For me, big medicine

Set - generally good, coming out from under the shadow of putting my dog down, six days earlier. Maybe I should have pushed back my exploring, but my grief had dulled somewhat, and, well, here I am. Other than that, good. Feeling strong and healthy. Lots of hiking lately, in the month of May alone, almost 200 miles on foot. April was less hiking, because I did an 8 day, 100-mile canoe trip. I’m not a jock, not a physical specimen, but I’m not sedentary. Just overall feeling pretty well. Over the last 2.5 years, I’ve made some non-trivial changes in my life, and they have helped much.

Setting - As I apparently prefer, I’m at home alone, just my one dog now. I’m comfortable at home, my music, my things, my space. My dog Jack is a good tripping pal. My wife is out of town for the week.

Ingestion 0930.
No drug use in at least 3 months. No medications.
Last meal - gluten free granola cereal with almond milk, 2000 prior evening.

Male, 170 lbs
History of use - Mescaline - virgin. Psychedelics - Not inexperienced. Not as well versed as many. More experienced than some. First LSD use was 1972.

Substance - T Bridgesii, 100 grams, drank as a reduced tea

My own garden is not even two years old yet.
Before I planted any cactus I had obtained some South American chunks of Bridgesii; it came highly recommended.

With different cactus powder, I had extracted a small amount of powder, using 69ron’s tek. I did two bioassays with it, maybe 200mg first time, and the remaining 300mg the second time. I can’t say I noticed any effect, either time.

So this would be my first mescaline exploration, assuming it was viable.

I contemplated Loveall’s ethyl acetate approach, and Guitar Tony’s resin tek, and trying 69ron again and also Kash’s extraction, I finally settled on the tea, it seems ‘can’t miss’.

I put the dried chunks in water, left the slow cooker going for about 30 hours, adding water as needed.
I separated the reconstituted chunks, considered mashing them to recover any magic, but after 30 hours of heat, it just didn’t seem necessary. (Spoiler alert - it was not necessary).
From there, just decanting and coffee-filtering the liquid, ended up with just about a liter of tea.

Next morning, low heat for about an hour brought it down to a coffee cup of thick syrup. Remembering how bad it stunk in the slow cooker, I was not looking forward to this syrup, And it was worse than I expected.
Nonetheless, I drank the cup, and held it down.
Almost forgot, I did drink Lemon Balm Tea shortly before the syrup. And 2 cups of coffee for the morning.

From reading on this nexus, 50g of bridgesii would generally be a good safe start point, especially with first use of this particular plant. But I drank it all down. For better and for worser.

Within 30 minutes, I started feeling a body load - disoriented, slowing of movements, small loss of coordination. I headed to bed and curled up, nice and cozy.

That became my go-to position for the next 11 or 12 hours. Either in the bed, or on the living room floor. Closed eyed visuals came pretty soon, kaleidoscope visions mostly.

As the explorations developed, open-eyed I got some good tracers, our houseplants were incredibly beautiful, my young cactus in my garden seemed to come alive, throbbing and glowing.

I had some less-than-comfortable visions along the way: When I fed my dog, I thought some specks in his food bowl were ants, and then thought that those ants were crawling all over my legs. It was not real. Similarly, during the day I frequently had muscle spasms/cramps in my legs, and when I looked, my mind was seeing muscles in my legs bulging and popping. Again, it was trickery in my head.

That was a significant part of my adventure, identifying what was real and what was not. Again for me, not uncommon at all. I don’t stress that part.

Early in the trip, I kept thinking “yeah this is just mostly body load” but then I’d realize “wait, this is serious tripping, I don’t know what just happened - again”. It was about 3 hours in before I realized I’d gotten a good dose, that I was tripping pretty hard.

I have to point out, I never ever need heroic doses, I’m lucky that way. I’m always receptive to stimulations like this, and I journey deep.

This dose knocked me sideways, some folks probably wouldn’t even consider it much of an exploration at all. For me, the medicine was real and serious.

The other discomfort for me was some vasoconstriction. I’m pretty sure my heart rate was elevated, though I can’t be certain. I did lots of breathing exercises trying to calm it, but I think it stayed up for awhile. But I’m still here.

I didn’t think I would post about this trip, because I was unable to come up with much to say about it, but then this thought came to me, to concisely state what the trip was like for me:
It was as if all the ‘boxes’ in my mind, where I compartmentalize my entire life - my loves, my pains, my joys, my plans, hopes, troubles, issues - everything - it felt like all that stuff just got tossed out of their ‘boxes’ and scattered everywhere.

But even that wasn’t so simple. I promise I’m laughing as I’m trying to tell these things.
It was like all those boxes got opened up just a small crack. And the medicine turned my mind upside down and was shaking all these things out of their boxes with just little tiny openings, like the boxes couldn’t have just been opened all the way to let things fall freely out. No, everything had to come out like salt out of the shaker. And something was shaking those drawers for real, to empty them.

Yeah. Go ahead with questions, you know I won’t have any answers…

Maybe I read that description somewhere, about the boxes. I don’t think so, but if I did, and someone else deserves credit, by all means they should have any credit, not I.

So, now I want to contrast. Dimethyl Tryptamine - busting through, I feel like I’m a rag doll, being tossed from one universe to another to another and on and on… Ayahuasca - the few times I’ve used it, it says “So, which box shall we open and go through today…?” And it goes through that box for me. LSD - for me, that’s like the cleaners show up, shining and polishing my perceptions with squeegees, making sure all the boxes are labeled and packaged nicely, brushing away cobwebs. But leaving the boxes alone… Mushrooms seem like more of a sight-seeing tour for me, delightful visions and tracers…

So, that’s about what I can say for now, just a few days in.

I mentioned the discomforts already.

Highlights - beautiful plants, indoors and outside. Music was exquisite. Without needing high volume, I noticed walls of sound, good songs lasted for ever and ever. Particularly good for my ears were Nina Simone (Here comes the sun) and (go to hell). And Black Coffee and Kings of Tomorrow were delightful as well.

I had set out some changa leaf and the bong. I don’t think my fingers would have worked well enough to load and light the bong, but I kind of wonder how that would have gone. Probably interesting.

So overall, it was good, and I’m glad I did it. Maybe smaller dose next time, and work on that extraction, it was difficult to drink the tea.

Great trip report Sunnyside! Thanks for sharing this. You gave a lot of helpful details about the preparation and the experience. Bridgesii tea

Sorry to hear about your dog.

Hey Grey Fox,

I think you already know how grateful I am for your influence and guidance in the past.

Thank you.

You're too kind.

It really is a great trip report. I enjoyed reading it. The box metaphor that you apply to different psychedelics is very interesting. I always feel that there is something about the cactus experience that is very broad and expansive, in the sense that it allows one to step back and understand life from a larger perspective than is usually possible. Sometimes I feel like I can understand my life from the perspective of an impassive observer, standing high above. Everything about life that I focus my mind on makes sense and is so clear. But to capture that insight and to bring it back into ordinary reality and live it... that is the hard part. The cactus trip is a special moment in time, a brief window, where it is possible to focus and understand with incredible clarity (fleeting as that may be). Each time I try to bring back more and live it in real life.

Very cool, thank you for sharing your experience with us friend!!!