Mescaline Mescaline Mescaline (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class, known for its hallucinogenic effects comparable to those of LSD and psilocybin. It occurs naturally in the peyote cactus ("Lophophora williamsii"), the San Pedro cactus ("Echinopsis pachanoi"), the Peruvian torch ("Echinopsis peruviana"), and other members of the Cactaceae plant family. It is also found in small amounts in certain members of the Fabaceae (bean) family, including "Acacia berlandieri". However those claims concerning Acacia species have been challenged and have been unsupported in additional analysis. Peyote has been used for at least 5,700 years by Native Americans in
Mescaline so contemporary users will often grind it into a powder and pour it in capsules to avoid having to taste it. The usual human dosage is 200–400 milligrams of mescaline sulfate or 178–356 milligrams of mescaline hydrochloride. The average button contains about 25 mg mescaline. Mescaline was first isolated and identified in 1897 by the German chemist Arthur Heffter and first synthesized in 1918 by Ernst Späth. In 1955, English politician Christopher Mayhew took part in an experiment for BBC's "Panorama", in which he ingested 400 mg of mescaline under the supervision of psychiatrist Humphry Osmond. Though the recording was