Hey team. So I embarked on my first complicated TEK ever a few weeks ago, and unfortunately the results aren't super. I'll give you a timeline of what happened.

1. Acquired a regal Trichocereus, most similar to Pachanoi. Specimen was peeled, cored, spined, then ground in a coffee grinder to produce a fine goo. Let it be shown that maybe half the cactus in this step was older and drying out naturally when I found it. The coffee grinding process produced more of a coarse, slightly damp sand than a goo, likely because there was not enough water to facilitate grinding, but enough to keep the cactus sticky. What a pain! Can't ask for everything to be easy though.

2. Cactus meal is placed in the oven at 150°F with the convection fan turned on. It is allowed to dry , and is immediately removed when only a little water is left, then it is left in the sun.

3. Cactus is re-ground and placed back in the oven, to complete the dehydration process.

Now, here's where I start screwing up.

4. I have 139 grams of dried cactus. I decide I'll do the first 100g in two batches to speed up the process or something. I don't remember what I was thinking.

5. I add 25g of calcium hydroxide to one of the halves, not realizing that I needed to divide the amount in half for half the TEK. I add another 25g to the other half, only after realizing what I did.

6. I forge on with the TEK, adding 150ml of water to each container. At this point I just decided to do it in one jar, so I added them together.

7. 300ml of limonene is added. Allowed to sit for five hours, then strained out. A thick, semen-like discharge appeared in my first pressing, and was difficult to filter out. This concerns me.

8. Being stupid, I continue to do limonene pulls, adding them to the jar in which the first limonene was. Only later did I read ron's advice about keeping each limonene pull separate. D'oh.

9. Second, third limonene pull. No discharge.

10. I decide to take care of the 39g of cactus that's left over. I ensure that each amount of calcium hydroxide/water/limonene is accurate for that amount of cactus.

11. First limonene pull on the 39g. Thick discharge. What the heck?

12. Start doing vinegar pulls on the massive jar of limonene. Collected separately. The vinegar has a dark, urine-like colour to it. Drinking 25ml of the vinegar produces no psychedelic effect.

13. Vinegar is placed in oven on a Pyrex dish. Oven is set to 170°F. I messed up again here by falling asleep when she was in the oven, but luckily I rescued her before very much damage could be done. Unfortunately, the resulting powder and crystals were brown and slightly burnt, and had picked up an acrid sort of odour/taste. The yield is really high, close to 3g I think for the 139g lot of cactus, but a lot of it doesn't feel like mescaline, and the consistency isn't as 69ron said it should be.

Any help would be appreciated. If anything, doing the TEK taught me a lot of do's and don'ts for next time. Can anybody suggest a possible solution for this, though? I don't want to lose this first batch.

69ron's tek works well when followed on commercial cactus powder. Working with wet cactus... you maybe should look at phlux's tek or the resin tek. Check the wiki. Also, the cactus might not have had much in it to begin with. They are not all winners. The d-limo tek and results you were expecting are based on high quality cactus from a good vendor.

I really like that you extracted a fresh cactus though. I have many cacti... I really hope that they are potent!!! I will probably find out next year.

As for cleaning up what you have... how do you feel about a MEK wash?

My advice:

Add much more lime than that tek calls for, probably equal parts lime and cactus powder, mixed together in the coffee grinder while powderizing dried cactus bits. I never measure the water added, but usually the amount needed to wash the powder out of the coffee grinder is more than enough to make paste. Adding slightly more water and carefully adding na2co3 will convert lime to lye and break the sludge. Salting with vinegar seems to be the source of most peoples problems, and I recommend just about any other salt you can think of.

The best way to check if you have a friendly cactus, and probably the strongest and simplest experience you will get from it, is to simply eat it. just make sure you take off the spines and waxy bit. Phlux's cacti prep tek is amazing.

edit: ps gravy separator << turkey baster. I got a glass one with graduations for 4 doll hairs

edit edit: more to add: to get dried bits from fresh plants after the Phlux- tek, dry halfway, freeze, then dry to a crisp. Drying halfway before freezing keeps precious cactus liquid from spilling everywhere when you thaw the cell damaged cactus spears.

I'm considering a MEK wash. I have quite a bit of material from the extraction, maybe 3.5g of powder, however I imagine it's mostly ethanoic acid from the vinegar after the water evaporated out, which is why I'm hesitant to eat some. I've made tea from this cactus before, it's plenty potent from what I've experienced. I'll probably be ordering some cactus cuttings soon for my garden, I might just have to order some cactus powder as well. That was the most time consuming part, anyway, and I'd love to have a guaranteed level of potency.

How much MEK would I use to wash the mescaline acetate? Ron's TEK sez 2ml of dry MEK but I feel that doesn't account for the extremely variable amounts of return individuals might get from their cactus. Also, I was sort of hoping to get the full spectrum of alkaloids for the full mescaline effect. This would be my first time taking a complete dose, as I couldn't stand the tea.



I see. What do you suggest I salt with? There's a world of solvents available at the hardware store, but the but the easier/least stringent the better, for reasons that need not be stated.

And thanks for the help! <3

Regards,
HZ

What about good old Hydrochloric acid ?

for (mostly) foolproof salting, weak hcl is best imo. You salt out the mesc base with an acid. ethanoic acid is another name for vinegar and will evap, besides the fact that it is perfectly safe to eat. You probably dont want to try salting the mesc out with any solvents from the hardware store, unless you are talking about weak hcl water.

to finally address the question in the OP (oops, sorry) you can supposedly convert the acetates into hcl by dissolving them in hcl water and evapping. I cant say from first hand experience though. The crude acetate extract should be exactly what you want if you are looking for full spectrum... I recommend you learn a bit more about this stuff as you seem slightly confused and it would be very irresponsible of me to recommend you eat any of your kitchen lab product from the state of your post... good luck and be safe!

It's true, I still have leagues to learn about all this. Most of my confusion lies in the fact that the final product did not fit 69ron's description for mescaline acetate powder. It is brown, is not sticky, smells slightly acrid, and has a sharp, biting taste along with the classical cactus flavor. I'm going to test a sample of 200mg, perhaps tonight, as I'm not terribly afraid of what I might've made. At the worst it's just mescaline with a little more vinegar than I'd like. I'm considering doing a MEK wash if it's entirely inactive, then saving that for after I make my next extraction, so I can try pure mescaline acetate after doing the full alkaloidal spectrum, assuming it works then. It's all variable.

Thanks again everybody for the help. Have any of you any more advice? I hope to modify ron's TEK and someday make a post about it with clearer instructions, not that there was anything to complain about in the original (;

Considering everything in the TEK was food grade, I decided to eat 310mg of the mysterious brown powder. I just ate the capsule, I'll report back with results. Here's to first times.

Regards,
HZ

this is some sound advice
i'm glad you were promoted to membership!! brovo an giving great advice bro

So, does adding more lime to Ron's original recipe (25grams per 100 grams of cactus powder) end up pulling more mescaline? Has anyone else tried this?