Mescaline

96 M; MESCALINE; 3,4,5-TRIMETHOXYPHENETHYLAMINE


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 ultimately 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), 178-256 mg (as the
hydrochloride salt).

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 transcendent 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-consciousness. 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.