SYNTHESIS: A solution of 20 g 3,4,5-trimethoxybenzaldehyde, 40 mL
nitromethane, and 20 mL cyclohexylamine in 200 mL of acetic acid was
heated on the steam bath for 1 h. The reaction mixture was then
diluted slowly and with good stirring, with 400 mL H2O, which allowed
the formation of a heavy yellow crystalline mass. This was removed by
filtration, washed with H2O, and sucked as dry as possible.
Recrystallization from boiling MeOH (15 mL/g) yielded, after
filtration and air drying, beta-nitro-3,4,5-trimethoxystyrene as bright
yellow crystals weighing 18.5 g. An alternate synthesis was
effective, using an excess of nitromethane as solvent as well as
reagent, if the amount of ammonium acetate catalysis was kept small.
A solution of 20 g 3,4,5-trimethoxybenzaldehyde in 40 mL nitromethane
containing 1 g anhydrous ammonium acetate was heated on the steam bath
for 4 h. The solvent was stripped under vacuum and the residual
yellow oil was dissolved in two volumes of hot MeOH, decanted from
some insolubles, and allowed to cool. The crystals formed are removed
by filtration, washed with MeOH and air dried yielding 14.2 g. of
bright yellow crystals of beta-nitro-3,4,5-trimethoxystyrene. The use of
these proportions but with 3.5 g ammonium acetate gave extensive
side-reaction products even when worked up after only 1.5 h heating.
The yield of nitrostyrene was, in this latter case, unsatisfactory.
To a gently refluxing suspension of 2 g LAH in 200 mL Et2O, there was
added 2.4 g beta-nitro-3,4,5-trimethoxystyrene as a saturated Et2O
solution by use of a Soxhlet extraction condenser modified to allow
the continuous return of condensed solvent through the thimble. After
the addition was complete, the refluxing conditions were maintained
for another 48 h. After cooling the reaction mixture, a total of 150
mL of 1.5 N H2SO4 was cautiously added, destroying the excess hydride
and untimately providing two clear phases. These were separated, and
the aqueous phase was washed once with 50 mL Et2O. There was then
added 50 g potassium sodium tartrate, followed by sufficient NaOH to
bring the pH >9. This was then extracted with 3x75 mL CH2Cl2, and the
solvent from the pooled extracts was removed under vacuum. The
residue was distilled at 120-130 °C at 0.3 mm/Hg giving a white oil
that was dissolved in 10 mL IPA and neutralized with concentrated HCl.
The white crystals that formed were diluted with 25 mL Et2O, removed
by filtration, and air dried to provide 2.1 g
3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine hydrochloride (M) as glistening white
crystals. The sulfate salt formed spectacular crystals from water,
but had a broad and uncharacteristic mp. An alternate synthesis can
employ 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenylacetonitrile, as described under beta-D.
DOSAGE: 200-400 mg (as the sulfate salt), 178-356 mg (as the
hydrochloride salt) [Erowid Note: The original text read
"178-256" but this was an error. The error was found by Bo and verified with Shulgin. See
the Erowid Mescaline Dosage page for a more complete discussion of the forms of mescaline].
DURATION: 10-12 h
QUALITATIVE COMMENTS: (with 300 mg) I would have liked to, and was
expecting to, have an exciting visual day, but I seemed to be unable
to escape self-analysis. At the peak of the experience I was quite
intoxicated and hyper with energy, so that it was not hard to move
around. I was quite restless. But I spent most of the day in
considerable agony, attempting to break through without success. I
learned a great deal about myself and my inner workings. Everything
almost was, but in the final analysis, wasn't. I began to become
aware of a point, a brilliant white light, that seemed to be where God
was entering, and it was inconceivably wonderful to perceive it and to
be close to it. One wished for it to approach with all one's heart.
I could see that people would sit and meditate for hours on end just
in the hope that this little bit of light would contact them. I
begged for it to continue and come closer but it did not. It faded
away not to return in that particular guise the rest of the day.
Listening to Mozart's Requiem, there were magnificent heights of
beauty and glory. The world was so far away from God, and nothing was
more important than getting back in touch with Him. But I saw how we
created the nuclear fiasco to threaten the existence of the planet, as
if it would be only through the threat of complete annihilation that
people might wake up and begin to become concerned about each other.
And so also with the famines in Africa. Many similar scenes of joy
and despair kept me in balance. I ended up the experience in a very
peaceful space, feeling that though I had been through a lot, I had
accomplished a great deal. I felt wonderful, free, and clear.
(with 350 mg) Once I got through the nausea stage, I ventured
out-of-doors and I was aware of an intensification of color and a
considerable change in the texture of the cloth of my skirt and in the
concrete of the sidewalk, and in the flowers and leaves that were
handed me by an observer. I experienced the desire to laugh
hysterically at what I could only describe as the completely
ridiculous state of the entire world. Although I was afraid of
motion, I was persuaded to take a ride in a car. The driver turned on
the radio and suddenly the music 'The March of the Siamese Children'
from 'The King and I' became the most perfect background music for the
parody of real life which was indeed the normal activity of Telegraph
Avenue on any Saturday morning. The perfectly ordinary people on
their perfectly ordinary errands were clearly the most cleverly
contrived set of characters all performing all manners of eccentric
activities for our particular hilarity and enjoyment. I felt that I
was at the same time both observing and performing in an outrageous
moving picture. I experienced one moment of transcendant happiness
when, while passing Epworth Hall, I looked out of the window of the
car and up at the building and I was suddenly in Italy looking up at a
gay apartment building with its shutters flung open in sunshine, and
with its window boxes with flowers. We stopped at a spot overlooking
the bay, but I found the view uninteresting and the sun uncomfortable.
I sat there on the seat of the car looking down at the ground, and the
earth became a mosaic of beautiful stones which had been placed in an
intricate design which soon all began to move in a serpentine manner.
Then I became aware that I was looking at the skin of a beautiful
snake--all the ground around me was this same huge creature and we
were all standing on the back of this gigantic and beautiful reptile.
The experience was very pleasing and I felt no revulsion. Just then,
another automobile stopped to look at the view and I experienced my
first real feeling of persecution and I wanted very much to leave.
(with 400 mg) During the initial phase of the intoxication (between 2
and 3 hours) everything seemed to have a humorous interpretation.
People's faces are in caricature, small cars seem to be chasing big
cars, and all cars coming towards me seem to have faces. This one is
a duchess moving in regal pomp, that one is a wizened old man running
away from someone. A remarkable effect of this drug is the extreme
empathy felt for all small things; a stone, a flower, an insect. I
believe that it would be impossible to harm anything--to commit an
overt harmful or painful act on anyone or anything is beyond one's
capabilities. One cannot pluck a flower--and even to walk upon a
gravel path requires one to pick his footing carefully, to avoid
hurting or disturbing the stones. I found the color perception to be
the most striking aspect of the experience. The slightest difference
of shade could be amplified to extreme contrast. Many subtle hues
became phosphorescent in intensity. Saturated colors were often
unchanged, but they were surrounded by cascades of new colors tumbling
over the edges.
(with 400 mg) It took a long time to come on and I was afraid that I
had done it wrong but my concerns were soon ended. The world soon
became transformed where objects glowed as if from an inner
illumination and my body sprang to life. The sense of my body, being
alive in my muscles and sinews, filled me with enormous joy. I
watched Ermina fill to brimming with animal spirit, her features
tranformed, her body cat-like in her graceful natural movement. I was
stopped in my tracks. The world seemed to hold its breath as the cat
changed again into the Goddess. As she shed her clothes, she shed her
ego and when the dance began, Ermina was no more. There was only the
dance without the slightest self-consconciousness. How can anything so
beautiful be chained and changed by other's expectations? I became
aware of myself in her and as we looked deeply into one another my
boundaries disappeared and I became her looking at me.
EXTENSIONS AND COMMENTARY: Mescaline is one of the oldest psychedelics
known to man. It is the major active component of the small dumpling
cactus known as Peyote. It grows wild in the Southwestern United
States and in Northern Mexico, and has been used as an intimate
component of a number of religious traditions amongst the native
Indians of these areas. The cactus has the botanical name of
Lophophora williamsii or Anhalonium lewinii and is immediately
recognizable by its small round shape and the appearance of tufts of
soft fuzz in place of the more conventional spines. The dried plant
material has been classically used with anywhere from a few to a
couple of dozen of the hard tops, called buttons, being consumed in
the course of a ceremony.
Throughout the more recently published record of clinical human
studies with mescaline, it has been used in the form of the synthetic
material, and has usually been administered as the sulfate salt.
Although this form has a miserable melting point (it contains water of
crystallization, and the exact melting point depends on the rate of
heating of the sample) it nonetheless forms magnificent crystals from
water. Long, glistening needles that are, in a sense, its signature
and its mark of purity. The dosages associated with the above
"qualitative comments" are given as if measured as the sulfate,
although the actual form used was usually the hydrochloride salt. The
conversion factor is given under "dosage" above.
Mescaline has always been the central standard against which all other
compounds are viewed. Even the United States Chemical Warfare group,
in their human studies of a number of substituted phenethylamines,
used mescaline as the reference material for both quantitative and
qualitative comparisons. The Edgewood Arsenal code number for it was
EA-1306. All psychedelics are given properties that are something
like "twice the potency of mescaline" or "twice as long-lived as
mescaline." This simple drug is truly the central prototype against
which everything else is measured. The earliest studies with the
"psychotomimetic amphetamines" had quantitative psychological numbers
attached that read as "mescaline units." Mescaline was cast in
concrete as being active at the 3.75 mg/kg level. That means for a 80
kilogram person (a 170 pound person) a dose of 300 milligrams. If a
new compound proved to be active at 30 milligrams, there was a M.U.
level of 10 put into the published literature. The behavioral
biologists were happy, because now they had numbers to represent
psychological properties. But in truth, none of this represented the
magic of this material, the nature of the experience itself. That is
why, in this Book II, there is only one line given to "dosage," but a
full page given to "qualitative comments".
Four simple N-modified mescaline analogues are of interest in that
they are natural and have been explored in man.
The N-acetyl analogue has been found in the peyote plant, and it is
also a major metabolite of mescaline in man. It is made by the gentle
reaction of mescaline with acetic anhydride (a bit too much heat, and
the product N-acetyl mescaline will cyclize to a dihydroisoquinoline,
itself a fine white crystalline solid, mp 160-161 °C) and can be
recrystallized from boiling toluene. A number of human trials with
this amide at levels in the 300 to 750 milligrams range have shown it
to be with very little activity. At the highest levels there have
been suggestions of drowsiness. Certainly there were none of the
classic mescaline psychedelic effects.
If free base mescaline is brought into reaction with ethyl formate (to
produce the amide, N-formylmescaline) and subsequently reduced (with
lithium aluminum hydride) it is converted to the N-methyl homologue.
This base has also been found as a trace component in the Peyote
cactus. And the effects of N-methylation of other psychedelic drugs
have been commented upon elsewhere in these recipes, all with
consistently negative results (with the noteworthy exception of the
conversion of MDA to MDMA). Here, too, there is no obvious activity
in man, although the levels assayed were only up to 25 milligrams.
N,N-Dimethylmescaline has been given the trivial name of Trichocerine
as it has been found as a natural product in several cacti of the
Trichocereus Genus but, interestingly, never in any Peyote variant.
It also has proven inactive in man in dosages in excess of 500
milligrams, administered parenterally. This observation, the absence
of activity of a simple tertiary amine, has been exploited in the
development of several iodinated radiopharmaceuticals that are
mentioned elsewhere in this book.
The fourth modification is the compound with the nitrogen atom
oxidatively removed from the scene. This is the mescaline metabolite,
3,4,5-trimethoxyphenylacetic acid, or TMPEA. Human dosages up to 750
milligrams orally failed to produce either physiological or
psychological changes.
One additional manipulation with some of these structures has been
made and should be mentioned. These are the analogues with an oxygen
atom inserted between the aromatic ring and the aliphatic chain. They
are, in essence, aminoethyl phenyl ethers. The first is related to
mescaline itself, 2-(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenoxy)ethylamine. Human trials
were conducted over the dose range of 10 to 300 milligrams and there
were no effects observed. The second is related to trichocerine,
N,N-dimethyl-2-(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenoxy)ethylamine. It was inactive
in man over the range of 10 to 400 milligrams. Mescaline, at a dose
of 420 milligrams, served as the control in these studies.
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