I would like to have full membership for the following reasons:
1. I am sincerely interested in mescaline, want to learn as much as I can about it, and have no ulterior motive or hidden agenda.
2. I really want to post to the Cacti Forum the following message:
“mescaline” a HUGE disappointment
There’s this guy that I know. Several years ago he did shrooms a bunch of times. He liked them, but whenever he was just getting off he would experience vertigo for a half hour or so (as did his friends). Sometimes that would make him anxious, and then he’d have to concentrate so as not to get into a negative mindset (dysphoria).
Lately he’d been reading the glowing reports about mescaline, so he thought he'd give that a try. He got some green “Peruvian Torch” powder from HP and performed an extraction on it using 69ron's HCl tek (using the tek exactly as written, without doing any titration). He then washed the crude extract 3 times each with acetone and isopropanol (both of which were ice-cold and anhydrous) to yield a pale pink powder with a slight amber tint.
The guy (who weighs about 200 pounds) ingested 200 mg of the pink powder. He expected an experience like the “pure” mescaline trips he had read about, but that wasn't what he got.
In the first place, as he got off he experienced a fairly heavy vertigo (with some mild anxiety and dysphoria) from T+1 hour to T+2½ hours, especially during the first half hour of that period. He doesn’t recall any mention of vertigo in the mescaline trip reports.
In the second place, he wouldn’t characterize anxiety and dysphoria as being extremely “forgiving”, as mescaline is said to be.
In the third place, he felt quite sleepy. In fact, a while after coming off the vertigo, and lasting right through the peak, he actually DOZED OFF several times!!
In the fourth place, he simultaneously felt kind of speedy.
In the fifth place, he was HEAVILY stoned, not at all clearheaded.
And in the sixth place, he started coughing for a while, actually bringing up some phlegm. He's not sure, but he thinks that might be a sign of bronchodilation.
So although he had extracted from “Torch” and washed the crude extract thoroughly, evidently there were still other psychoactive alkaloids besides mescaline present in large amounts.
However, the character of the experience didn’t change over time - it remained sleepy, speedy and stoning the whole time. But if there really were more than just one alkaloid present, wouldn't the experience change over time, due to the various alkaloids’ different times of onset and durations of effect?
On the other hand, if it really was (at least mostly) just one alkaloid, and the effects of that alkaloid lasted for twelve hours (as it did in this case), what else could it have been other than mescaline?
So could it be that these diverse effects were at least mostly caused by mescaline itself? The guy highly doubts it, because he feels that what he experienced lacked all the “hallmarks” of mescaline, based on everything he had read.
In the first place, it was not AT ALL euphoric. There was no joy, no emotional “warmth” or heightened feeling of well-being, and no laughter.
In the second place, the only feeling of sensuality he got was the kind of quasi-sensuality you feel when you’re sick.
In the third place, the experience didn't feel empathic / social at all (although admittedly the guy was alone at the time, so maybe that had something to do with it).
And in the fourth place, when the experience ended, there was no “afterglow” feeling of well-being.
So despite HP's excellent reputation, you gotta ask yourself: was the green powder from HP really Torch? Maybe it was actually San Pedro, or even Achuma.
But even THAT doesn't fit with what this guy had read. The other alkaloids in Torch, Pedro and Achuma were repeatedly described in the trip reports as also being pleasant - in fact, the “cocktail” of these alkaloids with mescaline were typically described as “therapeutic”, “nurturing”, “healing”, and “antidepressant” - which is not how this guy would describe this experience (especially the vertigo).
Anyway, he’s thinking of getting the necessary materials to do a proper recrystallization with decolorizing carbon and hot vacuum filtration, but that’ll raise the total cost of this project from $300 to $500, so he wants to get other people’s opinions before proceeding.
So does all this mean that other alkaloids in the mix can ruin the mescaline experience for some people, even though they’d still love straight mescaline? If so, assuming the original green powder was really Achuma (as the guy suspects), is there likely to be enough mescaline in the semi-refined pink powder to merit the expense of recrystallization? (The guy’s got only about 1.6 grams of pink powder left.)
Or is it possible that the pink powder is at least mostly mescaline, but this guy is just affected differently by it than most people, maybe because of his age? (He’s now in his fifties.) Also, could it be that psychedelics in general just tend to give him vertigo, with the potential for anxiety and dysphoria (as evidenced by his experience with shrooms)? Comments, please (especially from the “experts”).
If you could please allow me to do so, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.