My logic for putting it in /A/ was that it had an erowid article and I keep finding similarities with Kratom in terms of effects. One lad on erowid was smoking it but he's probably a mentalist.
Funnily enough, I had it the first time at my mate's dad's bit. He was a bit of a character, liked his Kratom and all that other herby stuff - wasn't into the taste at first.
I recently found that there's a hippy tea shop in my city that sells half-kilo bags of the dried leaves so I picked it up with a gourd and bombilla to boot.
I've been preparing it in the gourd, sweeping the leaves to one side to make the mate avalanche and just putting in hot (Not boiling!) water and taking it straight. Might get some honey though, it's still a bit mescaline-y in taste but it's growing on me!
I switched from coffee to mate at work, though I'm a heathen heretic and just use a cafetiere to make it. There's a nicely stimulating caffeine hit in the morning and, as I top it up throughout the day, the caffeine disappears and by the end of the day I'm still awake but not so nervously buzzed as I would be with coffee. I still have my gourd and bombilla somewhere, but it barely gets used as it's just too much faff for just myself. While I like the effect, I can't really find anything psychedelic about it (using Rosamonte or Taragui), certainly nothing like what I experienced with Kratom. The flavour was a bit weird to start, but it's really grown on me.
