Am talking here about specific and direct potentiation/synergy by taking herbs, spices, foods, etc that contain the same (sort of) compounds present in Loph willi or T. bridgesii for example.

I have tried to get to the bottom of this before, what in particular enhances the experience the most and actually turns mescaline trippy... but it is still not clear to me how much about this is shown and tested.
Things like quercetin, do they matter that much?
Is it correct that mesc is mainly metabolized by primary amine oxidase / SSAO?

Aside from the problem of unpredictability of dose-effect and interactions, I'm curious if herbs like dill could be interesting with a fat dose of mescaline, especially considering the essential oil components also involved... some might help as well just by being competitive inhibitors, binding as substrate to the same metabolic enzymes.

Curious as well what the balance or interaction of 5-HT2A, 5-HT2C and 5-HT1A agonism might have to do with this. Just like 2C-B and the like seem to have effects that rely quite a bit on 5-HT2C agonism while the effects on 5-HT2A are very unusual (and disputed in how they contribute).

Although normally the tolerance effect from 5-HT2C is apparently quite limited (not considered to develop so acutely and strongly like with 5-HT2A), in the course of years I have become apparently chronically much less sensitive to it judging by how I respond to e.g. 2C-B last times I tried.
With (synthetic) mescaline even going up to 450 mg I have never really had trippy effects like OEVs although I have had things like visions, empathogenic-entactogenic episodes and briefly getting zapped into OOBE.
Experiences with 5-MeO-DMT seem to suggest to me that such a profile may come from 5-HT1A effects: profound but strangely closer to non-visual in a nutshell or closer to the sort of flippy stuff you might see hallucinating on MDA (/MDMA).

I don't really wanna get into toxic levels of things either and it would feel a bit like cheating to combine too much with something that agonizes 5-HT2A.
Of course just taking cactus is also an option I would certainly like to explore if i can get a good opportunity.

But with all the above, I'm interested in hearing tips about what's going on with mescaline producing the full package in some people with some preparations, in particular this:

How could mescaline itself be supplemented with unconventional sources of compounds to piece together the same kind of synergy as is typical with some of the greatest cacti? SSAO inhibitors? Or rather relatively inactive phenethylamines which can just serve as competitive inhibitors (of whatever breaks it down) to potentiate? Are there just mild MAOIs in those cacti or what?

Well, ava69 swears that THH makes all the difference; I don't know if you've tried that. My default suggestion, at risk of being too repetitive, is to try a non-debilitating dose of nutmeg tincture and that fits the bill with some of what you're talking about. The research around 'oilahuasca' activation may have some useful pointers about SSAO inhibition if you dig into it a bit, along with a bunch of stuff about how to influence other metabolic pathways.

My best results have been with simply drinking a load of cactus tea over the course of hours or even a whole day, although one time I did pre-dose in a dietary sense with a wonderful salad on the preceding day made with peas, fresh pomegranate, coriander leaf, turmeric, mixed spice and raw pistachio nuts. I'd like to think it helped, it was certainly delicious.

Great questions Solipsis! It is my firm belief that there is still MUCH to be learned about these cacti. We are still in the very early stages of understanding these plants.

I guess what follows are just some ramblings on my part regarding these cacti and what I think about consuming them. I don't know more than anyone else who grows these cacti. This is just how I have come to see things, based on what I have been able to observe.

The cactus is so easy to grow. And the tea is so easy to make, effective, and rich in effect. It is not hard or expensive to build up a lifetime supply of this medicine. It just takes patience. It just takes time.

I find a great appeal in doing it the traditional way. There is something very special about these cacti. They teach important lessons every time.

What is there to improve upon? What is there to gain from going beyond the tea?

Is it the nausea? Mescaline on its own induces nausea. Most of the serotonin receptors are in the gut, not the brain. With mescaline it takes a large amount to experience effects, measured in 100's of milligrams. Almost a gram to go really deep. If one experiences no nausea then the dose of mescaline was not very strong. That's a fact. And there are ways to refine the tea making process. One can learn to make the tea itself less nausea inducing by improving filtering and decanting, and by paying more attention to the amount of heat used, especially as the level of water drops low. The tea itself can be improved upon in order to induce less nausea.

Is it more accurate dosing? When one becomes familiar with the plants that one grows then this problem resolves itself. After a few trips from the same plant over a few years one learns how hard the material hits and one can reliably dose to a surprisingly consistent degree. This is a lifelong process. It is a lifelong partnership with the plants. Why not sacrifice the first few years to figure it out?

The obvious downside to the pure mescaline approach is that something is lost. Some of the magic and power are gone. It is less visual. It is less intense. And what was gained? What was it for?

I think that the cactus has already gotten it right. I think that tea made from live cuttings is the way to go.

Thank you for replying!

Yes I realize / agree: there is still much to be learned.. no doubt. Especially since research has been suppressed and stifled.
I did hope though that some high-functioning obsessed ppl would have tackled certain questions but maybe I just haven't worked hard enough to look for their findings.
The whole question of what's so special about red jungle spice is a good example, last time I checked the answer was very anticlimactic but fair enough.

I appreciate that about growing cacti but unfortunately I don't really have the privilige of getting sunlight here so the growing I do with a lot of pain and stress is just for maintaining special genetics tho it all isn't growing abundantly.

The mesc I have to sample is synthetic, at most i may at some point fork over some money and buy an amount of cactus chips to prepare as sort of a one-time thing but for the most part the pure stuff is what I have to work with.
It could be an advantage if it could help to investigate these questions. Like great about the TTH, i will need to check cause i thought it wasn't *quite* safe.. but.. sort of.

About nausea: there are many mechanisms that can produce nausea, various psychedelics we might assume work on HT3 receptors in the guts but lots of em actually don't really activate that so we have to look for different causes. Idk if this is the case with mesc i would have to check. If it is the case, then it should respond to both ondansetron and ginger (which apparently is about as effective as ondansetron or better, amazingly!).

I appreciate the sentiment of magic being lost, like also with psilocybin mushrooms this is a whole discussion. For starters: I don't question experience feeling like some part is lost... experience is always beyond question of others.
What I do question is unfounded assumptions at least with mushrooms: I do not think that it is a good idea to just assume it works similarly as with cannabis or cacti, with some sort of entourage effect or synergy. At least I am personally skeptical about a lot of opinions I hear on that - but it's off-topic.

Just consume cactus is a fine suggestion but this whole matter I raised is about exactly the alternatives. Not only do I wonder how it could be imitated with other plants, foods etc where some of them *must* have relevant compounds given how many options exist...
But also it is a matter of wanting to understand how it works, they are complementary questions - figuring out one part of that could also help with the other.

I have a background in chemistry, I knew it was a long shot to ask about this super fringy stuff but yes I have in other threads seen similar talk about screening and discussing by chemical structure and the SAR with inhibition of relevant enzymes.
So yea I'm kinda calling out the dudes who are that deep into the chemistry. <3



Interesting, do you have a rationale for any of those ingredients - about what they contain that might feature the kinds of interactions we want?

This: https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=77370

I'm fairly convinced this not only reduces nausea with mescaline but also potentiates mescaline. My experience with it, on two occasions combined with full spectrum extracted mescaline was intense.

Peppermint and cinnamon oil i believe is said to potentiate and form adducts with LSA. Do you think a similar thing is happening with mescaline and pepermint oil combo?

The peas were for dopamine boosting, the pomegranate was for carboxylesterase and CYPwhatever-it-is inhibition, the first of which enhance phenethylamine activity and the second stops the methyl groups from getting lopped off. The coriander was just added for flavour and mercury detoxification; and you've got to have herbs in something like this, eh? The turmeric was there because it's great and also because of the MAOI properties it's purported to have. The mixed spice was there for its nutmeg content and here I can refer you to my experiments with nutmeg as an enhancer of various psychedelics, link in my sig below. The other spices in the mix improve the nutmeg effect. Pistachio is a CYP2D19, er, inducer IIRC, which along with it's steroidal aromatase thingy that it does (sorry, it's getting a bit late here!) helps the nutmeg to do the right thing, and that thing is making trips colourful and euphoric at lower doses. Also, pistachio nuts are a similar size to pomegranate kernels and peas. And they're green. And they begin with a 'p' which incidentally brings me to how the coriander can be successfully replaced with parsley, at least from a culinary point of view and likely from a biochemical point of view especially if one gets parsley of the right chemotype.

Yes, the salad was a work of biochemical art and maybe I should do that write-up for the whole episode. But I direct you once again towards my collation of the work of a whole lot of other people that I hope will help provide you with some useful insights into how you can achieve the goal towards which you are oriented.

I think it's going to be a metabolic interaction, a receptor modulation - maybe allosteric - or an absorption enhancement. I feel that any mescaline adducts would most likely be inactive. N-acetyl mescaline is inactive. And I'm still not convinced about the LSA/peppermint adduct thing, even though I've explored it conceptually with a degree of enthusiasm.

Maybe a mescaline/cinnamaldehyde adduct would inhibit mescaline metabolism somewhere or other - there are several routes of mescaline metabolism.

That is really interesting DFZ.

Are there many papers on metabolism of mescaline?
I should probably search myself.

Here's an early example, attached. I'm pretty sure it was on another thread here.

Charalampous, K.D., Walker, K.E., and Kinross-Wright: Metabolic Fate of Mescaline in Man. Psychopharmacologia (Berl.) 9, 48--63 (1966)

The main thing that happens besides oxidative deamination is demethylation, which one might reasonably presume will be followed up with a certain proportion of glucuronidation.

Of course, Charalampous et al. found that the majority of the mescaline is excreted unchanged in the urine - something which led to the obvious discussion of post-dose urine drinking in another thread not so long ago. It also suggests that an antidiuretic substance would prolong the half-life of mescaline in the body.