What they did:
collected a fat, hard grown, 400 gram tip piece of fat, old growth cali bridgesii. This plant had come recommended as being "what they were looking for". This piece was aged for about 4 months, starting in the shade and then moved to full dark.
A tea was made by slicing the cactus into half inch rounds- core, spines, skin and all. These pieces were put on the freezer for 24 hours, pulled out and thawed and refrozen for another 24 hrs. This then went into the blender with 3 oz of 190 proof alcohol, and 2 cups of water. This was blended thoroughly and 250 mg of crushed ascorbic acid was added and the blender was pulsed again to mix. The whole concoction was then refrozen.
The frozen slurry was thawed fully and then dumped into the pressure cooker which was run for a 25 minute cycle. This was then strained through a cotton bandana and again through a 25 micron bubble bag. The resulting concoction was placed in the fridge to settle for 2 days, at which point a blunt tipped needle was used to carefully decant the liquid from the top, which was then refiltered through the 25 micron bag. The solid fats/lipids/gunk from the bottom was left undisturbed and discarded along with as little bit of the liquid as possible.
This was then refrozen for about a week until they were ready to hold ceremony, at which point it was thawed and again decanted and filtered, leaving behind another round of gunk.
At this point it was done.

What happened:
The resulting tea was consumed at 8 pm. On a 7hr empty stomach, half was consumed first and the other half was consumed 15 minutes later. Within 10 minutes strange, dark, animalistic closed-eyed visions began to be mentally inlaid. Not so much closed or open-eyed visuals as they were separate mental occurrences coexisting with regular reality. They managed to keep their stomach settled for about 35/40 minutes before they knew there was no possibility of not puking. Running to the bathroom, everything came out in bitter bursts and torrents.
This is when the extreme body discomfort and over-stimulation began. They smoked a joint of cannabis, blue lotus, lemon balm, pao darco, and tobacco to calm their stomach and nerves. What came next was an incredibly uncomfortable evening of physical discomfort, body tremors, twitching, and relentless over-stimulation. Visuals were mildly interesting, but were over-shadowed by the physical discomfort. Urination burned and hurt, stomach felt bloated and uncomfortable, and the body twitching became uncontrolable and almost spastic, like possessed writhing or mild seizing. The lower half of the body had all night what can best be described as restless leg syndrome, with the hips and legs twitching most of all. There was zero of the spiritual awakening feeling, or phenylethylamine ecstatic joy/glow that they'd come to know from pachanoi excursions.
Eyes were dilated and speedy effects were felt all night, and even when the physical effects began to wane (around 5:30 am) sleep was far from attainable. They finally got 2 hours of sleep from around 9-11, at which point they awoke with a start, still feeling the speedy effects and restless leg issues to this time.

The question:
Were these effects the mescaline? Was it just bridgesii? That's all it is? Why is it so lauded if so? Or was this just a personal reaction? Or was it a mistake that they made in preparation? Or was it the particular plant?
There seemed to be zero shamanistic value to this experience. No insight, no grand visions, no sense of oneness or wonder. There was only discomfort and mild visuals.

As this was their first bridgesii experience they want to know if this is what is to be expected or if they should cull all bridgesii from their garden and focus on pachanoi and peruvianus.

Any help on this path would be greatly appreciated. Their desire to get to know these plants better in ceremony is strong and true, but if that is the bridgesii experience, then they would like to abandon these ambitions and focus elsewhere.

Thank you all.

I've never had Bridgesii tea fail to deliver. Sometimes it gives me lower back tension, which is uncomfortable, but after I purge the physical discomfort is usually over for me and the fun begins. For me a good stiff dose can make the whole room come alive, with inanimate objects breathing and ultra vivid liquid Cirque du Soleil CEVs.

I've done several different strains of Bridgesii and, while some might have been a bit more potent than others it was hard to tell considering the doses were a bit different each time. It always had plenty of mescaline though.

Once I saw full spectrum mescaline acetate cause a friend vasoconstriction in his legs. That was concerning. I wonder if that's what your restless leg symptoms were about?

Could you post a pic of this Bridgesii?

LoveInTheDream I've also had similar physical reactions from Bridgesii. For me it is dose dependent. The bigger the dose of Bridgesii, the more physical symptoms I experience. Very similar to what you describe. Muscle tension, tremors, muscle contractions and spasms. For me it is worst in the arms and legs, and is usually accompanied by uncomfortable vasoconstriction. I have also had difficulty being able to urinate when it gets like this, sometimes for hours. I don't recall my urine burning. But when I am able to urinate again it is very dark and concentrated.

These physical challenges happen for me with strong doses of Bridgesii. The other species of Trichocereus have not done this to me yet. Not saying it isn't possible though.

I'm not sure what causes these physical symptoms, if it is high concentrations of mescaline or something else. But overall I still value Bridgesii a lot. In fact it is my favorite Trichocereus species, because it so reliably brings on an intense journey. For me this journey is highly spiritual and visual. It has a different character or "feel" to it than Pachanoi or Peruvianus or the other species that I've tried. They tend to be more euphoric and uplifting. The Bridgesii is more likely to be challenging, both physically and psychologically. But I find the experience to have great merit, as it really challenges me to look inward and evaluate with a brutal clarity. And I think that this is the great benefit of Bridgesii: the intense, brutally honest and clear headspace. Its almost like Pachanoi holds your hand and shows you things, while Bridgesii kicks you in the ass and rubs your face in what it is teaching you.

So don't give up on Bridgesii just yet. It is a deep and powerful medicine. But it definitely takes some getting used to, especially on those stronger trips.

Having revisited the cactus experience a few times since my last post without experiencing the full spectrum of psychedelic features (visuals, MDMA-like qualities, etc) with teas made from various sources and doses of cacti, my friend decided to go for it last time. They made a strong syrup-like tea from 7,000gs of various cacti from various sources (1/3 bridgessi, 1/3 preuvianus, the remaining 1/3 a mix of PC pach, pach monstrous, and random cuts). After my last attempt with ~1,200gs of cacti in a tea being relatively underwhelming, I decided to age these cuttings for a few months before the brew and separated the resulting syrup into 4 doses of ~1,750gs of cacti each. Those of you experienced with cacti are probably shaking your heads at this point. Understandably so.
After 3 or 4 unimpressive attempts, they either did something right with the tea this time that they had messed up before, or more probably acquired some extremely potent cuttings.
They drank around 3/4 of one of these resulting 4 100ml doses of syrup before they got the message that they may not be able to keep more down and should wait to see how this effected them. It is good they stopped when they did, because they was soon launched deep into the spirit world. Within an hour of ingestion they knew they were in for it as they began to feel extreme waves of euphoric anticipation. It felt much like the coming-on of a tenth or two of very clean MDA/MDMA. During the next hour their pupils grew to take up the entirety of their face and there was an electric visual distortion to the air around them, accompanied by a slight vibrating of their visual field. They also began to get very cold and shivery. Their core temperature was way down, something that remained as such throughout the entirety of the experience.
At the three hour mark the entirety of their visual field was comprised of watercolor fractals folding and morphing into themselves. Little, vibrating pockets of multi-colored light made up everyone and everything around them and there was an extremely pleasurable sensation akin to the peak of a few tenths of extremely pure MDMA. Their eyes were rolling back in their head and their skull was being internally messaged by electric vibrations of color and pleasure. At the same time reality was disintegrating into itself.
Their partner, who was sober except for enjoying some wine, came and sat with them by their electric heater as they attempted to get warm. They had been sitting out back by the firepit for the past hour or 2 and their core was deeply, deeply chilly and they sought blankets and cozy warm. As they sat together things quickly turned erotic, and what ensued was one of the most amazing and completely ineffable erotic experience of their life. Physical sensation is certainly magnified by this medicine. Wow. Erotic synesthesia, melting, becoming one. Their partner agreed that they had "the spirit" in them, and after a few hours she retired to sleep completely and utterly exhausted and happy.
This is where things got uncomfortable for them. After she retired to bed they laid alone attempting to warm up, still deeply cold. A very uncomfortable sensation overtook them, it seemed to be pulsing from their spine- as though their whole nervous system was way overstimulated and was inflamed or pulsing with excess energy. Nothing they could do would get them comfortable, and they also felt their muscles cramping up. Their hands were folded into tense claws and they kept trying yoga poses and movements to shake the uncomfortable stimulation from their nervous system/spine. It was to the point where they could not enjoy the psychedelic, visual, or ecstatic aspects of the experience due to the uncomfortable physical sensations taking the entirety of their attention.
They were unable to sleep until the next afternoon at around 2:30pm, a good 19hrs after they had consumed the medicine. The primary feeling of the next day was an attempt to get warm, a completely "fried" feeling, brain-deadness, etc. There was none of the beautiful afterglow they had heard of or had some experience with from previous attempts. They also had the clenched wrist and hands throughout the day, as though they could not relax their muscles.

Obviously a few things happened here... One of which was they took a fucking monster of a dose. They have no way to tell how much, but would love to somehow have one of the remaining doses of tea analyzed to see exactly how much they overdid it by. Another thing that happened is that they hit upon some very active cacti- it being a blend of different cacti from different sources they have no idea which ones were the culprits (but perhaps all of them were above average).
It is difficult to get right with such a range of strength and composition to cacti. Their previous attempts kept telling them they didn't go far enough, well this time they *certainly* did.

For my firend- I am left curious about the uncomfortable bodily sensations. Are those common to mesc itself? Or are those a result of impurities/other alkaloids in cactus? Is it a bridgesii thing? I have heard so many say they don't prefer bridgesii (even though it has a higher mesc content) because of the other mystery alkaloids/compounds and their resulting body load.
They loved some parts of the experience, but due to the physical discomfort and overstimulation they are not in a rush to repeat this experience. It was very difficult physically, and due to this difficult physicality they were almost entirely unable to appreciate the claimed introspective qualities of the experience. They also couldn't appreciate the visionary qualities as their entire focus was drawn to physical discomfort and overstimulation.

Suggestions? Comments?

I also wonder if some of the negative effects were from standing still or over-focusing. If, perhaps, they had remained engaged in physical activity or somehow physically distracted these crampings and strange overstimulated vibrations would have been as severe?

What, other than,
?

Yeah, I'd say the *closest* I could compare it to is a few tenths of very pure MDA along with a strong pot of coffee and some super clean psilocin- followed by a strung-out, over-stimulated bout of discomfort. But that isn't really a fair comparison. As it is with this abundantly strange and rich territory, each ebb and crest is its own microcosm. This experience was entirely its own, comparable only to my other cacti experiences really. That is why I am asking about whether the uncomfortable sensations were unique to mesc, full spectrum cacti in general, bridgesii only, or just my personal physiology- because I have never felt this level of discomfort from a plant ally before, especially paired with such glorious and rich heights. So I am wondering what I did or am doing wrong, even if it is the plant itself (for me and my makeup).

To be abundantly clear- I have never tried synthetic or purified mesc, so besides what I mentioned before I only have that of other organic aqueous extractions of cacti that I could fairly compare this experience to. Unique for sure.

Also, perhaps worth noting, I was certainly smoking high test refer throughout- starting earlier in the day- and I had some tasty wine starting around 2 hours after ingestion, continuing until the bottle was done just before sleep the next day.

There are some other active, non mescaline compounds in (some) cacti, with quite unpleasant and uncomfortable effects. Not all people react the same way to this part of full spectrum cactus. For some users the unpleasantness is too strong, some can tolerate it relatively well.

Thats the reason why people extract mescaline, as in its purified form, it does not produce such unpleasantness and over stimulation.

Thank you Doubledog, that is the information I was looking for: If the negative physical effects were from the mesc itself, other cactus compounds, or were bridgesii specific.

That makes me curious- what else do you lose when you separate out the "other compounds"? Is some of the MDMA-like rush from these mystery alks or is that from the mesc itself? The speedy/stimulant effects? The visual effects?

Furthermore, if you had ~300 ml of highly concentrated clarified tea syrup, how would you go about isolating the mesc and separating out the other compounds? Would it be too concentrated and alk saturated to run kash A/B without wasting a lot of the goods? It says in the tek to only use a foot of cactus per, and my friend certainly used more than that (there's probably 12 or so in the syrup). Is there a better tek to use from syrup?

Most of the MDMA-like effects is caused by mescaline, but it's true that you loose also some positive effects (e. g. internal electric massage and some visual activity) by separation.
Most important is that you loose muscle tension and fried feeling next day.


Highly concentrated syrup is hard to extract from, kash A/B works, but you should be prepared for lot of pulls with toluene and overall quite complicated and demanding tek. Emulsion is your enemy here.
I would most likely extract the syrup with high % ethanol, evaporate it, redissolved into water and run A/B on that.

Hm. My understanding is that mesc is not really soluble in eth, but HIGHLY soluble in H2O, so why use the ethanol? Why not just add more water to dilute the syrup if A/B is the desired process? Adding the ethanol would keep the goods in the aqueous portion, right? And would just add alcohol to it that would then need to be evaped before it could be rehydrated with H20

Or what about dehydrating to a hard resin and then crushing it into a cold MEK wash?

Concentrated syrup or tea could contains lot of dissolved mucilage/pectin, which makes tea viscous and also causes emulsions when mixed with nonpolar solvent. It can also slow down migration of mesc fb from water into xylene.

Intermediate extraction with ethanol will get rid of most of the pectin, and will also lead (after evaporation and redissolving) to much smaller volume to work with. Subsequent A/B procedure is easier.

Mescaline salts are not soluble in pure ethanol, that's true, but are soluble in 80%-90 ethanol.

It's quite convenient to run this additional step for pectin separation, but it's more work and it also needs some skill, time and experience, so try it only if you are in experimental mood.

You can of course dilute your tea with some water and continue with A/B extraction.

More promising would be to make that resin alkaline with calcium hydroxide and extract mescaline into ethyl acetate (EA) - similarly as in CIELO extraction.

Could you kindly expound on how one would get this done if one were so inclined?