SWIM has 4 12" cuttings of San Pedro. He is a little unsure what method would be best here.

Should he dry them out? Does he separate the core? Does he only use skin?

I Think I know most of the materials, but I would appreciate your guidance.

Hi, I dont have any experience with cactus but maybe this link will help working with fresh cactus

I made an extraction with fresh cactus, I cut the whole thing up into slices (no blending!! otherwise you'll get unworkable snot), cut the star-slices into 4 pieces each, and added it all (spines, skin and all included) to a pot with water. So I simmered that in acidified water for a few hours, pour off the water doing this a total of 5 times.. The last two pulls I mashed/poked the cactus pieces a little bit.. Then I filtered all this water in funnel/cotton plug, and evaped on the oven at low temperatures (under 70celcius) with open door and fan until it was small quantity of liquid (a dehydrator would be more efficient). Some stuff had precipitated during reduction but I removed that because mescaline should be very water soluble so it shouldnt be actives precipitating.

Then I proceeded to normal extraction, basing the liquid, extracting with limonene (I did 9 pulls, because mescaline freebase is reasonably water soluble so if you dont do many pull you will be losing many actives to the water). Every 3 limo pulls I made, I put them together and salted with vinegar. Then I evapped (low temperature again) the vinegar to yield impure mescaline acetate, which is a dark red goo. If one wants pure mescaline, then better instead salt out with a dilute hcl solution and evap that, and then clean up the impure hcl with acetone and ipa washes.

Alternatively you can dry your cactus and do 69ron's mescaline extraction (its on the sustainable extractions subforum), which many people seem to enjoy, but I personally never tried that way

good luck and report back with results

only the green outer flesh is of use.
so: remove spines, cut skin off core, blend with water(acid like lemon juice optional)
boil until snotty consistancy is gone, strain plant matter
put strained plant matter back in the pot to boil and repeat, saving the liquid each time. combine liquid, reduce volume at a boil to a managable amount.

if you have very strong cacti, that might make 4 doses

This is the part im having trouble with. Im getting a few different methods here. Which is the best/cleanest. And I

thought you had to use food grade lye, and xylene? Do i dry out the chunks that i cut into smaller pieces and then put

in the lye/water mixture? and what exactly is a tea pull? just water?

I must disagree with you here. It was tested by members of this forum (phlux if im not mistaken) and there are significant amount of alkaloids in other parts of the cactus appart from the green outer flesh, so I would rather recommend extract from every part.

I would also definitely avoid blending cactus to avoid snot problem, simmering (not boiling! mescaline is heat sensitive) chunks will get you the alkaloids without having snot or other issues. Each one to his own though




I keep hearing people asking which is the 'best' extraction for such and such thing. There is no such thing as a 'best' extraction, every extraction has advantages and disadvantages in terms of ease of extraction, yield, type of chemicals used, time taken, etc etc. Why dont you research a bit more the different teks and try to see what sounds better for your own case? I suggest in the very least you read a typical A/B tek (like what I described above) and also 69ron's tek, so you understand the processes and can decide for yourself what you preffer.

what would be the point of using food grade lye if you're going to use xylene (yuck)?

You can substitute xylene for limonene and have a much more pleasant and equally effective extraction. If you have dry cactus maybe rather go for 69ron's tek which is a drytek and uses CaOH instead of lye. Lye is more appropriate if youre gonna do a standard wet A/B as I described.

I wont describe the process again, I described step by step exactly how I made, the chunks are simmered fresh...69rons tek also describes it step by step, but it uses powdered dry cactus istead.. please make a little research before asking all the questions.

a 'tea' pull is usually acidified water, btw...

I must disagree with you here. It was tested by members of this forum (phlux if im not mistaken) and there are significant amount of alkaloids in other parts of the cactus appart from the green outer flesh, so I would rather recommend extract from every part.

I would also definitely avoid blending cactus to avoid snot problem, simmering (not boiling! mescaline is heat sensitive) chunks will get you the alkaloids without having snot or other issues. Each one to his own though


sorry to post info agaist current understanding here,
mescaline is one of the most stable of substances, boiling point 360-400*f, and water boils at how much? 210-220
how could boiling hurt it? i have boiled mescaline many, many times w/ Zero neg. effect. you cant get water hot enough to burn mescaline, not physically possible. once you boil all the water away though...then temps above 350 should be avoided

and if you boil it long enough, the snot Totally goes away! it you dont boil the hell out of it, then it is snotty...

you can do the whole core if you like, but the amounts in there make it not worth the effort. there are not "significant" amounts in the core ime
when i post about extractions i'm not spouting someone elses experiences here btw

I concede I have never tested myself to know whether the boiling hurts mescaline.. I thought it was established that at least some mescaline salts are heat sensitive, so I always avoided boiling, but now that Im looking for sources I can indeed only find opinions around, so you might very well be right and people avoiding boiling be an over-careful measure

That being said, AFAIK nobody tested side-by-side with boiling and with simmering to see the difference in yields, if heat destroyed something (some substances can degrade in temperatures below their boiling point, though I dont know if thats the case with any mescaline salt form), so it seems we're still at the anecdotal level of evidence, right? I mean, you might not have noticed any problem when boiling but that is not necessarily a proof that no mescaline at all was degraded, isnt it? (im not pressuring you or anything, I hope you do notice, im really just trying to think together with you )

btw, when you say mescaline's bp is 360-400f, what salt form are you talking about?

as for the amount of alkaloids in the whole cactus, Im pretty sure it was a significant amount, but I cant seem to find the thread now, Ill ask phlux and post it here once I do

hxxp://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mescaline/mescaline_chemistry.shtml )change xx to tt)

taken from Merck.... all forms have a pretty high bp, but it does vary...
interestingly, shulgin says says

"""Throughout the more recently published record of clinical human studies with mescaline, it has been used in the form of the synthetic material, and has usually been administered as the sulfate salt. Although this form has a miserable melting point (it contains water of crystallization, and the exact melting point depends on the rate of heating of the sample) it nonetheless forms magnificent crystals from water. Long, glistening needles that are, in a sense, its signature and its mark of purity."""



endless, thanks for the cool attitude

here's the basis for my assumptions-

extraction 1: cacti skin dried from 25' pedro, stb (ie no boil) yeild .56% purified
extraction 2: cacti skin 25' redro, blended then multiple boiling in pressure cooker, straining, tea, reduction at boiling,then stb, yeild .61% purified
all from the same cacti, harvestedt the me time
even though the yeild was lower, i like extraction 1, it took 1/2 the time, (but used more chems)

there was a recent article somewhere about thousand(s) year old peyo button found in a cave in tx w/ "active" mescaline
cacti has been left in ph 14 basic solution for years, and still yeilded mescaline

the mescaline molocule is one tough nut

thanks for the info! btw, you can post links here if you want, its not a problem.

Interesting experiment you did! but question: with what acid was the boiling done? because this test would indicate that at least for this given salt, boiling is safe.

I wonder what form is mescaline in naturally in peyote.

i have personally boiled cacti with
citric (lotsa lemons)
sulfuric (fish aquarium ph down)
hydrochloric (muriatic concrete cleaner)
acetic (vinegar)

i'm a lazy hippie sometimes, i use what is at hand.

i have also salted with each of them, and boiled to reduce ( although i believe in careful accurate titration, so no excess acid is ever present!) i'll stick with sulfuric for salting because it is easy titrate with, readily crashes out easier than other salts ime

i'll write up my most recent salting adventures soon

now i dont use any acid when making tea for extraction, totally not needed
none was used in anything i have done in years