Why is it taken in such conservative doses? Well, if you try eating that much mesc. in cactus form, you'll find its hard to get such a dose in your stomach, so the traditional doses definitely aren't that sky-high. And I will say I got a bit of a headache at 700 mg. It felt harder on the body than mushrooms or LSD, although LSD definitely feels like it leaves a more permanent change in perception. Terence McKenna noted it was harder than most psychs on the body too, and he noted it wasn't even CLOSE to the visionary potential of the indoles. McKenna was not a fan of mescaline, too soft on the psychedelia, too hard on the body for him.
Not as rough as say, MDMA though, of course. I used to experiment with deleriants as well (diphenhydramine), and you're right, almost nothing is as miserable as that, lmao. The reliably induced telepathy was cool, but not worth the brain damage. Mescaline's cool, but honestly, I don't feel like I would have gotten much more out of it if I'd taken the full gram, the 300 mg trip wasn't even that much less powerful than the 700 mg. There was a difference, but not a fantastic amount. Aldous Huxley favoured LSD when he discovered it.
Nick Sand liked mescaline a lot though, he said that it, along with ibogaine and DMT were the most "pure" compounds, with DMT being the most "pure". I don't know what he meant by "pure".
It is quite a weak compound dose wise, compared to other psychedelic doses, you have to eat a lot of material. I think ibogaine's the only other one with a similar dose strength, and its also notoriously hard on the body, although mesc. is much easier on the body than ibogaine. I actually wouldn't recommend ibogaine, I've never taken it, but in high doses it causes neurodegeneration, which other psychedelics do not in similar doses.
I've pretty well finished exploring different compounds, I've dabbled in RC's and found them either un-enjoyable (2C-B, DOx) or fun with sketchy side effects (25i-NBOME and HPPD/plastic brain feeling), and the only ones I find notable that I haven't tried (ibogaine and 5-meo-dmt) don't sound fun. Mescaline too bland, psilocybin too crazy and anxious...LSD+MDMA (never one without the other) and DMT are the only psychedelics I use now. I just explore the mind now, not the compounds. I might retire on mescaline.
And no, I don't anticipate going for the 1200 dose. The people who have taken those in the literature (Leary, I think Kesey, some other Millbrook people), and a guy I know who took 22 hits of what I think was AL-LAD....they either stopped taking acid altogether, or they never too such a dose again and went back to regular doses. If I want to go there I'd rather take a normal dose of DMT than an overdose of something else.
Well that makes sense about the cactus, but I'm talking about pure mescaline here. The cactus has other alkaloids too to mix things up; obviously if you wanted more out of mescaline then you should eat larger doses than you would get from the cactus. The sky's the limit with that. I guess people just care more about body load than I do, or are maybe just more sensitive to it, I don't know.... As long as I know a dose of something is still safe such things don't really bother me. The reason I used deliriants so much is because the hallucinations were well worth the crappy feeling. Though, as you said, not worth the brain damage.... That's why I'm sticking to genuinely safe things now. But if mescaline isn't as hard on the body as even MDMA then I really don't see what the problem is. I've never had a single complaint about the body effects from MDMA either, just pure euphoria even in very high doses.
"Pure", eh.... It would be interesting to know what was meant by that. Particularly considering what he grouped it with....
See though, the dose wise means nothing to me. If you have to eat more, you have to eat more. That doesn't factor into what I consider the strength of a drug. As far as mescaline and ibogaine go, there's no comparison as far as I see it. Mescaline is only hard on the body in terms of having a stimulating effect; it is not
truly hard on the body in any significant way until absolutely absurd doses are taken, it's just a heavy body high to handle. Ibogaine on the other hand is genuinely hard on you, it's known to have the potential to cause or exacerbate heart problems. That's probably the biggest reason why I wouldn't take it.
I still want to explore RC tryptamines and mescaline, but that's it for me, as far as new drugs go that is. I've already been down the path of potential body and brain damage enough to never want to try anything again that's not ridiculously safe.... I'm honestly not even sure how I feel about MDMA anymore. Not for safety concerns, but just because it started to seem kind of shallow for me after a while. I can get how with a psychedelic it would be better, but without it... eh?
Well, like I said, to each their own. My huge dose of LSD (on blotter, no idea of the measurement) did nothing but make me want to push waaay further. I'd take 3+ mg if I ever got the chance, though I don't personally ever want to take LSD again if I can't be totally sure that I know what and how much I'm getting.
Ive only done mescaline once at 750mg of the HCl salt taken in 2x 325mg pills, 30 min apart to avoid nausea, and it was once the greatest drug experiences I've done. It was unique tin that it was like a combination of all the best parts of a lot of drugs Ive done; Clearheaded like the 2cs usually are, but as colorful if not more colorful than a 300+ug dose of LSD. It was also very euphoric and happy like MDMA, but not as intense and was much more relaxing than it was stimulating. In fact it was a very lazy drug, and that was an aspect of it that i didn't expect going in. As far as the visuals, they were the most organic of all my drug experiences ever. Incredible trails on all movement that would have a full rainbow behind them, and all things natural I found I had a greatly heightened appreciation for. For example there were so many birds that day and I could swear they were all there for me and then at one point a hawk swooped down within 15 feet of me and my tripping buddy who was on the same dose as I was and the trails behind the bird and were so beautiful. Then there was a nother time when I was walking round and saw a bee on a flower just doing its thing and it for some reason was just so humbling....all things natural were just enhanced intensely. Additionally, mescaline gave me one visual that I have never experienced on any other drug; tangible visuals. Imagine a surface of still water with some oil on the surface just dispersed; there was a similar film over my vision for the majority of the experience except instead of being mostly clear it was a very rainbow-y color and similar to how the oil on the surface of the water would react if you were to brush your fingers through it, the colorful oil-like film covering my whole field of vision was movable as I willed it to. It was really really cool, I could draw smiley faces out of rainbows and they would stay there in my filed of vision, yet this whole time I was totally communicable and controalable; ie: made myself dinner and talked to my parents on the phone for a few minutes at one point.
Overall Id totally recommend that If youre gunna play with mescaline, you might as well go for a high dose experience. It is, to date one of, if not the best drug experience in my life with some of the most incredible, unique visuals.
Good luck!!
You know, I've actually noticed a lot of trip reports lately that said they got great effects from spacing out the dose.... Does mescaline effect it's own metabolism? (Sort of like DXM?) I wonder....
That sounds like a wonderful experience. ^_^ I've actually heard that before, about it being somewhat sedating... but mostly on the body, like the laziness you said, but still with a significant amount of mental stimulation. Was that your experience? But that all sounds great! The film thing is really cool, and I love that you drew a smiley face. X) That sounds so neat, I would love to experience that on any psychedelic!
It certainly increases my motivation to try those high doses.
Thanks for the anecdote and the well wishes!
One thing to bear in mind wandering is the taste of cactus snot, which is presumably what you'll need to ingest. Think of the worse thing you've ever tasted. Now multiply it by a thousand. Now imagine drinking it strained through an old tramps skid-marked underpants. And that doesn't even come close to drinking cactus snot.
It's akin to medieval torture. Usually I can manage one sip before just bringing the glass to my nose again makes me gip and vomit. Actually swallowing enough snot to trip is a major challenge for many people.
I'm talking about pure mescaline here, extracted or otherwise, taken in capsule form, not cactus juice, so I'm not worried about that. The cacti don't fall into my definition of "known safety", at least as far as huge doses go.... Mescaline being tested and known to be safe doesn't mean the same thing for the cacti. I'd certainly like to use the cacti one day as well, but I wouldn't megadose them like I would the pure stuff. Maybe at the most take a good dose of cacti and supplement it with pure stuff... that sounds like fun.
I didn't say or mean that it cannot be psychedelic, just that it tends to be clear like a lot of phenethylamines can be and that trippy psychedelia manifesting as dramatic or brutal disconnection from reality (such as with mushrooms or DPT, etc but also LSD when you push it). Even the OOBE's I had were very controlled and came in burst when I let them wash over me lying on a bed, until I decided to move onto other things while still feeling like my most native, deep, natural and pure self.
It did not fall short for me, I just heard this trend with synthetic mescaline before plenty of times before or besides this thread. If people expect reliable and potent LSD- or mushroom-like effects from 300 mg rather than MDMA-like empathy and a very special mindspace even less distorted than sobriety it is just possible they are surprised by that.
Look, taking a high dose of mescaline and exploring the psychedelic potential it also does have sounds great and there is nothing wrong with that... I was just trying to point out not to do it out of disregard for its invaluable therapeutic potential that may appear instead or before the more typical psychedelia you might be expecting.
Well, all I was responding to was how you said that it doesn't seem to do a whole lot... which seemed quite contradictory to your description of it before, which sounded incredible to me. As I already said before, it was my non-hallucinogenic introspective cannabis experiences that helped me more than any heavy psychedelic trip I ever had. I'm not interested in using
only high doses of mescaline; I want to see everything that it has to offer, and those therapeutic effects sound like what I need more than anything. And I haven't been expecting any such thing from 300 mg.... In fact, it's been my plan, as long as I have a good amount of product to work with, to start with 50 mg and move up from there. I was expecting to go through several hopefully useful doses before even beginning to get visuals. I care about using psychedelics to help my life at least as much as I care about using them to explore my mind.
