I tested two brews using 40 inches of a homegrown fresh cactus. The San Pedro cutting was cut in half then each piece was cut in half again until I had 8 pieces. The pieces were then divided equally so the same amount of the top and middle sections of the cutting were put into both brews. I did this so the alkaloid content of both brews would be some what consistent.

While watching an episode of taboo from nat. geo. about mind altering substances I saw a shaman cutting the cactus into slices and leaving the core intact, while explaining that “the spirit of the cactus is strongest in the core/heart of the cactus”.

I froze then thawed the thin slices of cactus 5 times, one bag with the cores intact the other with them removed. Both were simmered for 7 hours with extra spring water added when the consistency was getting too thick. I spent the 8th hour reducing the brews to a drinkable amount.

I tested the core free brew first. After drinking it I felt very sedated and fell asleep for 3 hours, when I awoke I was barely feeling any effects. Over the next 3 hours I stayed on a pretty steady upward curve until the effects peaked.. This lasted another three hours; then I was down to a threshold dose of mild mescaline. This was a 9 hour experience that was very mild and slightly disappointing.

I waited a week to drink the second brew and after drinking it I fell asleep again. When I awoke I was tripping hard and for the next 3-5 hours the effects became more intense. This experience lasted 13 hours total and was intense enough to take me to new realms that past mescaline experiences failed to.

I understand that alkaloid content can vary but tried to eliminate this variable by using the same plant and dividing the top and middle sections evenly. The only variable was the use of the core left in the 2nd brew. The results speak for themselves.

funny. I was just thinking about posting about this same topic. I've heard some say to just throw away the core, but maybe that's not really right.

Excellent research, thick-light! You'd think that after a few thousand years, this "core knowledge" you so ably describe would be better known! There must be a hundred comments in the threads here talking about discarding the core. Well, you can always teach old dogs new tricks.

So, I plan to immediately put this info to the test. Up to now, I've been a fan of the two step program:
1) dehydrating the outer green flesh into potato chip-like strips (perfectly useable as is, or can be ground into powder and mixed with resin), and
2) sending the "white meat" sans-core through two freeze-thaw cycles, and then blending it with Everclear into a soup that is left to evaporate into resin. As has been reported here many times, resin balls are easy to deal with. This technique reduces the liquid content of cactus down close to zero.

Future efforts will include the core with the white meat, slice thin (those cores are dense!) and add an extra cycle or two of freeze-thaw.

I can't wait to hear the results of your experimentation

the cores are roughly a 1/4-1/3 as potent as the surrounding outter green flesh.

an effective technique to dealing with this is to dehydrate the outter green flesh , then powder it. make a resin from the cores and mix it into the outter green flesh powder to bind them into spheres. 1 cm in diameter is about as large as youd like to make them, as the larger they are the harder/more gag inducing they are to swallow and less easily they digest.


peace n light

2 feet of achuma with cores is fully entheogenic
3 feet of achuma without cores is fully entheogenic

Has anyone tested this yet?

I agree that they are 1/3 to 1/4 as potent as my brew withem lasted about 4-5 hours longer and was more intense.

How did your exp. go PAU?

I definetly think the cores have mesc in them, Not as much as the outer flesh, but still worth extracting or brewing with them.

I tried to upload the nat geo video but it's rather large so her's a link

nat geo san pedro

the cores were both bioassayed in their unprocessed form and extracted into a refined salt, this is how the statistics i quoted came to be

I have posted this information before but it seems relevant here to repeat it.

A study of trichocereus terscheckii found that the alkaloid concentration on a weight basis was strongest in the outer green tissue, however the same study found that despite having less alkaloids per weight the core tissues contained the majority of the alkaloids. People who throw away cores are throwing away something like 2/3 of their alkaloids.

The thing to keep in mind is that there is not much outer green tissue compared to core in most cases. The outer tissue is stronger in terms of concentration, but there is much more of the inner tissue and despite being weaker than the outer tissue the inner material still contains the majority of the alkaloids.

Think of it is way, if you have 10lbs of material that is 0.3‰ alkaloid and 1 lb of tissue that is 1% alkaloid, why would you keep only the stronger tissue and throw the other stuff away? In my example you have tissue that is 3X weaker than the other material, but ten times more abundant.

Inner material, the light colored stuff outside the vascular bundle that is under the green outer tissue, contains the majority of the alkaloids in these plants. One does need more of this material to make an equivalent dose, you might need three to five times more core than outer skin for the same effects, however mature plants have like ten to twenty times more inner tissue than outer tissue.

There is one thing to consider here though, in terms of extraction and tea, if you combine cores and outer tissue you not only extract but also average out the solution, what I mean is that when you start the outer tissue is say three times stronger than the inner tissue, if you combine them and make a tea you might end up enriching the cores more as that the amount of alkaloid in solution is going to be rather even after some time. Osmosis etc. if you do not add enough water for example, there will be more alkaloid initially in the outer tissue and less in the inner tissue, then the alkaloids go into solution and the amount of alkaloid in the inner and outer tissue becomes very very similar. If there is more alkaloid in solution than is present in inner core, the inner core will then be enriched to the point of the solution concentration. One might want to process cores and outer tissues separately for this reason, or use sme simple math and dilution ratios to optimize extraction. Keep in mind that extraction, unless you use an advanced method like electromechanical extraction using a magnetronic device, essentially does not remove alkaloids from the plant material, instead it averages them out in solutions of various solvents.

It is like this, your cactus is say 1‰ alkaloids, you then add water, if you add an equal amount of water to the weight of the cactus your solution becomes roughly 0.5% alkaloids and so does the cactus. The trick with exactions is to use a volume of solvent that reduces the solution concentration to something low, so that it is weak in terms of soltution, thus the cactus has little alkaloid left in it, then you remove the solution and concentrate it.

Sorry if this is too much info.

appreciate all parts of the cacti, but if someone were asking about what part to eat unextracted i would suggest the outter green flesh.


a couple key notes

healthy cacti in native environment are much thicker than most the cacti people acquire to use entheogenically
as such there is more space for alkaloids to exist within the non green layer. since the core/white area is soo much larger in native healthy plants they should be understood as such.

all information ive given about alkaloids has been relevant to 1 foot "top" cuts of t bridgesii, about 4 inches in diameter