Author: Gary Jackson

What Happened to Mescaline? Yale University Press

Analyses were conducted
using the IBM SPSS Statistics v.25 and v.26 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). Additionally, very few respondents in the present study reported legal problems,
psychological difficulties, or craving of mescaline, and none reported medical
difficulties. These numbers are similar to reports from 5-MeO-DMT users (Davis et al., 2018) and
relatively low in comparison to reported craving for more widely used substances
(e.g. alcohol) (McCabe et al.,
2017). Consistent with prior research (Johansen and Krebs, 2015; Krebs and Johansen, 2013),
these findings may indicate that mescaline has a relatively favorable psychological
safety profile for the use in naturalistic settings as evidenced by reports of low
abuse liability.

• Know your dosage, find a source you trust, make sure you’re in a good headspace, and take mescaline in a comfortable, safe setting.
• Peyote buttons are most often chewed, but they can also be mixed with water and swallowed.
• As shown in Table 3,
  there were several differences across the four mescaline subgroups, wherein
  those in the Peyote subgroup reported consuming more doses (2.9) in their most
  memorable experience compared to all other subgroups.
• Mescaline has been used for thousands of years and is best known as a drug used by some Native Americans in Mexico as part of their religious ceremonies.

Of the remaining 455, an
additional three were excluded because they reported being under the age of 18
(exclusion criteria). The primary survey utilized in this
study included a wide-ranging series of questions detailed in a recent
report18 about respondents’ pattern
of use, acute subjective effects, and potential consequences and benefits
of their use of mescaline in the context of their most “memorable”
experience. Finally, although we have compared mescaline experiences by mescaline type of use in
the present study, we do not intend for these data to be interpreted to mean that
further rigorous, clinical research are not needed. We cannot conclude that
similarities or differences observed in this dataset may have also been caused by a
variety of additional factors, such as participant demographics, “set and setting”
(i.e. contextual variables) that might co-vary with the type of use.

Mescaline (Peyote)

Though the AIRFA essentially decriminalized Peyote use for NAs
with the 1994 amendments, the city of Oakland, CA passed a resolution, which
decriminalized all “entheogenic plant medicines” including mescaline-containing
cacti in June 2019 (Epstein,
2019), which may lead to an exponentially increased use by Indigenous
peoples in the future. Decriminalization resolutions, which include Peyote, may
contribute significantly to the extinction of the Peyote cacti in the wild. Similarly, the Republic of Peru, South America has enacted legislation protecting
traditional use of Indigenous plant medicines, such as San Pedro (Dunnell, 2018).

Going without the drug for any period of time results in painful, distressing physical and psychological symptoms, which, if left uncontrolled, can compel the person to resume the substance abuse. People have used hallucinogens for hundreds of year, mostly for religious rituals or ceremonies. 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.