Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Test for Mescaline?

Darkfire - 29-9-2003 at 22:23

Can anybody give me a way to test for mescaline in a cactus w/o me being the guinnie pig?

CTR

Nick F - 30-9-2003 at 03:41

Just find out what the cactus is. Then go to erowid or somewhere similar and see if it contains mescaline.

Darkfire - 30-9-2003 at 14:03

Thats the problem, all cacti look so damn similar and i have heard both yes no mabey and who cares i want to find a way to test for it anyway, to satifie my chemical mind.

Blind Angel - 30-9-2003 at 14:09

well, try it, if your stone it's the good one, the worse that can happen is nothing, since i dont know many cacti that are actualy toxic...

Nick F - 1-10-2003 at 02:05

The whole reason that some cacti contain mescaline and/or other alkaloids is to make them toxic. Although it is true that it probably won't harm you. It might just make you feel a little ill (which mescaline often does).
Also, trying it would be useless, since even the most potent cacti contain a few % total alkaloids on a dry basis at most, so unless it's really big it'd have no effect.

You could do an AB extraction to get out miscellaneous alkaloids, but specifically identifying mescaline would not be easy at all.

Can you post a picture? I don't know much about cacti in general, but I recognise most of the "interesting" ones.

Botany Lesson

PinkFire - 1-10-2003 at 12:26

Visual plant identification based on known characterstics is easy.

If you're in the mood to delve into some botany, I found this to be rather informative:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/pbotany.htm

Give it a good read and then you'll be able to better distinguish Lophophora williamsii from all other cacti.

Nick F - 1-10-2003 at 13:18

Lophophora Williamsii is easy to identify, it is even fairly easy to identify from other lophophoras.
But it is certainly not the only mescaline containing cactus, and I think that if it was the cactus that Darkfire had, it would already have been identified.
Unfortunately, there are dozens and dozens of mescaline-containing cacti, and most are not as distinctive. eg one of these contains mescaline, one does not...




Not so easy to identify...

Darkfire - 1-10-2003 at 14:33

http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/highexplosives/images/Dsc0... Blooming,

http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/highexplosives/images/Dsc0... not blooming,

CTR

NERV - 1-10-2003 at 17:28

Iyou may want to try nans nook (http://www.nansnook.com) They have some pretty useful information on that kind of thing. They may be able to help you.

If you don' eat yer greens....no dessert!

Hermes_Trismegistus - 28-11-2003 at 15:56

Hey dorkFire!

What happened to living one day as a LION Huh!
Eat up buddy!!!
:P:P:P:P:P



just clowning!!!.....I wouldn't eat an unknown cactii either, far too many contain emetic substances.:cool::cool::cool: