http://www.mescaline.com/exp/index.htm
''Eating whole cactus produces a more body-oriented high than pure mescaline. San Pedro usually produces a very smooth, flowing experience. However, the effects of Peyote are quite different due to its unique mixture of alkaloids. With Peyote, the first couple hours of the experience are very dream-like, drifting, almost a delirium type state. '' - D. M. Turner
THE HIGH:
The mescaline experience is my favorite of the traditional psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline). I find it has the advantages of acid: a lucid, penetrating, focused ability of the mind, rather than the more dreamy, drifting state I get from mushrooms. However, I feel totally relaxed with mescaline, even calmer than I feel on mushrooms, and there's no trace of the metallic edge usually felt on acid.
Eating whole cactus produces a more body-oriented high than pure mescaline. San Pedro usually produces a very smooth, flowing experience. However, the effects of Peyote are quite different due to its unique mixture of alkaloids. With Peyote, the first couple hours of the experience are very dream-like, drifting, almost a delirium type state. During this time I feel groggy and sleepy and can do little more than lay back and sink into the feeling, which is not unpleasant. Some element of Peyote also acts as an emetic, making most people nauseous about two hours into the trip.
I find the mescaline experience to be more visual than mushrooms or acid. However, I've only experienced really spectacular visuals when using synthetic mescaline. My high tolerance to most psychedelics, along with the capacity of my stomach, has prevented me from ever being as high as I would have liked when eating whole cactus. Like psilocybin, mescaline tends to link me with collective evolutionary consciousness more than synthetics like LSD. The experiences produced by these natural psychedelics seem more "significant" than an acid high, which is more analytical. An acid high often seems to be a by-product of magnifying the mind, whereas with mushrooms and cactus one feels they are in touch with something ancient, spiritual, and personal. Mescaline has a unique signature in this context which I find most magical, a feeling that the Gods or protective allies are smiling down on me. The duration can be 6 to 14 hours depending on the amount consumed. The "coming back" portion of a mescaline trip is smoother than with the other traditional psychedelics. And I've never felt the "drained of energy" or "neural overload" feeling that can come after an intense acid trip. This allows for a more conscious and therapeutic return to regular consciousness, after which I can easily sink into sleep and wake up feeling refreshed.
Some aspects of the mescaline high are quite distinct from LSD or mushrooms. The visions produced by mescaline have a different character and structure. When being overtaken by a full strength mescaline trip, I've felt more than with any traditional psychedelic that I was an extraterrestrial being, immersing myself in new sensory phenomena for the first time. Where LSD or psilocybin heighten and clarify the sense of hearing, mescaline produces auditory hallucinations, heightening the hearing sense but also causing sounds to be quite different than normal. Mescaline also sharpens the olfactory sense to a much finer degree than LSD or psilocybin. I've particularly noted this in my ability to perceive the smells of numerous different plants when using synthetic mescaline outdoors. As for aphrodisiacal use of mescaline, wow!, it brought energies out of me that I never knew I had.
At the conclusion of this chapter is one of my favorite descriptions of a psychedelic experience. It illustrates the depth and spiritual significance that a mescaline experience can produce. This is a description of a Peyote experience which Bernard Roseman undertook with members of the Native American Church in the late l950s. It was published in The Peyote Story, Wilshire Book Company, 1963.
D M Turner