I was planning on doing another cactus experience for a while. I had procured some more dried Peruvian torch chips. I decided to go with 120 grams, as my last 75 gram trip had been great, but I wanted to go deeper. I had begun brewing them. I then realized that there was a meteor shower that was going to be happening! After brewing, straining, brewing straining, 4 times, then reducing down to a tar in a glass baking pan, scraping up with a razor, etc, I ended up with a ball of tar bigger than a golf ball. Next time I'll try decanting to try to reduce the total volume of the tar. I decided to save this for the meteor shower, which happened to be peaking on my friday night (which is actually sunday). I like to have a couple of days to reassimilate after such an experience.

So after fasting all day at work (I had an apple and a banana for breakfast, and accidentally munched a few blueberries through the day off the plants at work), I got home and decided to dose before sunset. I decided to ball up my tar into pill size balls and down them as quickly as possible with as little water as possible. This went against my own intuition and experience (which I should have listened to), because I had prematurely vomited once before from drinking tea too quickly, but i decided to follow the advice i had received from someone who seems to be quite experienced. I managed to get about 3/4 of it down, before i started getting horrible feelings in my stomach, so I made sure to sit as still as possible. Lit a little nice smelling palo santo incence, and attempted to ride it out. Well, I ended up vomiting up the majority of the dose I had taken. I know I didn't take a lot of it in, as it was still even shaped in little balls when I purged it.

I was feeling a little disappointed, then suddenly realized how high I was starting to get already, and how much better I felt about some issues I had been dwelling on (mainly my ex, who I was still seeing telling me she was seeing someone new, which she decided to tell me the morning before I was going to dose). The purge was actually pretty good and helped my purge all these negative feelings I was having. Very healing. I chilled at the house for a while to make sure I was feeling better before leaving my house. I had my MP3 on shuffle, and some Jimi Hendrix jam came on, and I totally merged with it, and really understood what it was that I used to like so much about Hendrix, even though I hardly listed to him anymore.

So, since my tummy and my head were feeling much better, I decided to go for a walk to the park. Leaving my house, I was just feeling super euphoric and energetic. It was still light, but getting towards dark. As I got on the trail, I noticed some nice mild visuals starting to kick in. Kinda circular spiderweb designs radiating around within the round profile of the trail going under the trees and stuff. Also I could see other groups of people walking up and down the trail, towards me and away from me, and got some really interesting sensations of depth perception warping.

So, I got to the park finally, and sat down on a bench to look at the sunset and the water. Very beautiful seeing the colors of the sunset rippling in the waters of the bay. Had some interesting realizations about the ripples that our lives send through the universe based on the ripples that would hit the shore quite some time after a boat had gone by. Also about how we can be affected by the ripples of others, and can choose to ride them, or cut through them and create ripples of our own. Good times, good introspection.

I layed back on the bench as it started getting darker and watched for meteors. I was one or 2 but not too many yet, as the shower was supposed to peak in the middle of the night. At this point, I started to wish I had dosed more, and decided to walk back to my house to figure out what I wanted to do about that.

Got home, decided I couldn't stomach the rest of my tar balls. Thought about taking some mushrooms, but instead decided to eat a decent chunk of some really strong ganja brownies I made, and nibbled on some raw cacao nibs (as I've heard they can help potentiate mescaline).I then set back out to walk back to the park.

Got back to the park, and layed back down on my bench that I was on before. I don't know how long I lay there looking at the stars. I don't really remember seeing meteors or anything. The next thing I knew, I was waking up from dosing off there on the park bench. It felt SO good to just drift off like that into a mescaline/cannabis sleep under the stars, and to wake up that way.

I woke up and walked around the park, down the boardwalk by the water and stuff. I have no clue how long I walked around, but at one point, I was a whole bunch of what seemed like homeless people just hanging out on all the benches at one end of the boardwalk. I felt a little uncomfortable and decided to walk back the other way. I'm still not quite sure they were really there, but I think they were.

Came home in the wee hours, and went to bed eventually. Woke up at 7 am or so, still feeling altered, and walked back down to the park to get a cup of coffee. This day was pretty cool. I did a lot of walking and thinking and stuff, not really tripping, but still feeling a little different.

My ex kept trying to call me and text me and got all upset I wouldn't talk to her. I didn't really want to talk to her, and texted her telling her I couldn't talk. That seemed to upset her more. I ended up sending a couple kinda heartless texts to her about why I didn't want to talk to her. I was surprised that I felt inclined to be so heartless in my communication with her after having such a great cactus experience, but maybe I was just cutting through the bullshit. I dunno.

So all in all, vomited my dose prematurely, didn't see many meteors (or at least don't remember seeing them), and still had a FANTASTIC time!

your passion for cactus further inspires me

i noticed your insight to decant next time, it makes a world of wonder when reducing the volume of your tea/ resin
this sort of self correction is invaluable, paving your own way. i love it.

when you used incense to ward off nausea it made me realize that i too use sensory stimulation to focus on rather than my nausea. i find that lemon juice is great to have around take a swig, swish it around spit most out and swallow a tiny bit, just enough to coat your throat (oddly ive rinsed with mint infused sprite soda and spit for great clean feeling) i also use incense/ agua florida for aromatic distractions.

lastly you mentioned sitting, i would highly suggest laying down on your back. i find that if roll onto my side or sit up from hours 1-3/4 the nausea comes on within seconds, but a few minutes lying down and using sensory stimulation works wonders. i also keep a container to spit into as i often salivate.

because you ended up purging shaped globs, try smaller globs next time, so they dissolve faster in your stomach.


it dosent seem like a failed experience by far, i think that the medicine treated you accordingly and it seemed to help you work out some personal issues. groundwork for deeper learning.


cactus often illuminates the awe of waters nature and how many things are metaphorically similliar. i see our reality as a body of liquid, each of us nodes create ripples, the more you believe in your experience the stronger your ripples. stronger ripples have tendencies to override weaker ripples and often other people are brought within your reality. for me this explains why shamans/curanderos work so well with thier medicines, the sick come to them confused and imbalanced and the medicine users reality is so strong it sorts out the patients inferior energies as a result of contact with the medicines "ripples"

part of my ritual is shower/bathing/swimming at the beggining of the experience to polarize my energies, i see our bodies as an electromagnetic field (many of them actually) and i see water (especially flowing water/moving through water) as polarized magnet (much like rubbing a magnet on a piece of metal and making it magnetic due to the electrons). hydrogen as i understand it is extremely ionic, and as such freely donates electrons/ receives them, so by lets say sitting under a waterfall (this is prime) theoretically you are washed of energetic imbalances and repolarize your energy fields accordingly. i really cant wait to try the waterfall, its priority 1 on my to do list.

Thanks for the tips. I'll have to try lying down next time. In thinking about it, that's what I did the last time, although I also spaced out the consumption quite a bit more. I think I might go back to trying a tea again next time, but decanting it. Is it worth doing multiple pulls from the leftovers of the decanting process or not? (You know, like add some more water, still well, let decant again).

I might try the flavorful in the mouth trick. I tried that with some mint leaves this time, and it seemed to help some, but it was mainly just too much volume in my stomach at once was what it felt like, not from the flavor so much. Some of the people in peru say to stay away from combining citrus with cactus. I'm not sure why. I think Ross Heaven talks about it somewhere in his book, and I've heard another reputable community member from Peru advise against it. I must say though that on my experience before this, I had a most amazing experience eating a giant mandarin, with seemingly no negative effects, so who knows...

Definitely not a failed experience. I think I got what I was supposed to get from it, but now I can't wait to go back and go deeper.

I like what you say about ripples. That's totally kinda in line with the thinking I was having. I'll have to try the ritual bathing thing one of these times. I think that's part of what they do at the sacred pools in Peru. Maybe this is why. I was even thinking about going up to the hotsprings overnight next time I partake...

with the decanted sludge, id only add water once more and let settle to retrieve most alkaloids per effort. then id reduce all of the filtered and decanted tea together


the peyote way suggests that each participant bring a grapefruit to break their fast the next day. once i peeled a box of clementines and set them all out in the room, which made the room pungently citrus (incredible sensation) given that this was day 2 for my friend and day 3 for me our fasting ended mid experience (we dosed each day starting at a foot then adding 6 inches per day) each clementine had a unique flavor and the sweetness was for lack of a finer definition, orgasmic. i use a lemon per foot of cactus when making tea, just squeeze most in the first 2 hour cook and the rest for the second 2 hour cook. i have had no problems combing citrus in any capacity, i used to use orange juice/grapefruit juice as my cactus chaser until i went 0 calories. grapefruit juice soda was my thing for a while for chasing btw

Dang! That must have been quite an experience! I've never had problems with the citrus either, but I wonder why some are suggesting against it?

Thanks so much for all the info you share!

considering your stomach acid is hydrochloric i can only assume weaker acids are converted to hcl before digestion, so any alkaloids made into cirtrates would further be made into hydrochlorides anyway it wouldnt matter what acid the alkaloids were made into because ultimately they would become hcl before complete digestion. i chalk the stigma of citrus up to superstition.


yes the clementines were an experience, having had 1 foot othen 1.5 then 2 feet and breaking my fast during 2 feet with a box of clementines i can only hint at the flavorgasm that resulted in our trial. stupendous!