DOSE:	50 g	oral	Cacti - T. peruvianus	(extract)
	repeated	smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

180 lb

Starved Rock Mescaline Trip Account, 9/25/09

The extraction was performed using 100 grams of powdered peruvian torch soaked in Everclear (190 Proof), with the resulting mixture filtered, evaporated, and stuffed in capsules. We had been planning this trip for a couple weeks, and we were both very excited. The plan was to drive about an hour and a half to Starved Rock National Park and drop the capsules of crudely extracted mescaline from Peruvian Torch cactus, hike around a bit and see the sights, and then drive back after we came down. Once we parked in the parking lot we dropped the capsules, myself taking 13 and my friend K taking 12. I would say that this was around 11:15 a.m. I had also brought along two capsules each containing approximately 100 mg of 95% pure Syrian Rue extract. I had the instinctive feeling that I would not need the MAOI just based on the large amount of cactus extract that we had. However K gladly accepted one capsule of it. Oh, and let me just say, the cactus extract capsules did not have an equal amount of extract in each, but I figured that we took roughly the same dose. I do believe my friend tripped a little harder because of the MAOI and also he did not throw up.

After dropping the capsules we grabbed our backpacks that had some food, a decent amount of water, and some sweatshirts in case we got cold. I also brought a flashlight just in case. Then we went into the visitor's center to grab a map of the trails in the area and checked out some of the history exhibits and such. We then decided it was time to start hiking shortly before 12:00. By this point I was feeling the usual anticipation/anxiety feeling that I normally get when I ingest visionary chemicals. My friend, having never tripped on mescaline before, was worried that nothing was going to happen, but by 1:00 or a little later, we knew we were in for a wild ride. During this time we were just moseying along the trail, stopping to see the cool rock formations and dense vegetation. I got nauseous and threw up shortly before 1:00. While it was very unpleasant because it was bitter as all fuck, I felt much better afterwards, and used one of those NAKED drinks and a cigarette to wash the taste out of my mouth. So we pressed on, starting to feel weirder and weirder with every step.

Then it started to rain. We knew ahead of time that it was probably going to rain, but we weren't too worried. The fairly dense canopy kept most of the rain off us, and we found a nice broad-leaved tree and stayed for a bit trying to wait the rain out. We probably stayed there for about 15 minutes and then started walking in the rain for maybe another 10 minutes, at which point it thankfully stopped raining. By this point we were both definitely starting to trip, because now if we focused on any spot in our field of vision for more than a few moments, shit would start shifting, breathing, and moving. We both remember looking at the ground, and it looked like the little roots on the ground were writhing like worms and the leaves were shaking like there was a breeze in the air. Verrrrry interesting.

After a bit more hiking, which was probably less than half a mile but took like almost an hour because we were constantly stopping and exploring an analyzing everything, we came to an overlook with a bench and little fenced area. We really wanted to sit over there but there was a couple sitting there and we were not in any condition to interact with anyone. So we sat down about 40-50 feet from them and kind of waited for them to leave. It was at this point that I started to get the Fear, I'd say now it was maybe a little after 2:00 in the afternoon. I started thinking about how easy it would be to get lost out here for people in our condition and just focusing on this thought. I didn't want this trip to go bad though and I told myself, 'You know what, you have a backpack with food, water, and a sweatshirt, and you're less than 5 miles away from the car and civilization, even if you do get lost you have more than enough to survive on to take you those 5 miles or whatever.' Then the people who were sitting on the bench left and I stopped thinking about this entirely. We sat on the bench and looked across the Illinois River at the trees and clouds and everything. We saw a little tugboat thing pushing a huge barge, which looked pretty ridiculous, especially since the tugboat looked like it was swimming like a fish on top of the water. After staying on that bench for what seemed like hours but was really about 15 minutes, we continued on. We were starting to peak at this point, and although the trip was exceedingly intense, at the same time we felt like we still had our wits about us. I remarked that I felt like my sanity was hanging on by a thread, but at the same time I felt mentally calm. My friend K felt exactly the same way.

We came to a large flight of stairs descending down towards the river, and there was a trail map at the bottom. This was very difficult to decipher, but we came to the conclusion that we had come down from the bluff trails to the river trail. We walked a little more on the river trail in the opposite direction of the visitors center and stopped on a little bridge that went over a small water inlet. As we were looking out across the river a hummingbird started collecting nectar from the plants that were growing out of the shallow water no more than 6-7 feet away from us. This was a spectacular sight, as K had never seen a hummingbird before and I've only seen one once or twice before, and never that close. The hummingbird left, and we decided that we really wanted to go back to the car and listen to some Grateful Dead. I figured that since now it was around 3:00, we could meander our way back to the car over the next couple hours, listen to music and chill for a bit, and then peace out when we felt sober enough.

We turned around and started heading back, but only walked for about 5 minutes or so and then stopped on another little footbridge. As we were leaning on the railing, all of a sudden K flipped out. I was like 'what? what?' and he's like 'dude I was just kicking the boards on the ground and this HUUUUGE spider just popped out by my hand.' He pointed at where it was and indeed the thing was frighteningly large. All we could say was 'OH MY GOD that thing is sick nasty'. We continued on though and in another 5 minutes or so we came to another bench right on the river and decided that we should probably eat something. I busted out some Sun Chips and cashews and we attempted to eat. Although it tasted fantastic, it just kind of seemed like a chore to eat at the time, so I didn't eat too much. K had another one of his pears and a good amount of my chips as well.

We sat on the bench afterwards and had a cigarette and watched the clouds. K said that one big one turned into a huge rat and turned around to face him, and then another one looked like two horses running together. I looked at the big cloud and it actually did look like rat, but the others just looked like clouds to me. Suddenly we noticed a huge daddy-longlegs crawling from under the bench on the ground, we watched it for a bit and then lost interest. Then a minute or so later another one came out from under the bench, but it was stumbling all over and looked like it was missing some legs. K was like, 'dude I bet that the first one we saw just beat the fuck outta this one and peaced out'. We both laughed pretty hard at this. As we were sitting there we noticed a couple guys coming down the trail towards us, and thought about asking them if they wanted to get high. They looked cool enough, but we decided against it and let them pass by. After what seemed like hours at this bench we got up to go, and realized that it was still only 3:30.

We kept going for about 100 feet from the bench and I spotted another massive spider in a web on the side of the trail. This one was brown and orange with like bright yellow-green legs. Very venomous looking. After being enthralled by this spider for a bit we kept going again and found a nice spot to chief. We were tripping sooooo hard at this point that I decided I didn't need to chief, but K did. So we were sitting under this big limestone rock formation and it looked like there were faces in the rock. There were also small caves in there, and we both remarked that some hideous spiders probably live in there. K put it this way: 'that's where the spider lives that all the other ones call BIG MOMMA' and I said in a deep voice, 'BIG MOMMA'S COMIN' TO GET YA!' And then we laughed our asses off again lol.

Oh, I forgot to mention, earlier when we were taking one of our frequent stops, we were looking across the water and all of a sudden this huge crane (the bird) flew down from a cliff and skimmed the water. That was really fuckin cool.

So anyways right after the smoke break we continued on and ended up having to climb a shitload of stairs to get back up to the same level as the visitor's center. We knew we were getting closer to civilization, but we were still tripping face. So we came to another bench which was basically like 100 yards from the trailhead and sat down again.

While we were sitting there just tripping balls I saw two dogs appear at the top of the stairs in front of us, and then two people appeared behind them, a guy and a girl. As the people were coming down the stairs, the guy slipped and almost fell, and I guess I laughed even though I don't really remember doing so. Anyway, I guess the girl heard me laugh, and she laughed and said 'Are you laughing because he almost just biffed his shit there?' and I said 'Yeah' and then the dogs came up to us and we started to pet them until the people caught up. As I recall we exchanged a few words, and they seemed really chill, and as they were about to leave K said 'Hey you guys wanna smoke a bowl?' They said that they hadn't brought anything with them, but we said its cool and we'd smoke them down.

So there we were with these people that we just met like a minute ago, chiefing on a bench in the middle of the woods while losing our minds. We immediately told them that we were tripping like hell on mescaline and they actually seemed, well, impressed. Maybe because we were still mildly coherent. As we were talking, within the first 5 minutes it came out that the guy was a 26 year old gay, racist, Mississippian army recruit, and the girl was a 28 year old gynecologist that works at the same hospital that my Dad works at and likes black cock. Oh my lord K and I were having trouble processing all this. It was just soooo amazing how real these people were, and how they were just truly and totally being themselves. We were laughing at their antics so hard they were just sooooo out there. So eventually we all decided that we would be on our way, but it ended up that we had to go in the same direction anyway so we stuck together.

All of a sudden we emerged from the woods not where we had gone in, into a cluster of cabins. Immediately I was reminded of that M. Night Shymalan movie 'The Village.' And there was a fucking wedding going on like less than 100 yards away outside one of the cabins. We skirted around the ceremony not wanting to interrupt, and we came to the back of the lodge which was located behind and slightly above the visitor's center on a hill. Oh, by the way, the people that we met were named Marcela and Matt. So anyway, we're waiting behind the lodge for Matt because he went in to ask for directions to some hotel or campsite or something. As we were waiting the whole fucking wedding procession is walking past us, and we were analyzing all of the people as they went by like literally 5 feet in front of us. It seriously looked like a Russian mob wedding or something, all of them were dressed very tacky and euro-style. And again we were analyzing them right in their faces! They must have heard us talking about them, but if they did they didn't acknowledge it. Eventually Matt came back and we walked down some stairs to the visitor's center. So Matt and Marcela offered for us to come back to their campsite and they'd make us some food or something, but we had our hearts set on listening to some Dead in the car and coming down until we could drive. So we told them thanks for the sweet company and entertainment, and that we would try to hit them up on our way out of town later. So we parted, and we got into the car and put on some tunes at about 6:00.

We sat in the car and tripped out to the Dead and some Keller Williams and this song by Master P that tells you how to make crack, it was pretty wild. We ate a little bit more, and chilled for a bit longer until it was totally dark and everyone had left the parking lot, but we were still tripping like fuck. At about 8:00, which was initially when I thought we should be coming down, we decided to get out and walk around again since we were still waaaay too messed up to be driving. We walked up by the entrance to the visitor's center, and swarms of bugs were flying around the light, and there were huge fuckin spiders all over the underside of the roof and on the sign outside of the place. Now that I look back on it, we saw an assload of spiders that day but anyways we bummed around the general area until about 8:30 when we got a text from Matt and Marcela saying that they had gotten this awesome hotel room and that it would 'complete our trip.' They texted us the address and K put it into the GPS on his phone, and it was only like 5 minutes away. We still were tripping like hell, and I was against driving, but we needed to leave because a park cop car drove by our vehicle a couple times which sketched us out, and we felt we needed to leave in general because it was getting late. K said he was capable of it, and I agreed, so we put on some techno and headed off. We had minimal depth perception, and the road and signs were hard to see, but K was driving well considering, and the GPS really helped. So we parked outside what we thought was the place and called Matt.

[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]
They said that they could see us and sure enough we got out of the car and Marcela waved us over to the place. This hotel was more like a guest house and it was absolutely amazing! We went through the main house which was very well decorated in a kind of eccentric way, but still looked very nice. We went out to the back onto a patio which led down to a small yard which had a couple little gazebos and little sidewalks leading to a series of 4 or 5 cottages! Marcela told us that all the cottages had a different theme, like safari theme, rainforest, back woods, and such. Their's was fishing-oriented. We walk in and there's a jacuzzi right in the main room with a couple couches and a TV. Over the jacuzzi there were a bunch of metal or plaster turtles crawling on the wall, and a stairway to the right leading up to a lofted bedroom. There was also fishing paraphernalia everywhere. This place truly was a great completion to our trip. So we chilled inside and watched TV and had some pretty deep conversations considering we had just met these people like 4 hours before. Matt and K went outside to presumably chainsmoke and Marcela and I just chatted for about 20 minutes until they came back in.

Then we all went outside, and when we looked to our right there was a small fire altar with 4 chairs around it that had just been lit. K and Matt said they didn't see anyone or any fire when they had been out just minutes earlier. This seemed like some sort of omen, so we went and sat around the fire, smoked a bowl, and talked about even deeper stuff. We raised issues like the unhappy last few years in my friend K's life, Marcela's relationship problems, and where we were all headed in life at this point. I would say it really was a healing experience for us.

At around midnight K and I were finally feeling sober enough to drive back, but we were very physically and mentally exhausted. And of course, even though we said we were going to leave, Matt and Marcela said that we could totally crash in their cottage if we wanted to. We agreed and thanked them profusely. They went to bed and K and I stayed up for another 30-45 minutes eating and talking about the day until we finally turned in for the night too. It took me a while to get to sleep because I was so busy trying to integrate this experience and what it all meant, but eventually I fell asleep and awoke around 10:00 in the morning feeling fairly refreshed.

Once we were all up and about, we talked a bunch more, less deeply but like the type of conversation that good friends would have. K and I were reluctant to leave, but we got their names and addresses, and it turned out that they live pretty damn close to us! So after telling them that we would definitely stay in touch, and thanking them profusely again, we hugged, and parted for the last time. I italicized the word 'hugged' in the last sentence to emphasize something. How often do you meet people these days and feel comfortable enough to hug them within like 12 hours of meeting them? These people were strangers that turned into friends in less than a day. As we got to the car I said to K, 'Ya know, this really kind of renewed my faith in the inherent goodness of people that is so rare to see these days. This trip could not have turned out any better.' K wholeheartedly agreed, and we began the drive back home.

Oh, on a side note, when K was walking through the main house to go to his car before we left, the owner of the place engaged him in conversation. He told her that we had met some people hiking the other day and we spent the night with them. And she said: 'Here. Take this candle to remember this experience.' And gave him a candle. Unreal.

I have to say that this was the best trip either of us have ever had, bar none. As we were driving back we reflected on how easy it would have been for the trip to have turned out radically different. If we had just stopped on the trail for an extra minute, or not stopped for a minute for that matter, we may never have met those people. Also, if we had just decided to drive home (which would have been very stupid and dangerous) instead of meeting up with Matt and Marcela again, we wouldn't have seen that insanely awesome hotel room, had more deep conversations, and most importantly we wouldn't have gotten their information crucial to ever seeing them again. Every little path that we took and choice that we made that day worked out in our favor. It just seems like it was meant to be. And I still can't believe it all really happened!

If some of this seems really long-winded I apologize, I just wanted to illustrate the entire experience from beginning to end, sparing no detail. While I didn't include everything, I think you can get the gist of it. If you decided to read this all the way to the end, I hope that you enjoyed it, and I hope that you can be as lucky and successful as K and I were in all your visionary endeavors. Just be safe, relax, and enjoy every moment of life.

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 81420
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 21
Published: Dec 2, 2013	Views: 4,970
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Cacti - T. peruvianus (69) : Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53), Nature / Outdoors (23), Glowing Experiences (4), General (1)