This is my next instalment of "How to kill your social media profile" or how to turn a piece of plankton into an amoeba. This time I'm outlining the effects of the Achuma cactus

My last report was about a DMT experience I had many years ago and the story can be found below
https://steemit.com/anarchy/@khufu/dmt-trip-report
https://steemit.com/anarchy/@khufu/dmt-trip-report-continued

I just want to express that this is not childs play, this particular cactus contains a MAOI-b like chemical that can cause serious problems for anyone on prescription MAO inhibitors and could also have some negative effects for anyone on SSRI medications. Combing a MAOI-a with a MAOI-b can be fatal. This cactus is considered by many to be the second most potent species on the planet, second only to Peyote (Lophophora williamsii). I'm not trying advocate drug use of any sort but feel free to live vicariously through my stories which may or may not be fictional ;).

So my kids had gone to stay with the Grandparents for the weekend and I had a mate coming over who'd expressed some interest in experimenting with cactus for the first time, let's just call him Dave. I was quite surprised that Dave was interested in anything like this because the whole time I'd known him he'd been one of those guys who'd never showed much interest in anything like this but I had the tools and he had the desire, so I thought I'd accommodate him.

I spent the afternoon preparing the cactus, I cut roughly 6 feet off several plants I have growing, de-spined them and cut them into slices. Then I cut a piece of electrical conduit and used that to cut the cores out of the slices and discarded them. I boiled the cut sections in water that I'd acidified with vinegar to ph4 for about 4 hours and mashed it all up with a potato masher. When it had boiled for 4 hours I filtered it off to remove any remaining plant matter and then reduced the brew until it was quite thick, almost like the Aloe vera juice you'd buy from a health food shop. It was an olive brown colour and it really didn't smell very nice at all.

So when Dave turned up I had several doses measured out and we both took one each (about 30ml), it was really disgusting stuff so we followed it down with some fruit juice and waited for it to kick in. We walked around my garden and spent a bit of time talking about our lives as we hadn't seen each other for quite some time. I have quite a few relatively unknown plants in the garden so we discussed their origins and traditional uses of many of the plants.

About 40 minutes later we'd made our way to the front yard and I started to feel the effects creeping on, it was a mild buzz at first and really quite energising but I was surprised that it was working so fast. I said to Dave "it's going to be a good one mate" he replied
Wow, look at your trees I can see their aura
I looked up at them & it really did look like I could see a distinctive glow emanating from the trees.

I said to Dave "Maybe we should move this out the back mate"
So we made our way out the back and set up a few chairs in the garden and started talking. That didn't last long as Dave just couldn't sit still, he'd sit then get up and walk around and then come back and sit down and he just kept repeating that over and over. By this time I was seeing sounds as kaleidoscopic echoes that resonated around the back yard and everything in the yard had taken on a new persona with each plant having its own distinctive appearance and individually coloured aura, it was as though nature had let me intrude and it's true character had been revealed for the first time.

By this time I'd started guzzling whiskey like a child would drink free soda and Dave who is a tea teetotaler had gone from walking around the back yard to walking in and out the back door of the house. I tried to settle him down several times but he just had to move so I'd thought I'd let my Mrs (who was completely sober) look after him for a while. They have a good rapport and she's kept me safe several times when I'd been in a similar state so I assumed he'd be OK. I went in and asked her to lock the front door so Dave didn't wander off and headed back outside to commune with nature.

If you've ever seen the episode of the Simpsons when Homer drank some wax so he could eat Chief Wiggums' chilli concoction and tripped his tits off, that was pretty much the state I was in by now. Only God knows what Dave was feeling.

The cactus had taken full effect by this stage and I started seeing demons rising up from the ground in the back yard, and that was contrasted by the light of a full moon that was glowing and emanating energising rays. I felt like the moon was light from heaven and I was being energised by God through the moon to rid the earth of the demon/zombie menace that was rising up from beneath the soil. I'm not really religious but something in my subconscious mind seems to think otherwise. I was having the time of my life stomping demons back into the earth and smashing their heads with a shovel, I really felt like I was doing Gods work until my Mrs came out and gave me one of those looks (anyone living with a woman knows the look I'm talking about) That was a reality check and I remember thinking maybe I'm getting into this a bit too much.

She said will you cut that shit out and come inside, there's something wrong with Dave. I'd love to say it snapped me out of my stupor but nothing would have at that point but I knew I had to pull myself together enough to make sure Dave was OK. I went inside and Dave was sitting on a mattress in the spare room looking completely dazed and barely able to talk. He said he wasn't feeling well and he certainly looked that way too, he was as white as the proverbial ghost, so I checked his pulse and he felt cold and clammy and also had a racing heart beat. I thought fuck this could be serious so I asked my wife to note the time as time was pretty much irrelevant to me by that point, hours felt like minutes and vice versa. I told her if he's not better in 15 minutes you'll have to call an ambulance.

I started asking Dave some questions to try and discern what was going on and when I asked him what he'd eaten that day and he told me he'd been living off a 100% fish diet for the last few days. The penny dropped instantly for me, he'd been carb free for a few days so he was at the stage where he'd be crossing over into keto and the mescaline had revved up up his metabolism so much it had sent him into a hypoglycemic state. I told my wife to get anything with sugar in it and see if it helps. She found a chocolate bar and bottle of lemonade and gave that to him and luckily he came good in less than 10 minutes. Note to self always ask people about their diet before indulging in something like this, I had questioned him about the tyramine content of his diet but not the carbohydrates.

Dave was OK by now he seemed to have a really good bond with my Mrs and they were discussing the deeper meaning of life the universe and everything but I was in no mood for that so I went out to the back yard to hunt zombies again but to my dismay all the zombies were gone by that stage. I was a bit disappointed about the lack of zombies so I spent the rest of the night sitting under my Ayahuasca vine meditating with my dog. I had a few revelations into my own psyche which were quite profound and I found a few aspects of my life that I wasn't satisfied with, so I worked through those issues and it had a very therapeutic healing effect.

By the time I went back inside Dave had gone to bed and was sleeping like a log so I talked with my Mrs for a while until she wanted to go to bed, I wasn't really tired so I just layed next to her and watched her sleep until I eventually drifted off myself.

The next day Dave was up early, bright eyed and bushy tailed and I dragged myself out of bed a bit later at maybe around 10am feeling like 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag. I'm not sure but I think that was from the litre of whiskey I'd drunk and the full packet of roll your tobacco I'd smoked the night before. Even though I was feeling like crap in general the after effects of the mescaline were still apparent, colours were still accentuated and my hearing was better than I could ever remember. It's like you get access to idle parts of your brain on mescaline and even though the psychedelic effects wear off some of the non psychedelic effects persist for almost a full day afterwards.

So that's it really, it was a really intense experience punctuated by a near emergency that luckily turned out well in the end. I wouldn't recommend anyone try something like this themselves unless they have done a lot of research and do it with the guidance of someone with either a medical background or someone with a lot of experience in this field (preferably both)

Image: https://simonsblogpark.com/legalhigh/simons-trichocereus-bridgesii-achuma-guide/