went out to the woods with a sleeping bag, drank a tea made with 30g dried san pedro chased with a tea of 30mg brugmansia leaf + ginger. this trip seemed to start off on a creepy note maybe due to being swarmed by mosquitoes in the high humidity. was planning to drink more tea, but some nausea set in shortly after, and i was discouraged to drink more. the ickiness from my stomach seemed to leak into my consciousness, as my thoughts seemed to become gross. i became deeply entangled in the ouroboros and soon had to leave. traveled back to the house, and purged 3 hours in, felt much better. overall i can say it is true that cactus is a stern teacher, as i feel like it laughs at me. the lesson for this trip seemed to be that everything is ultimately pointless except for the sake of the experience itself. although it was unpleasant and verging on a bad trip, i still got good lessons from it. the potency of the stimulant effects were a little unexpected and i can't wait to try it again.

Hi Mateo

Sorry to hear about your rough night. Stay away from the tropane alkaloids man. Drinking tea from that plant is not a good idea. No matter what you've read or think you know about it... It SHOULD NOT be a part of your toolkit!!!!!

Mescaline will bath you in love if you try it on its own, in a more comfortable setting and connect with another friendly soul throughout the experience

Peace

the thing about tropane alkaloids, i seem to have had both pleasant and also creepy effects from it, but i only use it in micro-doses to counteract nausea. am curious why brugmansia is commonly used as an admixture in south america but in western cultures there is heavy amount of fear surrounding it. the cactus itself seemed to have both an unusual smell and taste, so it's hard to distinguish the cause of things. but i agree to take it in a comfortable setting and connect with someone.

Just great
And yep the cactus keeps ya going.

I would work with a plant on its own for a while before connecting it with any other plant. Not smart to mix things before you know them well - kinda asking for trouble.

San Pedro is rarely a stern teacher. I have drank it hundreds of times and never once had it be stern with me. I know hundreds of others who have drank it and rarely does someone describe it as stern. I think that was more the brugmansia which many describe as stern. San Pedro is usually described as "gentle, warm, supportive, light, loving, emotional" - those kind of things.

You may be one of the people who is real sensitive to San Pedro - I have met a few. I recommend they drink less, like a quarter or half of a regular dose that someone else might need.... My wife is one of those sensitive to San Pedro.

I personally get along great with brugmansia and datura, but I think if you are using them for nausea, that isnt the best intention for them... Sure, they might help with that, but nausea is there for a reason. Most people drinking San Pedro only have mild or no nausea at all, and when you have more it is the cactus trying to tell you something. People with nausea usually have deeper ceremonies in my experience - especially if they purge.

I would say the datura like plants choose who they want to work with and are not for everyone... They demand real respect though. Make sure you are really called to them if you want to work with them. I get along great with them but I also really take my time with them (meditated with one for a year before ever ingesting any).

Best setting for San Pedro is somewhere comfortable and without distractions. Lots of mosquitos can take over your journey and so can cold. Good to be somewhere comfortable and to have as little distractions as possible. If you are too social you will feel great from the cactus but it probably wont talk to you. The less you do the more San Pedro does - quiet reflective time can take you real deep with the cactus (if that is your intention). When I drink with others I usually suggest mostly quiet reflective personal time for the first 5-6 hours, and then we get more social and adventurous after that as the medicine shifts. It lasts 15 hours usually so you have plenty of time for both phases of the journey, and I notice that if I just talk the whole time I miss out on the best part of the experience.

hmm interesting... first time i encountered achuma cactus it seemed to have a joker personality which was laughing at me... even with san pedro i envisioned a scenario where i was pleading for mercy and it just laughs at me. i think the nausea is due to the texture, as even small doses of cactus have upset me. when i use ayahuasca i have minimal nausea. overall i agree, silent darkness is probably optimal with icaros or drumming.

I never get nausea from San Pedro. My wife gets nausea almost every time even if she only drinks a tiny bit. I have seen many people have no nausea at all until 5-8 hours in, suddenly they need to purge. You may be different, but so far every person I have talked to who purged with San Pedro knew what they were purging out. Even seen two people purge out spirits - San Pedro performed an exorcism on them.

I never really do silence or darkness with San Pedro - I prefer in nature during the day. Some chill music that isnt distracting works well, but I generally prefer to play and sing all my own medicine songs. I usually dont play icaros with San Pedro since those are for Ayahuasca... San Pedro songs are called "taki's" or "hicha's". Love singing Quechua songs when I drink.

I also don't know anyone who would describe it as stern. In fact, I'd say this is where it differs from pretty much every other teacher plant. When I first took it, as a fungi veteran, I had my expectations all wrong and spent the first half of the experience confused and frustrated. I was expecting the stretching and pulling, the twisting and turning of psilocybin.

Then I realized what Mescalito wanted: to slooooooooow down. I sat down at the edge of the Colorado and stretched out in the sun. I felt like the benevolent king of my own life. This is what it seems to be about, a kind of consolidation, a fortification, a healing kind of embrace. That's in contrast to the "transgress-all-boundaries" methodology of the other major healing plants, the "break the bone to re-set it" approach.

It might take a couple tries to find the groove, maybe. Don't give up, there's a reason Mescalito has a special place in so many hearts.

hm i have heard at least one other person describe cactus as stern. i assumed that's why san pedro is considered a male spirit, while peyote is called the grandfather. seemed to me to have a more serious vibe, less playful than other psychedelics. although my experiences have been somewhat variable.



i wonder why both san pedro & peyote are traditional used at night, while westernized people seem to mostly use it during the day. although i understand the need for sleep, i find psychedelics work better at night. in the case of ayahuasca, it doesn't seem to work during the day.

Peyote and San Pedro are both commonly called "grandfather" actually. Usually Peyote is considered more stern then San Pedro. Stern isnt necessarily a male characteristic - Ayahuasca is way more stern then San Pedro for most people, yet many consider it feminine.

San Pedro is often very playful for me - maybe not as playful as mushrooms, but certainly more gentle then mushrooms. Everyone is different though, so your experience might not fit the general rule of thumb.

I often drink San Pedro in Peru and most ceremonies I have attended there were in the daytime. The persecution of the Spanish and Catholic church pushed it underground for a while which I think is one main reason some people worked with it at night... Cactus gets its power from the sun though, and San Pedro is less visual, so you dont need darkness to help see visions.... To me San Pedro is more about seeing the world and your life with new eyes. When I drink during the day all of nature comes alive and talks to me and clouds especially can become very meaningful.

Also gives you so much energy that you can hike super far... I often drink while backpacking in the forest. In Peru it is common to drink and then hike to sacred lakes where they jump in the glacial water for healing.

I find some psychedelics work better in the dark.... Any of them work fine in the day too though. Ayahuasca outdoors in nature can be pretty amazing - plants really come to life. Even the Shuar do rituals during the day sometimes.

Yeah, I agree with the others here regarding cacti. All my cacti experiences are of a different caliber, versus say something like mushrooms, ayahuasca, LSD, etc. The cacti experiences are typically very vibrant, everything being infused with this inner beauty and brilliance, colors become hyper-infused and overly saturated; the minutest details and patterns become completely discernible. Most columnars i've eaten or extracted have been very stimulating, the body becoming infused with this energy, typically starting in the legs, working its way up throughout my body and into the environment. Tactility and the senses become hyper-sensitive. Music, taste, smell, all brought into this beautiful level of perceiving. The biggest thing for me regarding mescaline though is the empathic and introspectie quality that stays from beginning til the end, even in the higher dosages. It definitely stands apart in that sense.

Although, in the much higher dosages, breakthroughs are possible. I've been immersed in rainbow prismatic fields of multi-layered depth, occasionally breaking into visions of hyper-infused temples, streams, people, places, etc. And even at those dosages, where im essentially layed out on the ground or floor, there's still this intense empathic quality and it proceeds very gently (also very euphoric), despite being heavily immersed in this other facet of reality.

Outdoors, especially during a blue sky, sunny day, has been my preferred setting. It's heaven on earth for me, literally. A definite gem that i'll keep with me for life.

Deepest I ever went with San Pedro started with open eye visions before I even drank... Was pretty interesting.

I was back at my teachers house in Peru. I was supposed to drink San Pedro 5 days before but I had suddenly become very sick... Thought it was food poisoning at first, but then later realized my wife and I had shared all our food that day and she never even got remotely sick at all. So after 5 days of being super sick I said "Screw it, I'm gonna drink San Pedro tomorrow no matter how sick I am. I'll puke all over the place if I have too... It's supposed to be medicine right? Lets test it out and see what happens!"

That night I had dreams of San Pedro teaching me the nature of good and evil and helping me fight demonic type spirits... San Pedro told me I had caught some bad energy in Cusco that had made me sick - what people call a "bad wind." When I woke up I not only felt healthy again, but I felt super energized and healthier then ever. Any time I had food poisoning in the past, once I got rid of the bug I was still weak for another week, but this was different.

So we headed up to my teachers house to drink San Pedro. As I stepped out of the cab in front of her house I was suddenly having visions. There were angels everywhere! Giant beings of light singing to me with light shooting out of their hands and mouths into me. They were kinda intense looking - not like what people paint from Bible stories, but kinda intimidating and really powerful looking, but at the same time I knew they weren't trying to harm me in any way. There songs were beautiful.

I gave my teacher a hug and kept gaping at all the angels everywhere.... They looked just as real and solid as all the people showing up for ceremony! My teacher then introduced me to a Q'ero shaman who was going to be around for our ceremony that day - I had been wanting to meet the Q'ero for a couple years and this was my first time meeting one (he is now a good friend I see each visit to Peru). I could barely talk to anyone as we all got ready to drink - all I could do was stare at these angels!

So we sat in my teachers maloka and she told everyone about San Pedro since most of them were first timers. I wasnt really listening to her - I was distracted because now there was my dead mother, a cactus man (San Pedro), archangel Michael and Jesus surrounding me on all four sides - all singing to me. I was so confused because I am not Christian at all, but I just went with it.

My teacher then handed me a cup of San Pedro to drink (yes, all these visions were occurring without any psychoactive in my system at all), and I wondered to myself "Do I even need to drink this?" But at that time Jesus came up behind me and put his hands on my back to support me, so I just gulped it down. I then went out to meditate in the garden and the whole garden was still full of singing angels.

A lot happened that day in the garden... Connected deeply with toe' (brugmansia) for the first time, talked a lot to my dead mother and saw her grow angel wings, turned into a puma with condor wings then flew around Cusco (even saw temples in my vision which I later found on a hike a few days later), and when things started to calm down a bit I walked over to talk to the Q'ero shaman. The Q'ero shaman had some mesa clothes (special ceremonial altar clothes) and chumpi khuyas (special carved stones used for energy work). I received my mesa and chumpi khuyas from him that afternoon (besides plants these are my main medicine and ritual tool).

I remember at one point feeling this huge download of energy coming into my body and I couldnt stop singing "icaros/taki's" (medicine songs from the plants). I think I was singing in Quechua and Hebrew, going back and forth as the songs would change (I dont speak either of those languages, but sometimes can sing in languages I dont know when I channel).

Many personal insights from brugmansia and talking with my mothers spirit... When I became the puma with condor wings I wanted to see if I could perform a distance healing in that form - so I went to heal a friend that was sick with chronic illness. 2 days later he reported being totally better (I didnt talk to him for 2 days because there is limited wifi in Peru).

By far my favorite place to drink San Pedro!

I love San Pedro.

@travsha

i profoundly disagree with your positions and seeming authority on the subject, ive lived in peru for years and dealt with many people like you, people who clearly have no real clue of the power of mescaline but get wrapped up in these dogmas based on tradition or something ridiculous another gringo wrote in a book, yes the woman that flies and ross heaven are both infantile if metered by their writings.

considering your tea is often palletable, as you had expressed you mixed it with apples to give it a "yummy" flavor
i hope some might consider that your medicine is a hybrid of your mind and your tea, so for someone who uses tea with an alkaloid profile that tastes "yummy" you probably dont have alot of mescaline in it, waiki. seeing jesus while sober isnt the san pedro, thats you man. its good to make that distinction.

moving onto the the nausea subject

nausea exists from 2 factors in the brew, 1 mescaline and relative alkaloids are nauseating, meaning if you get a dose from 400 mg or up ( i would be surprised if your sweet apple juice tea had a half gram of mesc per dose)
second factor is the actual cactus itself, it will make you nauseas if you eat enough of it

so if youre not getting nauseas, youre not taking enough mescaline to produce nasuea, and or theres not enough cellulose cactus in the belly, nausea isnt the goal but its a good benchmark if your medicine is real or not

purging does not make you trip harder, you are ejecting the medicine and the ground is the one "digesting" it, so having people purge usually just means their body cannot facilitate the dose they attempted, whether its the style of medicine or volume of cactus drugs working - yet another common pseudoshaman myth i felt obliged to address here

usually females are almost twice as affected, explains your wife

the aspect of daytime with music, it is a more shallow experience to saturate yourself in stimuli (music in the day) than to emulate an isolation tank and go deep in the dark, then again if your apple tea is "yummy" you will as la gringa says "be wasting your time in the dark because san pedro wont show you visions like ayahuasca" this makes sense as the common thread between you and la gringa is you both have incredibly mild medicine and a lineage of imagination.

san pedro/huachuma/trichocereus species has no living tradition from pre columbian times, the only practicioners alive with a living tradition can only trace that tradition to spanish inquisition, which is only the last few hundred years. hardly something to consider traditional when you consider chavin, 3-5 k years ago and other anthropological find in the huaraz area like cave of the guitarrist with 10,800 year old cuttings of san pedro stacked in a cave where humans lived

the whole culture of san pedro presented is a tourist experience, let there be no mistake, there are no ancient lineages alive, however ayahuasca does and this makes a huge difference in terms of its practice and ways to respect it.

the q'ero live too high for san pedro to grow in their native environment, also theyre not known to have a long lineage, just a few hundred years at most, this also goes for the san pedristos on the ecuadorian / peruvian north coast.

@ mateo

tropane alkaloids are great for nausea reduction, but they come at a cost. the cost is the different vibe the experience carries, a bit more icky and dark for sure. though 30 mg seems quite safe amigo, no sweat on that dose in terms of physical safety

your body wont tolerate a dose you arent ready for, however tropane alkaloids short circuit this inherent safety mechanism (sometimes) and you can hold a dose that you probably shouldnt be holding.

why cultures use medicines at night is beceause its common knowledge (to that culture) that its most effective at night, why, because it is. light and sound are more common in the day and they occupy the mind with the data we perceive through sensations, drop all that chatter and plunge into the moment without distraction. yea im a night time person for sure :

grandfather typically refers to mescaline containing cacti, somehow mescaline is grandfather in moder colloquial terms and ayahuasca is grandmother.

a sleeping bag in the woods is a primal method my friend, i would atleast get a tent or a way to spend part of the time in a place where you arent potentially being encroached upon by bugs/animals/strangers etc. that comfy bed is a great portal


thanks for the write up man, and cheers