Dark Horse
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2008
- Messages
- 134
It's about two months since my first experience with Peruvian Torch cactus chips. The following account is an overview of the experience, but it also includes a brief log of the day, my thoughts the next day, and emails in the weeks that followed from my friend who joined me in the experience.
There were two of us. I'll refer to my friend as B. We've known each other for 7 or 8 years - a couple of middle-aged expatriate men a long way from home. Some time ago we got to talking about LSD and wondered what it would be like to revisit psychedelics.
I spent a few months trying to locate some acid. At the same time, I was reading about all sorts of things I didn't know existed. This family of 2-c drugs and synthetic psychedelics, for instance. I read through descriptions and experiences on just about all of them and found the effects were either unpredictable or the drugs were hard to find, or both. Often when I found something initially appealing, further reading revealed reasons to give it a miss. And then after seeing the name come up many times online, I looked up San Pedro. I knew what mescaline was but didn't realize there was an easy way to get it. Here was a well-researched drug inside a cactus that was for sale. Glowing accounts abounded with nary a mention of a 'train wreck or trip disaster.' Even the 'difficult experiences' were qualified as somehow useful.
I settled on Peruvian Torch chips, ordered them online, and presto they were delivered.
B had done mescaline some 25 years before. It was a first time for me and fully 25 years since my last bit of acid. We'd both had experiences with E a few years back.
Saturday Morning:
0900:
B went big - two glasses of very finely powdered Peruvian Torch cactus chips mixed with water. 50 grams. I did the same dose but over an hour, and in four or five glasses. It was thick and bitter. I felt a little bit of the gag reflex, but nothing I couldn't resist. People have a lot to say about the taste, but I've had worse. For instance, I can't manage so much as a mouthful of blue cheese. Anyway, I used peanut butter as a chaser to swirl around my mouth and absorb whatever leftover cactus was lingering. That worked. I spat out the peanut butter after about five minutes. B was bothered even less by the taste.
0955 (T+ 55:00)
I was just lining up my last glass when B said he was getting his first alerts. He figured we were in for a big ride. Right away I thought he was feeling something else because this wasn't supposed to come on so quickly, was it ? Later, I realized most of the trip reports I'd read were by people who'd done doses in the 30 gram range. We'd been up smoking hash the night before and at the same time I was coming down with something that had left me a bit feverish. In the morning I thought it was remnants of the night before, and a cold, that had me feeling something like a first alert. But I rather suspected B was actually right. And from there, we just kept getting higher.
(Here is the log, pretty much as I wrote it on that day)
9 AM START
B TOOK HIS DOWN IN WATER…JUST TWO BIG GLASSES.HE HAS A TOUGH STOMACH. I DON'T…SO I TOOK MINE AFTER TWO GRAVOL (dramamine/sea-sick pills) AND SPACED IT OUT…EVERY 15 MINUTES OR SO.
FIRST ALERTS BY 10 AM
10:19 GETTING STRONGER…..NAUSEA CREEPING UP (for me).
PUKING AT 11:33- 11:36
12:08
NO OPEN EYE VISUALS – NOTHING DIFFERENT ABOUT VISION.
12:48
VISUALS GETTING BETTER…THE 3-D ASPECT..ESPECIALLY OF A COMPLEX
PATTERN…(B) 'I don't know if you should be writing anything down….'
…more initricate …layering…
2:21 (t+5:20)
Full on everything. Okay…just…to do this. On the edge of a bunch of
things…to bring it all together is really tough.
Visual distortion at 2:33…hard to type.
laughing fit at 2:36…'what were we laughing about' B asks as we leave the room.
(oh yeah, just played harps and keyboards)
And that was as far as we got with the log.
50 grams will leave you house bound. We didn't appreciate how incapacitating this would be. We had plans to get out into nature but there was never any thought of that at all once the effects started to set in, and that happened quickly. Before too long, we'd really stopped talking. B especially was having trouble forming sentences. I was happy to take it all in and managed to put sentences together, but I wasn't talkative, and I wasn't energetic. I was tremendously high but still conscious of everything around me. It was something like being in a spacesuit. There was a layer between my brain and the rest of my body.
We had some structure to the day, even though we didn't get outside. When me and B get together, it's always based around listening to music. So throughout the entire day, that's what we did. The stereo probably wasn't off for more than ten minutes. At one point we jammed, me on the piano, B on his harmonica. I struggled to play very fluidly. I felt detached from the music and my playing seemed disjointed. I couldn't get the usual satisfaction out of playing with B….no sense that we were on the same page, though we got it done and I was able (barely) to hold my end together.
The peak probably started between 12 and 1, three to four hours in. Once we got up there, we stayed there for five or six hours. Melted into the furniture at times.
The thoughts came so quickly that I remember few of them. I think now the best thing would have been to lie down in a quiet place and surrender. Instead I ended up half lying on a chair that's not all that comfortable and drifting off, but not for long. I'd lift my head and look around - this was something I did over and over again. Sit up, check on B, then drop my head again and see CEVs that I couldn't remember for long at all. It seemed the image I was left with whenever I snapped awake was one of many that had flown past in the instant just before.
No big themes or issues during the day, though I have lots in life to think about right now. I have family a long way from where I live but I didn't get emotional when I thought about that. Nothing really heavy at all. And it was as though I could control that if I wanted to. I consciously thought about 'issues' at one point, just to mentally raise them, but none seemed important.
I sensed time dilation and checked often. At some point, I adjusted and factored it in. Not sure it's a great thing to be checking something like that so often.
The experience overall was fragmented. Nothing held together very long, not even long enough most of the time to be remembered. Maybe because the next however-many-images-in-a-row just kept rolling in. They didn't stop.
I recall at one point saying to B ' this must be the euphoria.' I'm sure if I remember saying it, then I really did feel euphoric. But it wasn't like E. I wasn't connected to other people the same way.
Not that it was bad. I've never been so completely out of it on anything that had so little consequence on my body and mind later. I took two seasick pulls beforehand, and still got sick two and a half hours in. But it was quick. B got sick after about six hours. Neither of us thought it was an issue. No headaches, no big trouble sleeping, great natural feeling the next day. We smoked hash on and off but not much when we were peaking and I'm not sure how much difference it made. We ate well after about ten hours.
The only regret for me was not being able to see how this worked outdoors. I couldn't see us moving around on a dose like this. I'm curious to know what it would be like to be set up from the start in a fabulous natural setting.
It was fully 24 hours after we started that we finally got out. Even though it was a rare clear day in the big city I live in, there was still no mistaking the effect of the lingering cactus on my vision. It says something about how long this stuff sticks around, or about how powerful it is...because I hadn't seen the streets look like that before. Perfectly in focus - like the difference between old school TV and hi def. Bright, crisp colors. The sun was never better. Every image was incredibly sharp.
(Observations made the next day)
Afterward:
Came down from the hardest part somewhere between 5 and 6 pm. (T+ 8-9 hours) Remained strong nonetheless. Present until we went to bed at about 12:30.
My visuals were not so much on colors, though we were in a limited environment, but shapes. Warping of the room – a rectangular room with me in the middle looking down at one end where the light comes in through windows on the 6th floor. Coming into the computer room down the hall, I remember my vision was all over the place. Couldn't read this screen too well. It was possible to type with a little concentration…and that was the whole day. Everything was possible with some effort….I was never so far gone that I couldn't answer a question…never drifting for too long.
I'm not sure what I got from the experience, or whether I knew how to use the opportunity. Certainly if I'd been that high for that long on something less friendly, it might have been nasty.
To compare it to LSD…this was easier to control. I think if I'd been outside on a smaller dose – say 30-35 grams – I might have been able to pull it off. Presumably the peak doesn't get that high on the smaller dose.
The come down was wonderfully gentle. B feared a headache, as that's happened to him on other things. Nothing though. My neck was a bit sore from sitting the same way, but overall I was probably better off than if I'd tried to sit that way sober all day.
The next day has been great. We both think this is the cleanest of any major high we've had.
(end of next day observations)
Most of this has been my perspective. I checked in with B a few times over the following days and weeks. These are some of his thoughts:
'I was a bit sluggish in the first few days of the week but that may as well be the smoking (hash) which had been a while for me and the long trip. i was fine come mid week and have been feeling quite sharp in the past few days, handling some difficult work issues and communicating with my boss on the phone with plenty of clarity. but this morning i was under the impression that today was thursday and was surprised when my wife told me over the phone that it was friday. seems i missed a day... not sure if that was because i was so busy or if the cactus somehow messed up my body clock. any lingering effects from your side ? i would love to go for another round some time.'
(I asked for an update a few weeks later)
'I can't say that I have any lingering physical effects from the cactus but I think that a first time experience like that has to have some permanent effects on the mind although I would be hard pressed to define them. Certainly there is a resulting thought expanding effect. But that also applies to other drugs. What do you think? '
(I asked him to clarify what 'thought expanding' meant)
'As you know, one of the things lsd does is to help expose the true motives and nature of man which tend to get masked by things like culture, religion or ignorance. Thats a big part of the mind expanding. The cactus had the potential to go there but as we discussed before, it was controllable.'
'During the trip, there were about 4-5 very brief moments when I felt as though I was in my normal state and I mentioned it to you. I find this very interesting, considering how blasted I was. Did you get a similar feeling? Its mostly a head trip but fine hand coordination is definitely affected big time. But I had no problems walking on it. It was basically impossible to maintain a thread of thought for more than what seemed like 15 seconds or so even though it was obvious that the potential for thoughts to run quite deep was there.'
(Note: I felt okay about using my hands. At one point I picked up a cleaver and sliced the end off a big candle, and I think it was a lot safer doing that on the cactus than it would have been on alcohol.)
I noticed my body was relaxed in the days that followed. My breathing was very deep. My legs felt a bit weak. And continuing to smoke hash might not have helped me get back to normal. But there were no actual problems. I was just a touch removed from the mainstream.
We both think this is worth doing again. Somehow I want a different experience. I'm thinking it might be good to do less and get outside. And some time I want to do more than 50 grams to see where that goes.
There were two of us. I'll refer to my friend as B. We've known each other for 7 or 8 years - a couple of middle-aged expatriate men a long way from home. Some time ago we got to talking about LSD and wondered what it would be like to revisit psychedelics.
I spent a few months trying to locate some acid. At the same time, I was reading about all sorts of things I didn't know existed. This family of 2-c drugs and synthetic psychedelics, for instance. I read through descriptions and experiences on just about all of them and found the effects were either unpredictable or the drugs were hard to find, or both. Often when I found something initially appealing, further reading revealed reasons to give it a miss. And then after seeing the name come up many times online, I looked up San Pedro. I knew what mescaline was but didn't realize there was an easy way to get it. Here was a well-researched drug inside a cactus that was for sale. Glowing accounts abounded with nary a mention of a 'train wreck or trip disaster.' Even the 'difficult experiences' were qualified as somehow useful.
I settled on Peruvian Torch chips, ordered them online, and presto they were delivered.
B had done mescaline some 25 years before. It was a first time for me and fully 25 years since my last bit of acid. We'd both had experiences with E a few years back.
Saturday Morning:
0900:
B went big - two glasses of very finely powdered Peruvian Torch cactus chips mixed with water. 50 grams. I did the same dose but over an hour, and in four or five glasses. It was thick and bitter. I felt a little bit of the gag reflex, but nothing I couldn't resist. People have a lot to say about the taste, but I've had worse. For instance, I can't manage so much as a mouthful of blue cheese. Anyway, I used peanut butter as a chaser to swirl around my mouth and absorb whatever leftover cactus was lingering. That worked. I spat out the peanut butter after about five minutes. B was bothered even less by the taste.
0955 (T+ 55:00)
I was just lining up my last glass when B said he was getting his first alerts. He figured we were in for a big ride. Right away I thought he was feeling something else because this wasn't supposed to come on so quickly, was it ? Later, I realized most of the trip reports I'd read were by people who'd done doses in the 30 gram range. We'd been up smoking hash the night before and at the same time I was coming down with something that had left me a bit feverish. In the morning I thought it was remnants of the night before, and a cold, that had me feeling something like a first alert. But I rather suspected B was actually right. And from there, we just kept getting higher.
(Here is the log, pretty much as I wrote it on that day)
9 AM START
B TOOK HIS DOWN IN WATER…JUST TWO BIG GLASSES.HE HAS A TOUGH STOMACH. I DON'T…SO I TOOK MINE AFTER TWO GRAVOL (dramamine/sea-sick pills) AND SPACED IT OUT…EVERY 15 MINUTES OR SO.
FIRST ALERTS BY 10 AM
10:19 GETTING STRONGER…..NAUSEA CREEPING UP (for me).
PUKING AT 11:33- 11:36
12:08
NO OPEN EYE VISUALS – NOTHING DIFFERENT ABOUT VISION.
12:48
VISUALS GETTING BETTER…THE 3-D ASPECT..ESPECIALLY OF A COMPLEX
PATTERN…(B) 'I don't know if you should be writing anything down….'
…more initricate …layering…
2:21 (t+5:20)
Full on everything. Okay…just…to do this. On the edge of a bunch of
things…to bring it all together is really tough.
Visual distortion at 2:33…hard to type.
laughing fit at 2:36…'what were we laughing about' B asks as we leave the room.
(oh yeah, just played harps and keyboards)
And that was as far as we got with the log.
50 grams will leave you house bound. We didn't appreciate how incapacitating this would be. We had plans to get out into nature but there was never any thought of that at all once the effects started to set in, and that happened quickly. Before too long, we'd really stopped talking. B especially was having trouble forming sentences. I was happy to take it all in and managed to put sentences together, but I wasn't talkative, and I wasn't energetic. I was tremendously high but still conscious of everything around me. It was something like being in a spacesuit. There was a layer between my brain and the rest of my body.
We had some structure to the day, even though we didn't get outside. When me and B get together, it's always based around listening to music. So throughout the entire day, that's what we did. The stereo probably wasn't off for more than ten minutes. At one point we jammed, me on the piano, B on his harmonica. I struggled to play very fluidly. I felt detached from the music and my playing seemed disjointed. I couldn't get the usual satisfaction out of playing with B….no sense that we were on the same page, though we got it done and I was able (barely) to hold my end together.
The peak probably started between 12 and 1, three to four hours in. Once we got up there, we stayed there for five or six hours. Melted into the furniture at times.
The thoughts came so quickly that I remember few of them. I think now the best thing would have been to lie down in a quiet place and surrender. Instead I ended up half lying on a chair that's not all that comfortable and drifting off, but not for long. I'd lift my head and look around - this was something I did over and over again. Sit up, check on B, then drop my head again and see CEVs that I couldn't remember for long at all. It seemed the image I was left with whenever I snapped awake was one of many that had flown past in the instant just before.
No big themes or issues during the day, though I have lots in life to think about right now. I have family a long way from where I live but I didn't get emotional when I thought about that. Nothing really heavy at all. And it was as though I could control that if I wanted to. I consciously thought about 'issues' at one point, just to mentally raise them, but none seemed important.
I sensed time dilation and checked often. At some point, I adjusted and factored it in. Not sure it's a great thing to be checking something like that so often.
The experience overall was fragmented. Nothing held together very long, not even long enough most of the time to be remembered. Maybe because the next however-many-images-in-a-row just kept rolling in. They didn't stop.
I recall at one point saying to B ' this must be the euphoria.' I'm sure if I remember saying it, then I really did feel euphoric. But it wasn't like E. I wasn't connected to other people the same way.
Not that it was bad. I've never been so completely out of it on anything that had so little consequence on my body and mind later. I took two seasick pulls beforehand, and still got sick two and a half hours in. But it was quick. B got sick after about six hours. Neither of us thought it was an issue. No headaches, no big trouble sleeping, great natural feeling the next day. We smoked hash on and off but not much when we were peaking and I'm not sure how much difference it made. We ate well after about ten hours.
The only regret for me was not being able to see how this worked outdoors. I couldn't see us moving around on a dose like this. I'm curious to know what it would be like to be set up from the start in a fabulous natural setting.
It was fully 24 hours after we started that we finally got out. Even though it was a rare clear day in the big city I live in, there was still no mistaking the effect of the lingering cactus on my vision. It says something about how long this stuff sticks around, or about how powerful it is...because I hadn't seen the streets look like that before. Perfectly in focus - like the difference between old school TV and hi def. Bright, crisp colors. The sun was never better. Every image was incredibly sharp.
(Observations made the next day)
Afterward:
Came down from the hardest part somewhere between 5 and 6 pm. (T+ 8-9 hours) Remained strong nonetheless. Present until we went to bed at about 12:30.
My visuals were not so much on colors, though we were in a limited environment, but shapes. Warping of the room – a rectangular room with me in the middle looking down at one end where the light comes in through windows on the 6th floor. Coming into the computer room down the hall, I remember my vision was all over the place. Couldn't read this screen too well. It was possible to type with a little concentration…and that was the whole day. Everything was possible with some effort….I was never so far gone that I couldn't answer a question…never drifting for too long.
I'm not sure what I got from the experience, or whether I knew how to use the opportunity. Certainly if I'd been that high for that long on something less friendly, it might have been nasty.
To compare it to LSD…this was easier to control. I think if I'd been outside on a smaller dose – say 30-35 grams – I might have been able to pull it off. Presumably the peak doesn't get that high on the smaller dose.
The come down was wonderfully gentle. B feared a headache, as that's happened to him on other things. Nothing though. My neck was a bit sore from sitting the same way, but overall I was probably better off than if I'd tried to sit that way sober all day.
The next day has been great. We both think this is the cleanest of any major high we've had.
(end of next day observations)
Most of this has been my perspective. I checked in with B a few times over the following days and weeks. These are some of his thoughts:
'I was a bit sluggish in the first few days of the week but that may as well be the smoking (hash) which had been a while for me and the long trip. i was fine come mid week and have been feeling quite sharp in the past few days, handling some difficult work issues and communicating with my boss on the phone with plenty of clarity. but this morning i was under the impression that today was thursday and was surprised when my wife told me over the phone that it was friday. seems i missed a day... not sure if that was because i was so busy or if the cactus somehow messed up my body clock. any lingering effects from your side ? i would love to go for another round some time.'
(I asked for an update a few weeks later)
'I can't say that I have any lingering physical effects from the cactus but I think that a first time experience like that has to have some permanent effects on the mind although I would be hard pressed to define them. Certainly there is a resulting thought expanding effect. But that also applies to other drugs. What do you think? '
(I asked him to clarify what 'thought expanding' meant)
'As you know, one of the things lsd does is to help expose the true motives and nature of man which tend to get masked by things like culture, religion or ignorance. Thats a big part of the mind expanding. The cactus had the potential to go there but as we discussed before, it was controllable.'
'During the trip, there were about 4-5 very brief moments when I felt as though I was in my normal state and I mentioned it to you. I find this very interesting, considering how blasted I was. Did you get a similar feeling? Its mostly a head trip but fine hand coordination is definitely affected big time. But I had no problems walking on it. It was basically impossible to maintain a thread of thought for more than what seemed like 15 seconds or so even though it was obvious that the potential for thoughts to run quite deep was there.'
(Note: I felt okay about using my hands. At one point I picked up a cleaver and sliced the end off a big candle, and I think it was a lot safer doing that on the cactus than it would have been on alcohol.)
I noticed my body was relaxed in the days that followed. My breathing was very deep. My legs felt a bit weak. And continuing to smoke hash might not have helped me get back to normal. But there were no actual problems. I was just a touch removed from the mainstream.
We both think this is worth doing again. Somehow I want a different experience. I'm thinking it might be good to do less and get outside. And some time I want to do more than 50 grams to see where that goes.
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