My prefered preperation/consumption method.

I just thought I'd post up my prefered method of cacti preparation/consumption, take from it what you will. This is just my own personal preference, each to thier own.

Step One: Purchase your prefered cactus from a reliable source. In my case fresh San Pedro from my local head shop. I usually use around 600 grams per person per trip. This comes in a whole unprepared branch of cactus.

Step Two: Despine the cactus. I do this by first taking a scissors and triming all the spines/needles down to a milimeter or two. Next I go about removing the remainder of the spines. This is done by taking a sharp knife (I use an exacto knife/stanley blade/box cutter, whatever you want to call it) and cutting a diagonal \ and / shaped slice down into the cactus on each side of each spine, then prying out the small wedge of cactus which contains the remainder of the spine. The base of the spines usully go about 1-3 milimeter beneath the skin, so this is how deep you cut. You can save all these cactus wedges containing the pieces of spine and later remove the bits of spines completely if you don't want the little pieces of cactus to go to waste, but they add up to a very small percentage of the overall cactus material you will be consuming so I don't bother.

Step Three: Cut up your cactus into several star shaped slices about 2-3 inches thick.

Step Four: Skin the slices. The way I do this is to make a tiny cut and then just peel the skin off as if you are unrolling a roll of cellatape. Most of the time the skin will come away from the flesh of the cactus perfectly but occasionally little bits of flesh will come off stuck to the skin. If this happens just scrape the bits of flesh off the skin with a blade. Skinning like this gets easier with practice and I can skin a 12" piece of cactus cut into slices in about two minutes now.

Step Five: Remove the core of the slices. The centre part of the cactus has very little mescaline in it compared to the green fleshy parts. And going on anicdotal eveidence is responsible for most of the nausea some people expierince from eating cacti, best to just throw it out. The core is the bit in the centre that is lightest in colour (whitish-yellow). To remove this core just cut in a circle around it and pop it out. It can be a bit difficult trying to handle the slimy cactus slices so I dab them with a dry clean cloth to make them easier to handle.

Step Six: Slice up your cactus slices. Basically just dice them into smaller pieces. This will help the cactus dry out faster and makes later steps easier. You could just throw the pieces into a blender but I prefer to dice them by hand.

Step Seven: Dry out your diced cactus. I do this simply by spreading it out on a plate and leaving it somewhere out of the reach of children and animals (and thieves) and allow it to dry out naturally. It takes about 4 days and nights to dry out like this. But I live in Ireland which is a very wet place and dry it away from fresh air and direct sunlight, so obviously if you live somewhere warm or if you dry it in the open air and sunlight it will dry much faster. (Note: The colour the cactus changes while at different stages of drying out is really incredible, a strange mix of vibrant red, purples and greens, I will take a picture next time.)

Step Eight: Powder your cactus. Take your dryed out cactus (when dry it will be a lot smaller in volume and hard) and throw it into a blender or coffee grinder or anything else that will accomplish your needs (I find a blender to be the best) and crush it into a fine powder.

Step Nine: Consume your cactus powder. This is always going to be a matter of personal tastes but these are the 4 ways I go about it.
(1). Throw some the powder into a small glass of strong tasting beverage (beer, orange juice, coke ect) a bit at a time and stir it well with a spoon, then shoot it. It will not taste good but it will be bearable. Repeate untill all the powder is consumed. This stuff will not want to mix with the beverage, it will not dissolve in any real way, so shoot it as soon as you mix it about or it will just gather at the bottom of the glass.
(2). Put the powder into an empty glass and the add just enough strong tatsing and pleasant beverage (as above) so that the powder soaks it up and becomes a kind of goey paste. Next squash the paste up as tight as you can into several small balls. Now throw the balls into you mouth one at a time and immediately wash them down witha big mouthful of beverage. You should barely taste anything but your beverage of choice with this method.
(3). Mix the powder through a paste like food of your choice. Peanut butter, chocalate spread, nutella, depending on your personal tastes and either eat it on its own or spread it onto a sandwich or somethig and eat it like that.
(4). Stuff the powder into capsules and swallow them down. Thier is a lot of powder so you will be eating a lot of capsules so I am not a big fan of doing it this way, as I have heard that eating that many capsules can give you pretty bad diahrea.

 

You say you are consuming 600 grams PER PERSON, per trip?

I assume the wet weight is 600 grams? That would make it around 120 grams dry weight powder. Thats quite a bit for one person isnt it?

 

Yeah Ancient thats 600g (0.6KG) fresh weight, I'm not sure what it weighs in at when dried, never thought to check, I'll way the dried powder next time I do it and post the dry weight. Out of curiosity how did you come to the figure of 120g when dry?

 

Its a standard. San Pedro is 75% water. That means its 25% plant material. So the math goes (convert percentage to a decimal) .25(600g)=120 grams.

.331% is typical of what many consider the mescaline content of San Pedro (the lower end of the scale most often quoted). So (convert percentage to a decimal) .00331(120g)=.397 grams of mescaline=397 milligrams of mescaline. However the molecular weight of the specific mescaline compound used effects dose, depending on whether its extracted as mescaline sulfate, mescaline hydrochloride, mescaline carbonate, mescaline freebase, mescaline citrate, etc. The lighter the molecule the less dose required.

Not to mention the fact that some say San Pedro can range up to 1%. So that although the minimum and most likely amount available from 600 g is 397 mg the upper end could be more than 1.2 grams or 1200 mg of mescaline.

A full san pedro dose is considered to be 57-96 grams dry weight. Theoretically.

 

Well he mentions discarding the core, but not the white flesh as well. That may explain the extra weight. Also, the molecular weight wouldn't come into play here because he is just eating the cactus. The mescaline would be in a freebase.

 

Ahh good thinking kidsmoke. 600g fresh would be the weight including the core, skin and spines/needles. The weight of the spines and skin but mainly the core would weigh roughly 100-110g I'm guessing, meaning the fresh weight of the consumed part of the cactus would be around 490-500g , something like that. That would mean it is 125g dry weight, (25% of 600 is 150 not 120 I think). So I guess that would still mean it is a strong dose, going on the figure of 57-96g dry that you posted. I suppose it is a strong dose, you deffinately have no doubt you are full of mesc on it, but in general a strong trip is what we are looking for when we do mescaline.

 

what if you just used the weight of the dark underflesh and skin only. you would think the mescaline percentage would now increase manifold compared to weight. I have one more footer to prepare for next week. I will weigh the skins for you guys. e!