This time it was 14 inches of good bridgesii. At sundown I smoked a small cigar and then drank the tea, while sitting outside next to a fire pit with a small wood fire going inside of it. I chased each gulp of tea by eating a segment of sweet grapefruit. It took about 40 minutes to drink all the tea. Nausea started to set in. I took 2 puffs of cannabis to ease the nausea, and continued to take 2 puffs of cannabis per hour for the next 5 or 6 hours.

Started feeling the effects of the tea right away. A heaviness came over my body and I could sense my mind starting to slow down. The clouds in the darkened sky looked very puffy and 3 dimensional and started merging together into one grand pattern. I leaned my head back, took a deep breath, and settled back into the chair, with that familiar, dejavu feeling of entering the other side starting to engulf my body and mind.

Words don’t really do justice to what transpired over the next 12 hours. I thought about many things. I entered this trip with an intention: to better understand the source of fear and insecurity that hold me back from more fully achieving my potential as a person. But instead the bridgesii steered the night in a different direction. Perhaps it answered my intention, but in a way that still needs further processing in the deep recesses of my being.

Ultimately I saw that life is fragile and death is just around the corner for all of us. Therefore fear and insecurity are, in a sense, normal and rational, an acknowledgment of the fleetingness of it all. I lost another family member not that long ago. He was in his 60’s and had recently been diagnosed with the onset of Parkinson’s. He ended up falling down a flight of stairs and hit his head and died. I thought about him and his family. I thought about cousins and family members whom I haven’t seen in years. I thought about the legacy that I will leave behind when it is my time.

I saw the uselessness of personal judgments and of trying to impress other people. In a way, I came a little bit closer to accepting myself.

But the bridgesii was hard on my body. Lots of nausea and stomach discomfort. I did not urinate for about 8 hours. Food was an impossibility. My body felt weak and spent by the end. Spent the last few hours until sunrise laying in bed, rolling around like a wrapped up burrito, unable to tell up from down. Washed by waves of emotion, soaked in the certainty of my own mortality.

I didn’t sleep at all, and rose with the sun, to go back outside and listen to the birds and insects, smelling the fresh morning air and the smell of Springtime.

There was a definite bleakness to this trip, and a feeling that resistance is useless, and a peace to it all.

My body was weak all that next day. But in the following days I felt refreshed and strong. Many good events have transpired in the week following this trip. Oddly, I have a new confidence and peacefulness that is with me now, and I would never have expected that during the depths of that bleak night.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of this. I hope that more clarity will come over the next weeks, as I continue to think this all through and soak it in. But in a way it feels as though something has already changed. Perhaps the nature of that change is what will become more clear.

There were many visuals during this trip. Eyeballs embedded in animals, and people, and objects, all staring at me and dancing around. The flames of that fire did things that flames should not be able to do.

There is a feeling of death and rebirth to these trips. Bridgesii is very powerful. Please treat it with respect.

Amazing report=) I heard pure mescaline will not give stomach discomfort.

Thanks FranLover.

I've heard that too. Then I've also heard that Mescaline by itself causes nausea and stomach issues. Maybe one day I'll do an extraction and see for myself.

But for now I am getting very consistent results with tea, so thats probably what I'll continue with for the forseeable future.

I've heard conflicting information about grapefruit juice's ability to potentiate mescaline, and was wondering if this is why you chose to consume it with the tea. Apparently it's a MAO-B inhibitor? To my limited understanding, one must typically consume enough mescaline to overwhelm the MAO-B pathways before it's active. If that's correct, it seems that grapefruit juice would be an easy way to potentiate cacti but I've also heard that it doesn't work. Cocoa is supposed to be a potentiator as well but I'm guessing the 'processed with alkali' crap we generally get in the supermarket would be useless for this purpose (IMO, it's a sin what they do with cocoa, almonds, etc.). Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

The main reason I used the grapefruit was to chase the taste of the cactus tea after each sip. I always add the juice from citrus fruit to the tea as its brewing because I've heard that the acidity increases the effectiveness of water extraction with mescaline. Not sure if thats true or not, but I always do it just in case it does help. I find that sucking on a wedge of citrus fruit works well to chase the taste of the tea. I just go with whatever is fresh and available at the time, thats why I went with the grapefruit on that occassion. That was a sweet type of grapefruit that is less harsh than a standard grapefruit. I would avoid really bitter grapefruits or even lemons because when the acidity is too much then it can aggravate the stomach discomfort caused by the tea.

I dont worry too much about "potentiating" the mescaline. The most important thing is to start out with high quality cuttings and to use enough plant material. If you have good cuttings of sufficient size then its hard to go wrong. And if you want to up the intensity during the experience then puffing on some cannabis works great.

Great trip report Grey Fox. Bridgesii is my go-to cactus, and while I've found all Bridgesii to be potent I think you may be right that the larger, ground-planted type is stronger.

I use needle-nosed pliers too, after having difficulty trying to use a hobby knife to cut out the spines. The trick I've found with the pliers is to grasp the entire spine cluster at the base and then roll the pliers rather than pluck them individually. That makes quick work of it.

I slice mine longways along the outer edge and inner trough of each rib, and then filet out the dark green flesh. If there's not much core then I leave it. I freeze thaw the strips three times which makes the outer shell-like skin easier to peel away, peel it, blender the cactus flesh and simmer for 30 -60 minutes, then filter it through a shirt. I've tried longer boils and can tell no difference. I don't reduce my tea much unless I'm going to extract as the taste is less icky that way.

I find the purge to be cathartic and makes me feel like I've paid my dues and am freed up to enjoy the ride. The only time I've had cramps was once when I didn't purge. When it got to my intestines it was uncomfortable.

Interesting trip report; thanks for writing fox.

I wonder about the calcium oxalate... Have you considered this at all?

I plan on trying some cacti soon and have usually taken it in tea form. Now that I've heard of the calcium though I am wary.

Thats a good tip with the pliers.

I enjoy hearing how other people prepare their cactus tea. It just just goes to show you there are many ways to skin a cat. For me the longer cooking time has resulted in strong teas, so I'll keep doing it that way for now.

The purge has its place and value for sure. For me high doses almost always cause purging, but medium to light doses usually do not.

I'm not too worried about calcium oxalate or anything in these cacti being harmful. There's such a long history of use in the Andes. And I havent encountered any health issues so far from my use, although the physical side effects certainly can be challenging during the trip, but I tend to see that as an overall part of the experience. The biggest "red flags" that I've encountered have been muscle cramps / muscle spasms, and also a temporary inability to urinate. These have occurred with stronger trips and tend to go away about halfway through the trip. But I can also say that I usually come out of cactus trips feeling physically and mentally envigorated.

From your experience drinking tea do you think that your health has been negatively impacted?

When I was younger I could stomach just about anything but the last couple time I took cacti, as tea (back a few years ago) I only though that it could be doing something odd to my intestines. Maybe bacterial impact or something like that. I really am not sure but it certainly can be very hard on the stomach/gut/intestines.

I wonder if not being able to urinate could have anything to do with kidneys? I really don't know but the thought did cross my mind when you mentioned that.

On the flipside, and aside from health concerns, I would prefer tea rather than extract in most circumstances I think for A) the practicality of preparation , and b) the whole deluge of chemicals.

As a cactus enthusiast with some pretty serious gut problems this concerns me. I don't know when I'll ever have a cactus experience, but it sounds like it will destroy my insides. Is it difficult to do an extraction? I don't know anything about the materials required. I just don't think I could safely go the edible route.

Beautiful post thanks for posting

Nathaniel reduced tea, straight to base, pull with D-Limo and salt with Vinegar to full spectrum mescaline acetate is easy. The initial nausea is still there (Mescaline does that on its own) but it greatly reduces longer term physical discomfort.

Right on. I just thought I'd ask since everyone talks about "the purge" and stomach discomfort. Also I like your name

Thanks all for the feedback and for furthering the discussion on this thread. Certainly everyone will have to make their own decision regarding the best way to consume cacti. I started out by peeling off the scotch tape like outer skin and then eating as much raw flesh as I could stomach. Those early trips were powerful and vivid. But over time I found that having to stomach all that raw cactus material was too challenging and limiting. So I progressed on to tea, and thats where I still am at this point.

The upside to tea is that you're getting a full spectrum experience and the potency is good if you brew the tea well. Its also a lot less to consume compared to eating cactus.

The downside is the taste and the stomach discomfort, as well as some of the unpleasant bodyload issues that come with the full spectrum.

As I continue to experiment with these cacti I see that there is an element of unpredictability to these cacti and to the tea. I am familiar enough now with my cacti and with brewing tea that I dont get weak tea anymore. I am able to consistently make tea that is strong. But what surprises me is that sometimes the tea is much stronger or more horrible tasting than expected. I am not sure why this happens. There have been a few times that the taste is so intense that I cannot finish drinking the tea. And sometimes the tea will sit like battery acid in your gut, with terrible heartburn and indigestion.

So you never exactly know how the tea will hit your stomach until you drink it. But thankfully, most of the time its not too bad. And even those times that were rough on my stomach, in hindsight I'm still glad that I took those trips.

I think that issues with tea are partially caused by cactus mucilage. When you drink the tea, you ingest lot of it. 2-3% of fresh cactus weight is water soluble mucilage - btw, it is the main component of cactus resin, made by evaporation of tea.

Although mucilage could be beneficial for your health (it could be considered as prebiotic), in larger doses it causes discomfort (like other prebiotics in higher doses). I would say this strongly depends also on your own type of gut microbiome.

Separation of mucilage from other components of tea is quite easy - just evaporate tea to resin, dissolve it in 80%+ ethanol and freeze. Mucilage will settle at the bottom, so decant the liquid and evaporate it again.

Good tip doubledog. Would it work as well with IPA?

I think yes, IPA works, tried it once and saw no difference.
But prefer ethanol as it is better solvent for mescaline.