San Pedro- Mescaline Cactus

 The San Pedro cactus is particularly associated with healers, shamans, and curanderos in the Andes region of south America. The earliest depiction of it in art so far discovered is a stone carving of a shaman found at the Jaguar Temple of Chavin de Huantar in northern Peru which is almost 3500 years old. That means the South American people have used and depicted the use of San Pedro since at least the time of Greece and Egypt.Textiles from the same period have been found depicting the cactus with hummingbirds and jaguars, with spirals depicting the visual experience.

So why is this plant such an important part of Andean culture through the millenia? Some say the reason is the same as why people are drawn to hallucinogens still. There is something inherently human about exploring this space. One shaman from Richard Shultes book Plants of the Gods says this of San Pedro:

"First, a dreamy state... then great visions, a clearing of all faculties... then a detachment, a type of visual force inclusive of the 6th sense, the telepathic state of transmitting oneself across time and matter, like a removal of thoughts to a distant dimension."

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I don't know about you, but if I was a hunter gatherer society, especially one who attributed many of the things that happened in life to the gods, this cactus would be a major spiritual experience. I would probably build temples to it, and art about it. To me it would seem like a way to speak with the gods. It still is a major spiritual experience for people.

Now if you've never heard of San Pedro despite its cultural importance to one of the largest empires in the New World, you may be wondering why not. Well, I'm pretty sure you've at least heard of San Pedro's more popular sister in Central and North America, peyote.

Peyote was the first New World hallucinogen to be discovered by Europeans. It was unfortunately discovered by the Spanish whose religious fervor did not spell good things for these cactus drinking natives. Through violent conversion and enslavement the Spanish tried to stamp out any non Christian religion, and that included the use of Peyote as a spiritual aide. The Europeans forced this religious group far away from civilization into the hills where they could practice without fear of retaliation.

Peyote too has been used for millenia, since at least 1900 years before the arrival of the Spaniards attempted to end its spiritual use. But some recent evidence using radio-carbon dating has discovered two peyote buttons at an archaeological dig site on the Rio Grande in Texas. This indicates that native Americans were likely to have used Peyote at least 5500 years ago. To put that in perspective, people on the American continent were using this cactus continuously from the time of ancient Sumer to present day, largely undisturbed. The Native Huichol culture has 4 gods, the Corn, the Eagle, the Sun, and the Peyote. One Huichol Shaman has said:


"Peyote is everything, it is the crossing of the souls, it is everything there is. Without peyote nothing would exist"

The use of mescaline entered the pop-culture with Dr. John Raleigh Briggs, the first western scientist to draw attention to the peyote plant, and mescaline as a result. Mescaline has similar effects on the brain as Mushrooms and LSD. Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception, PIHKAL by Alexander Shulgin and Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas all launched Mescaline into the pop-culture foreground but I don't think it ever achieved the same status as Acid or Mushrooms did as a recreational drug.

After the 1971 Psychotropic Convention that made Mescaline illegal and the subsequent crack down of recreational use of Peyote, pop-culture and wide spread use died down. Recently a film starring actor Michael Cera, Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus (2013) depicts 2 young Americans and a group of Chileans as they search for the San Pedro cactus experience, and touches on the New Age spiritualism and its connection with entheogens.

Peyote and San Pedro can be prepared in a number of ways including being eaten raw. Peyote is usually cut into "buttons" and chewed on or soaked in water. The cactus is quite bitter so many modern users will dry the cactus and grind it into a powder then take it via gel capsule.

San Pedro due to its size difference to peyote is much more versatile for preparation and many Mexican or South American recipes that already use cactus can be used to make tasty entheogenic dishes from the San Pedro. The hardest part of making a San Pedro dish is the preparation and peeling. The stalk is long and it is star shaped. To start cut inwards at the concave sections towards the center to create cactus "spears".

To peel the spears start from the bottom and cut away the waxy outer green part. This proccess is time consuming. Put on some good music.

After its cut you can do a lot with it. You can dehydrate it in a home dehydrator (though these often cost upward of $200 and even  a cheap one can be $120) to store for long times as cactus jerky. The dried cactus can also be ground into cactus granules.

Raw fresh cactus can be salted, limed and eaten straight. You can cut it up and make a vinegar salad. Cook it in oil and season it. Really the possibilities are limitless so long as you don't cook it for too long and damage the alkaloids.

And speaking of alkaloids, there's also a way to extract pure mescaline from the cactus. That is illegal. I do not recommend doing it. It involves lots of chemicals, and the effect is not terribly different than eating the cactus itself.

I will not post the process for extracting mescaline from San Pedro cactus but it is easily find-able on the internet if you are dead set at doing it.