I'm new to the Cacti experience. As a kid I did LSD, Mushrooms and I think I even did some DMT one time back in the 70's, but I'd never encountered Mescaline in any form. After reading online about Sacred Cacti and doing enough online research that I thought I knew what species to try I decided my best bet, because of my inexperience was to stay away from Pachanoi and stick with Bridgesii and possibly Terscheckii. I'd read mixed reports about Terscheckii's activity, but the reports indicating that it was active seemed reliable and some Terschekii were immediately available.
The week before I'd brewed up about 10 inches of Scopulicola/Bridgesii (about 2" diameter) using a similar method. After all these years of sobriety it was an incredible experience, as mild as it was. I believe it was about a 150 mg threshhold dose with some interesting distortions and closed eye visuals, and music (Shpongle) sounded absolutely magical. Lots of fun but I wish I'd done two or three times the dose.
So the next weekend I set about brewing two Terscheckiis. They each were about 7" long and about 4" diameter, not including the spines. I began by removing the spines with a smaller adjustable utility knife. Those spines are pretty serious and I did contribute some blood before I was finished. I found out they have spines all the way down into the dirt covered root area. With the spines removed I cut the root and a little of the top cap off, slice it longways a couple of times, quartering it and then carefully filleted the white core part, leaving the approximate 1/4" of dark green and the outer hard, waxy skin.
I turned my freezer down to the lowest setting and placed the long fresh strips on a teflon pizza pan and left it to freeze, the idea being, as I'd read to use the hard freezing as a method of breaking down the cell walls without also cooking down the alkaloids as with heat. After a couple of hours hard freeze I removed it and let it thaw. Once thawed I realized the outer hard skin had been loosened somewhat. I froze it hard again and after I thawed it the second time I was able to remove the outer skin, which was similar to a shrimp's shell. Some came right off, but most of it had to be scraped off with the utility knife blade. I suspect additional freezings would help with the skin removal, but I wanted to get on with the process.
I put the remaining green flesh in a blender with about 2 cups of bottled lemon juice I got from Whole Foods, the kind that tastes much better than the reconstituted type. I mixed it well, resulting in a full blender of about a half gallon of light green bubbly slime. Yum. I transferred it to a large cooking pot and cooked it on medium low heat for about an hour, adding another cup or so of lemon juice. I'd read differing reports about how long to cook it, but time and hesitancy to cook the alkaloids down too much kept it to about an hour. The frothy mixture takes about 15 or 20 minutes on the stove before it cooks down to a more manageable liquid.
I let the resulting 2 liters or so cool and filtered it through a cotton t-shirt, which required some muscle. I ended up with about 1.8 Liters of Tea which I halved and stored in two separate bottles of about 900ml each. All the work so far took a full evening.
I woke up early the next morning, having fasted the night before and started on one of the bottles, drinking a cup of liquid every few minutes chasing it with tonic water until I'd downed about 750ml, or the equivalent of 4/5 of one brewed 7" long by 4" diameter Terscheckii. The flavor was surprisingly delicate compared to the Scopulicola/Bridgesii Tea I'd had the week before, and except for the purge I knew would be coming I can even imagine enjoying it, especially if the recipe was modified (Orange Juice? Sweet Milk?).
Nothing for almost two hours, then just as I was starting to wonder if I was feeling any effect at all SUDDENLY HERE IT CAME. The purge was violent and, mmmmm purging. I kept on hand a bottle of fresh water to help immediately rinse my mouth out and keep from burning my throat or etching my teeth, and that seemed to work well, except for the additional purge of just water.
Now I settled back on the couch and within 10 minutes or so I was definitely feeling the effects. Surfaces shifting, colors changing and I started to see faces and patterns on surfaces. This is something I've noticed about Cactus. It seems to immediately activate the "Face Recognition" function in my brain and I start seeing faces in things like the carpet or especially the paisley pattern of the sofa. When I was a kid we used to call this "Seeing faces in the trees" on high doses of weed. For me, with both the Scope/Bridgesii and Terscheckii teas this effect started early on and continued throughout the experience. I have a friend who has Schizoaffective Disorder and I wonder now whether there is any similarity in the two experiences.
Within about 30 minutes of onset the effects became much more intense. I never saw any real open eye visuals, just lots of distortions and color shifts but, as the Scope/Bridgesii was incredibly dark and tactile, the Terscheckii was brighter and far far more emotionally intense. I lay down and watch the closed eye visuals which were mostly swirling neon green and red clouds and smoke continually coalescing into faces of dragons and demons who seemed to be grinning at me as if to say "Well well well....how did you find yourself here?" I decided to keep my eyes open, not out of fear really, but more like caution, thinking if this got much more intense I might meet something scary.
I started to feel anxious and kinda speedy, like too much coffee, so I decided to watch TV, and this is where the emotional rollercoaster kicked in. Everything I saw on TV was wildly exaggerated. I came across the comedy "The Three Amigos" with Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short. If they did a silly dance I laughed until I was almost bawling. If the scene was melodramatic I really was crying, as silly as it was. I probably cried 5 or 6 times during the movie. I've never experienced anything quite like it. I was also fully aware of the absurdity of reacting like this to a slapstick movie.
The effects started to subside about 4 in the afternoon, or about 8 hours after the onset, but I was still kinda high when I went to bed about midnight, and could feel some residual effects the next morning.
I now have zero doubts about the psychoactive properties of Terscheckii. I do wish I knew some mild anxiolytic that would lessen the speedy "Don't know what to do with myself" part of the trip, without diminishing the other effects. As a youngster I tried Dalmane with LSD (Killed the visuals somewhat), and Codeine with LSD (Really dampened the whole experience).
Anyone know a good mixer with Cactus?
Note: I remeasured the other Terscheckii and the ones I used were really a full 4" diameter, not the 3" I'd originally stated. I probably should have weighed the amount of material used from each cactus.
My flesh moves, like liquid. My mind is cut loose.