DOSE: T+ 0:00	490 g	oral	Cacti - T. pachanoi	(extract)
T+ 0:35		smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)
T+ 4:20	172 g	oral	Cacti - T. pachanoi	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

August 6, 2004

Previous night: 490 grams of whole cactus is despined, peeled of the “Gore Tex” like coating, and juiced. The collected pulp is boiled for about 15 minutes with 1 cup of water and then strained through an old t-shirt. The two liquids are combined and boiled for another 30 minutes until the volume is reduced to 16 oz and then refrigerated.

8:40 am: I feel calm and am looking forward to this experiment. Unlike most past experiences with new drugs (marijuana, shrooms, LSD, cocaine, methamphetamine), no internal voice is saying, “What am I doing to myself?!” I drank ½ of the mixture. The taste is not as bad as expected (because, according to the South American Indian legend, I am pure of heart), but definitely not recreational.

9:15 am: feeling a very vague fuzziness, both physical (skin feels stimulated, but stomach is ever so slightly burning and queasy) and mental. I drank the remaining mixture and find it slightly less palatable. A small puff of marijuana helps my stomach. I listen to “Equinox” by Jeanne Jarre and the sound is very rich, flowing over me like ocean waves as I sit and write.

10:40 am: I feel very relaxed and can feel something building. It feels slightly “shroomy.” Hand shadows are becoming apparent. The living room carpet patterns begin to reveal animal shapes: a beaver with a flapping tail, mouse, deer, and fish. I close my eyes and lose perspective of direction, even “up” cannot be determined. An American Indian with an oddly “white man” face, bare chest and a feather in his headband comes up to me, places his hand on my shoulder and says, “Yep, you got a bit of mescaline in you.” He seems pleased. My hands are getting that rubbery, tripping feel. I feel like a few year’s worth of burden has been scraped back off the top of my head. I have fits of giggling and laughter as I feel the trip coming on.

11:10 am: My whole body begins to orgasm and keeps this feeling for nearly an hour - this is just great! The only emotion I’m aware of is joy. The walls breathe slightly and the wooden trim is vibrating. Books on the shelf move back and forth, sometimes the whole shelf bends. During this time I’m aware of the amount of love I have for my wife, and it’s a big part of me, one of just a few pillars of my emotional core.

I go outside and sit on the porch looking at the gardens and birds. I spend many minutes watching a praying mantis climb up the chair next to me. After a while I get up and wander around the yard and doing a little light weeding. I clean the area around My Old Cat’s grave and am aware of how much sadness is within me from her loss. I am not consumed by it, just aware. I look up at the sky and see many beautiful clouds and am struck that My Old Cat is literally a part of the clouds. I find comfort in this new awareness, this is something new I will keep from this trip.

I get into the hammock and watch clouds passing. This is the most amazing cloud display I’ve ever seen. They are always something and seem to show everything. A human face will morph into an animal which changes into a floating city, then to a dragon (many dragons), then an emotion, now an ironing board, back to a dinosaur, love, couples kissing, science fiction scenes, and on and on and on. The sky is full of clouds and the images are changing like a fast movie. I am captivated for over an hour, it has been a long time since I’ve relaxed like this.

1:00 pm: It feels like I’m not going any deeper on this trip so I decide to try and boost it with another serving of cactus. I slice a 3 inch long piece which weighs 172 grams. I remove the spines, peel it, and eat it with a bit of salt like cucumber slices. The taste is not bad at all, in fact I find that I like it. During this time I talk to an old friend and he congratulates me on my discovery. We talk for about 40 minutes and I find conversation to be pretty easy.

1:40 pm: the trip is definitely beginning to fade. I play guitar some and find I can play whatever I want regardless of what is on the stereo. I find this odd, and seem to be playing rather well. I continue listening to various types of music and meditate.

3:20 pm: I sit down to write some of my impressions while listening to the Brandenburg concertos. They sound really good right now and I see mild visual distortions (maybe the second cactus is helping a bit). On blank walls I see translucent geometric shapes in multiple colors, mostly greens, blues, yellows and light red. I feel like I’ve been on a vacation for a few days. My wife comes home and I’m still fairly high. I wouldn’t want to drive like this.

6:30 pm: I still have pronounced body sensations, a mild version of the orgasms felt earlier in the day, and am still trippy. I’m at a quiet point in the trip and find pleasure in lying on the couch listening to the neighborhood sounds. A little later my wife and I go up the street and eat at the neighborhood restaurant. All goes well, though I’m still fairly quiet. The food tastes good and is very welcome since I ate very little today, other than cactus.

11:35 pm: I’m tired and headed for bed though the trip is still present. The bathroom floor tiles are showing heretofore unnoticed patterns and images. One of the tiles fills with alphabetic letters in no particular order. Faces and small animals appear in the floor. My head feels fairly congested. I sleep pretty well and wake up the next day feeling okay except for a headache which lasts most of the day. Other than this my mood is good and I seem to be noticing plants more, green colors seem very pleasurable.

Notes for future: This was a good exploration of the concept of tripping off a cactus. I didn’t go as far as I’d hoped, but definitely “tripped”. The experience was very similar to mushroom trips. This was more of a rest and relaxation day than what I’m seeking, which is a day of more insight. For a first try it was perfect, I haven’t tripped at all since 1999, and not in a big way since 1988. I will try again in a few weeks, or months, whenever it feels right, and use somewhere between 680 and 900 grams (1.5 to 2 pounds) prepared the same way and all consumed during the first hour.

Exp Year: 2004	ExpID: 56505
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 29, 2008	Views: 16,457
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Cacti - T. pachanoi (64) : General (1), First Times (2), Alone (16)