Mesc is tricky... getting a strong trip in my opinion isn't just about consuming a large amount. From what I've read around the nexus, quite a lot of the mescaline you ingest just comes right out in your pee. Putting what I've read from others in context of my own experiences, I'm not sure of the nature of the variability of actual absorption, but I definitely feel like it is a real thing. I've taken smaller doses and had stronger trips, and I've taken larger doses and just had mostly nausea the whole time with minimal psychedelic effects, all from just eating powder.
I have a really wide throat and already take a ton of medication every day so I have no problem tossing back 30+ 000 size gel caps in a minute or two. What I do with powder to bypass the taste entirely, is just weigh it out, dump it into a deep bowl, and then spend some time capping it up. After a while, you figure out how to do it quickly. I've had 15g, 30g, and 45g trips with cactus powder. The one 45g experience was not stronger than the 30g experiences.
I agree that tea will make the same amount of cactus more potent than if you were to just eat it. I find tea at higher doses produce more immersive visions than any other method. Tea is a bewildering pain in my opinion though. It always takes way longer than you ever think it will and I find that by the time I am ever done making the tea it is already so late in the day even if I start early in the morning. So make it a day in advance if you go that way.
Mesc is probably best experienced extracted all the way- fun, laughy, stimulating, recreational, spiritual, beautiful. If you have the time and energy, definitely extract it. Most teks call for 100g of powder. If you just want to eat the powder anyways, 100g probably has a mesc content of like 1%, give or take some unknown error rate of course. You might have a gram of mescaline, maybe a little more or less. Most say don't go that high, but if you like the doses you like, I wouldn't worry about it. Mesc hasn't ever came close in terms of intensity compared to a powerful, fully absorbed aya/pharma dose. I have read that the way cactus powder causes nausea and the way that acacia causes nausea is an entirely different mechanism. If your iron stomach backfires on you with 100g of powderized cactus flesh inside, you might have a problem. Even when cactus doesn't produce nausea or pain, there is still a serious heaviness to it. I've taken 520mg of pure mescaline with pretty much no body load or heaviness after the come up.
Every time I do mescaline, I make sure I have really good weed on hand. Properly grown and cured weed that is not too dry will make mescaline erupt.
"It was altruism, not violence or force, which associated our higher cortex. Our intent is to awaken that memory." - Indigo