Tell me about your cactus tea/syrup visuals

[tregar]

Please tell me about your open eyed or closed eye visuals with cactus alcohol extraction, cactus tea or syrup. Pure mescaline visuals are welcome too. Here are a few from the literature:

An account of a peyote experience from "The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience" by Robert Maserter, Ph.D. and Jean Houston, Ph.D:

Example No. 1. This contains no especially unusual elements but does describe a good many of the more common components of the psychedelic experience. Of particular interest is the summation by the subject (S), at the end of his account, of the reasons why he considers the term "consciousness-expanding" to be warranted.

S, a thirty-six-year-old assistant professor of English literature, had his peyote session in the company of the guide and S's wife, neither of whom took the drug. Several pre-session interviews and some correspondence and other reading had prepared S for his experience and eliminated misconceptions and most of the anxiety concerning it. S's own account follows:
My peyote experience began in a house on a farm in the rugged hill country of Northwest Arkansas. A kind of tea had been brewed from the green 'buttons' or tops of the cactus plants and I had no trouble consuming an amount the guide told me was sufficient. The Dramamine I took ahead of time apparently was instrumental in keeping the hour or so of nausea within manageable proportions.

Apart from this nausea and some feelings of being alternately too hot and too cold, no effects of the drug were noticeable for about one and one-half hours from the time of consumption. Then I suddenly became extremely aware of the croaking of frogs and then of the chirping of crickets. The former came from a stream about a block or so away from the house but sounded very close and I fancied that the frogs had come down to stand before the door and serenade me.

Darkness had come on almost unnoticed and my attention was first called to the dimness of the light when my wife got up to turn on a small lamp that was standing on a table in one comer of the room. Very shortly after this I saw moving toward me across the room a ball of red fire about the size of a golf ball. It drifted, swaying a little from side to side, while moving toward me at about the level of my shoulders as I was seated in a chair. I felt no uneasiness, only interest, and when the ball of fire had come close enough I poked at its center with my finger. It then exploded, a lavish shower of multicolored sparks cascading and dropping on the rug at my feet. I smiled happily at the others and remarked: 'It has started. Now let's see what kind of traveler I am going to make.'

Ever since I first had heard of the peyote I had wanted to observe the effects of such a drug on myself. I sought no particular experience but I expected to have a happy and interesting time and also possibly to learn a good bit about my own psychology. The beautiful images some writers have described were something I hoped would be a part of my experience. While outside the house were lovely natural surroundings that later I planned to explore.

To see if the images would come I closed my eyes and perceived at first a succession of geometric forms, mostly circles and triangles. The colors were soft pastels and aroused in me a kind of emotional warmth that encompassed my wife, the guide and all of my surroundings and remained with me throughout most of the session. This warmth was accompanied by a sensation of relaxing muscles, although the mind kept very much alert and alive. Then began the images I had wanted to see, brilliantly colored and drenched in white and golden light. Also, objects in the images seemed to generate a light of their own and cast off glowing and pulsating or rippling waves of color. The first image I remember was of an Egyptian tomb made of granite, alabaster and marble. Behind it great golden sculptures of pharaohs rose to awesome heights and there was the fragrance of eucalyptus burning in brass bowls mounted upon tripods of iron that had the feet of falcons. Priests in ornate headdress ringed the tomb and raised their arms to greet a procession of many brightly robed figures bearing torches and with faces obscured by masks resembling the heads of various beasts. Funerary orations seemed to blend into marriage ceremonies where fruit and great platters of meat, even the forbidden pig, were served up by fierce glistening black slaves. The platters were placed upon massive stone steps leading to a dais upon which were seated royal figures in carved black chairs whose arms were the heads of solemn cats.

From a distance, after that, I saw pyramids and knew that in one of these the ceremony just observed was unfolding. But the pyramids were transformed into haystacks, golden under a huge red sun, and then these became dunes in a great desert. Here, tents were clustered half-buried by swirling stinging sands. Inside one of these, in appropriate garb, my wife and I were seated on pillows of camel's hair. Girls in filmy garments were dancing, their dark eyes flashing above gleaming white teeth. There were tambourines, a drum, and strange stringed instruments, playing a music I could hear and that seemed intended to lay bare and set quivering the elemental passions of the listeners. Swarthy, scowling, bearded men were ranged near the tent's entrance. They had black, glaring eyes, wore daggers, and some held naked swords in lean weather-beaten hands.

In many of the images that came to me I saw myself, sometimes with my wife, more often alone. I was a fur-capped Mongol huntsman, cold-eyed and cruel, bow in hand, striking down a running rabbit from the back of a racing, gaunt half-wild stallion. I was a stark black-robed figure, protected by an amulet suspended from a heavy gold chain that was worn about my neck, somberly wandering, lost in bitter ascetic reflection, among the crumbling walls of old temples overgrown by thick, twisted and gnarled vines. At other times there were legions of warriors, darkening deserts or in ranks that extended across immense bone-littered plains. There were brown-cowled monks, pacing cloisters in silent, shared but unadmitted desperation. Image after image after image, flowing in succession more rapid than I would have wished, but all exquisitely detailed and with colors richer and more brilliant than those either nature or the artist has yet managed to create.

Again and again I returned to the images, so numerous I could not begin to recount them, but in between times many other curious phenomena came to my attention. So extended was time that once it seemed to me I lighted a cigarette, smoked it for hours, looked down and noticed that the cigarette still had its first ash. A few moments were hours, possibly longer, and any one event seemed to take almost no time at all. I remarked to my wife that 'We are out of time, but that is not to say that time has run out.' What I meant was that, in the moment when I spoke, time's fingers had ceased their nervous, incessant strumming upon the space that contained us. But that space was—how can one put it?—irregular. A space that expanded and contracted and imposed upon us (actually, of course, upon me) the arbitrary quickening rhythms of its pulsations. For, as I remarked, this timeless space was a bubble, and would burst. Then I experienced a dull sort of sadness, since I wanted to remain forever out of time. Or, if not that, then in a world of moments which, like those I was experiencing, were enormously extended. I wanted to know that those moments would not, in some instant to be dreaded, snap back like an elastic drawn out for a while but then released as if God were punishing some pleasure so great as to be an unforgivable transgression.

I believe it was simultaneous with this that I became aware of the body that encased me as being very heavy and amorphous. Inside it, everything was stirring and seemed to be drawing me inward. I felt that I could count the beats, the throbbing of my heart, feel the blood moving through my veins, feel the passage of the breath as it entered and left the body, the nerves as they hummed with their myriad messages. Above all, I was conscious of my brain as teemingly alive, cells incredibly active, and my mental processes as possessing the unity of perfect precision. Yet this last, I suspected, was not really true and instead my mind, 'drunk on its own ideas,' was boastfully over-estimating its prowess.

Sensations were acute. I heard, saw, felt, smelled and tasted more fully than ever before (or since). A peanut butter sandwich was a delicacy not even a god could deserve. Yet, I took only a few bites and was too full to eat more. To touch a fabric with one's fingertip was to simultaneously know more about both one's fingertip and the fabric than one had ever known about either. It was also to experience intense touch-pleasure and this was accentuated even further when, at the guide's suggestion, I 'localized consciousness' in the fingertip with the consequence that all phenomena at that point were greatly enhanced.

I took my wife's hand and it seemed to me a great force of love flowed through my hand into hers, and also from her hand into mine, and that then this love was diffused throughout our bodies. Her smile, her whole face was beautiful beyond description, and I wondered if I would be able to see her like this when the drug experience had ended.

Together we walked to one end of the room, where a large reproduction of Rousseau's Sleeping Gypsy was hanging on the wall. Try as I might I could not at that time decide if the Gyspy was a man or a woman, but my wife said 'A man,' and I accepted her judgment. Studying the bulging-eyed beast in that painting, I saw that its mane is all dendrites and energy pulses through each branch and is transmitted to the brain of the sleeping Gypsy. The beast seemed to be sniffing, while the moon shimmered and winked and smiled, and the strings of the instrument that lay upon the ground were plucked by an invisible hand. I saw that in the painting gray-green waters never stir to wash upon brown sands. The sleep of the Gypsy was endless. The beast hovered, rooted forever in its place, and the life that I now breathed into that scene gave new life to me but not to those figures transfixed in captive immortality projected by a brain long since gone to its rest and returned to the dust. Better, I said, to be a live beholder than to be a great artist in his grave. Better life, than to be an immortal but immobile Gypsy or on or sea or beast. My life suddenly seemed to me infinitely precious nd I cried out with joy at the thought that I was now living so much in so short a span of time.

Later, we walked in the woods and by the river and it seemed that my love was so great it evoked a response from animals, birds and plants, and even from inanimate things. On the river bank, as the sky began to brighten, I threw my arms around my wife and at once the birds broke into a song that bespoke a universal harmony always existing but requiring that one approach it in a certain way before it can reveal itself. The silver-surfaced river, bathed in fresh dawnlight, reflected trees reaching down as if yearning toward the heart of the earth. The leaves of the trees were as intricately patterned as great snowflakes and at other times resembled webs spun by God-inspired spiders of a thread of unraveled emeralds. The beauty of nature was such that I cannot describe it, although I have managed to retain some measure of the feeling it awakened in me.

Along with all this there were torrents of ideas, some amplifications of my own past thinking, but others that were strange and entered my mind as if from without. At the house, when we returned and the effects were much less, it seemed to me that what I had experienced was essentially, and with few exceptions, the usual content of experience but that, of everything, there was more. This more is what I think must be meant by the 'expansion of consciousness' and I jotted down at that time something of this more I had experienced.

The consciousness-expanding drugs, I wrote then, enable one to sense, think and feel more.
Looking at a thing one sees more of its color, more of its detail, more of its form.
Touching a thing, one touches more. Hearing a sound, one hears more. Tasting, one tastes more. Moving, one is more aware of movement. Smelling, one smells more.
The mind is able to contain, at any given moment, more. Within consciousness, more simultaneous mental processes operate without any one of them interfering with the awareness of the others. Awareness has more levels, is many-dimensioned. Awareness is of more shades of meaning contained in words and ideas.
One feels, or responds emotionally with more intensity, more depth, more comprehensiveness.
There is more of time, or within any clock-measured unit of time, vastly more occurs than can under normal conditions.
There is more empathy, more unity with people and things."There is more insight into oneself, more self-knowledge.
There are more alternatives when a particular problem is considered, more choices available when a particular decision is to be made. There are more ways of 'looking at' a thing, an idea or a person ..."
In an appraisal of the effects of his session, made about five months later, S said that his view of the psychedelic experience as "essentially a more" still seemed to him to be valid. What he had "carried away from" his session was "above all a feeling of very great enrichment." He retained "a more acute awareness of color, a much increased apprecia*tion of the great beauty of my wife, and a wonderful awareness of the almost infinite detail that objects will yield up if only one will give them one's attention."

Most important of all, S thought, was "the knowledge and certainty I now have that it is truly possible to attain to a sense of harmony with all creatures and things." He felt that this sense of harmony as he had experienced it during his session provides the person with "a strength, serenity and capacity for loving not possible when the experience of harmony is wanting." S was having some success at "re-invoking" the harmonious state and making it a part of his everyday life. He felt that this must be done without the "invaluable help of peyote which shows one the way but then, quite properly, leaves one to follow that way through one's own efforts. This has to be so, since the way pointed out has its application in this world, not in the peyote wonder-world." S added that his experiencing of the "universal harmony and what it confers was the richest single event of my session and probably, also, of my life."

In evaluating the session just described, we regarded it as being a very positive and pleasant one for the subject. However, it was not one of those more profound experiences met with in the drug-state in which the subject confronts himself on the deepest levels of his being, receives some basic insight or understanding, and emerges transformed in some fundamental way.

Possibly these deeper levels were not reached because the subject had no need to reach them. His adjustment already was superior and this is reflected in the thoroughly wholesome or healthy-minded charac*ter of his session. Few psychedelic experiences are so free of "negative" elements as this one, although all of our subjects had to meet such basic requirements as: 1) successful present functioning; 2) absence of de*tectable signs of psychosis or serious neurosis; 3) absence of past history of major mental illness; and 4) adequate preparation for and positive expectations concerning the drug experience.
We would add that when these and a few other preconditions are met and when the session is adequately managed, the chances of any subject's "getting into trouble" are reduced to very slight proportions.

An experience with Trichocereus bridgesii from Wade Davis "One River, Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest":

It was noon, and the sun had burned off the sea mist. We waited for an hour or two until the light softened somewhat, and then we ate several handfuls of the dried flesh of a cactus we had found in the mountains of Bolivia. It was a wild relative of huachuma, or San Pedro, the Cactus of the Four Winds, a magical plant rich in mescaline used by curanderos on the northern coast of Peru. The species we had collected, Trichocereus bridgesii, had never been reported as a hallucinogen, but an old Aymara woman we had met on the altiplano had referred to it as achutna and said that it made one drunk with visions.

We sat quietly on the sand, watching the waves crash on the shore. Both of us soon felt queasy, a faint trace of nausea that could have been the first sign of intoxication or the onset of poisoning. This uncertainty slowly gave way to an unmistakable sensation, a warmth in the belly, a faint intimation of what lies ahead. The wind breathing in the air, a bird in flight, silent and composed. The waves falling on the sand, spitting up white froth. Suddenly the wave was within, the ebb and flow, pulsing, moving physically into the body.

We stood up and walked along the beach toward a headland where the ocean swell broke over a series of tidal pools, alive with starfish, urchins, and crabs. A surge of energy carried us up the face of a cliff, bare feet touching rock, dark stones bursting into blossoms. The wind blowing off the sea lifted us onto a broad promontory beyond which lay the entire desert. Every gesture brought forth a reaction in the dry air, a wave of color that ran away to the horizon. The air took form, became tactile. It was like swimming in a pool of soft pastel light. I turned and saw Tim silhouetted against the sea. Overhead was the confusion of a dazzling sky. Around the sun were figures flying in circles, creatures with red breasts, blue serpents for hair, and eyes like saucers of light spinning in tighter and tighter circles. A vortex of memory. A song, a luminous spiral. Tim's voice, a vision of blinding light, a tapestry of pearls embroidered with gold and silver thread, a blanket to rest on.

The sky opened. A dome of the deepest blue gave way to black with small crystals of light flaring on all sides. I looked down and saw the brown earth receding. We were caught on the wings of birds, passing through space, through emptiness, over lands of purple sand and rivers of glass running to the sea. From the desert shapes emerged, castles and temples, enormous lizards draped over dunes, totemic figures etched onto the sand, a mere semblance of known things. Flying along the wild face of mountains, in the wind the touch of clouds on feathers. They were our feathers, sprung from the skin. The eye of a hawk. The beauty of water carving veins in the earth. The wind carrying us away into the night sky and beyond the scattered stars. Nothing to fear.

Suddenly, a distant voice came from far below. A well of darkness. The pale face of a smiling child. I turned and saw a raptor arched across a morning sky, flying on, its beak aimed at the center of the sun. There was no sound, just the image of a soaring bird heading for oblivion. And then a slow spiraling descent that seemed to draw the earth to my feet. And once again the ground. Slowly I stood up and walked to the point overlooking the sea. The sun was down. Hours had passed. I looked back and saw Tim sitting on a stone at the center of a pool of velvet light. Pogo darted in and out of shadow. We had no idea where we were, and for a moment Tim seemed uncertain.

"Are you okayi" I asked. The words came awkwardly. We both laughed.
"Did you see the sun£" Tim said.
"Yeah."
In that moment all things seemed possible. A collective vision, movement through time and space, metamorphosis—these were no more illusory or wondrous than the beauty of a dry blade of grass sprouting from beneath a rock in that barren desert.

Tim followed me to the edge of the bluff. We walked blindly but managed to find a way down the rocks. The moon had yet to rise, and beyond the far side of the cove, headlights passed in the darkness. There were ships landing, small parties of men delivering contraband. We rested on the beach and then continued up the shore, retracing our steps until we came upon a strange sight: an enormous whale bone stranded in the sand. I looked back and saw waves of color flowing from Tim's brow. I walked on, climbing slowly up a steep slope that rose from the sea. Pogo darted ahead, chasing a fox. I paused at the crest of the hill and waited. To the east the mountains lay bare, a dark ridge on the night horizon. Overhead stretched the Milky Way. And here below, parked on the desert floor, was the Red Hotel.

The moon had turned slowly through the sky, and the desert was coming alive. Colors softened. The light changed, and silver traces flashed by in the rough wind. The surge of waves on the shore, the deep breath of exhaustion. We collapsed on the sand, -with Pogo hovering by our side. Clouds rolled by, time was suspended. The smugglers worked through the night. Foxes yelped, the odd bird cried. Gradually the east*ern sky lightened, and the first intimations of dawn took us both by surprise.

"Listen to that," Tim said.
There was a low drone in the earth, deep, unmistakable. An impulse, resonant and complete.
"That is the sound of life," he said. "I'm not speaking in metaphor. I mean the actual sound of life. The tone of energy -within your cells."
The dawn was fully upon us, and the clouds to the east took on a luminous tone in an empty sky. Every color of the sunset returned in an infinitely more subtle hue. A great rolling wall of mist swept over the shore, and by the time it dissipated, there were fishermen on the beach, combing the surf for bait.

From "The Varieties of Psychedeilc Experience" by Robert Masters, Ph.D., Jean Houston, Ph.D:

In a representative example of the usual sort of entertaining or innocuous aesthetic image sequence a male subject, S-3 (peyote), experienced the following

A platinum snail about twelve feet high and studded with rubies was pulled along on its wheels by a much smaller and brightly painted dwarf carved from wood. The curious couple was closely followed by a host of metallic, gem-covered insects—grasshoppers and beetles, bumblebees, and mosquitos, all of fabulous size and brilliantly gleaming, gliding' or walking or hopping with the precision of wound-up toys. These then were followed by strange creatures from some wildly imaginative bestiary—all converging upon a lush oasis in the golden desert where the foliage seemed to have been created by Rousseau."

As regards the "twelve feet high" snail, very often the subject knows the dimensions of the imaged object although, of course, the size of an image cannot be measured. This may be true even when the imaged object occurs alone and cannot be compared with other things in the environment. Also, as in this case, the scene may be such that nothing in it offers any clues concerning the size of the object. Apparently, in the unconscious act of constructing the object certain specifications have been made and these become conscious along with the image.

In some cases of eidetic imaging there is a transition from initial crepuscular imagery to increasingly more vivid images. Usually, there is at least some intensification of the images. But it is by no means un*known that the images appear in full vividness at the beginning or any earlier, vague images pass unnoticed. Also, such complex images as those described in the example are preceded in some cases by simple images—geometric forms, drifting "clouds" of color, clusters of "jewels," and so on.1 In the following case we are given an excellent description of the transition from simple to complex images. The subject, whose peyote experience remained entirely on the sensory level, also describes a few typical perceptual responses to the environment. More importantly, this account of his experience, including a final assessment of it, is representative of the evaluations likely to be made by a mature and nonmystically inclined individual whose experience has remained on the sensory level.

The subject, S-4, a forty-one-year-old journalist and former musician, writes:

The first impressions began to appear in about an hour. With the eyes closed I saw multicolored lines and streaks, faint at first but growing stronger, in a sort of moving kaleidoscope. The constantly shifting patterns reminded me of Disney's visual interpretation of the Bach-Stokowski orchestral transcription in his Fantasia, which I had seen some fifteen years before. These images involving play of light, color and movement, were replaced by a static series of patterns of rich hues and abstract design, somewhat like tapestries. They followed at regular short invervals, changing automatically like a slide projector. There seemed no way of detaining a particularly pleasant one by concentration.

It seemed more pleasant to keep the eyes closed and enjoy the train of inner visions than to examine the various objects in the room. Though their colors and shapes sharpened, which made an ordinary household object a thing of beauty, I did not have Huxley's feeling of perceiving the Platonic essence or Ding-an-sich of the objects in view.

The objects seen with the eyes closed seemed unrelated to thought or experience. As they gradually became more perceptible, scenes involving human forms and architecture began to emerge accompanied by play of light and color, a 'technicolor' of the mind's eye. As the visions grew more interesting, I could still convey my experiences to the guide, although my engrossment in the sensations was such that I did not wish to interrupt them for too long . . . Most of the scenes were oriental— brilliantly illuminated landscapes, strange towers, pagodas, and temples, furnishing the background to exquisite lovely dancers, often with delicate breasts, who could have been Balinese maidens.

The most vivid image appeared in a timeless setting: a Japanese girl, nude, standing motionless before a temple, her skin a lovely amber, her hair a glistening black. The colors seemed to glow with an inner light. It seemed a glimpse of something timeless and primordial, a sort of breakthrough into the realm of the absolute. There were no religious or mystical associations—the vision was there, objective, eternal, and yet ephemeral—in a few seconds I moved on to another....

We took a little stroll and outside in the warm Louisiana summer night—it then was after ten o'clock—the world was transfigured. The full moon shone so brightly it seemed like a sun, and like the sun, one could not focus one's eyes upon it any longer than an instant. The foliage appeared to be a lush tropical garden, the wax-like leaves and blades of grass taking on a deep olive hue. It seemed as if I could distinguish every leaf, every blade of grass. It was like walking through a fairyland, a tranquil, dreamlike landscape unassociated with anything I had previously known.

With regard to time, what impressed me most was how heavily each moment weighed in the scheme of things—the incredible amount of experience a few minutes could contain. Yet, in retrospect, each of the ten or twelve hours taken up by the experiment seemed to have lasted only a few minutes. Afterwards, I felt I had gone through a powerful experience, but there was no desire to repeat the experience. In a few months, perhaps, yes; but for the moment I had had enough of such strange and uncontrollable sensations.

I have read that certain tribes of American Indians use the peyote in religious experience. At no time during the experiment did I associate my sensations with religious or mystical feelings. To be sure, there were visions; but for me they were purely sensations. Sensation is a matter of degree; heightened through peyote or other drugs, it still does nothing for me except perhaps emphasize the mystery involved as regards sensory perception.

Since the sensation is pleasurable, I suspect that some who experiment with psychedelic drugs for 'religious purposes' are subconsciously rationalizing in an attempt to justify the taking of drugs in a society where drug-taking is taboo. Rationalization enables them to indulge in a pleasant and guilt-free experience; even taking drugs becomes a moral act if identified with the search for the Buddha.

[rocketman]

Tregar, let me say first, I never made tea or syrup. I have eaten the cactus flesh. I have done a/b, and I have done alcohol extractions.


Cactus flesh: This to me is the way to fly, but the nausea and gut load of a mass of expanding cactus is a turn off for many.

I tend to lay around during the peak, it feels speedy, yet dreamy at the same time. Most memorable would be the time where I closed my eyes and in a lucid dream state was transported to where the cactus I ate came from. I saw what I thought at the time to be the Andes mountains. This was a clear vision, like watching tv inside my head is about as well as I can describe it. This was also the first time I saw the jaguar that is a constant in many of my voyages. I had a very heightened sense of awareness. The rushes and waves keep coming, but they are gentle and steerable. I never had a bad trip on cactus or mescaline. The only way I can describe the peak on cactus flesh is like 6 or so hours of a brain orgasm. You know the feeling you get when you take shrooms and are peaking...the brain thing, well thats what you get with cactus, only its damn near constant and satisfying. The lucid dreaming I found happens only with eating the cactus flesh.

The open eye visuals I see are common with any form of mescaline. Very aztec to american indian. I saw a Thunderbird on my tile floor for 8 hours. Every time I looked at it, there it was in the same place every time. I am pretty sure that the thunderbird is a common vision in peyote/trichocereus voyages, and I believe that all of us being human tend to see similar things on similar substances. So, I believe a tripping american indian saw the thunderbird and painted it.

Cactus is a very spiritual thing. I feel the love of the universe, but not in an acid type way. Its more earthy and natural, where shooms, acid, dmt, etc. can be very alien.

I dont like smoking salvia by itself, but coming down from a mescaline ride, it is very synergistic. Mj is also very nice with mescaline. I remember a vision that we were all conduit (electrical). Interconnected feeding each other and from each other, almost like an electric train track needs another track to continue the circuit, we need energy to live. When we break or die we get replaced and move on. At the time I thought, man, what a shitty thing....but I have had similar acid trips that were very matrix like. I remember years ago talking to hip about that trip and he said he had similar, so again a common thread with mankind.

What does it all mean, who the fuck knows. Is it cool and enjoyable, yes, at least to me. Does it change my life, no, well maybe it changed what I believed in. Got me unstuck temporarily. I have said it in a hundred or more posts here, the medicine will find those that need it. Your seeking will likely end up in your finding. Good luck, and let me know how it turns out

[joey_megabucks]

i was given two 0 size capsules of mesc. One was brownish and one was whiter. I took the whiter one and had some visuals similar to 4 or 5 hits of lsd. Things were "breathing." It lasted about 14 or so hours. I think I gave the brown one to someone else... I'll be sure to try to get a hold of some this summer and take two.

The guy I bought my t. peru cuttings from used to slice it up and make a salad out of it. He said an 8" piece made him trip insane. I've never tried it. I just grow the stuff. heheh (too attached to cut it up and eat it!)

[tregar]

Thanks for the experiences! Very nice. The medicine is indeed just what this feline needed, and so glad it has found him after 10 months of reading.

After many weak morning glory experiences (the seeds must be weak)...

A feline last night soaked 25 grams finely powdered tricho. macrog. in 4 oz of everclear for several hours with shaking, then vacuum filtered it, collected the everclear in a 500ml vacuum filter flask with side arm, connected the side arm to a vacuum aspirator on faucet, put rubber stopper on and evaporated the everclear down to 2 oz, then consumed in dreams.

It was fairly potent, the feline has found his new ally & medicine (along with ayahuasca). Closed eye afterimages with blue and green icey geometric forms for a brief moment after looking into a bright lamp then closing eyes...and music sounded incredible for a few hours. Active and lucid, would be great to combine with a decent CWE of morning glory (to counteract the sedation of the LSA).

Peter Webster's brand new paper on ergot & morning glory ergoline alkaloids (see issue #2): http://www.earthrites.org/invisible-college.htm (he sent me the link himself)

Next time will change out the everclear everyday and let it soak for 7 days to get everything good out, then evaporate it down to 1 to 2 oz in the end; will also use 35 grams next time.

[rocketman]

3 pulls with everclear is about all you will get. The third one is pretty clear. You also loose quite a bit during the alcohol extract. For the full effect I would go up to 70-80g or more, but thats just me.



edited to say: One pull every 24 hours works great. Shake well every time you think about it, 4-5x a day.

[tregar]

Thanks for the tips Rocketman. A few pulls with everclear over a few days and a higher amount next time--will start with 40 grams and go up from there. I remember reading that Dr. Heffter used to "percolate" his everclear extract (page 38 I think) kind of interesting: http://www.heffter.org/review/Review2/chap2.pdf

Heffter's First Self-Experiment 5 June 1897:

Rather than eating dried Peyote buttons as the subjects of P&M's experiments did, Heffter followed Mitchell's procedure and made an alcoholic extract of 16.6 g of dried cactus, which he says corresponded to about 5 buttons. An alcoholic extract is the residue made by exhaustively percolating the dried material with 95% alcohol, then evaporating the alcohol under vacuum to dryness. To make this more palatable, Heffter pressed the extract tightly into a number of wafer-papers. He then consumed all of this material between 10:15 and 10:45 on the morning of 5 June 1887.

[Hippie3]

interesting site there, tregar.

[tregar]

Thanks Hippie3, gotta love the heffter institute.

I feel an afterglow today (unless I'm still tripping?) with a feeling of love for everyone and everything pure and simple, it's the same afterglow I've felt a decade ago after tripping on A the next day. It's very nice, since I've been in a funk for the past month to finally feel happy and energized, refreshed. This is powerful medicine, pure and simple. Having Indian blood in me from a century ago, I feel I've reclaimed a part of my lost heritage. My grandmother used to tell me stories of my Indian heritage but that was when I was very young and I don't remember much especially now that she's gone.

I just noticed "The Entheogen Review" volume XV, number 4 (winter solstice 2006) has a 3 page article entitled "mescaline for the masses" by Mamo Pachano that shows how to prepare a 190 proof alcohol extract.

[Hippie3]

i only remember going to a pow wow once as a small child. my grandmama was mostly cherokee.

[tregar]

Interesting...same here except great great grandmother was Cherokee, never been to a pow wow but my grandmother showed me an illustrated artbook of her drawings that still survives somehow to this day, very realistic -- portrayed the life of the tribe for years. My grandmother was also an artist but she painted oil scenes of the countryside with animals.

[StatelyPlumpBuck]

At what dosage point do open-eye visuals typically emerge? My friend has tried up to 350mg of Mesc HCL with no OEV (except for a mild shimmering effect around edges of objects)

[tregar]

Arthur Keps took 500mg of mescaline sulfate and had the following open & closed eye visuals (from page 116 of the "Psychedelics Encyclopedia"):

The experience resulted in his leaving his job as a state prison psychologist, in addition to other considerable changes in his life. Here is how he described what occurred:

At that point I retired to the bedroom and closed my eyes (it having occurred to me that if I kept them open a monstrous gobbler from outer space might come around the corner any moment) and found myself watching a 3-dimensional color movie on the inside of whatever it is one looks at when there isn't anything there.

All night, I alternated between eyes open terror and eyes closed astonishment. With eyelids shut I saw a succession of elaborate scenes which lasted a few seconds each before being replaced by the next in line.

Extra-terrestrial civilizations. Jungles. Organic computer interiors. Animated cartoons. Abstract light shows. Temples and palaces of a decidedly pre-Colombian American type. There was no obvious narrative connection between scenes or aesthetic coherence to the whole. The most awesome and sublimely well executed spectacles, things that compared quite well with the best in Western art, alternated with gross caricatures.

There was never any hint of a "technical" breakdown though--if something merely silly was being presented it was always dressed with all the slick perfection of a Walt Disney feature, plus all kinds of extra touches Disney could never have afforded.

Let's say that "despair" was being depicted in the form of the conventional cartoon castaway on a cartoon raft--a two-second thrownaway flash. Well, just for kicks why not add a transparent ocean, perfectly and variously tinted, in which bob a billion seahorses, singing and playing perfect tiny musical instruments? Certainly. Coming right up. That was the spirit of the thing. No job too large, no job too small. The difficult we do right away, and the impossible...we do right away too.

But I have exposed the conclusions I arrived at later in the terms of my description. What I was seeing was a kind of language of the gods, the ultimate vocabulary of the mind, which was, naturally, much more than just a collection of nouns. I didn't think it through until later, but at the time the tip-off was a radio discussion I turned on in a vain attempt to make the visions stop.

Every single word emanated from the radio got a magnificent image to go with it, as if the trivia being spoken had been the life's work of generations of media technicians on planets given over to the production of such artistic wonders--all for the purpose of this one showing in Art Klep's one man screening room...

[StatelyPlumpBuck]

Great info tregar.

[tregar]

Thanks. The Psychedelics Encyclopedia is really a great book--it has many great "experience reports" as I recently re-discovered the book after it had been sitting around for ages. Although my library is extensive, I had completely forgotten about that book.

I've done acid about a decade ago for many years, probably around 200 times or more in low dose, mid dose, and high dose...and only the alcoholic cactus extraction on 25 grams once so far, and I found it very much to my liking...hopefully after a few more times with stronger doses and longer soak times I will be able to compare the two as he did. I've done shrooms about a dozen times and limited experience with ayahuasca--though I plan more ayahuasca sessions as well. Shrooms were nice too with many visuals, electric colors, crystals in a crystal shop all turned into "alien heads with large dark round eyes, narrow mouth and chin", beautiful sound enhancement in the underground club playing tribal music...saw wavy multi-colored electrified "entities" out in a field, alien-like, dreamy and drifty, lots of "waviness", not as "lucid" or "brilliant" as acid but very fun none the less. I could fill up pages with my reports on visuals, sound enhancement, etc. with acid, but if you look around I'm sure I've posted a few here and there on the forum. With high-dose acid (10 hits) I've seen with open-eyes, holographic like images brilliant in color and lucidity, brightness...saw a three-dimensional Egyptian pyramid covered in gold sheen with glistening sands all around it, 3 foot long serpents twisting and twirling together like DNA strands, two 3 foot long dragons covered in gold mosaics and patterning, elf-heads popping up in the lawn in the grass outside, 3 angels made of white light about a foot tall holding hands and dancing in a "ring" around a bush in a front yard, etc. intensely mystical and religious as well.

I found this recently on a forum...what do you guys think about his comparison?

Xorkoth:

The differences between LSD and mescaline would really only be indistinguishable by users who had only used one psychedelic, very few times, or who had not ever used any psychedelics. I think I know the study to which you are referring, and that study used people who had had very little to no previous psychedelic experience. Once you get some experience in several compounds, you realize how vastly different LSD and mescaline are, and indeed, how different almost every psychedelic chemical is compared to almost every other. There are literally hundreds of them, and each is unique in its own way. But mescaline is extremely, fundamentally different from LSD in every possible way I can think of.

For one, mescaline does not tend towards ego loss. Rather, it tends toward ego amplification and clarification. This is probably the biggest difference but it makes the two very different chemicals. Also, mescaline is very, very calm compared to LSD. LSD is a tryptamine, and like most tryptamines, makes the thoughts race, and contains a significant "mind fuck" aspect that can result in a very difficult but also very mind-blowing journey. Mescaline is a phenethylamine, and although not all phenethylamines are like mescaline at all, mescaline itself is characterized by a very calm and meditating mind state, with actually not a whole lot of racing thought going on at all. The mescaline state of mind is vastly easier to navigate with calm and uniform emotion, whereas the LSD mindstate (and mushroom) consists of rapidly fluctuating emotions. If one were to graph the effects, it would be a series of sharp ups and downs, whereas the mescaline graph would be more of a smooth, gradual sine wave, never getting as high as LSD might, but also never getting as low.

Also, the physical effects are drastically different, although at low doses to inexperienced users, I guess I could see how they would be indistinguishable. LSD consists of an "electric" body buzz, whereas mescaline is much more earthy and warm and pleasurable (in general), as is typical of phenethylamines in comparison to tryptamines.

Finally, the visual effects of the two chemicals are very, very different. LSD seems to dramatically alter visual perception so as to view objects in seemingly more dimensions than our usual three. Colors abound, and rapid breathing and morphing of objects is common. Also, fractals are common to see at higher doses. The visuals from LSD are sharp and crisp, and well-defined, and detailed to an astonishing extent. On the other hand, mescaline's visuals are generally much more subtle. There is a slowly breathing of objects, and a faint crawling of small things like print, but the biggest difference is that mescaline visuals are almost cartoon-like, in that they make everything stand out in enhanced color and vividness, but they don't even come close to the sharp, detailed visual enhancement of LSD and some others. Mescaline's greatest visual characteristic is often described as showing you the world around through a lens of enhanced singificance, if that makes sense.

Anyway, I hope this was illuminating to you on the differences between LSD and mescaline. I think that study is extremely misleading in many ways, because as an experienced user, I find the effects of LSD, mushrooms, and mescaline to be vastly different, and I guarantee I could differentiate between them at a sufficient dose for a full trip with absolutely no problems. it also helps that I've used somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 research chemical psychedelics as well, which haver really helped me to understand the psychedelic state and the differences between various drugs extremely well.

If you ever have any other questions about psychedelic, or any chemical in particular, PM me or get ahold of me in some other way. or go to Erowid and find my reports by the Erowid Author name of "Lightwarden". or go to Bluelight and read my various posts as Xorkoth.

Also please keep in mind that my statements are generalizations, and every user will experience these drugs somewhat differently. But this should give a good general idea.

Unlike Xorkoth, I never experienced "mind fuck" with acid and also, some of the visuals that form out of nothingness seen with acid could also be called "disney-like" and cartoonish imho--not all but some of them.

Jonathan Ott (Pharmacotheon):

Under proper experimental conditions, many would be unable to discern much difference between mescaline and LSD. In fact, peak effects of these compounds are remarkably similar, and these drugs (as well as psilocybine and psilocine) show cross-tolerance, suggesting they produce their effects by similar neural mechanisms.

These experiences were relayed to me by people who took tea prepared from cacti:

Kube:

With closed eyes vivid landscapes in the desert with blue and yellow geometric patterns on some of ixxxx finest tea. it was the first time i tried ixxxxx.

free spirit:

w/ mescaline i find the visuals to be very unique. moreso on syrup than on pure. using ixxxxx as well.

the visuals were not distortion based like shrooms and acid seem to do. the visuals instead were like 'slid' over the existing imagery. like laying a stencil over it. (for example, i could see the wall and the chair, and they werent distorted at all, but overlaying it all were these intricate patterns)
w/in these visuals, ive seen various different landscapes. interestingly they tended to favor mayan or incan themes. temples, or vast statues and walls that were like canvases.
lots of geometric shapes...

never gotten the same visuals on pure mescaline. only the foul foul syrup!

Afro88:

Exactly the same visuals I've had in my mescaline experiences. I used Pedro and boiled it into a tea. Definite incan theme, blocky angular shapes and characters. At one stage there were about 20-30 squares overlaid onto each wall of the room aligned up into a perfect grid that all uniformly moved horizontally towards the corner, while shifting between the colours blue, red and green. Amazing stuff, I felt extremely grounded and blissful the whole time.

From Heinrich Kluver "Mescal & Mechanisms of Hallucinations":

Putt, for example, found during a state of mescal intoxication that each audible stroke of a pendulum produced an "explosion of colour." Prentiss and Morgan discovered that the beat of a drum had the power of increasing the beauty and variety of the visions. One of Rouhier's subjects stated that the sound of the low notes of a piano produced an hallucination of violet, while high notes gave rise to rose and white. The harmonies of a musical composition evoked grandiose architectural visions—"a basilic court with statues." Dixon also may be quoted in this connection: "the effect of the sound of the piano was most curious and delightful, the whole air being filled with music, each note of which seemed to arrange around itself a medley of other notes which appeared to me to be surrounded by a halo of colour pulsating to the music."

And who could forget DM Turner's paper: http://www.lavondyss.com/donut/guide/mescaline.html
Dr. Weil Mitchell's experience: http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=42614