I've been growing this cactus from seed for the past five years (since ~ 2016), it got sold to me as Trichocereus peruvianus from a vendor on eBay. I've been under a lot of stress lately and was planning on finally consuming mescaline and also trying out Loveall's extraction procedure. I just wanted some input on whether or not this cacti is psychoactive and if I could go about extracting it anytime soon for a solid mescaline dose? I was also curious if the number of ribs on a cactus has anything to do with psychoactivity / mescaline content? Since I started a fresh grow of what was said to be bridgesii on magicgardenseeds, doesn't resemble it, and most of them have 8 ribs.

KT - I'd wait until one of the limbs on the 5 year old specimen has reached about 18". They all look a little on the short side to me. At a push, you might get some success with the biggest bit but I'm still inclined to believe the alkaloids will be more concentrated nearer the growing tip. Maybe that's nonsense but I'd rather wait until that piece on the previously cut long stem has reached 40cm so you can do a 'cut and shut'.

Sorry to hear you've been so stressed lately. One thing that will reduce your stress a tiny bit is drawing your benzene rings with three separate double bonds - it makes electron pair movement in reaction schemes a lot easier to work out (This was an early piece of advice given to me by real organic chemists. Maybe not the bit about stress.)

If you're feeling particularly desperate then the biggest bit should do the job. It would still be best if you could give it a month's conditioning - or longer - in the dark before consumption. Something that has worked for me - and I note that it is also a part of traditional indigenous San Pedro use - is incorporating an element of ritual journey into the experience.

This means arranging to get away from your home space (and away from the city). And it seems to make for a more... special kind of experience - you do, of course, have to choose the location wisely though.

KT its in the Peruvianus spectrum. But honestly the features look more Cuzcoensis than pure Peruvianus. Paler green color, smaller areoles, not that thick, super spiny, weak central spine. Cuzcoensis or Peruzco. It should be active, but don't expect it to be very strong.

Those seedlings don't look right for Bridgesii. Spines are wrong and too many ribs.

There are many hybrid seedlings being grown out these days. Makes it more challenging to get a definitive i.d.


P.S.
Spines on pure Bridgesii look like this:

I am looking for an ID on this cactus. I apologize for the poor photo, I didn't plan to share. I thought I'd be able to figure it out.

Also, does anyone have recommendations for a good place to get seed?

That looks like Stetsonia coryne the "Toothpick Cactus". It is not active.

Thanks for the reply. It is very pretty though. I've yet to find a good key to identifying trichocereus species. With mushrooms there are a lot of keys published to identify genus and species.

They do start very handsome and get to be quite impressive after a few years. I've had a few nice specimens over the years but always ended up messing up and killing them. They don't like temperatures much below 6°C when they're younger - and the one I nurtured to an appreciable size got damaged and succumbed to galloping rot.

Trichocereus keys are plagued by the variability and interbreeding of the species to some extent. Nonetheless, I would point you in the direction of the works of Keeper Trout, and Patrick Noll for the flowering hybrids. There should be a link to K. Trout's "Sacred Cacti" somewhere in this thread.

Pr0zac the best way to identify them is just to look at a lot of Pachanoi and Peruvianus and Bridgesii until you become familiar with their appearance. Then when you see a different type of cactus something just won't look right about it. There are several species that look similar and often get confused. The main ones are Stetsonia coryne, Myrtillocactus geometrizans, Browningia hertlingiana, and Polaskia chichipe.

Like DFZ said, Keeper Trout has some great resources on his website troutsnotes.com My favorite resource of his is this one:

https://troutsnotes.com/...i_pachanot_addendum.pdf

It is packed with tons of knowledge about these cacti. And there are many photos that you can look at to see what these species look like. That book was a huge help to me when I was starting to collect these cacti.

Hi, I got some cacti growing in my garden. When I got them I've been told they are San Pedro, but I would like to confirm this is what it actually is. I hope the new "sprouts" aren't too small to identify. I cut off two ~50cm pieces a few month ago, because I wanted to try them (never tried mescaline so far). These are stored away powdered already, I just need to decide on an effective extraction tek.
In the second pic I attached, you can see a small cactus, which I have adopted only recently. This one looks similar to the others I already got.

I would be grateful for any input.

Edit: One has 6 and the other one has 7 spines, which I guess indicates it's not the same kind of cactus?

Looks like a pedro to me.