cactus cuttings vs dried chips/powder

[Tony6Strings]

Tony I wish you all the best on your next San Pedro journey. But you may have to up the dose significantly if you really want to go deep with it. Be safe.

Do you think consuming 50 grams dried San Pedro material is a reasonable place to start for going deep? How about going double or nothing at 100 grams? I want a fully psychedelic experience.

 

[Grey Fox]

All my experience is with live cuttings. But if you drank tea from 50 grams of dried chips and did not have a strong experience then why would you expect to get there with 50 grams of powder? Is the powder much stronger than the chips? If not then you will have to go up in dose.

If you are aiming not to go overboard while trying out the powder for the first time then I understand why you would want to do the same amount as you took with the chips. But if you think it will be about as strong then you need to raise the dose.

With live cuttings of Bridgesii I have found these guidelines to be pretty accurate:
4 to 9 inches for a low dose
9 to 14 inches for a moderate dose
14 to 19 inches for a high dose
19 to 24+ inches for a very high dose

Those guidelines are for using the entire cutting (core and all) to make tea. But I'm not sure how that converts to the chips and powder that you have.

 

[Tony6Strings]

I was thinking perhaps I didn't get all the alkaloids when I made the tea, whereas eating the powder is a sure way to ingest whatever is in the plant. I will try the whole 100 just to make sure. Thanks for this bridgesii guideline.

 

[doubledog]

By eating the plant powder itself, you ingest everything, but you are not absorbing everything properly. Huge part of actives would stay in cactus snot inside your digestive tract.

 

[Tony6Strings]

By eating the plant powder itself, you ingest everything, but you are not absorbing everything properly. Huge part of actives would stay in cactus snot inside your digestive tract.

I can see that, since snot is exactly what the powder did when I added water and heat to try and make tea. So, will somebody please tell me, what in the world is powdered San Pedro good for? I can't make tea with it, this rules out a standard A/B. Dry tek??

 

[doubledog]

You can hydrolyse cactus snot by prolonged boiling in water, but it's not very practical method.
Or you can extract the powder with basic alcohol (alcohol + ammonia), evaporate liquid, dissolve residue in acid water, filter and again evaporate to yield resin. Or continue with normal A/B.

 

[brewster]

I can see that, since snot is exactly what the powder did when I added water and heat to try and make tea. So, will somebody please tell me, what in the world is powdered San Pedro good for? I can't make tea with it, this rules out a standard A/B. Dry tek??

Hmm - how long did you boil it?

I mean, it should be the same as if you blend fresh cactus and then boil it, right? Because, that, at first, renders something extremely slimy and thick, too, but it breaks down after a while into a thinnish liquid that is quite easy to work with. One would expect powder to behave in a similar fashion - doesn't it?

 

[Tony6Strings]

I can't say, brewster, I've never had the pleasure of working with fresh cactus. I added water and put the pot on heat. Within a couple minutes it was the same texture of a very thick bowl of cream of wheat. Kept on heat but the goop stayed the same, within an hour it was obvious that nobody was going to drink that goop as tea that evening.

 

[brewster]

That's weird indeed. Because, with fresh blended cactus, the goop collapses after 20 minutes or so.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

what in the world is powdered San Pedro good for?

dissolving in sodium hydroxide solution and extracting with xylene or limonene, it would seem.

 

[brewster]

Thanks downwardsfromzero!

Also: it seems that it can't be boiled down, unlike blended cactus:

San Pedro Cacti Powder Tea Preparation? - Welcome discussion - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus

 

[Tony6Strings]

This evening I drank more cactus tea. Winding down from the experience as I type this with a few shots of Cuervo with lime biters. Had a wonderful experience, went deeper than last time. My girl took no cactus tonight, probably not for a while.

 

[brewster]

Nice! Would love to read a report if you have the time for that. How much did you use?

I guess it's a good idea for your mate to take a break for a while - imho, it rarely is a good idea to travel again when a difficult experience is still lingering.

 

[Grey Fox]

I'd love to hear more about how it went Tony. Did you use the powder or the chips? Hope all is well.

 

[metta-morpheus]

Is there a general guideline for fresh weight equivalents to dry powdered weights? I found a tek that says it works better for fresh cuttings, but I was wondering what the fresh weight or cuttings size might equate to from dry weight.

 

[Tony6Strings]

I'm curious about this also metta. Very cool to read back through this thread and recall the beginnings of my journey working with this wonderful cactus. Very happy to have San Pedro in my life.