IS San Pedro Safe to consume if not prepared correctly?

I was watching The Nasca Lines in Peru on TV and a shaman on that episode gave the host some San Pedro juice. The host ( I think hes name is Olly or Mark) says that it can be fatal if not prepared correctly. He said he was going to risk it in the hands of the shaman who prepared it.

absolutely not. TV is more fatal than pedro.

I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I am the tool of the government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I am the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I am the slime oozin out
From your tv set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help...no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

That's right, folks..
Don't touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin along on your livinroom floor

I am the slime from your video
Cant stop the slime, people, lookit me go

lyrics by Frank Zappa

OF

Anything can be fatal if you prepare it incorrectly. For example, when brewing San Pedro over an open fire, be sure not to stand in the fire. That is incorrect and dangerous.

A cactus preparation can very well be fatal in the worst case of very poisonous if it is the wrong cactus!

The guy on the TV was over-sensationalising for the sake of over-sensationalisation.

Or he wanted to ward off people who would be willing to prepare cactus themselves.

Or the shaman himself told him this to maintain his monopoly on cactus preparation. The bastard!!!

The pedro itself is completely safe. Many brewers add other ingredients to the goop... Nicotine being a common part of some brews, this is more likely the cause of adverse reactions

Yes... pedro can be very very dangerous. It's SOO important that you remove the spines AND not try to swallow it whole. This could be very uncomfortable.

It really depends on the Shaman's brew if it was just a san pedro brew it is almost non toxic if it was "cimora" it well likely contains at the least tobbacco and likely toe`( brugmansia) and therefore a "deadly" concoction used incorrectly.
I watched as this fool discounted the experience after a single use when it is a dieta and sustained ritual use which brings the most benefit.Something the quick fix western mind has a problem with.
I would love to have this psuedo-scientist sit for one of my Achuma ceremonies and then just set it aside as he did on the show.I would try not to laugh as his third eye is forced wide open and he sees the fundament of eternity unfold. He would grok the Nazca plain from a new place and that is for sure.
SB

Couldn't you die from straight San Pedro if you ingested so much that you overdosed on mescaline? I remember reading the Erowid calculations which said that with the strongest Pedro ever heard of a safe dose would be 25g. Some people eat way more than that, so could you overdose if the shaman happened to unwittingly find the strongest Pedro available that morning?

I'd be interested to know how far you can go with cactus... I mean, if you haven't been eating cactus all your life so you can't make an expert judgement on strength by working up, and you're not a scientist so you can't measure how much mescaline your cactus contains. Even if you do work up, how do you know when to stop increasing the dose?

I remember during a Terence Mckenna lecture he was talking about the LD50 (lethal dose) of various molecules and said that mescaline had the worst profile of all. But then he said one would have to take about 20 grams (?) of pure mescaline to reach the lethal dose. He said that you deserve to die if you are stupid enough to take that much. The audience laughed and if you heard St. Terence of Mckenna say it you would have laughed too.

According to Erowid the LD50 of mescaline in rats is 157 mg/kg. That translates to handfuls of pure mescaline for a human, probably way more than someone could eat without extraction. I don't know about the other alkaloids though, and Pedro has a lot.

Regarding the max safe dose of mescaline according to the page I was referring to:

1g is nowhere near a handful, and not that hard to ingest... so who is right here? McKenna, Hyperquill or Ott? Or at least the guys quoting Ott.
Of those three sources I would go with Ott personally, if that's really what he said.

Regarding Pedro cactus:

It seems it was 50g dried that they think is the max safe dose of dried cacti of unknown strength.
Weird, it's 50g not 25g. I'm glad to be wrong about that, embarrassed but glad! 50g sounds like one hell of a trip.

And for fresh...


I also found this, about mescaline not pedro but...

So unlikely to happen with mescaline apparently. Although I'm not convinced by this answer because just because someone might have died injecting 15g, doesn't mean they wouldn't have died with less. I want to know how much lots of people HAVE tried without health problems.

But more importantly, could it happen accidentally with cactus? Cactus is far harder to judge dosage for.



Q1: Are the guys quoted off Erowid correct to say that 50g dry (~1.5lb. fresh) is the max safe dose of an unknown strength of pedro?
Q2: Is the Ott quote of 1g mescaline being the max safe dose correct?

House, Touche and Soulfood, I got a good laugh out of your comments. Thanks for that.

I'm not an expert, but I've read in a few different places that mescaline can be toxic in extremely high doses. I've seen friends of friends eat 500+ mg without any lasting physical effects and I'm certain that others have pushed it much further. After all, 250-350 mg is a pretty typical dose. I'd think it would be especially tough to eat so much cactus that you'd hurt yourself from the actual mescaline content. I agree with the assessment above that mescaline is generally a very safe molecule and is not likely to be fatal unless taken along with other alkaloids or maybe a MOAI. I'm thinking this guy on TV was playing up the drama purely for entertainment value.

Also, I have much respect for Ott, but I believe that he was quite prone to exaggeration or 'filling in the blanks' when perhaps he didn't have all the facts. I consider him a great story teller, but far from an infallible scientific source.

-JM

iv had way over a gram once - probably closer to 2g, but it was in cactus tea form - im not so sure taking that much mesc hcl would be the most fun(bah - it probably would) but it was about the same strenght of a full breakthru spice dose for many hours - im still alive and better than ever - i loved it, it was as if i was in an oil painting.

OW yeah man !!! Cacti si one hell of toxic shit ! Just send all of your cacti to ILPT and he will destroy (consume) it in safe way ! Thanks. Please P.M. me for his address. Thanks

The one human death I have read about involved IVing 9 grams of mescaline HCl. The most SWIM has ever taken was around 1.5 g of the HCl, and it definitely could have been pushed much further..

Even water is toxic if you have too much, but without water you will die.

This is how the FDA proves things are toxic. They give massive amounts of a substance, far beyond reasonable doses, and give them for months, and then eventually the rats develop health problems. This is a simple trick used to ban all substances they want banned. It works even with water, so always be skeptical of lab tests unless you know the test, how it was done, and you know it was done properly.

For example, if you inject rats with a stream of pure water, and you use enough water, the rats will eventually die. This test proves that water is toxic! Such tests can prove anything is toxic.

All things you can ingest have a lethal dosage level. There is no exception to this as far as I am aware. Even vitamin C, as healthy as it is, has a lethal dosage level. If the FDA wants vitamin C banned, all they need to do is show how toxic it is by feeding rats super overdoses of the vitamin and they will all eventually die. Fortunately though, such a test will be bring about massive protests because way too many people like vitamin C, and a ton of tests already exist showing it’s benefits when used in proper doses, so the FDA will cause a serious fight with many large companies if they did that. But their tests would be enough to ban it. The people would have to fight to get the ban lifted.

The FDA could also ban chocolate based on studies done on dogs. Chocolate, even in normal doses, can be fatal for dogs. But imagine the public outrage they would cause if they did that! Anything that has a certain level of popularity is very difficult to ban, and chocolate is one such thing. Tobacco is obviously bad for you, and the FDA still cannot ban it. If they did, the public outrage would be huge, not to mention the companies that back tobacco have a ton of money and certain people at the FDA might suddenly disappear, if you get my drift. High profits are unfortunately often accompanied by high corruption.

My point is that most of the animal based toxicity studies done need to be looked at with a magnifying glass. You need to read the fine print. You need to know exactly how the tests were done. You need to know how it applies to humans if at all. A good example of this is asarone, which causes cancer in rats (because of their unique digestive system), but apparently not in humans in reasonable amounts, but it is still banned as a carcinogen. The reason for the ban is likely because it can be used to make XTC. Tobacco is far more carcinogenic, and proven so in humans, and yet it is not banned. This really makes you think just what the FDA really does. They don’t seem interested in really protecting people.

In many cases, the corporations with the largest amount of cash flow are the ones that the FDA backs, and the smaller corporations get pushed around by the FDA. A good example of this: stevia was banned as a food additive for many years until the Coca Cola company wanted it approved. They got it approved easily, while others tried and failed. Obviously dirty money was passed around, more than the makers of NutriSweet or Splenda could offer to keep stevia banned, and someone at the FDA got rich from this move. This is how the FDA works. I’ve watched them operated for many years. They are pretty corrupt. Anyone who doubts they are can simply do a search on Google and find thousands of cases of corruption within the FDA. The FDA responds to MONEY. If I wanted to get stevia approved, the makers of NutriSweet or Splenda would pay the FDA dirty money not to approve it. Being the owner of Coca Cola, the FDA will not only approve it but will also treat me like a movie star. I will get the red carpet treatment form the FDA. It’s all about money. The FDA needs to be shut down.