Mescaline Made Me Do It
FEATURE | DRUGS
Written by Stu Paul (he/him) | Contributing Writer
Illustrated by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Feature Editor
Since I was a young lad, I have always been a bit of a curious human. For much of my youth, I was amazed by the reality of cause and effect; every action having an equal and opposite reaction (or so the internet tells me - I didn’t take physics in high school and science was never my forte). As a toddler, I had an apparent interest in chewing electrical wires, horrifying both family and foe alike. At the tender age of 5, my elder brother told me to throw gravel at a stranger’s car, which I promptly did without much thought. I rained a near-biblical hail of stones on this poor woman’s vehicle for no more reason than my brother telling me to, and my wanting to see what would happen. What happened was the understandably incensed owner catching me red-handed in my act of wanton vandalism, and exploding at me while my brother disappeared like smoke. You might wonder what this has to do with drugs. Not a lot. It’s more to do with ME and that insatiable curiosity of “what’s gonna happen if I do this” in relation to drugs. Unfortunately, this evidently misguided curiosity would have significant negative consequences on my academic and financial life in my early 20s. For one fateful day, while perusing the internet and reading about the indigenous Mexican use of the mushroom peyote (of which the active psychoactive substance is an alkaloid named mescaline), this writer wondered thoughtfully to himself - “Huh, I wonder what THAT feels like?”
With a little further research, I discovered that this psychedelic substance mescaline, present in the peyote cactus used by the Mexican shamans, was also present in a particular species of cactus that is 100% legal to own in NZ and is quite a popular ornamental garden plant - perhaps even owned by the reader’s aunt or grandmother (or dubious hippy uncle, maybe). Upon procuring a segment of said cactus through entirely legal means, I proceeded to skin, freeze, thaw, and strain the cactus flesh in a process that is entirely NOT legal (although possession of the cactus itself is, so presumably the only way you could get in trouble is by literally brewing your trippy cactus drink in the presence of a police officer - but I digress). Perhaps the most salient point of this whole story is that the amount of liquefied cactus juice I ended up consuming was actually double the amount I had intended to trip on - a dire mistake caused by a combination of:
The varying internet opinions I was reading about the appropriate amount of cactus to trip confused my already weed-addled brain
The fact that the cactus juice tastes like absolute shit and most people puke as part of the experience due to the extreme bitterness of the alkaloids - with this in mind I wanted to make sure I drank enough of it to absorb the mescaline before I puked it up
That aforementioned insatiable curiosity of me wanting to have an extreme and out-the-gate psychedelic experience that, in the folly of youth, I hoped might fix and enlighten my precarious mental state
12 long and rather illuminating hours later, I had made some big important decisions about my life. No longer would I continue my bachelor’s degree in history and international politics at the University of Auckland, no - I was to drop out halfway and enrol in another bachelor’s, this time in psychology and philosophy, at Massey University. Of course, this made total sense to my naïve young brain swimming in mind-altering chemicals, but would have far-reaching consequences for my life that cost me a lot of time, effort and money.
I won’t bore the reader with an account of the visually stunning and admittedly quasi-mystical drug experience I embarked on via this mysterious cactus, in this day and age such stories feel cliché and overplayed. The point is that I had decided, firmly and resolutely, that my professional future lay in the academic realms of psychology and philosophy - and not history and politics (the justification was something along the lines of - “maaan this shit is trippy, I’m into trippy stuff, this makes me think a lot about the mind and reality, damn, maybe I should study that shit instead, yeah, mind and reality = psychology and philosophy, hell yeah, maaan I’m smart…” etc etc). It would have been cool if this totally illogical frame of mind had only lasted the duration of the mescaline trip, alas this was not so. At this point in my life, as far as psychedelics go, I had only tried psilocybin mushrooms once, the really-not-wonderful salvia divinorum a handful of unnerving times, and was yet to embark on my truly enlightening and still flowering love affair with LSD. I was unused to the wildly unorthodox thoughts and frames of mind that occur with strong doses of psychedelics and believed without question in the logic and validity of my cactus-inspired switch in life direction with regards to my university studies. I distinctly recall my partner at the time expressing her concerns about my random drug-fuelled decision-making, which I brushed off and ignored with what I’m sure was an infuriatingly smug “I know what I’m doing, you weren’t there with me and the spirit of Mescalito, you don’t get it” type response.
True to my word, unfortunately, I went through with my plan and dropped out of the UoA and enrolled at Massey. It was only a matter of weeks before I realised my terrible mistake. The cactus-induced psychoactive glow had faded, and with it my passion and determination to become the best and trippiest psychology and philosophy student the university had ever seen. Furthermore, I discovered that despite my keen interests in the 3 B’s of Buddhism, Blake and Bongs, I was far less philosophically adept than I had originally assumed (even Descartes was annoying for me to read). It turned out that I was more of a “smoke weed and discuss the Matrix” type of philosopher - which is kind of like saying I’m not really a philosophy guy at all, I think I just like taking drugs.
Before long, I had come to my senses. I needed to drop out of this new degree and return to my original one (costing myself a whole semester in course fees and student living costs in the process). This meant I would have to actually complete and pass the Massey coursework for that semester to ensure that Studylink would continue to loan money to me for the following semester when I returned to the University of Auckland. Like, fuck me, right. My curiosity about cause and effect ended up causing a considerable headache in my life, although providing me with a super fun and costly cautionary tale on drug use for my fellow spiritual truth-seekers.
Funnily enough, the psychology side of things I actually did end up pursuing in a different way years later, completing a qualification in Mental Health Support and currently working as a Mental Health Support Worker and Rehabilitation Coach. The irony of my current job in relation to my past drug experiences is not lost on me. In many ways, it makes me perfect for the role. I work with clients experiencing schizophrenia, a condition studied by psychological researchers in the 1950s by using mescaline to induce mind states in experiment participants that they believed were very similar to those experienced by people with schizophrenia. My weird and wild mescaline ride provided me with an understanding (however limited) of what it feels like to not have a solid mental grip on reality, to think that you are enlightened with information privy only to yourself because you are a particularly special and important human, and to empathise with the dual forces of fear and awe that are so often experienced by people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia.
In the end, for these reasons and more, I don’t regret my strange and costly dance with Mescalito. My curiosity about cause and effect has not totally evaporated, and I know that one day I will likely roll the dice once more with my mental state and the mighty mescaline cactus. In fact I currently have 2 adolescent specimens growing healthily in my backyard, but due to the many years it takes for the cacti to grow to a mature and trip-worthy length, I will have plenty of time to prepare my mind for another such psychological rollercoaster ride. Fingers crossed that when this day comes, I will have the personal fortitude and basic common sense to not uproot whatever life plans I have in the works on a misguided odyssey of academic study in philosophy and psychology. But then again, maybe it is a good idea after all…
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