San Pedro, B-quality

Not exactly as handsome as its A-class brothers but just as psychoactive!

The San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus Pachanoi)   is the oldest known magical plant from South America. Originally this plant comes from Ecuador and Peru, there it still grows on the highlands at 2000-3000 metres.

This rapidly growing cactus has 4 to 9 ribs and a strong root system. In nature the San Pedro cactus will continue to grow until it falls over under its own weight. The fallen cactus will root again and produce many new shoots.

The San Pedro is often used as a base for grafting other, more difficult to cultivate, cacti on top of it.

The San Pedro itself can be grown from seeds. Under dry as well as wet circumstances the cactus can be grown, it grows up most quickly when it's watered regularly. However, without water the plant can survive for years and even produce new sprouts.

The active alkaloids of the San Pedro cactus are:

• mescaline (3,4,5-trimethoxy-B-phenethylamine)
• 3-methoxy-4-hydroxy-B-phenethylamine
• 3,5-dimethoxy-4-hydroxy-B-phenethylamine
• tyramine
• hordinenine

Mescaline is the most important alkaloid. The San Pedro contains a bit less mescaline than the Peyote cactus, making its trip more friendly.

Size	Average diameter	Average weight
6-8 cm	3 cm	45 gr
25-30 cm	3,5 cm	105 gr
50-60 cm	5 cm	780 gr

Why are these cacti B-quality?
- They may be bruised, a bit too misshapen or ugly in some other way.
- But, each of them can still be grown into a large-sized cactus.
- And, they can still be consumed.

Effects

Mescaline cacti allow you to explore your inner fantasy world. They will give you a trip with spiritual, colourful visions and feelings of inner tranquillity, oneness with life, heightened awareness and rapid thought flow. The subject-object consciousness disappears, and you feel you are melted away in the sensory (mainly visual) perception. This comes mostly together with indescribable feelings of happiness.
The San Pedro trip is less heavy, and more friendly than the Peyote trip. The nausea during the first hour after consumption will not be as strong as with Peyote cacti.

Usage

The traditional way to consume the cacti is to eat them. They can be eaten fresh or dried. Try not to eat at least 6 hours before consuming the cacti.
Remove the skin and thorns. Make sure you peel thinly as most of the active substances are concentrated just beneath the skin.
You can now eat the meat around the wooden core of the cacti. Beware of splinters. The cacti taste very bitter. The best thing to avoid the bitterness is to drink them with fruit juice. A tastier way of consuming the cacti is make tea of them. Remove the thorns and cut the cacti in small pieces. Boil them for 2-3 hours in a closed pan with low heat. After letting it cool down you can mix it with fruit juice or honey.
The cacti can be dried by cutting them into slices and putting them in an oven on 50°C for 4 or 5 hours. Then you can eat the slices.
An often occurring first effect is nausea. Some people say eating ginger helps to avoid the nausea.

Another way to prepare San Pedro is as follows: Cut off 30 cm of cactus (first cut off the thorns with scissors and wear protective gloves while you do this), weigh it to see if it's approximately 500 grams, and then use a bread knife or saw to cut it into smaller pieces. For this method of preparation it's not necessary to remove the wooden spine or skin. Put the pieces in a Tupperware box and place it in the freezer. Take them out next morning and put some of the pieces in a blender and add an equal amount of water. Collect all the mush in a bowl while you keep blending more pieces, and then separate the clear green liquid by pouring the blended material through a sieve covered by a cheese cloth (or clean t-shirt). When you're done, fold the cheese cloth and try to squeeze out all the liquid from the pulp.

The sacred beverage will be quite bitter (although it would have been more bitter if you had cooked the cactus), but with all the fibre removed it can be swallowed easily and will cause minimal gastro-intestinal discomfort. The visionary experience that ensues may last up to ten hours and can be quite overwhelming. Prepare yourself well before you embark on this journey.

Dosage
When taking cacti that have an average height of 15-20 cm, an average diameter of 3,5 cm, one to one and a half cactus should be enough for a light to moderate trip, two to two and a half cacti for a strong trip.
Remember that potency can vary greatly. Therefore it is best not to take the dosage all at once, but to build up the dosage gradually: take half of the dosage, wait an 60 to 90 minutes to see what the effect is, then if desired take half of what is left over and if necessary repeat. A San pedro trip takes about two to two and a half hours to peak.

Fresh cactus to mescaline ratio
400 g contains about 480 mg mescaline - 0.12% mescaline per gram of cactus (according to Schultes & Hofmann)
400 g contains about 200 - 300 mg mescaline - 0.05 - 0.075% mescaline per gram of cactus (according to another source)

Dried cactus to mescaline ratio
100 g contains about 200 - 300 mg mescaline - 0.2 - 0.3% mescaline per gram of cactus
Dry weight is 25% of the fresh weight (75% water)

Mescaline dosages

150 mg	Minimum dose.
150 - 300 mg	light to moderate dosage
300 - 400 mg	strong trip last 6 - 12 hours
450 - 500 mg	possible ego dissolution, trip will last about 12 hours
500 - 600 mg	definite ego dissolution , trip can last up to 24 hours

Warning

Do not combine with alcohol, MAO-Inhibitors or other stimulants.
Do not use when pregnant, depressed, on medication, driving motorized vehicles, under 18 years old.
When you're using San Pedro make sure there's someone with you to assist you when neccessary.

Azarius Encyclopedia: Using Psychedelics Safely

Shipping restrictions

Please check if this product is legal in your country. We cannot ship this product to Australia, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey and United States.

Reviews

Post a review  More reviews

Sep 21, 2010 trypto said:
    
“You don't need to grow them for 10 years. With enough sun (southside in a middle-European mild climate) a big pot with good soil and some cactus fertilizer, one of these will grow up to 40cm per summer.

Put one small piece (~10cm) in soil and grow it for two years, then you can already cut it and have a nice trip from it. However it will grow much bigger if you don't cut it (duh!) :)”

May 2, 2010 Chris White said:
    
“I bought a couple of the smallest San Pedro, B-quality (45gr) cacti approximately on Oct. 2008. They successfully rooted, but then for some reason stopped growing. I think I didn't water them enough or maybe they need a special lamp during the winter. One seemed to half-dead and became pale white, grew grayish protective shield.
Lately I have been watering them like every other day and the cacti seem to come to life. The top is fresh green and seems gaining mass. Anyway-- considering the growth rate, smallest size is not for consuming. I assume it may take up to 10 years for these babies to produce a strong plant, that might gain 'a foot per season' as it's said.
The product arrived quickly, neatly packed and looked better than the ones in the picture.

--Thnx Azarius,
the smart-shop choice on-line.”

Nov 6, 2008 wheat said:
     
“why can,t you ship to U.S. there are a lot of products you sell that you can buy here I bought my SAN PEDRO in AZ. its weak. I need to try another strain from outside U.S. I like to research A lot of growing gooodes, not just cacti ! thanks I love your web site, wish my hands were noy tied!!!

[answer from Azarius: there are different reasons why we don't ship certain products to the U.S. One reason may be the law, another the time & distance the plants have to travel. We have bad experience with shipping live plants, including cacti, to distant locations.] ”