from needing to urinate but not being able to, yet more often than not, watching those who need to urinate.

Typical Omorashi scene depicts a schoolgirl in distress looking for a place to relieve herself. And of course, they never find a free porta-potty…and then it’s time for the money shot: wetting oneself in public.

All this obsessing about schoolgirl outfits is a phenomenon known as Burusera, claimed to have nothing to do with pedophilia per se, although some such scandals have arisen from the scene lately. Then again, schoolgirl uniforms are meat and potatoes of the fetish clothing in the west too, so draw your own conclusions.

7. ELDERLY PORN

Shigeo Tokuda is truly the grand old man of Japanese porn.

Born in 1934 and still going strong, he is just one albeit the most famous example of the ever-growing subgenre in Japanese sex industry: elderly porn. It can hardly be called a mere niche – there are a lot of older people willing to spend their retirement bucks on the smut with an actor of their own age. Some estimates say up to 30% of all industry yen comes from elder porn.

Tokuda, the superstar of such classics as Maniac Training of Lolitas and Forbidden Elderly Care plus over 300 other titles has not yet told his wife what he does for a living.

And for all you who disapprove, old people have sexuality too – get over it!

6. ASHI FETCHI

Lovingly embraced by the Japanese, the crushing fetish actually originates in the good ol’ U.S. of A.

You could argue the giantess fetish (Women crushing soldiers, cars and other toy figurines), is the same thing as this fun pastime but then again I’m sure there are lots of you out there who beg to differ, too.

We got our taste of crushing in Tokyo. Let me tell you, those fruits got pulped!

But did it do anything for us? Well, to be frank and earnest (I’m Frank, Tunna’s the latter), not so much.

5. HAMMOCK FETISH

Having spent hundreds of nights in a hammock, this one should have been fairly obvious to us. Somehow the company and the conditions we tend to use this marvelous camping equipment rarely leads your thoughts to any kind of sex.

Jungle hammock is a very near and dear device to us and we would never dream of cutting a hole into one to gain access into some unmentionable orifice, but apparently there is a very strong subculture of effectively making a sex swing out of what was meant to be a camping bed.

Here’s an example of sex in the hammock.

Made you look!

No subtitles? Suits you right, pervert!

4. BAKUNYū

The translation: Bursting Breasts.

This is actually ero-manga with characters of Dolly Parton-esque physical attributes, with milk and milk-like substances splattered all over the place.

Bakunyū is just one example of many different fetishes in comic books, which take what is physically possible to do in “real” porn and just blow it out of the water. Popular erotic manga genres include incest between siblings, cross-dressing, yaoi (“boys’ love”), sex slavery, tough girl/wimpy guy porn and on and on ad infinitum.

And people read this stuff in public too without any hint of embarrassment, since it’s considered art, not pornography.

3. YOBAI

Now this is creepy – literally.

Yobai is what you call it when a man sneaks into a stranger’s house to have sex with the lady or the daughter of the house. This is said to be a very common practice in the olden days at the country side, but nowadays the fetish of sneaking up to sleeping women and luring them into semi-compliant sexual acts has moved to the sex clubs of the big cities, where pros pretend sleeping to their Johns.

2. COCKROACH PORN

There is porn and there is some serious hentai porn.

Some of this stuff most of us might be aware, through the on-going osmosis of pop culture where to the ooze tends to make its way to the surface of the mainstream – good example being tentacle porn.

And then there’s stuff like cockroach porn.

Yeah, we bet your mom and dad didn’t involve these bugs into the talk when they told you about the birds and the bees.

To further explore, we dare you to google the infamous Bug Eater series. Made in Japan, where else.

1. ZENTAI

Not so much a sexual thing as it is your own portable isolation tank.

Regularly used at the Madventures HQ as a meditation tool and a way to chillax. Can’t really explain, it must be seen.

This was just a surface scratch. If you are interested in such things as Japanese men having sex with air, eels poured in vaginas and gangbang orgies with well over hundred people, then you are truly blessed, for you have the miracle of Internet at your beg and call.

And probably too much time on your hands.

R & T

2009
09.29

fairey

Beautiful Aung San Suu Kyi artwork by Shepard Fairey.

U.S. Campaign for Burma

2009
09.28

Poorism

Riku ja skidit

Fact: most of this planet’s population lives in the third world countries or conditions.

For the privileged minority, picturesque ruins and exotic shopping malls won’t cut it anymore as the tourist attractions of the noughties.

The social and political problems have become the sights to see – therefore, the phenomenon of poverty tourism: guided trips through the slums and shantytowns of developing countries, even catastrophe sites.

Famous poverty tour destinations include Dharavi slum in India, Soweto in Johannesburg and even some poorer neighborhoods in major European and American cities. Mexico City, Cairo and Manila all have huge dumpsites that have become attractions. It has been reported that after hurricane Katrina, New Orleans became a popular destination for poorists.

Is poorism just another version of slowing down next to a car crash in order to get a better look?

There is definitely more than an ounce worth of truth to the claim. If you are taking a guided tour to a place without official infrastructure, you can never be sure if the subject of your gawking gets even a cent.

But there is another side to this phenomenon. I’m willing to bet these treks are real eye-openers to many. Make your homework, think about your safety and then decide if you really need an organizer to your trip or are you able to do it independently.

Obviously, there are places that are too dangerous to visit on your own, like many of the Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.

The business of taking holidaymakers into slums has also brought out the less principled impresarios always after the tourist shekel. For example, don’t let a huckster organize your visit to favela – you might even get a bullet in the head as a souvenir!

Then again, the unspoken law of the favela is that if you mess with a non-carioca, you are in a hard row to hoe. It’s never in the drug kingpin’s interest to induce the wrath of tropa de elite, the special police operation battalion, so rest assured a bit of shantytown justice is dispensed for all those who attack gringos without permission.

Fact: at least 3 billion people on the planet live on less than 2 dollars a day. If you are about to partake in poorism it’s up to you and your wallet to decide if you are going to treat them as human beings or as animals in the zoo?

Throw some money at the place and make sure it ends up in the right hands.

The best way to do this is to find a decent grassroots level non-governmental organization in whatever area you are visiting.

They might even have some use for you as a volunteer as well – and then you’re not just gawking at the car crash anymore.

R

2009
09.27

quad4

This documentary is made up from actual footage shot by the video journalists of Burma during the Burmese monks’ protest of September 2007. Several VJs were captured by the government forces.

They are currently in jail and expecting life sentences.

Here’s a description of the film from the official Burma VJ website:

“Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, the acclaimed filmmaker, Anders Østergaard, brings us close to the video journalists who deliver the footage. Though risking torture and life in jail, courageous young citizens of Burma live the essence of journalism as they insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country. Armed with small handycams the Burma VJs stop at nothing to make their reportages from the streets of Rangoon. Their material is smuggled out of the country and broadcast back into Burma via satellite and offered as free usage for international media. The whole world has witnessed single event clips made by the VJs, but for the very first time, their individual images have been carefully put together and at once, they tell a much bigger story. The film offers a unique insight into high-risk journalism and dissidence in a police state, while at the same time providing a thorough documentation of the historical and dramatic days of September 2007, when the Buddhist monks started marching.

”Joshua”, age 27, is one of the young video journalists, who works undercover to counter the propaganda of the military regime. Joshua is suddenly thrown into the role as tactical leader of his group of reporters, when the monks lead a massive but peaceful uprising against the military regime. After decades of oblivion – Burma returns to the world stage, but at the same time foreign TV crews are banned from entering the country, so it is left to Joshua and his crew to document the events and establish a lifeline to the surrounding world. It is their footage that keeps the revolution alive on TV screens all over.

Amidst marching monks, brutal police agents, and shooting military the reporters embark on their dangerous mission, working around the clock to keep the world informed of events inside the closed country. Their compulsive instinct to shoot what they witness, rather than any deliberate heroism, turns their lives into that of freedom fighters.
The regime quickly understands the power of the camera and the reporters are constantly chased by government intelligence agents who look at the ”media saboteurs” as the biggest prey they can get.
During the turbulent days of September, Joshua finds himself on an emotional rollercoaster between hope and despair, as he frantically tries to keep track of his reporters in the streets while the great uprising unfolds and comes to its tragic end.
With Joshua as the psychological lens, the Burmese condition is made tangible to a global audience so we can understand it, feel it, and smell it.”

Official Site

2009
09.25

5 for Friday

madvent_ss_japan_002

What is your favorite scene from this season’s Madventures?

RIKU: Can’t name one, gotta go with at least three – most positive and negative ones.

Never feared a scene as much beforehand as Ayahuasca ritual. Many a books I read, plenty of documentaries I watched but still I was completely terrified the first moment we met Don Francisco the curandero and I realized we’re going for it, for real.

The second one is the roof jump in St. Petersburg. The whole day I was petrified, I was 100 % sure one of us would die in the progress.

Those two were prime examples negative turning into positive and I guess it shows in the actual episodes as well.

But the easiest one and the most funniest one for me was – as I don’t normally shoot scenes myself was Tunna eating leeches filled with my blood in Russia episode. The wimp manned up!

TUNNA: Every scene is a favorite and over the top in its own way. But the highlights for me must be the crucifixion ritual in the Philippines, that weird zentai fetishist dude crushing stuff in the Japanese love hotel and midnight Aghori puja in India, where some of the scariest sides of human nature manifested themselves.

If you’d have recommend a country one should visit during his or her lifetime, what would it be?

TUNNA: Use your intuition. Do not necessarily go where others go.

RIKU: India.

The fictional character most like you?

RIKU: Mostly it’s Passepartout from Around the World in Eighty Days, but I wished it was Marco Polo. Which I claim is a fictional character.

TUNNA: Tarzan.

Where will you travel next?

TUNNA: India.

RIKU: Iceland. I have a crush on islands and that’s the last one of the Nordic countries I haven’t visited.

Why the hell you do the things you do in the show?

RIKU: Sometimes things I do are comical, but I don’t do it for humor. I do it for the story and the story is always better when you can add your own experience into it.

TUNNA: Harder it is to understand a culture, more important it is to understand it.

2009
09.24

Rikuwhite

Situation normal, all fucked up…

Our entry to Myanmar had gone almost immaculately. Before entering we had broken the smaller camera into even more miniscule particles and hid the pieces inside the seams of our clothes, hidden pockets of our backpacks and various body cavities better left unnamed. The border patrol gave us the stink-eye, the sort of unwelcoming stare usually reserved for the uninvited hobos hovering about one’s property. But in the end, it went smoothly. Well, nearly.

We had made an amateur mistake by not preparing ourselves to the only question this customs bacon was eager to find the answer to – where would we be staying? As always, we had no fixed plans and had definitely wanted to rent a room from a small guesthouse. This way the money we’d spend would go to common people instead of military regime. But in a moment of nervousness and not to raise suspicions, we blabbed the only address that came to mind – one of the fancy and of course government-biased hotels in Yangon.

Next thing we knew, we were on a taxi and on our way to the said hotel. We didn’t want to stay in wherever we were taken, but we had to do it to ensure our entrance into the country and were too jittery to change horses midstream. The cabbie seemed like a decent Chuck, but then again he could have been an informer, for all we know.

Having infiltrated Myanmar successfully we felt confident, hairy-chested and just about ready to punish ourselves with couple of bacas and beers. Then we arrived to our lodgings and we got the fear. Hard.

Something about the room just seemed to scream that we were under surveillance. Tunna started to look for hidden microphones and was quite certain the radio, the phone and the telly-vision set had some parts in them that did definitely not belong to the original design.

So we tried to keep our conversation topics light. Laugh it up, but you don’t know paranoia until you’ve spent a night as an illegal journo in a hotel ran by military junta. We weren’t about to hit the pit because of the slip of the lip.

But inna di lights, we checked out and started searching for new diggs.

We found the most excellent habitation on the 52nd street. This place was called The Three Seasons Hotel. The location was good and the prices are low, so you don’t have to be a coin intended or Mr. Richmond to stay there. Mrs. Ma Hla Hla and her family were very nice people and had more than adequate linguistic skills. They arranged tickets when we wanted to use transportation, rooms were clean and the breakfast was scrumptious.

Always remember: in Myanmar, the money paid to the government supports criminal and oppressive administration.

Don’t be an easy touch – whatever the business, always choose private, whenever possible!

R & T

2009
09.22

jesus

No words can really prepare one for a meeting with the really dangerous and violent gangs, no matter where in the world you are.

We’ve been to Manila, we’ve been to Port Moresby, both claimed to be one of the most dangerous cities in the world at one time or another. But in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, the feeling of threat is somehow even harsher. It’s just the sheer size of the gang turf, in this case a huge shanty maze build on a hill called Rocinha. It is possible to feel claustrophobic, yet completely overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place. What’s more, there’s a feeling of being constantly watched, which turned out to be true – more on that a bit later.

Most of the favela residents aren’t of course criminals, but ordinary, hard-working people living in a country where differences in standard of living are one of the greatest in the world. The people of favela do not necessarily have a real say-so in who is leading them. Then again, that can be said about most countries…

Anyway, our camera evoked interest but also suspicion from locals even before we reached the favela entrance. Before, we had been asked not to go this particular favela and to choose somewhere safer to film. We did shoot a few sequences in a place called Tavares Bastos, where local police presence was high. We quickly decided that it would be worth taking a risk and go to Rocinha if we wanted to capture any authentic material on tape.

A meeting with the drug traffickers was arranged up on the hills of Rocinha favela.

Yet for the most of our climb up the camera stayed in the bag – we really didn’t have any choice in the matter. We were told if we would shoot where we were not allowed to, some limbs would surely be hacked off to teach us a lesson in respecting one’s turf. It had become clear that compared to Tavares Bastos, Rocinha was a place where anything could happen.

Finally Tunna, myself and our trusty local contact Breno made it to the hills above the favela to the small outpost, where the seeming rulers of the Rocinha waited for us. We were frisked thoroughly before the interview could commence.

We brought a bottle of Finlandia vodka as a souvenir to the don and his men – well, boys really. These A.D.A. foot soldiers, already high as a kite on Jah knows what even though it was early afternoon, confiscated the bottle right away and finished it even before we had time to set our camera.

The gang members limited our camera angles very strictly, making sure we didn’t point it at the kill zone – basically the whole of Rocinha Favela below, where their scoped rifles were aimed. Just to make the place potentially more dangerous, there was a huge stash of cocaine right under our feet. We weren’t happy about the forced artistic choices, since it made the whole sequence look like it was shot in some sandpit. But then again we were not going to start arguing about framing with these duderinos.

They were the peacekeeping forces the Favela way – vengeful, intoxicated, malicious young gods watching over the populace of the slum, ready to smite down anyone with their wrath the second they strayed from the path of what passes as law and order here.

Yes, we got our interview with favela drug gang, but just barely, when the bullets started flying. Right there and then we decided to pack it up and trade what was left of our journalistic integrity for our dear lives.

R

2009
09.21

The hut is engulfed in the darkness.

The participants of the ceremony sit in a round. The curandero chants as every breath the jungle takes is magnified thousand-fold. We swallow the tea in halved coconut shells. Our bodies rebel against the brew.

Disorientation. Regurgitation. Dehydration.

We were promised peace and light, but right now only one word describes this dark forest we had strayed into. This is HELL.

The medicine of sacred visions, Ayahuasca is scientifically speaking a psychoactive aqueous solution prepared from Amazonian Vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) mixed with the leaves of dimethyltryptamine-containing species of shrubs Chakruna (Psychotria viridis).

Dimelthyltryptamine or DMT is a very strong psychedelic drug, found not only in plants, but also in trace amounts in our bodies. Its function is undetermined in the human system – unless you ask a shaman.

The word ayahuasca is the combination of Quechuan Indian words Aya and Huasca.

First one means “spirit,” “ancestor” or “dead person” (That’s cool in it’s own right – the actually think of those things as trinity) and the latter “vine”. Common translation is “vine of the soul” or “vine of the dead”.

Small but growing number of people around the world believe that Ayahuasca is a sort of Rosetta Stone of medicine, capable of conquering diseases western science has labeled incurable, such as cancer and HIV. While the shamans remain silent about the secrets of the vine and its true capabilities, Ayahuasca has been known to ease the suffering of people with depression and drug addictions. Its most important aspect seems to be the ability to give patients psychological therapy.

Ayahuasca ceremony is the center of the vine healing. In it you must surrender yourself completely to the divine, admitting your flaws, fears, guilt and culpabilities. Only then you can truly explore the world inside you and the world surrounding you.

The reason to drink the brew is to reach contact with ancestors and free the soul.

Our vegetalista, Don Francisco is over 90 years old. He says he can see into the future, travel in astral form, remove and cast spells.

According to this medicine man, nausea is not just our body’s reaction to the challenge we are putting our consciousness through. He calls this the purga, the cleaning the body from both physical and spiritual waste. Vine is a benevolent presence that can guide you through difficult experiences, but pushing the limits of perception does come with physical price, involving some serious vomiting, dry heaving and projectile diarrhea.

Scientifically speaking it’s just an altered state of mind, for some with strong feelings of paranoia and phobias. According to shamans this terror is something a person undergoing the ritual must overcome in order to attain knowledge and healing. Peace and light are on the other side of horror and darkness.

Filming the Ayahuasca ceremony is a risky proposition in more ways than one. There’s always the chance of a bad trip and the fear your losing your mind for good from the influence of spirit vine. Strangely enough, the closer the actual event came, we felt more and more secure in giving ourselves completely in care of Don Francisco.

Then there’s the professional angle: for the outsider looking in, the initiate undergoing the ceremony is stranded in the world of his own, mostly alternating between extreme nausea and complete detachment from his surroundings. By verbalizing the experience best we could, recounting each step of the trip and combining it with the physical reactions of our bodies was the only authentic way to externalize the experience. We didn’t want to resort to the crutch of cheesy special effects that could never make justice to what went on inside our heads anyway.

The actual impact of the Ayahuasca tea was shockingly strong. When we took it, within 20 minutes my perception was completely altered and I started hallucinating. Weird visitors replaced the darkness of ceremonial hut.

Some see them as snakes, some talk about DNA strands. Whatever they are, when under the influence of the brew, there is no doubt in your mind about the realness of these things. They swirl, writhe and wrap themselves around you, spewing a rollercoaster of revelations you can’t escape from.

Dredging the subconscious, the vine releases millions of visions that envelope you, triggering millions of ideas. Incredibly, you have access to them all. Ayahusca shows you the capacity of mind.

Majority of those visions were both hellish and unexplainable or memories buried so deep into the lower layers of subconscious, we had forgotten about forgetting them. Some of them were foreknowledge.

The time loses meaning. It stretches. Minutes become years.

We were facing our fears and looking them right in the eyes. And only then, it was possible to see somewhere far, far ahead where a beacon of light started to shine and guide my way out of the storm of visions…

R & T

Ayahuasca is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) and as such, can have interactions and contraindications with certain foods and medications. There is no overdose level with Ayahuasca. Increasing the Vine increases the richness and depth and transformative power of the experience.

http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v06n1/06158mao.html

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/maois/maois_info2.shtml

http://ayahuasca.tribe.net/thread/dab0ec6d-5d2d-42e2-bc81-25cbf92570f2