SWIM is about to order a nice ~30cm San Pedro and is not sure if the mescaline within will be preserved if he cant do the extraction straight away. This is probably a stupid question but will anything go wrong if SWIM buys the cactus, waits possibly up to 2-3 months and then extracts it? I know the cactus needs drying anyway and I have found other posts online saying mescaline is one of the most stable and long lasting alkaloids, but I need to post in the welcome area anyway to be promoted and use all of the forum. SWIM is relatively new to Psychedelics and extraction, has experimented with aMT, LSA in morning glory and Hawaiian forms and is working towards mescaline next. Also, how long would the San Pedro cutting take to dry sufficiently? SWIM plans to use 69ron's Non toxic food safe extraction

It'll be fine for years if you keep it in a spot with light. Just watch it to make sure it doesn't start rotting. If it rots, throw it in the freezer and it'll last as long as the freezer (longer if you put it in another freezer after that first freezer breaks down).

For the extraction, it really doesn't do you any good to dry it. You can make a tea out of the fresh cactus chunks as described here. Basify (add enough base to turn the fluid slightly red-brown) and extract with D-Limo.

I have not done the chunk method described yet. I didn't think it would work as well as blending the cactus, but everyone that's tried it seems to have had good results. The nice thing is, there's no blending and no filtering needed!

Wow thats a great method! been reading it through and is much simpler than obtaining xylene (more readily available to SWIM that d limonene) etc,and doing an A/B extraction. SWIM will give it a try and post results and pics if at all successful

These are SWIM's results of

~Test run of "chunks" method with San Pedro~
V small amount of cactus (2-3 inch portion from a 9" cutting) was sliced into stars of about 1cm thickness then stars into quarters. The chunks were placed in a pot and just covered with tap water (swim didnt feel the need to use distilled here), then heated on the lowest setting for one hour with minimal stirring. Roughly 5 minutes in, swim added about 5ml lemon juice to the pot. The 5ml was guessed as it was squeezed directly from a lemon.
The liquid was left to cool then poured off into a container. Swim originally had trouble evaporating the solution as the container wasn't flat and wide enough, so decanted it into a pyrex baking pan and left to evaporate over an aga. This worked really well and over a few hours left swim with a pan covered with a thin layer of light green/yellow ish coloured crystals.
Swim scraped up the crystals using a non serrated knife much like a butter knife, and spoon. This wasnt the most effective method as during scraping some of the residue would 'ping' and fly and inevitably some of the crystals were lost to the tabletop and surrounding environment. However swim thinks this is negligible loss.
0.8g of alkaloid crystals were collected into a beaker and weighed.
When swim does the same with the rest of the cutting swim will weigh it before as well and work out a yield.
Additionally, swim is unsure of the potency of the crystals and how much is actually mescaline. It's estimated to be roughly 50% mesc and 50% other alkaloids.
I will post swim's results of experimenting with the rest of the cactus and also with the potency.

Here are pics of SWIM's final product

I doubt there's much mescaline in there. Looks like plant matter.


A 9" cutting would have to be pretty potent to get .8g of crystals. I've heard of strains pushing 1% alk content and higher, so its possible. However, its unlikley to get that much from 2-3 inches.

Better test it and find out.



That would be nearly 400mgs mescaline from 3 inches of cactus.
Most would say you'll need about 12-18 inches to get that dose.

^i agree
your (we dont really SWIM here btw) math is waaay optimistic.

i dont recommend extraction for such a small starting amount.

100g of dried skins is a good small extraction amount- yield .05-2g

hmm, that's disappointing. Still haven't tried it yet. Maybe there's still some present it's just diluted with whatever else is in there. The rest of the cactus was used up ~(135g total)and ended up with about 5g of.. whatever it is. Is it possible that what i have is say 15% mesc/alkaloid and the rest is poo. that would mean within the 5 is .75 worth taking; so a 'dose' would be 1.66g rather than 0.2g?

nevertheless i will experiment with doses and see if i have any worthwhile amount of alkaloids in there

Ya that looks like mostly plant matter, there are no crystals. Did you even filter or strain the solution at all? Best way to go about tea extractions is by simmering in water/acid for 1-2 hours, seperate liquid from plant matter by filtering and save, put plant matter back in pot and repeat steps atleast 4 times, then reduce and evaporate all the liquid. Dont mean to rain on your parade but my guess is very little of that is even mescaline.