DOSE:

22 in

oral

Cacti - T. pachanoi

(tea)

BODY WEIGHT:

210 lb

I bought a San Pedro cactus at the local cacti store about a year ago & have been growing it out back. I finally got around to trying it. I read up on all the extractions, etc. on Erowid & decided to go with cactus juice. My logic was that cooking it or drying it has got to reduce the alkaloids at least a little - you always lose something in processing. At the same time I couldn't imagine choking down nearly 2 feet of cactus raw. Finally, I figured I could juice some ginger along with the cactus to cut down on the nausea. I own a juiceman type juicer, so this was pretty easy. I put on some didg music and started despining the freshly cut 22' section of cactus. Once all the spines were gone I juiced it with a hunk of ginger about the size of a small lemon. I added about a 1/4 tsp of citric/malic acid blend that I got from a local homebrew shop. This yielded about a beer glass and a half (~24 oz) of cactus juice. I was expecting it to be really foul, but the taste wasn't that bad. The texture, however, was WAY high on the revolting scale. Adding ice helped a lot, and the ginger did cut the taste quite a bit. I choked it down & meditated to start the trip. I've found this to be a great way to get a good mindset going before tripping.

It took about an hour to come on, and it was great stuff. Good visuals, very nonthreatening, but at the same time it definitely delivered the goods. I took a walk through my neighborhood which was absolutely amazing - everything was so alive & I felt a sense of connectedness to everything. I came home because a wave of nausea came on, & I thought I might puke. I didn't, & being indoors wasn't much fun, so I went on another walk, which was great. I was accosted by a pack of roving Mormons, but I was totally OK with talking with them & letting them be on their trip while I was on mine. I continued on my walk and started to come down a bit (maybe 4 hours after I drank the juice). Coming down wasn't a whole lot of fun as the nausea was still there but most of the good effects had worn off, but it wasn't too bad. I didn't feel like eating anything much all day because of the nausea, which came and went. At one point I walked past a cactus, but I couldn't look at it because it made me want to puke, which made me burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of it.

Overall it was definitely a worthwhile trip but something I'm not in any rush to do again. It's great stuff but plan on taking a full day for it, and feeling a little hungover the next day as well. The ginger helped a lot but I was left wondering if it might have been better to have just puked and got it over with rather than riding out the nausea.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 35780
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Aug 10, 2004	Views: 14,291
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Cacti - T. pachanoi (64) : Alone (16), Personal Preparation (45), Glowing Experiences (4), Preparation / Recipes (30), First Times (2)