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Pachycereus Pringlei - "Cactihuasca"

yardbirdrc

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 8, 2011
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160
So I was listening to a podcast at work today where the Shulgins were speaking at the 2005 Mind States conference, and Sasha was talking about a new cactus he'd been experimenting with called Pachycereus Pringlei. The cactus is native to Baja California and apparently has some sparse history of entheogenic use. He said that he had taken it twice with Anne and that it was indeed very psychedelic, but that after analyzing it thoroughly he found no mescaline present whatsoever. Instead he found several related phenethylamines which were known to be inactive as well as a bunch of isoquinolones. He synthesized several of these compounds and took them separately but found there to be no effect when ingested this way. His best guess at the time was that some of the isoquinolones acted as MAOIs thus rendering some of the usually inactive phenethylamines active, but I haven't been able to find much more information about it since then. I'm not sure if he ever completed his plans to take some of the isolated compounds in conjunction, but I was wondering if anybody here has partaken of this particular cactus. A psychedelic cacti devoid of mescaline is pretty fascinating, I'd very much like to try it and it's pretty available from what I understand.

Thoughts?

EDIT: Found some more info on this -
JUST AFTER sunset on a cool California evening last fall, Alexander Shulgin prepared to test the effects of the cactus Pachycereus pringlei on himself, his wife, and 10 other subjects. The group, which included two chemists and an anthropologist, gathered in the living room of a redwood house deep in the woods to help Shulgin with his research into psychedelic cacti. A few months earlier, the anthropologist had told Shulgin that this particular variety was worth looking into - a cave painting in Mexico suggested it might have psychoactive properties. Through chromatography, Shulgin determined that P. pringlei probably was a mild psychedelic, but "the establishment of its human pharmacology requires that it be consumed by man." So Shulgin dissolved the extract of the cactus into fruit juice, then poured a 4-ounce cup for each person. But his experiment went awry. "At about the two-hour point, my visual experiences became totally swamped by an overwhelming fear of moving," recalls Shulgin, the 77-year-old chemist who introduced ecstasy to the world. His wife, Ann, had an even more severe reaction. Out on the deck, she remembers, "I could see the full moon shining down on me with what felt like chilling contempt, and I thought, What an awful, stupid way to die." With her pulse racing, she went inside to check on her husband, who was upstairs in one of the bedrooms, lying still in the dark. "He said he was OK as long as he didn't move." Early the next morning, Shulgin assembled his test group, still in pajamas, to assess the effects of the cactus extract. All 12 of them had taken the same compound, but half had become violently ill, while the other six had the kind of pleasant but unremarkable experience Shulgin expected. The results, he decided, were inconclusive.

And another one, from the old ask sasha blog -
Another continuing source of new things will be from our plant teachers in nature. We are continuously being made aware of new, active plants about which we know very little. My present pursuits are the psychoactive cacti. A good example is a relatively unexplored columnar giant called Pachycereus pringlei. In the published literature, there have been five compounds reported as being present. I have seen four of these, and have obtained mass spectra of 18 additional compounds. Some of these new components I have already identified, but none of these is known to be active in man. And yet I know that the cactus is active as I have actually eaten it and have gotten real effects. Could this be an example of a plant that contains two compounds that are active in combination whereas neither one is active as an isolated chemical? Such things are known in nature.
 
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How interesting! This sounds like it would be worth trying - at a low dose. A natural MAO inhibitor with some other compound all in the one package. A tryptamine, I'm guessing? If it's a phenethylamine like mescaline, that might explain why some of the testing group got sick. And if the experience was enough to shake even Sasha and Anne Shulgin, you can bet it was fucking intense.
 
@flickering - it does not appear any trypts were present. Phens similar to mescaline were identified. My assumption here is that something is probably up or down regulating liver enzymes as well as having a MAOI effect, and we're probably seeing activity from multiple compounds. Then you add in some good old placebo and priming effects and you're off to the races.

I've certainly had my ass handed to me in very different ways by cacti species. Mescaline might be the major player for most of them but it's certainly not the only actor in the play.
 
fwiw I feel privileged to have been able to ask Sasha about this at Burning Man '07 when he seemed to think there still might be some other unidentified chem responsible, he no longer seemed to think it likely isoquinilone MAOIs were important as I understood him

n
 
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I was at that conf, and witnessed the presentation, and I remember much allusion to Aliens Visiting the traditional users of this.
And apparently these giant cactus plants are very abundant in Mexico.
 
I can confirm these cacti are abundant in baja california (del sur at least). Even though there's lots of them, it's good to remember that they're actually very sensitive (but hardy) plants that grow quite slowly. If you were to bioassay them, best to carefully cut off a small segment to leave the plant alive.

Really cool you were there for that conference pupnik.

I remember talking with a hippie I met in Mexico about psychedelic cacti that grew there. He was saying that there are a ton of psychedelic cacti there that hardly anyone knows about. He had eaten a lot of different cacti to test them out, and had discovered a bunch on his own. I'm not really brave enough to go around sampling them, but it was a very interesting rumour.
 
The researcher had slides of cave paintings of demons or aliens with a ship, and presumably the contact with aliens is a factor in tripping with these large cacti.
Maybe even get a ride to another world.
 
As far as plants containing a second substance which allows bioactivity of a first, doesn't jurema? I seem to recall reading of Mimosa hostilis rootbark (which contains DMT, along with a weird looking compound of uncertain activity, yuremamine) being used orally as a decoction. DMT certainly isn't orally active.
 
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