Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics
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Spiritual respect for peyote and the hard-fought legal right to use it are not the only reasons why the Native American community is pushing back on drug reform advocates. Peyote is very slow-growing and only thrives in a small territory of southern Texas and northern Mexico. It may take 10 or more years for a single peyote cactus to transition from a seedling to the first stage of flowering. Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) has been traditionally consumed by Indigenous North American tribes for at least 5,500 years. The crowns of the cacti growing above ground are called the peyote buttons, which are carefully harvested to allow the plant to continue to grow.
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Subjective acute and enduring effects
The present data indicate that most people infrequently used SanPedro or Peyote orally through self-administration (i.e. consuming the mescalinewithout oversight of another person) for spiritual and nature connection. In the present study, both 500 mg mescaline and LSD, but not psilocybin, enhanced circulating oxytocin. Therefore, the present study was the first to document elevated plasma oxytocin levels in response to mescaline as it was previously shown for LSD 24, 27, 28 and psilocybin 24. In fact, 500 mg mescaline was the strongest releaser of oxytocin among the psychedelics that were tested herein.
What Are the Risks of Mescaline?
From the earliest recorded time, peyote has been used by natives in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, where it grows, as a part of traditional religious rites. It has an effect that is similar to LSD or psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and other hallucinogenic drugs. Mescaline and LSD significantly increased plasma oxytocin levels compared with placebo. Oxytocin levels were significantly higher after mescaline compared with psilocybin. As a classical psychedelic, mescaline operates on the same serotonin receptors impacted by psilocybin and LSD. Knowing that psilocybin and LSD support neurogenesis, it can be suggested that mescaline does as well.
Is Microdosing Mescaline Legal?
- Peyote ceremonies often last 10 hours and involve drumming, singing, dancing, social interactions, praying, and processing of deep traumas and personal issues.
- LSD showed a significantly lower maximal diastolic blood pressure response compared with psilocybin.
- The most significant mescaline trip of the 1960s, with hindsight, was that taken by the chemist Alexander Shulgin, which he later wrote ‘unquestionably confirmed the entire direction of my life’.
- In the 1930s, avant-garde artists painted on it, and psychiatrists gave it to intellectuals like Walter Benjamin and Jean-Paul Sartre.
- Fellows of the Native American Church regularly use peyote in their sacred rituals, ceremonies, and religious sacraments.
In traditional and ritualistic practices of Indigenous communities, mescaline is derived from fast-growing San Pedro cacti and slow-growing peyote cacti. Peyote cacti were first introduced to Western culture when Spanish people arrived in Mexico in the early sixteenth century. The active component was isolated in 1895 by the German chemist Arthur Heffter, who coined the name “mescaline”.
Forte shared the idea with psychologist mesclun psychedelic James Fadiman, who wrote about it in The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide, which quickly gained interest by the public who liked the idea of mental health benefits without the psychedelic experience. On its own, mescaline is probably one of the safest known psychedelics but is relatively rare to come by. Still, people do report microdosing with mescaline, both naturally occurring and synthetic.
Mescaline origins
He included these sea creatures in his novel Nausea, which implicitly quoted his mescaline experience. Research on mescaline indicates that it may have a high potential for treating anxiety, depression, addiction, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Another observational study in 2021 demonstrated self-reported improvements in various psychological symptoms after the naturalistic use of mescaline18. Some of the psychological effects of mescaline include internal and external hallucinations, distortion of time and space, distortion of the physical environment, euphoria, ego death, spiritual insights, tactile sensations, increased emotional sensations, and self-realization. The psychological and emotional effects of mescaline greatly vary due to many factors such as dose, set, setting, intention, and more.
- Participants ate peyote buttons, usually dried, while seated all night around a central fire, purified with prayers, tobacco and incense, and sang songs accompanied by a drum and rattle that passed around the group.
- Aleister Crowley used it extensively in his magick practice, and obtained a special high-strength peyote extract from the pharmacists Parke-Davis in Detroit.
- Mescaline is a naturally occurring psychoactive phenethylamine found inseveral cacti and historically used ceremonially by Indigenous and LatinAmerican populations.
- Conversely, LSD showed a trend toward an increase in heart rate compared with psilocybin.
- Results from this study also showed no significant differences in the subjectiveacute and enduring effects between mescaline types.
- Although the book is not entirely about his mescaline trip, the plant was a great inspiration for his existential writing.
Mescaline is a naturally occurring phenylethylamine found in several cacti species that grow in regions of the United States and Mexico. Phenylethylamines are compounds that work on the sympathetic (also known as the ‘fight or flight’) nervous system. There are many types of phenethylamines, including the endogenous (produced by the human body) neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine, as well as non-psychoactive pharmaceuticals like salbutamol (commonly used in inhalers for asthma) and phenylephrine (a nasal decongestant).
One prominent figure in these studies, psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond, shared mescaline with Aldous Huxley, who would later write about his experiences in several books. In poetic correspondence between the two men, Osmond coined the term “psychedelic” in 1957 when he wrote “to fathom hell or soar angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic”. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first international epidemiological studyon mescaline use.
In this day and age, “microdosing” has become quite the buzzword — both within and beyond the world of psychedelics. Claimed by many to be an alternative to pharmaceuticals and a shortcut to productivity, microdosing is regarded by some as a miracle or a testament to the power of placebo, and by others as a cultish marketing scheme to avoid. Drugs that affect a person’s mental state (psychoactive drugs) can also have varied effects depending on a person’s mood (often called the ‘set’) or the environment they are in (the ‘setting’). Today, pure mescaline has pretty much disappeared from everywhere but the recesses of the dark web.
The hallucinogenic effects of mescaline will last longer for some people than others. Depending on a person’s height, weight, mental state, previous drug use, mescaline can last between 10 and 20 hours. We found no evidence of qualitative differences in altered states of consciousness that were induced by 500 mg mescaline, 100 µg LSD, and 20 mg psilocybin. This study supports dose finding for research and psychedelic-assisted therapy.
The resulting intermediate is then oxidized again by a hydroxylase enzyme, likely monophenol hydroxylase again, at carbon 5, and methylated by COMT. The product, methylated at the two meta positions with respect to the alkyl substituent, experiences a final methylation at the 4 carbon by a guaiacol-O-methyltransferase, which also operates by a SAM-dependent mechanism. Blood pressure, heart rate, and tympanic body temperature were repeatedly measured at baseline and 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 3.5, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, and 24 h after drug administration 38.
