cRocodile on Sceletium tortuosum:

While I have never tasted pure (?) mesembrine I have done quite a bit of experimentation with 
traditionally prepared Sceletium tortuosum powder from South Africa. 

1. I have strong reason to believe that not all commercially available Sceletium tortuosum
(seed or herb) is really that... it seems that other Mesembryamanthaceae are being passed off
as S.tortuosum or S.expansum.

2. I consider Channa/Kaugoed to be a highly interesting material with strong analgetic properties.
The  subjective effects vary greatly with the route of ingestion:

- smoking, dosage: 100-250mg fermented herb powder, subjective effects: as expected the effects
are felt almost immediately and synergize very very well with Cannabis (which is a traditional 
combination!). Several friends tried this combination and almost everybody liked it, except maybe
for the strange taste. Personally I find this route effective but quite ninteresting in that it 
produces a more "stoned" and "narcotic" feeling when compared to the other routes. The euphoric
and analgetic effects are less pronounced IMHO than with other ingestion routes.

- insufflation, dosage: 50-200mg (or as much as you can tolerate).
This route is _highly_ effective and yields the best subjective effect (for me). The problem is
that the herb-powder is extremely painful to insufflate and quickly leads to nose bleeding with 
repeated use. For these reasons few peoples (other than me) have tried this route, the few who did
were very enthusiastic about it and confirmed that the effect is much more euphoric as with the 
other routes. The analgesic effect is not very strong when used this way but still stronger than 
smoking. If it wasn't for the pain this could really become a drug of abuse in my humbly opinion.

- oral ingestion: dosage 500mg - 2000mg
For most of my experiments I ingested the material orally since this was the most appealing way
to consume the material (smoking is fine but only if you are willing to mix it with some Cannabis, 
alone it is rather vile tasting,....). For me (60kg body weight) a threshold dosage is around 500mg 
- apparently the material is much less effective when consumed orally. The upper dosage limit seems 
to be around 2-2.5g, more usually leads to very strong nausea and vomiting. When taken orally the 
material reminds me quite a LOT of opiates, it is markedly sedative narcotic and the analgetic 
effect is very very pronounced (comparable to poppy-straw extracts). The effect is very enjoyable 
and longer lasting (compared to smoking or insufflation) but also less euphoric. The only problems 
with this route are the large dosages which are required (over 500mg) and the fact that the
quantity is self-limiting (nauseating in large quantities).

I am interested in trying the pure mesembrine since I'm told it lacks the somatic side-effects of 
the plant. If someone has a reliable extraction procedure at hand that might also be very 
interesting...... However: there is strong reason to believe that the effects of this plant cannot 
be attributed SOLELY to Mesembrine - while it is probably the chief alkaloid - people who tried
both report significant differences.

Hope that helps .... let me know if you have any specific questions!