Experiences - San Pedro experiences

[TMM]

You can't really OD on mescaline. It's supposed to last 12+ hours and it's very difficult not to throw up at some point. I suppose the headache could be attributed to sustained periods of intense thought. SWIM often has killer headaches when coming down from psychedelics.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Thanks for the info on OD'ing on mesc. Helped swim out alot. Appreciate it.

[morican69]

Originally Posted by runitsthepolice

What happened after the experience is the most profound. He tells me that his mind has been affected positively by the experience. Swim used to think that all the hippies out there were just bsing about how psychadelic drugs cause great positive changes in their lives. Two days after the experience swim found the willpower to quit smoking cold turkey, and it has stuck. He also has been eating healthier and taking better care of himself. He used to be lazy and not give a shit about his body but this all changed. He tried eating right and quitting smoking before but was never really successful at either.

Swim is experienced with a variety of psychadelics but nothing really good or useful came out of his experiments besides for a fun night. This was different. It would be interesting to understand the biological mechanisms behind what happened to swim. Maybe he just decided to change coincidentally. Who knows.

If it had a positive affect like it seems to have had in Swims life, then it don't matter how he achieved it. Props on the accomplishments...

[runitsthepolice]

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING TRIP REPORT MIXES AN MAOI WITH MESCALINE, THIS IS POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS. THE AUTHOR OF THE FOLLOWING REPORT, SWIM, RECOMMENDS CAUTION. YMMV

15g of peruvian torch powder was gel capped in large capsules. 1g p. harmala seeds were gel capped as well.

T 0:00 Seed capsule eaten

T 0:30 Begin ingesting cactus powder gel caps

T 1:30 Final gel cap is consumed. The cactus eating is spread out in an attempt to acclimate the body to the substance and reduce nausea. Something is felt, but probably placebo.

T 3:00 Some nausea, but not nearly as bad as fresh cactus. Swim is definitely feeling it now, much stronger than swims previous report in this thread with much less cactus material. Torch seems to be a little stronger than Pedro, or perhaps it is the Hamala. More experimentation is needed.

T 3:30-8:30 Nausea subsided, this is definitely the way to go. Swim puts on some house music and reads some other experience reports. Talking with others on the computer and around the house, a unique sense of empathy is felt. Swim is feeling sharp, even though he is fairly strongly under the influence. This time is spent conversing with friends and surfing the internet. Visuals are mild and pleasant. At some point some jwh-018 is smoked. Swim no longer felt sharp, but it was very nice.

T 8:30 Visuals subsiding, swim is in a great mood. He wants to go to a bar but decides against it.

T 10:00 Swim has to do stuff tomorrow so 2.5ml gbl is ingested now and at T 14:00. Sleep is achieved easily. Felt pretty normal, with high spirits the next day.

[Ralf_4]

swim had an incredibly life affirming journey. swim brewed around 60g of the dried stuff up and drank about a third of the liquid - good trip was pretty light though.
about a week later he drank around 3/4 of the remaining stuff. This is what he wrote:

''I drank the nasty stuff at 11.00am over the course of about 2 hours.
after about an hour i started to feel the effects coming on (i know an hour!!) and for about 3 hours after they intensified until they started to plateau at about the 4 hour point. i was looking for an answer in using the drug and i wouldnt normally use it recreationally. for the first few hours i just bummed around the house listening to music and watching bits of tv and then i got bored with my room as i felt i had reached a new level so i wandered downstairs and started watching tv in the living room. an episode of futurama came on and i watched it completely engrossed in the story (it was the one with the space honey). i continued watching and at the end right at the emotional peak it said "just wake up" and it seemed so incredibly significant and i burst out crying, it seemed so relevant to my life and so insightful about how i had spent this last year. (it has only been about drugs)
This was a major turning point i had found an answer to my problems and now i had to face them to tackle them. An episode of simpsons came on and the visuals jumped in intensity about a mile, so i went out for a smoke to change the environment. A train passed and i noticed that the first half of the train's lights were all red but the second half were a nice shade of green. i pondered this but could make nothing out of it so i went back in and decided it was time to go on a walk. i just walked out of the house and walked towards the station near me. along the way it was very dark and i had quite an intense thinking time, i reached the station happily but felt it would be best to leave quickly in case a train came and saw me staring at the ground strangely! i started to go back but as i got further and further from the station it seemed i was getting more and more buried in darkness (i live in the middle of nowhere so ther were no lights anywhere).
I knew exactly where i was going but somehow i kept thinking i was lost, i had been down this route thousands of times but i felt so incredibly lost. then a car came down the road next to me and when its headlights shone through the trees this incredible split second view came that was just so beautiful and incredible but the car went past and again i was plunged ito darkness and i felt sad that this beauty only existed for such a small time. once i got back to the house i noticed that when i looked towards the station the sky turned red around it yet my house was a bright green and i thought that i had to dispel this myth of home being good and anywhere else being bad but i went back to my house out of instinct.
i got back in and rolled another ciggy and realised that everywhere i looked everything had a shade of red applied to it but i just tried to ignore it and watched some more tv. i watched the simpsons for ages and the visuals came and went not making much of an impact on me but then 'The golden compass' came on and i was intrigued with the whole story and i became amazed with the everything!
On the aleithiometer random symbols kept jumping out on me and telling me things at one point i made a note of the symbols which were 'the horse, the crocodile and the mouse' i still have no idea what that means but it seemed deeply significant at the time.
The movie finished and the effects seemed to have noticably dwindled so i just sat in the calm watching 'never mind the buzzcocks' and i felt how the players felt the whole way through and i felt so sorry for lethal bizzle because everyone took the piss out of him just for being a rapper even though he was very curteous and nice to people (hes not like an ordinary rapper - hes nice!). I could practically see the emotions eminating from people and how Phil Jupitus is just a wanker (he makes little contribution, he isnt funny and is incredibly spiteful). the effects started to go down more here and i had the last little bit of emotional telepathy while watching QI. The trip ended at roughly 11.00pm about 10 hours of trip.
I started to ponder what had occurred in this trip for me and it made an impact on me that i will not forget in a hurry. This drug is truly amazing and should not be used just to get high. if u wanna trip take mushrooms or acid, if u want a truly deep meaning to eminate from from inside your brain - mescaline is the way to go.''

[haplo_09]

Is there a way to reduce nausea, if you smoke some MJ before the trip?

[ElectroStep]

The nausea really isn't that bad.

Yes, weed would help.

[Benga]

a gram or so of powdered ginger works with quite a few substances, so does tea made with fresh ginger.
b

[dirt]

AGFNM (a good friend not me) has had a lot of luck with a juicer and san pedro. first she will juice it next she will put it all (cactus mush and juice) in the ice box. when it is all ice she will add lime juice and water to start brewing a tea. the boiling water she will recommend to be low. if you get a thick snot add more water. after 3 hours use a t-shurt to get out the thick stuff and drink. she had nice trip with lots of yellow red and greens....

[slownerveaction]

I was doing research on the "bigger" lessons people seem to take away from San Pedro experiments, and a friend passed this along to me. Not sure exactly when it's from, but it seems relevant.

I recently found a 14" section of San Pedro cactus weighing about 1.5 pounds. I'm only 26 years old and in pretty good shape. I've been vegan for years and only regularly take B12 supplements without any pharmas for about a year. I've had a handful of experiences with mushrooms, 2CB, and MDMA. I'm a scientist by trade, though I subscribe to a less formal architecture of knowledge than most scientists - I often doubt the presence of an objective reality. Having done some cursory reading about the cactus' effects on the human body and how to prepare the material, I decided that I was smarter than everyone else and did it my own way.

I've been a long time user of the Champion juicer. Since most of the methods for prepare cacti for consumption seem to lyse the cells of the plant through drying, boiling, or pulverizing and then to reduce the sheer volume of this extracted dried, boiled, or pulverized material, I thought that juicing it (essentially an intense homomgenization) would be perfect. I'm a some-time raw foodist, so it appealed to me for that reason as well.

I cut the cactus radially into 1/6th strips without despining or decoring and ran the strips through the juicer with the juicing plate installed. The juice that came out was green and clear, if a bit stringy. The "solid" effluent was actually a bubbly, fluffy, oddly sticky substance of a lighter green color. I froze both materials for about a week before thawing them out the next weekend.

The ensuing week was a little high energy but not high stress. I was in the middle of a noir novel and McLuhan's "Understanding Media". I was excited for the cactus, perhaps a little too much so. On Friday night, I took the material out of the freezer. On Saturday at about noon, a few hours after a breakfast of oatmeal and orange juice and a short trip to work, I drank the "juice" part of the cactus over 30 minutes. It tastes horrible, but if you hold your nose closed and mix in some sugar, it's bearable. I was very anxious about this experiment - I wanted it to work well.

T+0:00: Puttering around my apartment, cleaning up, adding lines to a neglected drawing, and thinking about minutiae.

T+0:30: First alert. Something is up. I had this feeling once before on a much smaller amount of cactus that just left me feeling relaxed. Did I underdose again, as always? Shit. A white piece of paper with black ink seems almost fluorescent. I am really hoping for strong visuals.

T+1:00: Feeling quite anxious for something to happen. Not sure how much was cactus-induced anxiety and how much was me bringing too many expectations to the table.

T+1:15: Nausea. Had a hit of marijuana, worked perfectly to calm my stomach.

T+2:00: Still not much else. Paper is still bright. Am I just too hardhead for even this much? A friend suggested I down the fluffy effluent. Of course! I pushed it through a coarse mesh filter hopefully getting out the spines and drank everything that went through - very little solids left in the filter. Also quite gross, but the texture was more offensive than the taste!

T+2:15: I want to lay down because moving around feels overwhelming, though not uncoordinated or unmanageable. Just a lot to keep track of, feels like busywork. The corners of the bedroom ceiling are waving like the ocean and a shadow on the ceiling is moving around like a cartoon monster but the room as a whole is holding together. It's fascinating but also a little threatening and I can't figure out why this is so. I know it's just a shadow. I suspect I am under the influence of something.

T+2:30: Time dilation is apparent. Sitting back down at my computer, I immediately recognize an effect I've seen on mushrooms: the text of a page floats around, tectonic plates of words. Very pleasant, makes me happy. I keep reading and enjoying the words.

T+3:00: Feeling hungry, make a PB&J sandwich. The shrubs outside of the window just seem prettier than normal. I'm starting to let go of what I expected to happen and am just enjoying what is happening. Neighbor comes home, says hi. I feel very relaxed, happy, and connected. We hang out in the yard for a couple hours, talking about the neighborhood, the city, the economy, and the birds that inhabit our yard. A very excellent time.

T+5:00: Back in the house now, in front of the computer. I put on a live recording of Animal Collective and "Daily Routine" comes on. After the bouncy part, when the music is getting spacey and drawn out, I am totally mesmerized by it. I keep replaying that section over and over. A fern in my computer's wallpaper is waving it at me, squeezing in and out like an hourglass. The lights filtering into the kitchen through the shrubs and window are brighter, beautifully. Not patterns, just beautiful like cross-processed slide film.

T+7:00: Very definitely on the way down. I take another hit of marijuana to see if there's any life left in the cactus, but it doesn't seem to do much. Not unpleasant, though.

T+9:00: I'm starting to feel a little worn out, so I just sort of putter around, cleaning, stuff like that.

T+10:00: Almost totally baseline, I get in bed, turn out the lights, and just enjoy the feeling of the bedsheet as I wait for sleep. Not anxious about waiting at all.

Not only that, but this is a follow-up addition that was apparently written a few weeks after the first section above:

"Expectation leads to disappointment. If you don't expect something big, huge, and exciting, usually...uh...I don't know, it's just not as...yeah." -The Books, "Smells Like Content"

I went into this trip with huge expectations. I wanted my mind to be blown and I was going to do it on my terms, dammit! I was so determined to have a prescription experience and that cramped it for the first few hours...or did it set me up for the wonderful feeling of letting go of the expectations? Hard to say, though if I stumble upon another cactus, I think I'd try not to build it up so much before partaking.

I really enjoyed this kind of "trip", if you can even call it that. I was never out of control or losing touch with reality. People have described 2CB as being nice because you can "snap out" of it if you need to deal with something. I felt like I didn't have to snap out of anything - I was either participating in what was going on (listening to music and watching the fern) or I was letting it inform my psychological state in an undirected manner (hanging out with my neighbor). There was no "snap", just me and the cactus, hanging out on a Saturday afternoon. I think I'd like to try a higher dose, but to tell you the truth, I found these modest effects to be quite enjoyable. I've been working on integrating the bit about expectations into my life to positive effect.

[runitsthepolice]

12" san pedro cactus was skinned and despined, leaving the outer green xylem in tact. The cactus then had its core removed. The remainder was thrown in a blender and liquified. When swim tasted it it was much more bitter than the 12" peruvian torch that he had tried ingesting long ago. He felt nothing after eating that torch. After realizing there was no way the he could drink a blender full of cactus juice straight, he decided to add peanutbutter and banana to the blender. This did not help much. Extraction or boiling the cactus was out of the question because people were coming over later and swim couldnt smell up his house.

Over the next hour swim managed to drink 2/3 of the liquid in the blender. He gave up and poured the other 1/3 out. He then enjoyed some spike99. Two hours later swim began to feel the first effects. He then promptly barfed. After that the effects came on stronger and one of his friends called him to go out to a club. They met up and headed out to their destination. After they got there swim decided to partake in some gbl.

Swim was really enjoying the music (electro house mostly). He danced his ass off. The cactus lasted the whole 3~hours or so that they were at the venue and then started to weaken. He ingested it between 5:30 and 6:30pm and it lasted til about 2am pretty strongly. Swim made his way home and passed out easily.

Swim would describe his experience as mildly visual and not very intense overall, a very fun experience. What happened after the experience is the most profound. He tells me that his mind has been affected positively by the experience. Swim used to think that all the hippies out there were just bsing about how psychadelic drugs cause great positive changes in their lives. Two days after the experience swim found the willpower to quit smoking cold turkey, and it has stuck. He also has been eating healthier and taking better care of himself. He used to be lazy and not give a shit about his body but this all changed. He tried eating right and quitting smoking before but was never really successful at either.

Swim is experienced with a variety of psychadelics but nothing really good or useful came out of his experiments besides for a fun night. This was different. It would be interesting to understand the biological mechanisms behind what happened to swim. Maybe he just decided to change coincidentally. Who knows.

[Nothingnew]

Ok, so many weeks ago SWIM and his sister decided to have a mescaline trip after reading "The Doors Of Perception" by Aldous Huxley.

They bought about 26 in. of rooted San Pedro. First batch was chopped, frozen overnight, blended, then put into a pot and cooked, strained, and cooked again down to a green liquid; It took about 6-8 hours.

The San Pedro tea was so nasty SWIM and sis did everything possible to avoid tasting it. After drinking about 60 fl. oz. of the TERRIBLE liquid, SWIM went out back and sat on the porch until his stomach could settle.

Sitting in a recliner, SWIM recalls smoking a very large J and just sitting there watching the trees and children play off in the distance. All the while, feeling a heavier, and heavier body high, almost suffocating.

T - 45 minutes or so: SWIM takes a hit of the J, looks at the smoke and does a double take. "Holy shit, there are rainbows in my smoke!" Then stands up, the heaviness of the body high is gone, replaced by a grand euphoria. And the visuals were... gorgeous. The colors were so bright and vivid! SWIM had never though life could be this beautiful. After a while of this, it gets a bit deeper.

At about T - 3 hours: SWIM peaked. He saw things moving in odd distorted ways, saw ghostly roots growing from the pool edge, he saw life itself leaking from the water. Water IS life, he decides. Then the visuals start to fade in and out, then it all starts to go away. =(

SWIM's sis starts to trip a bit after he does, but the liquid is so vile that her stomach can't handle the bitterness, and she gets sick and goes to bed.

The second batch SWIM cooked down to a blackinsh green goo, consistency of corn starch with water, probably because it is mostly cactus starch. Then SWIM had a bright idea. He takes flour, mixes it with the thick goo, rolls them into small pill sized balls, and covers them in powdered sugar. Packs them up and takes them back to do another trip with. Didn't quite have enough in the second batch to pass the visual threshhold though, him and a friend only got a good body high.

Now, SWIM has bought more cacti, 48 in. of Trichocereus bridgesii, which is usually considered more potent than San Pedro, just not very well known. That's goin down in a couple of weeks. SWIM will have his 2 tripmates keep trip journals and post those too if anyone would like. Peace.

[69Ron]

Originally Posted by Nothingnew

Now, SWIM has bought more cacti, 48 in. of Trichocereus bridgesii, which is usually considered more potent than San Pedro, just not very well known. That's goin down in a couple of weeks. SWIM will have his 2 tripmates keep trip journals and post those too if anyone would like. Peace.

SWIM did an alkaloid extraction on bridgesii and found it quite active at about 70 mg, which is too low for mescaline to be that active. It was about twice as potent as mescaline. So there’s apparently either another hallucinogen present that is stronger than mescaline, or there’s an MAOI present, or both.

The bridgesii trip is very different from pachanoi. It starts out with a sedated dreamy feeling and then changes to a clear headed mescaline trip. But it doesn’t feel completely like mescaline. It is very nice though.

[Nothingnew]

I think it's the 3,4-DIMETHOXYPHENETHYLAMINE. It's the only known other psychedelic alkaloid present in bridgesii but not the pachanoi, but the only recond of this alkaloid I know of is fromt the PIHKAL. But we may have already had this conversation somewhere else...

[slownerveaction]

Originally Posted by Nothingnew

I think it's the 3,4-DIMETHOXYPHENETHYLAMINE. It's the only known other psychedelic alkaloid present in bridgesii but not the pachanoi, but the only recond of this alkaloid I know of is fromt the PIHKAL. But we may have already had this conversation somewhere else...

So we're on the same page, the page in PIHKAL on DMPEA is what you're referring to, right? He notes that there has been no activity observed in man up to 1 gram, presumably orally. I've been curious about this compound in two avenues: in conjunction with an MAOI and possibly as a true "mescaline-like tofu". Shulgin mentions 2C-D as a "pharmacological tofu" and I can't help but wonder if DMPEA has the some kind of similar potential, just nothing on it's own (which 2C-D does have).

[69Ron]

Originally Posted by slownerveaction

So we're on the same page, the page in PIHKAL on DMPEA is what you're referring to, right? He notes that there has been no activity observed in man up to 1 gram, presumably orally. I've been curious about this compound in two avenues: in conjunction with an MAOI and possibly as a true "mescaline-like tofu". Shulgin mentions 2C-D as a "pharmacological tofu" and I can't help but wonder if DMPEA has the some kind of similar potential, just nothing on it's own (which 2C-D does have).

It may have no activity when taken alone as stated but it’s very possible that it’s active in conjunction with mescaline as a modifier or potentiator of mescaline. It could possibly make mescaline more potent. The effects of achuma are very different from the effects of san pedro. An alkaloid extract of achuma is stronger than the same amount of pure mescaline. So something is going on. An alkaloid extract from san pedro is slightly less potent than pure mescaline if it’s not purified well.

[Ciel]

Swim ate about 6" of a cutting, took a while to cut off the needles and outer layer and then eat the tasty mescaline, mmm. Swim thinks that his does was med or med/light. When he did it he was backpacking with his friends. They were gooming, taking cactus and some club cookies, swim just had cactus. Swim's twin brother got lost for a little bit, tip don't let the person tripping the hardest fall to the back. Swim spent a good few hours walking and talking with his friend about concepts and life. Swim and his friend spent some time looking at the view when they finally got out of the forest and had a view of the pacific ocean and cliffs from the hill they were on. Swim's cousin was ontop of the tallest nearby hill tripping hard from the view, swim and his friend joined them and he had a moment where the wind was rushing past him and he started running through it, just experiencing the wind, it was amazing. Swim's cousin went to find his brother who had been tripping too hard and decided to take a nap in a meadow. Swim's cousin almost gave up on looking, hearing from backpackers that they hadn't seen anyone when some birds told him that swim's brother was just a little further up and off the trail. He found him, and his positive energy helped swim's brother overcome his problems, and they all met up and chilled down by the ocean before setting up camp. Fucking chill.

[runitsthepolice]

Warning: Some of the dosages and combinations in the following experience are ridiculous. They should never be emulated by anyone.

At home, two chili cheese dogs are consumed at 5:15. No psychedelics are consumed for at least 4 days prior

5:30 pm: Swim mixes 3 tbsp of powdered peruvian torch cactus in some yogurt. Swim is able to get it down quickly but he told me it was still awful.

7:00 pm: Swim can tell he is going to trip but fears it will not be as powerful as he would like. He notices his pupils are constricted. Weird. Swim parachutes ~2 grams of p. harmala seeds. Swim mixes another tbsp of torch powder in yogurt and eats it.

8:00 pm: Swim is too impatient to see if that will be sufficient so he parachutes two more tbsp of torch powder to make sure.

10:00 pm: Swim is now having moderate to strong visual hallucinations. Swim can read but the letters keep moving around. Swim is getting a little nervous and tightness in his chest so he decides to have 1.5 ml gbl. Swim barfs a few minutes later, its entirely made up of green cactus powder. Swim didn't have to barf but he decided to so his stomach would maybe calm down.

10:00pm-1am: He gets on my account and writes a post somewhere on drugs forum. He wouldn't tell me where. I'll figure it out later and beat swims ass if he wrote something stupid. Swim watches a rerun of a ufc fight where a guy gets kicked in the face. The gbl makes swim hungry so he asks his roommate if he wants anything to eat. Roommate says no so swim decides to go to a burger place. Being out of the house and listening to music feels good. Swim orders way too much food and as he is sitting in the burger place notices that he is hallucinating hard, and that this is awesome. He returns home. Swim manages to spill old chinese food that was sitting out all over himself, his backpack, and pretty much everything. Damnit! After eating his burger he has 1.5 ml more gbl and lays down in a trip friendly room in his house. He puts on some trance and chills there for about 30 minutes. Swim thinks about how indians sang some songs while fucked up and how that somehow relates to what swim is doing. Swim comes out at about 1 and heads to bed.

1:15 am Swim has 2.5 ml more gbl because he was supposed to do some stuff tomorrow and wants to get to bed. Well guess what, this time gbl has no effect. Swim lays in bed and watches tv, hallucinating harder than ever. He gets up to check the mirror and his face is morphing. His pupils are bigger than they have ever been for the duration of the trip.

1:45 1.5ml gbl consumed. Fall asleep damnit!

2:30 1 ml gbl consumed. Swim keeps thinking of mistakes hes made, stupid shit hes done, awkward situations. It was never scary or really horrible but at this point swim kinda wants to be done.

3:30 2.5ml gbl consumed. At this point swim is still hallucinating strongly, but he is so strongly depressed by the gbl that he is apathetic. He lays there, giving in to the fact that he might be totally fucked tomorrow.

4-4:30???: Swim finally passes out

9:30: Swim awakens. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? THIS SHIT STILL? Swim is still hallucinating. This is fucking ridiculous. Swim gives up and lays in bed til he goes to class at 2. Swim now has a gbl hangover and is still tripping. Great. On campus he sees a one of his favorite local djs. The guy says hi and tells swim about how much work he's doing and how stressed he is. All swim can say is "me too, catch you later." Swim eats some food and makes it to class. After class he talks to his friend for a few hours. Every once in a while her eyes start drifting around her face. Swim keeps it cool though. By the time he gets back home around 7:30 pm, he is finally sober. This shit including comeup and after effects lasted a full 24 hours. Peak effects were from 10pm to maybe 10:30am.

Swim wants to add the next night he slept for 13 hours

Reputation Comments on this post:

Thank you for several detailed reports. Please be more careful in the future.

[Lady Codone]

My best friend, Fonda Cox, sent me this message in her own words regarding her San Pedro trip:

From: Fonda Cox
To: Lady C.

I recently tried San Pedro for the second time and had my most wonderful experience yet with the substance. I'll skip the boring preparation info, but will say that I used the "powder in gelcaps" method, which yielded about 35-40 pills.

__________________________________________________ _______________________

Background Summary:

*Prior Psychedelic Experience: Salvia leaf, psilocybin mushrooms, San Pedro.

*Dosage: 10 inches of "fat" cactus.

*Set/Setting: At home alone on a Friday. Nice weather, uneventful day w/ nothing to do. Mindset was normal, no anxiety or other issues. Dosed on a full stomach.

*Trip activities: Reading, writing, sitting on the patio with my plants, music, surfing the web, napping, chatting with roommate and neighbors.

*Other substances ingested: A few sips of poppy tea beforehand to avoid withdrawals, which added greatly to the relaxed euphoria of the come up. Crystallized ginger and peppermint tea for nausea. Claritin-D for allergies, which were HORRIBLE at the time

__________________________________________________ _______________________

I'd heard horror stories about the nausea inherent in mescaline of any form and have a severe aversion to/phobia about vomiting, so I made sure to ingest anti-emetics like ginger, peppermint tea, and a non-sedating antihistamine beforehand, which worked like a charm. AT NO TIME DURING THE EXPERIENCE WAS ANY NAUSEA, PAIN, OR STOMACH DISCOMFORT EXPERIENCED. Surprising, considering the number of pills filled with large cactus particles I had to swallow (it wasn't finely ground, and was covered in grease from the non-stick cooking spray I used when oven-drying the cactus. Gross.)

The experience was one of energy and euphoria, with strong CEVs and spiritual thoughts. It was subtle in that I could still communicate and function properly but intense in that I felt a unique sense of happiness, confidence, and spirituality (along with the cool visual changes), which is just what I was looking for. Music had a strange quality to it, time seemed extremely sped up, and art took on a whole different meaning. My appetite was unaffected and I ate normally throughout with no ill effects. The experience lasted around 14 hours, with a full day of "afterglow". I saw things when I closed my eyes that defy description, like a "cactus sun" that was rising as if it were in a cartoonist's animation book where the pages are rapidly turned to provide the illusion of movement

Overall, it was a very fun and enlightening experience, especially considering that hallucinogens are NOT my drug of choice (opiates, pot, and mild stimulants are). Shrooms gave me a warped, psychedelic "brain soup" experience, while San Pedro was more upbeat and spiritual. It felt like packing 2 weeks of vacation into a day, and the afterglow was as enjoyable as the trip itself. If I had to compare SP to one other substance, I couldn't. It shares similarities with SEVERAL drugs as well as having completely unique attributes. While I haven't tried ecstasy, it had some of the euphoria, tactile effects and empathy I've heard about with E. It shares some visual qualities with shrooms and dank marijuana, with a touch of stimulation ala propylhexedrine or caffeine. The "spiritual" and "cleansing" properties are wholly unique to mescaline cacti and can't be compared to anything else that I know of or have experienced.

San Pedro is a multipurpose entheogen that deserves respect and reverence, and I plan on utilizing it for more than just its positive mental effects. San Pedro contains compounds (such as hordenine) that have been shown to fight 11 strains of treatment-resistant bacteria. Being a sufferer of chronic UTI/kidney infection, this aspect will come in very handy. It's been used to treat addiction, mental disorders, and a host of other ills for millennia, all without long-term damage to the mind or body, unlike so many other treatment methods out there.

Who would I recommend it for? Well-adjusted, mentally stable adults interested in spiritual pursuits, soul searching, natural healing, traditional medicine, and introspection. For those in need of a vacation but lacking the luxury of actually getting away, San Pedro is a great mental escape. If you're in need of a new perspective on psychological problems, health issues, bad habits or hangups, San Pedro is a useful way to get out of your own head and see things from a new angle. It's great for enhancing emotions like empathy, self-confidence, and tolerance provided you already work on these things in your sober state.

Who would I NOT recommend it for? Mentally unstable folks, underage peeps, and those unfamiliar with its effects. If you're looking for a great "rush" or the next hot party drug, San Pedro is not for you. If you're seeking to numb out your feelings or self-medicate undesirable emotions, it's not for you. If you're going through a stressful situation or aren't in a good mental space for any other reason, SP is a bad choice. If you don't have the time or patience needed to research the effects and possible side effects of SP, steer clear of it. While uncommon, overdose, traumatic psychological events (bad trips), nausea/vomiting, and other unpleasant effects CAN occur, which is why prior knowledge of the substance is so important.

In conclusion, it was a great experience that I look forward to repeating. It seems that once every other month (6x per year) is a reasonable dosing schedule and will give me both time to reflect on what I've learned and to reinforce it and keep learning with additional trips.

San Pedro = My favorite psychedelic by far.

One <3,
Lady Codone

[Biomolecular Engineer]

SWIM's second experience with san pedro was also his best. He consumed roughly six grams of powdered cactus extract in gel caps around 10:30 AM, intending to have a day trip at his friends house. Began to feel slightly nauseous after 20 minutes, but was surprised it was not worse after his first experience and because he took it on an empty stomach. SWIM's two friends who took the same dose also felt sick, so everyone decided to go smoke some cannabis. SWIM and one of his friends immediately felt completely better, but his smaller friend continued to feel sick for about two hours, during which she threw up. Luckily she was able to hold it down long enough to absorb it.

SWIM began to feel effects first as a body high and euphoria around an hour and a half after dosing. The feeling of the San Pedro was much more relaxing than LSD or Psilocybin. Sitting on his friends porch, SWIM noticed that everything looked more warm and vibrant, but in a gentle way. Trees took on their familiar fractal patterns, and stains on the concrete floor began to move and shift. After relaxing outside and talking for a little while everyone went inside to eat. Unfortunately SWIM's friend had little food in his house, so he ended up with just some chips and orange juice. The lightly salted chips tasted good, but the orange juice was totally different. When he took a sip, SWIM was hit with several distinct waves of flavor, each one better than the last. The next few hours were spent throwing the football, smoking cannabis, and relaxing outside.

Around 7:00 they decided to go down to the river and skip stones. The river is about two miles from SWIM's friend's house, and the walk was slow and relaxed. It probably took between 30 and 45 minutes to reach the river, where SWIM rolled a joint and everyone skipped stones until the sun began to set. As darkness came everything changed. The tree fractals began to move more, and the whole world took on a different feel. Instead of the warmth from the day, everything was cool and mysterious. The change was very refreshing, as was the walk back to the house.

Down in the basement they played some Super Smash Bros and watched TV,
which was hard for SWIM because the entire time the light was running out of the TV and pooling on the floor. The only bad part about the experience was that SWIM's friends went to sleep around 2:00, but SWIM could not sleep for several more hours. San Pedro was the most relaxing trip SWIM has ever had.

Reputation Comments on this post:

nice description