Mescaline Drug Information

Mescaline is not as potent as LSD, but it similarly causes hallucinogenic effects. A mescalinee or peyote "trip" can last up to 12 hours. It can be, as in LSD, a "good trip" or a "bad trip."

The user, as in LSD again, also suffers sensation and perception impairment, loss of a sense of time, disorganization of thought and psychotic reactions. It is, therefore, a peril to the mind.

In his bestselling Journey to Ixtian, Carlos Castafleda gives the most celebrated record of a peyote experience. It was, he sums it: one frightful or ecstatic confrontation after another. He details:

"In a matter of instants, a tunnel formed around me, very low and narrow, hard and strangely cold. It felt to the touch like a wall of solid tinfoil. I remember having to crawl towards a sort of round point where the tunnel ended; when I finally arrived, if I did, I had forgotten all."

And he took off "like a bird." Adds he, "I flew in my imagination. Where was my body?"

In other "trips," Castafieda saw "the guardian of the world" rise before him as a hundred foot-high gnat with spiky hair and droolingiaws; met "Mescalito," a powerful teacher, successively as a black dog, a column of singing light, and a cricket-like being with a green warty head; talked with a bilingual coyote. He was, he writes, "terrified".

Like LSD, mescaline acts on the central nervous system. In plain words, it acts on the brain.

Apart from its cardiovascular effects, which speed up the heartbeat and increase the blood pressure, it also: dilates the eyes' pupils, increases the blood sugar level, heightens the body temperature, causes heavy perspiration and nausea.

In large doses, mescaline lowers the blood glucose. In such cases, the user may suffer bloody diarrhea and fall into unconsciousness.

Lethal doses produce convulsions, breath-arrests and heart failures. Death is due to respiratory failure.

Negative Effects:

• Dizziness
• Vomiting
• Tachycardia
• Headaches
• Anxiety
• Feeling of dying or annihilation
• Fear of not being able to return to normal consciousness
• Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD)
• Irrationality of the thought-process
• Temporary splitting/destruction of ego

Other Effects:

• Creative closed-eye visuals
• New thought processes
• Dream-like scenarios
• Euphoria
• Mystical experience

Source: http://www.nida.nih.gov/