thundercles
03-05-2005, 06:03 AM
Presenting the first time worthy of me using a post icon other then "drugs" for a thread in a looong looong time, I even use "drugs" post icon only in flames, but this deserves a Peyote prolly one of the few times it will be used too, sadly.
Big Update in prep procedure!! Please reread it real quick, I changed from boiling to simmering and from 1-2 hours to 3 hours. thanks.
Well this isn't as much an FAQ as it just is general information since I don't know what questions people have about San Pedro. Most people don't even know what it is or that it contains mescaline in the first place. That's a damn shame cause it is sold in nurserys across the country and grows in many houses' front yards here in Phoenix. I counted 4-6 houses within a half mile square area in my neighborhood but the average neighborhood has about 2 or so houses with it generally here. Anyways, here it goes,
What is Mescaline?
Mescaline is most commonly known as the active ingredient in the Peyote cactus used by the Native American Church as their sacrement(correct me if I'm wrong here don't wanna offend any indians if I'm wrong). The chemical is 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenylethylamine. This means it has three groups of carbons attached to oxygens, which are bonded to the #3, 4, and 5 carbon atoms on a benzene ring, which is bonded to a chain of two carbons and on the second carbon of the chain there is a nitrogen atom. It is a hallucinigen in the phenylethylamine class which includes notorious drugs such as amphetamine, Extacy, 2-CB and many more. It differs from many of the common phenylethylamines in that it occurs naturally in plants. In the san pedro cactus I read that it is a growth hormone but I wouldn't quote it as bible truth for I do not have that source. It is in a completly different class of drugs then most hallucinigens which are tryptomines like shrooms and DMT. Its effects are intense colorful halluciniations and visions along with some uppity effects characteristic of its drug class and intense mood elevation, much like I would assume X to have although I have not done X so I don't have a basis of comparison there. Personally I favor mescaline as my favorite psycoactive drug of them all, even beating out Oxy, and I love downers so that says something.
What is San Pedro Cactus?
San Pedro Cactus is Trichosereus Pachanoi (yay remembered that off the top of my head) a Cactus that is indigenous to South America, although it can grow fine just about anywhere, especially in desert areas like the southwestern US (where I'm from :) ). All cactus tend to like sandy soil so a San Pedro will tend to grow better in a 50/50 mix of potting soil and sand then it will in just potting soil or garden soil. I happen to have two growing quite nicely in my backyard (for show, I'm not intending on eating my babies) in such a mixture. The cactus looks like a very narrow tall barrel cactus and is a very bright green color in comparison to other similar looking cactii. It will have about 5 or 6 ridges and extremely short spines in groups of three. These spines are so short and sparse that it is quite possible to rip a large chunk of one off with your bare hands. I did so today and was pricked only a single time. I could post pictures from the internet but they all suck balls and make it very difficult to identify a cactus. Instead I will post my own pictures that I have taken of cactii from my area. Pay very close attention to these pictures and my verbal description above as it is very easy to mix up this cactus with one that is not psycoactive and waste your time, or possibly even eat one with poison in it. Probably the easiest cactus to mix it up with is the Sereus because it is in the same family, but Serius cactii grow much much larger and are a much darker green. Below are some pics of san pedro cactus I harvested and tripped off of:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/Set89_02.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/Set89_01.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/Set90_01.jpg
Yes that's my cat Sir Cat btw, and no those pictures arn't that great. I will update this FAQ by editing it and when I do that I will add pictures taken with my super high quality digital camera and provide some nice like 800x600 shots of cactii I just harvested today and the cactus they came from which is one of the larger ones I've seen, as well as some pics of smaller ones in the hood. Update: some of these pics are now up and can be found at the bottom of the post.
Now as for getting a cactus, again I urge you to use caution, if it is your first time picking a cactus I urge you to have me or someone else you know who has personally delt with a san pedro cactus or knows cactii confirm your find. The best way to do this is to just go to a nursery and buy a san pedro for like 10 bux, then you'll know exactly what one looks like and can harvest it from people's front yards and such. If you don't have 10 bux then hopefully my pics will be good enough....
One last thing is that another cactus called the Peruvian Torch also contains mescaline and can be used just like San Pedro. It even looks pretty much just like San Pedro but with much longer spines. I informed a person in Drugs and Booze forum of the Peruvian Torch who lived in New York and he managed to find and purchase one from a nursery and just ate the whole thing and provided an excellent trip report. If I can find it I'll post a link but that was almost a year ago.
Update: I left out a couple important things on gauging your cactii's potency. Two big things are season of harvest and age of cactus. The San Pedro pumps out mescaline heaviest during a hot summer season. Also the age is probably most important, the younger it is, the more mescaline it produces. Based on the information I know, I would guess it is because a younger cactus will be growing more and faster and therefore is pumped more mescaline which is its growth hormone. This is also why the cactii you buy from a nursery will pretty much always work well: they will most likely be extremely young.
How do I get the mescaline out of the cactus?
Well this is the hard part. First you need to have at least a foot, I recommend a foot and a half of cactus per person. You need pliers. Use the pliers to pluck off all the spines as you do not want to eat or drink them. You will notice That the cactus is comprised of three layers: a tough outer skin a dark green inner pulp, and a core. The pulp is what contains mescaline and will be extremely bitter. I have a good sense of smell and can smell the bitterness of it right when I rip it off usuaully, and definetly can once the spines have been plucked. So what you have to do is get that green pulp seperated from the skin and core. This requires first peeling off the skin, which sucks royally. We've tried multpile ways of doing this and there is no way that really makes it suck much less, but freezing it seemed to help some, but it made it really cold on your hands to work with so there is a trade off. Peel off the outer skin removing as little dark green pulp as possible. now you can easily scrape the green pulp off the core.
Now what?
At this point you hafta choose whether you will eat or drink it. If you want to drink it then Simmer it for 2-3 hours and make sure the pulp gets broken up and distributed throughout the drink or it will be lumpy. If you eat it, just take chunks and swallow them whole try not to let it touch your tounge. In either case HAVE A CHASER, A STRONG STRONG CHASER. I have drunk some nasty stuff in my life, and I can say the only thing that tastes worse then san pedro brew is theraflu, yes it is even worse then robotussin. Then prepare for a roller coaster to set in about 30 minautes to an hour later, leaning more on the hour side. Make sure you plan 8 hours plus the hour onset for your trip to be safe as it lasts 7-8 hours although you should be able to function normally during the last half of the trip if you have to. I personally have been able to operate a car perfectly on Mescaline even near the peak, but everyone is different and I have an extreme tendancy away from visuals and towards mood alteration on all hallucinigens, so remember be safe and don't operate macheinery if you are too fucked up, but as I said before you shouldn't be too bad at least during the last 4 hours.
I will update and upkeep this FAQ as needed via editing this post. Hopefully tomarrow I can post the hi-res pictures of the cactus and add any more specific info I think up of. I can also start posting the answers to people's questions in this post if they need to be in the document (if it's something like "is this cactus a san pedro" with a picture I'll just reply).
Hope this document helps those of you looking to try something new or just looking for a cheap trip, and I hope it sticks around for a while, if not I'll bump it occasionally for new people :)
PICS:
I am linking to my photobucket to keep from possibly breaking tables and to keep the post accessible to 56k users. I have descriptioins followed by links:
Okay these first two pics are of the cacii I just harvested yesterday from someone's yard in my neighborhood. Nice sturdy cactus which I have tripped off before so this is the kinda thing you are looking for. The one on the left has a great bright color, the second picture you can see the spines on the cactus on the right very well.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0345.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0346.jpg
Okay these are of the two cactii I am growing in my backyard for show. They came off another very large san pedro but the skin is a bit darker, and earlier harvests off this cactus were not quite as trippy as I'd hoped, but they are good pics of a cactii in soil.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0348.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0349.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0350.jpg
All right, these are all Cactii I found within a quarter mile of each other:
these came from a cactus I have tripped off of before, it is probably one of the larger San Pedros you will find:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0351.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0352.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0353.jpg
These two were found about a quarter mile away in the same neighborhood, in the same yard:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0354.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0355.jpg
These two are one house over from the previous two and right next to each other:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0356.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0357.jpg
Here is a Sereus cactus, you DON'T want one of these, they look similar but you can see the subtle differences:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0358.jpg
Big Update in prep procedure!! Please reread it real quick, I changed from boiling to simmering and from 1-2 hours to 3 hours. thanks.
Well this isn't as much an FAQ as it just is general information since I don't know what questions people have about San Pedro. Most people don't even know what it is or that it contains mescaline in the first place. That's a damn shame cause it is sold in nurserys across the country and grows in many houses' front yards here in Phoenix. I counted 4-6 houses within a half mile square area in my neighborhood but the average neighborhood has about 2 or so houses with it generally here. Anyways, here it goes,
What is Mescaline?
Mescaline is most commonly known as the active ingredient in the Peyote cactus used by the Native American Church as their sacrement(correct me if I'm wrong here don't wanna offend any indians if I'm wrong). The chemical is 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenylethylamine. This means it has three groups of carbons attached to oxygens, which are bonded to the #3, 4, and 5 carbon atoms on a benzene ring, which is bonded to a chain of two carbons and on the second carbon of the chain there is a nitrogen atom. It is a hallucinigen in the phenylethylamine class which includes notorious drugs such as amphetamine, Extacy, 2-CB and many more. It differs from many of the common phenylethylamines in that it occurs naturally in plants. In the san pedro cactus I read that it is a growth hormone but I wouldn't quote it as bible truth for I do not have that source. It is in a completly different class of drugs then most hallucinigens which are tryptomines like shrooms and DMT. Its effects are intense colorful halluciniations and visions along with some uppity effects characteristic of its drug class and intense mood elevation, much like I would assume X to have although I have not done X so I don't have a basis of comparison there. Personally I favor mescaline as my favorite psycoactive drug of them all, even beating out Oxy, and I love downers so that says something.
What is San Pedro Cactus?
San Pedro Cactus is Trichosereus Pachanoi (yay remembered that off the top of my head) a Cactus that is indigenous to South America, although it can grow fine just about anywhere, especially in desert areas like the southwestern US (where I'm from :) ). All cactus tend to like sandy soil so a San Pedro will tend to grow better in a 50/50 mix of potting soil and sand then it will in just potting soil or garden soil. I happen to have two growing quite nicely in my backyard (for show, I'm not intending on eating my babies) in such a mixture. The cactus looks like a very narrow tall barrel cactus and is a very bright green color in comparison to other similar looking cactii. It will have about 5 or 6 ridges and extremely short spines in groups of three. These spines are so short and sparse that it is quite possible to rip a large chunk of one off with your bare hands. I did so today and was pricked only a single time. I could post pictures from the internet but they all suck balls and make it very difficult to identify a cactus. Instead I will post my own pictures that I have taken of cactii from my area. Pay very close attention to these pictures and my verbal description above as it is very easy to mix up this cactus with one that is not psycoactive and waste your time, or possibly even eat one with poison in it. Probably the easiest cactus to mix it up with is the Sereus because it is in the same family, but Serius cactii grow much much larger and are a much darker green. Below are some pics of san pedro cactus I harvested and tripped off of:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/Set89_02.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/Set89_01.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/Set90_01.jpg
Yes that's my cat Sir Cat btw, and no those pictures arn't that great. I will update this FAQ by editing it and when I do that I will add pictures taken with my super high quality digital camera and provide some nice like 800x600 shots of cactii I just harvested today and the cactus they came from which is one of the larger ones I've seen, as well as some pics of smaller ones in the hood. Update: some of these pics are now up and can be found at the bottom of the post.
Now as for getting a cactus, again I urge you to use caution, if it is your first time picking a cactus I urge you to have me or someone else you know who has personally delt with a san pedro cactus or knows cactii confirm your find. The best way to do this is to just go to a nursery and buy a san pedro for like 10 bux, then you'll know exactly what one looks like and can harvest it from people's front yards and such. If you don't have 10 bux then hopefully my pics will be good enough....
One last thing is that another cactus called the Peruvian Torch also contains mescaline and can be used just like San Pedro. It even looks pretty much just like San Pedro but with much longer spines. I informed a person in Drugs and Booze forum of the Peruvian Torch who lived in New York and he managed to find and purchase one from a nursery and just ate the whole thing and provided an excellent trip report. If I can find it I'll post a link but that was almost a year ago.
Update: I left out a couple important things on gauging your cactii's potency. Two big things are season of harvest and age of cactus. The San Pedro pumps out mescaline heaviest during a hot summer season. Also the age is probably most important, the younger it is, the more mescaline it produces. Based on the information I know, I would guess it is because a younger cactus will be growing more and faster and therefore is pumped more mescaline which is its growth hormone. This is also why the cactii you buy from a nursery will pretty much always work well: they will most likely be extremely young.
How do I get the mescaline out of the cactus?
Well this is the hard part. First you need to have at least a foot, I recommend a foot and a half of cactus per person. You need pliers. Use the pliers to pluck off all the spines as you do not want to eat or drink them. You will notice That the cactus is comprised of three layers: a tough outer skin a dark green inner pulp, and a core. The pulp is what contains mescaline and will be extremely bitter. I have a good sense of smell and can smell the bitterness of it right when I rip it off usuaully, and definetly can once the spines have been plucked. So what you have to do is get that green pulp seperated from the skin and core. This requires first peeling off the skin, which sucks royally. We've tried multpile ways of doing this and there is no way that really makes it suck much less, but freezing it seemed to help some, but it made it really cold on your hands to work with so there is a trade off. Peel off the outer skin removing as little dark green pulp as possible. now you can easily scrape the green pulp off the core.
Now what?
At this point you hafta choose whether you will eat or drink it. If you want to drink it then Simmer it for 2-3 hours and make sure the pulp gets broken up and distributed throughout the drink or it will be lumpy. If you eat it, just take chunks and swallow them whole try not to let it touch your tounge. In either case HAVE A CHASER, A STRONG STRONG CHASER. I have drunk some nasty stuff in my life, and I can say the only thing that tastes worse then san pedro brew is theraflu, yes it is even worse then robotussin. Then prepare for a roller coaster to set in about 30 minautes to an hour later, leaning more on the hour side. Make sure you plan 8 hours plus the hour onset for your trip to be safe as it lasts 7-8 hours although you should be able to function normally during the last half of the trip if you have to. I personally have been able to operate a car perfectly on Mescaline even near the peak, but everyone is different and I have an extreme tendancy away from visuals and towards mood alteration on all hallucinigens, so remember be safe and don't operate macheinery if you are too fucked up, but as I said before you shouldn't be too bad at least during the last 4 hours.
I will update and upkeep this FAQ as needed via editing this post. Hopefully tomarrow I can post the hi-res pictures of the cactus and add any more specific info I think up of. I can also start posting the answers to people's questions in this post if they need to be in the document (if it's something like "is this cactus a san pedro" with a picture I'll just reply).
Hope this document helps those of you looking to try something new or just looking for a cheap trip, and I hope it sticks around for a while, if not I'll bump it occasionally for new people :)
PICS:
I am linking to my photobucket to keep from possibly breaking tables and to keep the post accessible to 56k users. I have descriptioins followed by links:
Okay these first two pics are of the cacii I just harvested yesterday from someone's yard in my neighborhood. Nice sturdy cactus which I have tripped off before so this is the kinda thing you are looking for. The one on the left has a great bright color, the second picture you can see the spines on the cactus on the right very well.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0345.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0346.jpg
Okay these are of the two cactii I am growing in my backyard for show. They came off another very large san pedro but the skin is a bit darker, and earlier harvests off this cactus were not quite as trippy as I'd hoped, but they are good pics of a cactii in soil.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0348.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0349.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0350.jpg
All right, these are all Cactii I found within a quarter mile of each other:
these came from a cactus I have tripped off of before, it is probably one of the larger San Pedros you will find:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0351.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0352.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0353.jpg
These two were found about a quarter mile away in the same neighborhood, in the same yard:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0354.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0355.jpg
These two are one house over from the previous two and right next to each other:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0356.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0357.jpg
Here is a Sereus cactus, you DON'T want one of these, they look similar but you can see the subtle differences:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/thundercles1/IMG_0358.jpg