DOSE:		oral	Cacti - T. bridgesii	(tea)
	4 mg		Pharms - Buprenorphine	(daily)
	1 mg		Naloxone	(daily)

BODY WEIGHT:

200 lb

I am a 33 year old, college educated male. I have struggled with addiction to potent, and in my opinion, evil prescription pills in the opiate, amphetamine, and benzodiazepine classes. I have been clean from those substances for over 3 years now with the help of Suboxone maintenance therapy and more importantly, support from my family and girlfriend.

In the first two years of sobriety, I worked through about 75% of the issues that were fueling my addiction. I needed years of a clear head to figure out the simple things that I never noticed while high that were causing me to abuse drugs. The main ones being confidence and a negative thought pattern. The latter being something that I must be on my toes every day to notice, stop, and replace with positivity. I am currently on a very low dose of Suboxone (4mg/day) and about to be off of it in a few months.

So, let me get to the point. For the past year, I have attended 3 ayahuasca ceremonies, and consumed San Pedro (and its cousin T. bridgesii) 4 times. The reason I have been using these ancient psychedelics is for healing purposes and enlightenment. In this report, I will be describing my last trip 3 trips on t. bridgesii. I ordered 3, 12 inch t. bridgesii mid cuttings from an online vendor and 1 10 inch t. bridgesii from [online vendor]. I used all four pieces. I cut off the spines, tore the clear outer skin off (which in my opinion is the most grueling part), chopped up the cacti, and blended it all together in a blender. I also added about 300-400ml of grapefruit juice in the blender per 12 inch of cactus to help cancel out the bitter taste. I used the freeze method where you freeze the blended cacti in the freezer in a Tupperware container overnight. The next day, take it out of the freezer, let it thaw, add about 800ml of water in the cephalon pot, and add the thawed out blended cacti. I boiled that mixture of water and blended cacti for 4 and ½ hours on medium-low heat. Just enough to where it starts bubbling. After the 4 and ½ hours and much of the water/liquid has evaporated, I let it cool to room temp and strained it with cheesecloth. This produced about 3 cups + 6 ounces of cactus juice. Next time, I am going to boil the finished product to get it down to around 2 cups.

My girlfriend and I were planning on ingesting a little over 1 cup each on the 4th of July, but I decided to test it out to ensure we weren’t wasting our day off together. It was about 6 PM, and I poured about 5 ounces into a cup and chugged it followed by fruit gummi’s and grapefruit juice to chase that taste. If I use the grapefruit juice when preparing the cactus, it really does cut down on the extremely bitter taste. I start doing chores, cleaning the kitchen, etc, and after that, I laid on the couch and put on some of my favorite music.

About 30 minutes in, the first effects that I notice is that I am REALLY into the music that I’m listening to (tool, mgmt, beck, etc.). I’ve always loved smoking some bud and listening to music because of how it enhances the music. Mescaline not only enhances it, but it makes me FEEL the music inside of me. Many of the songs that I’ve listened to hundreds of times sounded different than before because my mind was able to separate all of the instruments, and the lyrics had a divine meaning.

About an hour into it, I start getting some cold sweats, but they weren’t unpleasant “detox” type cold sweats. My appetite is down, and couldn’t eat if I wanted to. They call San Pedro a heart opener and around this time is when that made sense to me. It felt as if I was taking in all of the energy around me, whether it just be from electricity or my dogs. I noticed little things around the house that I never noticed before. I took my dogs outside to go to the bathroom and there was a frog somewhere out there, and when it croaked, it sounded 10 times as loud as it normally would. My neighbor has some blue lights, and they were RADIATING! The stars and moon were out and everything just seemed right. Like everything was in harmony with one another. It was magnificent.

Around the 3 hour mark, when I’m back on the couch, I remembered thinking to myself “this cactus is definitely active, I’ve noticed some cool effects, and I feel serene. However, we are going to have to take more than just a cup to have a psychedelic experience when I do this with my girlfriend”. I felt sober. Then, I stood up and went to the kitchen to get some ice water, and that’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks. I walked back to my room while my legs felt like jelly. My vision was blurred, but not a drunken blurred. Just like everything was out of focus unless I really tried to focus my attention on something. Oh man, but the COLORS! My girlfriend’s house has bright turquoise, yellows, oranges, all throughout the house, and they just POPPED! I looked in the mirror and I looked strange or as if I didn’t know the person in the mirror……I thought, “Yes! Here comes the ego death, please take that retched unnecessary thing away from me!” I felt a somewhat mild nausea in the pit of my stomach. I was staring at the ceiling and the light from the ceiling lamp was dancing around the wall. I was in a very dreamy, but aware state of mind.

I laid on my bed for about 2 hours (seemed like 10 minutes), and my girlfriend walks in from work. I act like I am asleep because talking to her would bring me down a bit. I can’t help it and start cracking up when I hear her walking around the room. I tell her that we are in for a treat on the fourth, and that the bridgesii is definitely active. Finally, I kiss my girlfriend and tell her that I am going in the other room because I won’t be sleeping that night. I wasn’t tired at all.

Fast forward a few days later to the fourth of July. My girlfriend and I chug our 8-9 ounces of cactus juice around noon. We finish doing our morning chore routine, and move the couch around to face the wall where we have some tapestries on the wall. Around the 1 hour mark, the nausea hits us both at the same time, so we walk outside to hopefully purge. I went first, and 5 minutes later she purges as well. That’s when mild euphoria kicked in. It felt like a light MDMA dose with anti-anxiety properties. We then sit outside with the dogs for a few hours which seemed like 10 minutes. Our neighbor has their music turned way up next to their pool, so there’s no way we can play our music over it. The only decent band they played was Heart if that tells you anything. We decide to just hang out, laugh, and take in the sun. Everything just seemed so right. I noticed every leaf blowing in the wind that was in my peripheral vision, as if the leaves were all flowing in unison. We took the dogs for a walk around the block, and made our way back inside to listen to some Peru ceremony music we got from our people we met at our last Ayahuasca ceremony. We both meditated for a few hours with that music playing in the background. We did some Yoga that I told her to instruct, which she did, and did an excellent job! She said that she could see my Aura after we got done (a bright white with purple tones). I found that interesting because there was this girl at our last Ayahuasca ceremony that came up to me and said Wow! You’re glowing!! I said, excuse me? She said, “I can see Auras, and you have a bright blue, healing aura all around you”. I asked if that was a good thing, and she said of course it is. 4 years ago, I would have thought she was full of shit, but am open minded now and days, and believed what they both were saying about Auras. This whole life is a mystery and no one knows what’s really going on. Who am I to judge someone because I’ve never experienced it?

**NOTE: From my experience, I would less juice to prevent purging. My first experience with this juice was much more intense. I also finished off the last 4 ounces the day after, and that was also a bit more intense. Purging seemed to lighten the intensity, and the trip didn’t last as long. It also could have been my expectations considering that I took almost double the amount that I took the first time.

I don’t want to make this too long, because then no one will read this. I’ll sum it up here. San Pedro and its cousins are heart openers, and therefore, they are great to take with my partner. For me, there was about 8 total hours of preparation (including online research) for this cook up, and is a lot of hard work, but it was definitely worth it. I plan on purchasing a few more T. brigesii and Peruvian torch, and growing them. Mescaline takes a long time to kick in, and as other have said, it comes on slow and lands you back down onto earth with a parachute and trampoline. It is very smooth and “clean” trip except for the nausea.

It shows me the beauty of everyday life. Mescaline is a perfect medicine to help open my mind to the beauty of what’s already there. his was more of a test run with T. bridgesii, and will set intentions before my future trips. If I had to compare it to another psychedelic, it would be psilocybin. It’s hard to have a bad trip on mescaline because of the serene state of mind it puts me in.

I used to take anti-depressants back in college, and know that they only work for a few months, and the withdrawal is hell. There really is something to psychedelics and mental health. I hope that they continue to study it and find scientific research that backs up this belief that many of us have.

Exp Year: 2017	ExpID: 110735
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 33
Published: May 25, 2019	Views: 2,068
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Cacti - T. bridgesii (448) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Glowing Experiences (4), Combinations (3)