I invite everyone and the more experienced members to add anything and correct me if I'm wrong in my speculations.

link to clean cactus tea tek : https://mycotopia.net/to...ed-clean-cactus-tea-tek/

So, I obtained 2,5kg of san pedro cactus. I decided that I will prepare the cacti for consumption. Last time I made a tea – the tea was hard to get down, part of it is indeed my fault as I could do a better job and have a more »palatable« end result.

So as I was making my research about the possibilites I thought I would do an acid/base extraction to avoid the bad tasting tea. I already made the A/B extraction one time before successfully, but had a very bad yield. I could do a better job indeed and have a better yield, but it was my very first extraction.

As I was researching and reading further I observed that generally when people do an A/B extraction with mescaline containing cacti the yields are quite low, even when the procedure was done skillfully. I compared that with the tea method and observed that if people do a good job the results seem to be better in terms of how many doses one gets from the actual cacti.

The one time I made a tea I had a 15 cm long and 3 – 4 cm diameter cacti. As you can imagine this was a small piece of cacti. I made a tea and had a great experience. It was not a strong dose – but indeed it was a good common dose. I had great visuals and great mental uplift. In general the experience was one of the most beautiful I have had. It lasted at least 10 hours.

I wonder if the experience would be that good for me if I extracted the goods via A/B method. I think not (I could be wrong of course). Also, some of the senior members here say that they had the best experiences with tea and not the A/B extraction.

I found this method on mycotopia forum and gave it a try. :
https://mycotopia.net/to...ed-clean-cactus-tea-tek/

I was not making my tea for 14 days as the author of this method here suggests, but went for the quicker way with the same principles applied. It took me 3 or 4 days. If you do it more slowly one will get better results but still I think the end product of the quicker variation is way better than the tea I did my first time.

I used 1,3 kg of cactus and managed to boil the water down to 600 ml.

If the quantity I used was dry then  1300g * 0,05 = 65g  I have about 65g of dry material. Therefore if the speculated dry material contains 1% of mescaline  65g * 0,01 = 0,65g  I have 650 mg of mescaline in my 600 ml of tea. That basically means that I have about two common doses. Which is not very satisfying.

At this point I'm planning to do an experiment with 100 ml just to see the actual potency of the tea. If my speculations are correct I should have a stronger experience from 100 ml of this tea compared to  650 mg / 6 = 108 mg  108 mg of extraced mescaline.

I tried 5 ml of my tea and found that it is very bitter (a great sign) and indeed more palatable than my first successful tea I mentioned before.

What do you think ?

Do we have any data on how many alkaloids might be lost with the A/B method compared to a »full spectrum« water extraction ?

As promised I dosed myself with 100ml of the clean tea I made to test the actual potency of the stuff. All I can say is that the clean tea is a great success.

I was drinking the 100 ml slowly for 60 minutes. At the beggining of drinking the utter bitternes I smoked a small joint just to counter the potential nausea.

At the 60 minute mark I was at (+) according to the Shulgin's scale. At that moment I said to myself that this stuff takes 3 hours to kick in fully and I'm already at (+) this will be something.

The effects slowly built up until I was at an unmistakeable (+++) at the 3 hour mark. There were moments when I experienced the so-called transcendental state or (++++) according to Shulgin's scale – a rare experience indeed. The visuals and the colours were really something and very intense.

At 10 hour mark I was still experiencing vivid open-eyed visual. There were colours I never saw before. Sleep was achieved at the 13 or 14 hour mark – though the quality was not very good at all.

By the way I was not even able to drink the whole 100 ml – there were still about 10 or 20 ml left in the glass – which is actually 10 - 20 % of the dose – so that's something important to note I think.

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My speculations were that there should be around 108 mg of mescaline per 100 ml of my tea. I also speculated (see my previous post) that the experience should be stronger from 100 ml of the tea compared to 108 mg of extracted mescaline.

According to erowid.org  100 mg can at best produce a light experience or (+). My experience, as you can see, was no doubt a strong experience or a (+++) and (++++) for moments in between. Therefore taking erowid into account I consumed at least 300 mg of mescaline (the range for a strong experience is from 300 – 500 mg and since I'm relatively sensitive to psychedelics I assume 300 mg).

This can mean either that my speculations of the strength of my cacti is not about 1% (dried) but somwhere about 3 % (dried) – I think 3 % is very high potency and find that unlikely (I could be wrong though), or it can mean that with the A/B extraction a good deal of alkaloids are lost.

At this point I'm not quite sure which conclusion is the right one.

Anyway – I'm very happy with the potency of the clean tea method. According to my calculations every 10 ml of the tea I made contains about 32,5 mg of mescaline or mix of alkaloids that produces the same strength.

Erowids numbers are high ime.

108mg seems reasonable.

I had mild experience with 220 mg of cleaned Pachanoi extract (washed several times with acetone), I increased the dose to 350 mg in the second hour of the trip and it went beautiful, compared to light LSD trip.

I was thinking some more about the cacti and my tea. One very important thing I forgot to take into account is that my cacti were harvested almost immediatly after the overwintering phase. In practice that means they had not had any water for at least 5 months. Therefore my initial idea about the water content in my cacti was wrong - and my initial idea about their potency is also wrong I believe.


I thought I would re-arange the numbers in my calculations a little to get a more sensible result.


--> Instead of substracting 95% from fresh cacti I'll do 90%. --> 1300g * 0,1 = 130g
Only this step gives me 200% more dry weight than my initial idea which gave me 65g.
And 130g with 1% mescaline content leads to 1,3g --> 130g * 0,01 = 1,3g.
Dividing that with 6 to get my dose --> 1,3g / 6 = 0,216g or 216mg of mescaline per 100ml tea.

216mg compared to 108mg is indeed a more sensible dose for the intense effects I experienced.
But accorind to erowid I'm still only at the beggining of common dose with 216mg (common dose: 200-300 mg). My experience however was no doubt a strong one.

So if I anticipate a little stronger potency of my cacti - 1,5% (dry) instead of 1% (dry) I get to a funny number. I say funny because after the experience I evaluated exactly this number without doing any calculations whatsoever.

--> 130g (dry) * 0,015 = 1,95g --> 1950mg / 6 = 325mg --> this gives me 325mg of mescaline per 100ml

I think with this calculation I'm getting a more accurate dose, which is 325 mg instead of 108, and that's just about 3 times more. I may be wrong of course and forgot to include other factors I'm not aware of at the moment.




blue.magic --> To how many micrograms of LSD would you compare the experience you're mentioning ?

Something like 75-100 micrograms, without visuals or just barely noticeable OEVs, but still a meaningful mind trip if one is calm and focused inwards. Very little bodily sensations.

However, I had two very strong "surges" of energy coming through my spine after doing some breathing tantric exercises. This happens to me on cacti almost every time, the energy has a transparent, fluid quality of water, but very strong if contained and streaming.

That's interesting. It is true that I'm very sensitive to tryptamines, lysergamides and phenetylamines and my weight is very low - but still I find it strange that 75-100 micrograms produced only that kind of effects. For me 100 mcg produces +++ psychedelia. I could relate the intensity of 100ml of my tea to about 100 mcg of LSD.

I know a guy who doesn't even feel a 250 mcg blotter. He needs to take several drops of dissolved LSD to have a trip, an amount that would make my flying above and under galaxy...

One factor might be I am burned out from my last job, not exercising, eating badly and being desensitized from all the worries. When I took psychedelics in such state, I often not feel anything until the "plug pops" and bam, then it works.

I think most LSD is 'cut' (or more accurately, the advertised mcg amounts are higher than they are in reality) because it's difficult to verify microgram amounts on paper blotters and due to its illegality it's hard to enforce decent standards. When I took 125mcg of what my friends told me was 'strong LSD', it was comparable to 30mcg of legally obtained 1P-LSD.

If someone suddenly started selling 100mcg LSD as 100mcg LSD it would be dangerous, because people are used to the overstated numbers and they would be taking 200mcg thinking it's going to be mild.

When I took 125mcg 1P-LSD (highest dose so far, and I don't think I'll ever have the guts to exceed or repeat it), I couldn't tell up from down. It was a complete mind melt and was accompanied by strong visual distortions.

As for cactus tea I don't really understand why people bother and then worry about long term storage when you can just dry it for indefinite storage and eat the chips whenever it calls you. With my home-grown cactus, 3 grams dried outer (dark green) flesh is a solid dose. The inner (light green) flesh I discard, because it's hardly active. So if you insist on making tea for whatever reason, you may want to consider discarding the inner flesh - little alkaloid loss, but potentially a great reduction in undesirables.

I took quite a few blotters from different sources so I use my personal scale, maybe most of the blotter were 'cut' so I have a bias there.

I had a similar trip on microdosing when reached threshold dose by serial dilution, then took 2-3 times the threshold. That was mostly like my last 350 mg mescaline trip.

Of course, the whole comparison to LSD is misleading, it's completely different compound, not even a same class.

It was a mild trip compared to my previous journeys on 25 grams of cactus, more like 15-20 grams. I will try 380-400 mg of the extract later and see

I tottally agree with you regarding LSD being 'cut'. I also have experience with 1P-LSD, though not with as high dose as you. I have had several sessions with it, I think around 15 sessions, but it was always half of a 100 mcg tab - that is 50mcg. I'll write a separate post about my experiments with it.

Well I just deep froze the rest of my tea and will melt it again when I'll intend to have another experience. I don't have to melt the whole quantity of course - I can melt something like 40 ml to have a pleasent experience or 10 ml for a microdose. I do wonder however if this freezing and melting can have a negative effect on the potency of my tea. I really don't want to loose that since I'm very happy with what I have now. I hear that mescaline is a relatively stable molecule though. What do you guys think, or maybe have experience with that ?

I don't have any experience with dry cacti chips yet so I can't compare that to the tea experience. I think there is still a lot of the 'nasty stuff (waxes and stuff)' in the outer dark-green flesh that can cause gut discomfort, if not removed. Maybe you can tell me more since you have experience with it.

The method I chose to make my tea only discards the outer skin, the spines and the innermost woody stuff (I believe it's called 'pith' ). Since I used relativelly large qunatites for the tea I believe that I gathered quite a lot of alkaloids that would be lost if I had discarded the inner light-green flesh. And I think that's also one of the main points of this tek - to extract as much as possible, even from the less potent parts of cacti.

I would be a good experiment to separate the outer dark-green more potent flesh and the inner light green less potent flesh and compare the actual potencies of one another. I think I saw one thread with this idea somwhere here. I Can't rememeber exactly now.

You say that 3g of this outer flesh is a solid dose - I suppose that means a ++ experience according to Shulgin's rating scale. I wonder what is the potency of your dry chips - if you have 3% of alkaloid content that would give you 30mg/g --> therefore 90mg/3g.

I guess everything is a trade-off and everyone needs to find one that works for them.

Making tea also results in losses compared to eating raw chips. IME (from bioassays) there is very little active alkaloids in the inner flesh, so after a few tries I decided it's not even worth the energy spent on drying it.

This may vary from one cactus type / strain to another.

No doubt there are nasties in the outer flesh, but the high alkaloid content (in my strain anyway) means you need very little of it, which means less nasties. Personally I've never experienced any physical discomfort from cactus prepared that way.

Having a smaller amount of plant material to consume is another plus.
Chips are also much more convenient to take with me on a day hike and I can even take them on a plane in hand baggage.

Someone did an experiment (IIRC it's DG) extracting inner (white) and green flesh separately and got, more or less, the same amount from both. Of course total weight of the inner flesh is much bigger than the green one so the % of alkaloid is much lower but it's a waste to discard the white flesh.


Edit : i was wrong. It's not DG who runned the experiment and the numbers are wrong too. In fact there is only 30% of alkaloids in green flesh and 70% in the core and white flesh. Here is the post to read.

It must vary widely from strain to strain, because with mine it's more like 95% alks in the green and 5% alks in the white (based on bioassays only).

You see, I don't know what is the ratio in my cacti, therefore I put the outer and the inner flesh to the cooking, just in case to catch all the alkaloids. The tek I used is designed to remove as much undesirable nasty stuff as posible. You can check how it works in the link I posted in the opening post.