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achuma is happy to teach you, then you will know more about achuma

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when i take a 1 foot dose of achuma im affected heavily but i can walk and talk semi-normally. Being outside on mescaline i think provides one of the most profound, beautiful experiences that the plant offers. I find achuma on average to be a lot more powerful than san pedro, though achuma is also more sedating than the electric feel of san pedro. i dont prepare mine as a tea instead i make a full alkaloid extract and put that into capsules if you would be intrested in a method like that i can give you the details.

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achuma is a powerful cactus and you can feel the empathy from 6 to 7 inch dose. if your weary of taking to much you could always take a half foot then in a few hours if its not strong enough take a little more. i never get overwhelmed by cactus though its very easy on the body and mind. Renting a cabin sounds like a pretty good place to take it as well

the method i use is an iso alcohol tek you just dry and grind the cactus then put it in a mason jar or some kind of glass and cover the cactus with enough iso alcohol to cover all your cactus material with an inch over the top. you do that for three days and 3 times strain after three days and collect the alcohol and evaporate either with a fan over the iso or very low heat with no flame i use a dehydrator to evaporate mine that will leave you a sticky resin that you can gel cap that way or to make it easier to work with add some flour.

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Yeah 7 inches if its as good as what ive had is enough for exactly the experienc you say your looking for.

yes you can feel good effects off 7 inches

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Oh, stop it with all that SWIM stuff. We all know it's YOU!

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2/3-3/4 foot are what youre seeking, however that is less than introductory. 1 foot is my typical intro dose. i would go somewhere where you are least likely to be disturbed.

also on full spectrum extract, its my opinion that one should acquire a base knowledge with simpler methods of preparation before moving onto something a bit more complicated.

one should learn to brew a nice cup of coffee before extracting and making caffeine powder... same idea

also 4 hours is long enough to get all your alkaloids dissolved provided you cut your cactus thin enough and or froze it first to lyse the cell walls. i typically do 2x2 hour simmers, combine, filter, reduce, decant.

We actually know very little about ancient uses of cacti. For starters "achuma" in Sth America is used to refer to various cacti including T. pachanoi, T. peruvianus and T. bridgesii. But, most of the people in Sth America currently use them are doing so in the context of modern syncretic practices. Not to devalue their experience - just to point out that there is no one "true" native use of these substances. Original usage dates back at least 3000 years.

As for dosage, studies show huge variation in potency on a per kg basis. Per-inch dosage is even worse - if you double the diameter of the branch, you quadruple the per-inch dosage. 6 inches of one branch of one cactus could be 60 inches of another.

A recent potency study: Ogunbodede et al 2010.

On the variety of different "achumas" see slide 97 ... K. Trout PowerPoint

i appreciate your science

when i refer to a foot i mean 12 inches of 3-4 inch diameter

for me this has been a standard, a reliable constant with which i can accurately predict my experiencial depths. additionally ive used the same source of achuma for the last 4 years, my results are fairly consistent without outliers

its important to note that the further toward the base of the cactus, the more potent the plant is. my measurements are relevant to tip cuttings, for each foot under the top its about 30% more potent than the foot above if the plant hadnt been repeatedly cut at the same spot. by this i mean let 1 foot grow, chop it off, let another foot grow, chop it off. this would make the foot under this (and all other parts with age) MUCH STRONGER, the older the cactus is the stronger it is, typically 1 foot cuttings are a growing season old.