Review Erowid at GreatNonprofits.org
Help us be a "Top Rated Nonprofit" again this year and spread
honest info (good or bad) about psychedelics & other psychoactive drugs.
("Share Your Story" link. Needs quick login creation but no verification of contact info)
Let’s Spend a Lifetime Here
Cacti - T. pachanoi
Citation:   SlipKnot420. "Let’s Spend a Lifetime Here: An Experience with Cacti - T. pachanoi (exp37131)". Erowid.org. Dec 3, 2004. erowid.org/exp/37131

 
DOSE:
12 in oral Cacti - T. pachanoi (tea)
This is a trip report of my first (and so far best) mescaline experience. I wrote it shortly after the trip. My friend has been bugging me for like months to post this report so I am finally going to. Be warned it is LONG AS HELL. I had to divide it up into parts.

Part 1: Pre-trip
One night, after a very entertaining night at a party, I went to a friends apartment, where I was given an everclear mixed drink. Eventually, at about 3 AM, I decided to leave and walk my way back home. It was a very easy walk, maybe 10 minutes. I knew exactly how to get back. But after walking and walking in what I thought was the right direction, I realized that I didn’t know where I was. My next memory was standing in an almost deserted parking lot. I had no idea where I was, or how I had gotten there. I looked up and realized that I was standing in front of a bar called The Neon Cactus. This name was very familiar to me. My friend Joshua, had just mentioned this bar to me the night before, and here I was in front of it. I had never heard of the bar, or seen it before, until then. But I knew this was not right. Where was I? Normally when I drink, even when I drink a lot, I always make it home, never get lost. I stared at the glowing green neon cactus sign that stood out so brightly against the night sky for a few minutes before I decided to start walking again.

After about 10 minutes I realized where I was, and realized that I was a good 2 miles from home. How had that happened? I hadn’t crossed any of the major roads that I needed to cross to get to this place. At least not that I could remember. I looked at my watch and realized that it was already 5 AM. I proceeded to walk my way back home, finally making it back at 6 AM, just as the sun was rising over the horizon. But I still couldn’t get the cactus bar out of my head. How had I gotten there? It made no sense. The strangest part to me was that I had a very strange feeling that night. It was a feeling that I had never had before. And it was a feeling that I would not have again until two weeks later, when I embarked upon my first mescaline journey. It could very likely be a giant coincidence. But as that mescaline trip was to reveal to me, nothing is a coincidence. It’s all flows the way it’s going to flow. And that experience was just a foreshadowing of what was on its way.

Part 2: The Journey Begins
Two weeks later Joshua and I were anxiously awaiting Ben’s arrival. The jar full of the dark greenish brown cactus slime [from 2 x 12inch cuttings] was sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting to be consumed. Josh called Ben a couple times but there was no answer, which only magnified the suspense. A few minutes later Ben arrived.

Josh kept on warning us that the cactus slime tasted terrible. He decided that we needed a bunch of different chasers get the crap down. He got nine glasses out. Three of them were filled with equal amounts of the mescaline cactus extraction. In the next three he poured a bunch of some random citrus drink for us to use as a chaser. He filled the final three glasses with ice cream, hoping that it would help neutralize the drink somehow. Josh said that we’d need all this to get the slime down. So there I sat, skeptically staring at the ice cream, citrus drink, and cactus crap that sat in front of me.

And then it began. We all downed our cactus slime at once. It was horrible, I plugged my nose and was chugging but my body wanted to reject it. It did not like what I was forcing into it. I felt like I was about to puke and so I stopped drinking. Swallowing a lot of ice cream definitely seemed to help. I still had a little bit of the juice left, but didn’t think that I could get it down. Josh convinced me to finish it off though, so I held my nose and swallowed the rest. This all happened at approximately 7:45 PM.

Afterwards, we tried to pass the time. None of our stomachs were feeling too good so we smoked some herb. Then we went upstairs and listened to music. I spent most of the time just trying to keep my mind off my stomach. I noticed that my body was feeling kind of strange. I was really thirsty, and when we went back downstairs we all had some milk. The milk felt perfect and the odd sensations in my throat and stomach that were being caused by the acidic cactus drink were instantly neutralized by the milk. We went outside for a while too. Something about the cold air on our bodies helped keep our mind off the feeling in our stomach.

I’m not exactly sure what time it was at, but I stood up and walked to the kitchen. I was soaring with energy. I walked around the kitchen very restlessly and then came back into the room that Josh and Ben were in. “You guys, I have a LOT of energy” I said. And with that the mescaline began to take effect.

“Do you guys think it is about time for a walk?” Josh asked Ben and me.

Ben and I both agreed, and soon the three of us were outside walking down the street and talking. We were commenting on the strange feeling of energy that we all had. It had initially started off subtle, but was slowly gaining more and more intensity and importance. This energy was very focused as well. When I take acid I get a similar restless energy, but it is very scattered and unfocused. Acid takes me all over the place and then I end up where I started at. This was different. This energy was leading us on a direct path. It was very directed and very focused. We all knew that the mescaline was leading us somewhere.

I remember as we walked along the very busy street, it turned into a bridge. Underneath the bridge was another road, and cars were driving underneath us. The view of all those cars, with the bright lights, the fast speeds, the loud sounds – it was all just amazing. A strange feeling permeated the air. I knew tonight was very special. It felt like this night had been meant to happen for a long time. Almost as if I had been waiting my entire life for this night. I knew that something incredible was on its way.

We continued on our journey, wondering where it was leading us, and talking very fast and excitedly. Suddenly Josh stopped, looked totally confused, turned around and started looking around. “Is there a sewer here?” He asked. We all stopped to look around for the sewer Josh was talking about but there definitely wasn’t one around. Josh started talking about how he had thought that he heard a sewer bubbling up and making strange sounds. I thought that was funny, because there obviously was no sewer, but Josh kept looking around to make sure.

During this whole time, my vision was gradually getting more enhanced. Everything seemed like an oil painting or something. We kept walking down the street, and I was staring at the headlights of the oncoming cars. The headlights began to look amazing. They weren’t just white, they were crystalline. There were vibrant colors of blues and greens and reds fractaling out of them. As I focused on this, it became more bright and more visual, slowly unfolding. And suddenly I brought myself back down, made the visual stop, and everything was “normal”. I was somewhat confused by this. What the hell was that?? It was very weird, because the visuals became intense as I focused on it, but then when I stopped everything was back to “normal” and the weird vision that I had just experienced was nowhere to be found.

Josh started talking about how he suddenly felt like he had so much time, and it was true. I felt the same way. I had all the time in the universe. Normally I felt so rushed in my everyday life. Even during the weekends I always felt like Monday was just around the corner. But now everything seemed different. There was lots of time tonight. More than we could ever dream of. We had all the time in the universe and we could do whatever we wanted with it. It was in great abundance, almost overflowing. This feeling was very comforting to me, because I was so used to always being in a rush.

Eventually we got to a forest preserve. There was a road path to enter to forest, and the gate was still up, so we went in and started walking along the path. The experience was incredible. The trees all stood tall and proud. Every tree was making its presence noticed. I could feel the spirits of the trees all around me, communicating to me, guiding me. There was an intense energy among them, vibrating through the air. I wondered why I had never noticed this energy before.

We kept walking and got to a wooden sign. We walked up and tried to read it but this proved to be more difficult than expected and none of us could read it. We had to walk real close to the sign, and even then it was very difficult to read because the letters were moving, shifting, and crawling around. Eventually we figured out what the sign said. It just stated the rules of the park, the speed limit to drive at, and explained that the park was closed at dusk. It was past dusk, but that was okay because everything was magical tonight. We were walking along, talking about everything that came to our minds. Then the crazyness began.

Part 3: Weirdness in the Forest
We were walking forward and I saw two trees, in between them and further off in the distance I saw a dark pond, and something moving around on the shore. There was a dark figure that looked like it was sitting on the edge of the pond fishing. I was kind of creeped out by that, and didn’t want to go there and bother the fisher. We kept walking forward and it turned out that there was nobody fishing at the lake. In fact, there wasn’t even a lake there. It was just a field. My eyes were starting to play tricks on me. I later found out Josh had thought he saw somebody fishing too. I followed Ben and Josh into the field, but I was getting very creepy vibes. For the entire duration that we had been in the woods up until this point, I had felt like there were lots of good forest spirits around me to guide, protect, and watch over me. But now things were changing. We stood in the field and I felt an intense terror. It was odd because I hadn’t felt any terror during the whole mescaline experience until that moment. But something about this field definitely was not right. Bad energies, angry spirits, and violent vibrations permeated the air.

I was convinced that we had stumbled upon the spirits of a bunch of slaughtered Native Americans. I could feel their spirits glaring at us. They were standing all around the field, staring down at us angrily, telling us to leave. Josh started walking forward but I couldn’t handle the intense fear that was washing over me. I knew I couldn’t go forward anymore and so I turned around. Ben seemed pretty freaked out too, and he agreed that we should leave. Josh agreed that this field was creeping him out too. Ben later told me that the place felt like a battlefield to him, which is exactly how I felt at the time.

So we turned around and let the mescaline lead us. I seriously felt like the trees were all whispering to me, telling us to retreat into the safety of the forest, away from the open field. We followed the energy and it led us forward into the woods and up a giant hill filled with trees. We started walking up it. The trees seemed to be spreading to the sides for us. They were parting to the sides, opening up to reveal a hidden secret trail that was meant just for us. The roots of the trees were creating layers of dirt which were forming into a staircase for us to climb. I felt much more comfortable with these trees, like they were trying to protect us and lead us out of the bad place. I could very definitely feel their spirits guiding us, telling us to just follow the staircase that they were creating for us, and everything would be okay. I didn’t even question where this staircase was leading to, but it seemed VERY real to me.

It was then, not even 60 seconds after we had gotten out of the field, that we turned around and looked back behind us to see a car drive down the road. There were weird lights in it, and it started to circle the field a few time. At first we just sat quietly, protected by the kind spirits of the trees as we watched the car with curiosity. But then we noticed something else. It wasn’t an ordinary car driving around down there, it was a forest preserve cop! If we hadn’t all suddenly gotten those bad vibrations, if we hadn’t left the field right when we did, we would have all gotten caught being in the park after dusk, while high on mescaline.

So we just laid down and watched the car drive around the field a few times. The spirits were telling us not to move, to just stay where we were for now, and that we would be okay. My balance felt quite odd at this point and lying down on the hill was comforting. I looked up above and stared at the intricate and complex designs of the leaves. I could focus on something and let the visuals slowly build up, and then stop it and bring myself totally down again. It was nothing like acid or mushrooms.

We stayed there, quiet and hidden, watching the visuals until we were sure the car was gone, and then we proceeded to continue climbing the strange staircase that the trees were revealing. The mescaline was definitely leading us somewhere, on some journey. And after being led to safety away from the cop, I had complete trust in the mescaline. It definitely felt like the Gods were watching over us that night. I knew I just had to pay attention to the vibes, and it would lead us the path that was being shown.

Josh was standing with his head pressed against a tree. I put my hand on a tree and felt its magnificence. I realized how wise the trees were compared to humans. They had lived through so much more time than humans. They had seen and experienced so much more than I had ever realized. With my hand on the tree, I could feel it’s spirit communicating to me. I was feeling its wisdom, its experience, it’s being melt into me, mix with me. But I was only feeling part of it, because the tree contained so much, and it was only giving me a small sample. I was just in total awe of it.

We just kept walking up and up the secret staircase hidden in the woods, exploring this wonderful fairytale-like forest for what seemed to be ages. At one point I had to jump over what seemed to be a cliff. I thought I was high atop some mountain, although in retrospect it must have been some strange ditch. Eventually we came by some houses, but the energy didn’t seem right to explore that area.. There was another way we could go, but it was also giving off bad vibes so we stayed away. This adventure was maddening. We kept walking and it seemed that I was at yet a different kind of cliff. I looked down and could see the entire path that we had walked up. It looked like we had ascended a massive mountain. It seemed as though we had spent years on this journey. We kept letting the mescaline lead us, and eventually it led us back down and out of the woods.

The journey was getting even more magical now. It was an adventure. There was something very special going on. We all knew that, but couldn’t quite put our finger on what it was. We were walking out of the forest preserve, and came back to the wooden sign that we had originally seen. We were staring at it again, but now the world around us was definitely different than it was when we first came up to the sign. Either Ben or Josh said that it felt like something out of Jumanji. We all agreed. The whole trip had a strange Jumanji feel to it.

We got to the very end of the forest preserve and we noticed that something was different. When we had entered, the gate to drive into the forest preserve had been open, but now it was closed. It had definitely been some forest preserve cop that had been driving around, and we were very lucky to not have gotten caught.

But somehow I knew it wasn’t luck at all. It was very obvious to me at this time that the spirits were guiding us. The spirits of all the trees in and animals in the forest, the spirit of the cactus, the spirit of mescaline. All of them.

Part 4: More Journeys
I was feeling spectacular now. The mescaline was going strong and it felt incredible. We kept walking and Ben found a strange pole in the ground. He picked it up and started using it as a cane. He called it his journey cane. I thought that was awesome, and as we kept walking forward I said “Wow I wish I had a journey cane too.” A moment later, another identical pole appeared in the ground in front of me. I was beyond amazed at that. It seemed as if the Gods had heard my request and given it as a gift.

We kept walking and eventually came upon a strange structure on the side of the road. It was sort of like the side of a pyramid, made out of many long logs that were stacked on top of each other. Josh was very curious and decided to climb it. We all followed him up this strange structure, and it felt like I was climbing some ancient Aztec pyramid. What mysteries awaited at the top? We got pretty high up it and decided to sit down here for a while. “Let’s spend a lifetime here” I remember saying. We all thought that seemed pretty appropriate. It was like we were having all sorts of different journeys to different places, and each one seemed like a lifetime.

And so we sat and talked about a lot of things. I remember we were talking about how amazing we felt. It felt almost like we were rolling. Only this was much more amazing than just rolling. We realized that mescaline didn’t feel like rolling. Rolling felt like mescaline. MDMA had come from mescaline.

There was something totally incredible about this substance. I felt like I had found something that I had spent years looking for. But I had never been aware that I was looking for it. All my use of psychedelics, I had always been looking for mescaline. None of the other drugs had delivered what I wanted. Acid was close, but not quite. It showed me there was something more, but it was so confusing that I could never make sense of it. The messages it gave me were too encrypted. I often came off of an acid trip very confused, trying to comprehend what had happened. I always felt like I had come so close to the truth, but then was cast out before I fully grasped something, and then had to spend months trying to piece together what happened that night. With the cactus it was different. There was no confusion. There was no paranoia, no insanity. But there was complete understanding. It definitely reminded me of the movie The Matrix.

I recalled a part when Neo had woken up and there was a message on his computer saying “Follow The White Rabbit”. Then some people came and neo said “Have you ever had that feeling where you not sure if you're awake or still dreaming?” and the guy said “All the time…It’s called mescaline…it’s the only way to fly.” The early scenes of that movie were so odd, so strange and surreal, that was exactly how I was feeling on this mescaline. When they kept saying how Neo was looking for something, and they knew because they had been looking for it once too…that’s how I was feeling. I felt like all my trips were because I was looking for something. I knew something wasn’t right with reality, I knew there was something more, but I hadn’t found the answer yet. Then I tried mescaline, and I finally found what I had been looking for all these years.

We talked a lot as we sat on that Aztec Pyramid, about a lot of things. I really don’t remember what because we talked about so much during the entire night. But eventually, after what seemed like a very long time, we decided it was time to go.

“Hey, we really did spend a lifetime here!” Somebody said. A lifetime had definitely seemed to pass, and now it was time for another journey.

And then we were back on the road, continuing on our journey. We were talking about how we weren’t going back home, even though the direction we were walking was that way. But it didn’t feel like we were going “back”. We were still being led forward. We talked about how it should always be like that, how we should always be looking forward.

Part 5: The Healing Rug
We finally got back to Josh’s place, and were feeling incredible. Josh had this blanket with Native American designs on it, and we spread it out and sat around in a circle on it. We kept discussing many things. We all had this incredible feeling, and we spent the whole night trying to describe it to each other, to see if we were all feeling the same thing. Our words never seemed to be quite enough because language is very inadequate, but it seemed that even though none of us could communicate it the right way, we all knew we were experiencing the same thing.

Then we sat on the rug and began to discuss many things. We called the rug the healing rug. On mescaline, it was much easier to talk about things that we normally tried to avoid. I now see where MDMA gets all its therapeutic potential. We were talking about how normally people (especially myself) try not to talk about things like religion and politics. They are too volatile of subjects and people generally just try to avoid them. But now, as we sat on the healing rug, we realized the absurdity of doing that. It seemed that those were the most important things that we had to talk about. “Why are we here and how do we want to live.” Religion and politics. We were talking about how fear gets into our hearts, and how it is totally unnecessary. We were talking about how much easier it is to get rid of the fear if you face up to it. I realized how helpful it is to talk things out with people, because you can’t always do it alone. But you can heal so much with the help and support of people, if you only looked past your hang-ups to talk about them. I feel like we definitely all solved a lot of problems that night. The cactus was definitely a healing cactus. I felt it going deep inside me, healing my soul. It was rejuvenating me and making me much stronger.

I was drinking a lot of water and going to the bathroom a lot more then Ben and Josh. I was pretty sure the cactus was helping me flush something out of me. Whether it was bad ideas, misconceptions, or just some sort of physical illness that was on its way, I don’t know. But I was definitely feeling better and healthier than I had in a long time.

Josh’s pet kitten was sitting with us on the rug for most of the night too. It seemed that we could understand the cat’s consciousness, and it could understand that we were on its level this time, much the way I can on mushrooms.

For a while we were looking up at the ceiling. I was watching the lines in the ceiling move around, slowly unfold into colorful visuals and patterns which were bright and intense. They swirled around and oozed colors and images. I moved my hand in front of my eyes and was surprised to see that mescaline also gave me tracers.

I was realizing the incredible potential of this drug. It was everything I had ever wanted from a drug. We were saying how when you take any drug, you have expectations about how you want the experience to be, and mescaline is the expectations. Mescaline was like all the best effects from all the drugs all put into one. There was the great body feeling and incredible empathy and understanding of ecstasy. There was the focus and energy and drive of acid. There seemed to be the journey effect that I always enjoyed from shrooms, but this was much better. There was an incredible mental change in consciousness, but it wasn’t maddening or confusion or chaotic. It was simply amazing. Yet it was at times subtle. We all felt completely sober. It was the soberest we had ever felt in our life. I could think totally clearly, more clearly than usual. A lot like how when I roll, it is very intense, but at the same time very subtle. It allowed me to deal with thoughts that normally are pushed out of the way. But it didn’t force anything. Just allowed you to heal if you wanted. But of course, who wouldn’t want to heal?

We were talking about how beneficial this chemical could be to people. People are doing all sorts of drugs all the time looking for some sort of happiness and understanding. They drink alcohol, take ecstasy, do heroin. The government lets people get prescribed all sorts of crazy prescription drugs from Prozac to Adderol to Xanax to get their problems solved. And yet the government won’t even consider a chemical like mescaline. Something that Native Americans (and myself as well) never even considered a drug. It was a medicine. They still use it to help stop alcoholism. With little risk of insanity, no addiction potential, and hundreds of years worth of therapeutic benefit, it’s no wonder they consider mescaline containing cacti medicine. If people were allowed to use this substance, instead of these random dangerous chemicals that the government tests on us, there would be so much to be gained. Besides a high, there is also a sense of universal understanding, a connection with other people, and the ability to come together and work out problems

I felt like I was remembering a past life. It seemed so real to me. I could remember a village. A native American village a long time ago. Peyote was common then. It was the socially accepted medicine. People would take it, go into the TeePee, and sit and talk and heal. It was a gift from God, it was a religious ceremony. I felt like I remembered myself from another lifetime, carrying the peyote to the teepee, and life was much better. Then people came into our world, took it away from us, never even experienced what it was but they were scared of it.

I sort of snapped out of this trance. Realized that I wasn’t having some long forgotten past-life memory. It seemed though as though a spirit was showing me this vision. I don’t know how my mind created that, or why. But it made me think of how much better our society could be with a substance like this. If used respectfully, the world could be much better. There is sooooo many more amazing things that we talked about, so many important and crazy realizations that we had that I didn’t include.

After a long night of talking and healing, the sun rose and we decided that it was time to rest. I felt better than I had in a long time. I cannot believe the healing potential of this cactus. We went to bed and the next day when I woke up I still felt incredibly high from the mescaline. When I got home I took a shower and it was the best shower of my life. I felt like I wasn’t just cleaning my body, I was cleaning my entire soul. I was washing away all the negative energies, concluding the healing process. Afterwards I felt renewed, refreshed, and revitalized. I spent the rest of the day in an incredible mood, still very high, and trying to grasp how incredible of an experience I had just had.

Exp Year: 2003ExpID: 37131
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 3, 2004Views: 35,544
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Cacti - T. pachanoi (64) : Nature / Outdoors (23), Glowing Experiences (4), Small Group (2-9) (17)

COPYRIGHTS: All reports copyright Erowid.
No AI Training use allowed without written permission.
TERMS OF USE: By accessing this page, you agree not to download, analyze, distill, reuse, digest, or feed into any AI-type system the report data without first contacting Erowid Center and receiving written permission.

Experience Reports are the writings and opinions of the authors who submit them. Some of the activities described are dangerous and/or illegal and none are recommended by Erowid Center.


Experience Vaults Index Full List of Substances Search Submit Report User Settings About Main Psychoactive Vaults