Micro-Dosing Mescaline Part Two: Clear Sight, Stable Mood, and a Wondering Mind

In part one, I described how I came into possession of a small amount of powered mescaline cactus juice (San Pedro cactus, specifically) several years ago and I covered my first micro-dose of that powder. You don't need to run over to my page and find part one, though. It is enough to say that my first micro-dose experience was encouraging despite not having the majority of the trippy effects that I enjoy. The tiny pinch of powder made me feel good and, with the help of a few bong hits, I found that I greatly enjoyed the experience.

Two days had passed and my friend, who had tripped on the liquid cactus juice with me, said that she did not want any of the powder. I had a few grams of the stuff (enough for two light recreational doses) and it was all mine. I had just taken a recreational trip though, and I was not ready for another one but I knew that this powder, having been made in the way that it was (see part one, if you are interested in that), would have a limited shelf life before mold or other potentially harmful organisms began growing in it. That being the case, I decided to continue taking small doses in order to get the mild pleasant effect that I had achieved before.

The first time that I used the powder, I swallowed a small pinch of it but I thought that I should try something a little different the second time around. I took another pinch out of the corner of the bag and I crushed it into a more finely ground powder. Then, I snorted it. This was instantly recognizable as a mistake. It did not burn, as I had feared, but the flavor of the cactus juice powder was stuck in my sinuses and slowly dripping down into the back of my throat. I can't stress how bad this stuff tastes enough but if you can imagine gargling acetone, that will give you an idea of what I was going through.

Fortunately, snorting the cactus juice powder worked as well as eating it. I began to feel the familiar psychedelic glow that I had noticed during my first experience. It would not be fair to call this sort of perceptual change "intoxication," however. I was not tripping and my mind was clear (with the exception of the slight haze of a my morning weed). It felt more like a sense of general ease than anything else. I was less bothered by minor annoyances (like traffic on my way to the community collage, or the particularly boring professor, droning on about a subject that I had no interest in).

As was the case with my first micro-dose, I observed some minor visual changes but no real hallucinations (this dose was far too small for that sort of thing to manifest). Colors seemed a little brighter and more well defined. They looked a bit like they look on the days immediately after a very intense mushroom trip. It is hard to describe this effect to someone who has never tripped on anything but it is akin to cleaning the dirt off of the windshield of your car and noticing how much better everything looks without the thin coat of grime blocking your view. While I was driving home from school, I also thought that I seemed to have an easier time focusing on objects that were quite a long distance away. This could have been my imagination but I felt as though I could actually see more clearly. I have read that some psychedelics do really increase visual acuity for a short time so there may actually be something to that.

I decided that I really liked the way that these tiny doses of the powdered cactus juice made me feel so I started taking a small amount of it each morning with my coffee and weed. After a couple of days, the glow that had I originally noticed began to diminish but the good feelings, sense of emotional stability, and beneficial visual changes remained. With the small amount that I was consuming, I had enough powdered juice to last for a couple of weeks and I used it daily for that period of time.

I was rather unfamiliar with the concept of micro-dosing and I had, more or less, stumbled across the method of use and, perhaps, I was taking too much powder or taking it too frequently because I experienced some strange effects that are not necessarily positive (most were neutral and one was negative). I seemed to be more even keeled, when I was taking my micro-doses but that is a two way street. I was less bothered by things but I took a little less pleasure from things too. I was calm but that calmness came at a price. I would call that a neutral effect, though. It is a fair trade. You lose the ability to go to emotional extremes as readily but you gain a better balance between those emotional states. My thought process started to shift slightly, too. I felt as though I was a little more inquisitive and creative than I normally would be but I was also a less focused. Again, that felt like a fair trade. There was a vague trippy edge below the surface of my consciousness, too. It wasn't something that I can easily describe but I felt like I was starting to see through the "curtain" that obscures our view of the "real" reality which lies just beyond the range of our perception. I was not tripping, but I always had the sense that, at any moment, the world could melt away into the psychedelic dimension that secretly hides behind it. That was fine, too. It did not interfere with anything but it also provided no real benefit.

The only negative effect to speak of was a slight spaciness that seemed to build over the period that I was micro-dosing mescaline. This was not an extreme effect but I did find that I would do things like ask someone a question and then not remember if I had asked the question or just thought about asking the question. I would also get lost in my mind more easily and that would cause lot of trains of thought to not reach their intended destinations. Simply put, the steady stream of low dose mescaline had left me a little "off" and that that did not exactly lend itself to productivity. However, looking back on the situation, I believe that I may have been dosing too frequently. The positive effects seemed to last for a few days but I was taking the powder daily and there may have been a build up of the drug in my system that allowed some of the more classic psychedelic effects (like spaciness) to manifest.

When I ran out of the powdered cactus juice, that ended my experiment with micro-dosing mescaline and I was left with some mixed feelings. I see a great deal of potential in this method of psychedelic consumption but I think there are some things to watch out for too. I believe that micro-dosing mescaline or other psychedelics can certainly benefit people who would like to be a little more emotionally stable and a little more at peace with life. However, a person should do more research than I did to make sure that the size and timing of his or her micro-doses are appropriate for the results that he or she is trying to achieve. Instead of using cactus juice powder of questionable quality, it would also be better to consume pure mescaline, properly prepared cactus juice, or an entirely different psychedelic drug. There is definitely something to be gained from micro-dosing psychedelics but if you are considering doing it, do it in a more controlled way than I did and you will likely avoid the negative side effect (which quickly went away after I stopped, by the way) that I experienced.

Peace.

If you are interested in reading part one of this post, here is a link:
https://steemit.com/writing/@artisticscreech/micro-dosing-mescaline-part-one-how-it-came-to-pass-and-my-first-experience

All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website unsplash.com.