I have done fresh and dried. Fresh is the bomb. If I had a chance to do fresh again, and if my wife was up for it again, I'd sure love to do some. If not, probably not. We did that kinda stuff together..
I loved them.
Did them in the late 70's while in college in Wyoming USA. A friend on my dorm floor was dating a Shoshone (100% Native American) chick. She had legal access to fresh peyote so we all got together and got with it!
- - First Time taking Fresh Peyote :
"Cut off all the white hairy stuff"
We were advised by the only legal (and experienced) peyote user in our group that we needed to get those hairs because they contained strychnine. After a short pause for consideration, we all agreed it was a good idea so we took our time and cleaned those hairs off real good. Then we cleaned the sand off....quartered or 1/8's them into bites....poked them with a toothpick and dipped them in honey (we had heard they were awful) to "mask" what turned out to be the most awful nasty thing I have ever tasted in my entire life. I am 65 now. It still stands as the most horrible nasty thing I have ever tried. It seems to me we each did three very fresh and juicy buttons - each were 3-4cm in diameter.
Fun fact: Choose your "cover the gritty toad taste" well...it took twenty years before I could look a bottle of honey in the eye! Don't pick something you like.
The only thing we could compare the taste to was in our imagination(s)...what we all thought at the time was, "man, they taste like a toad" ... we all agreed that this was what a toad must taste like. We were not even close to being high yet....but oh boy, that train was a coming.
We all had nausea. I somehow talked myself into holding in these little delectables and came thru the nausea really tripping...but so were everyone else...I do not know if the trip is better or worse if you vomit up the buttons. Many do and report wonderful results. We drove into the National Forest and oh my what a fun day.....I had more fun on fresh peyote than on any other drug. Ever. Ever.
POST Nausea:
The best high I have ever had (really) including acid, 'shrooms (dried and fresh), mesc., coke, yada yada....
To me it was: A speedy/buzzy like cocaine - so you have great amounts of energy...a good thing IMHO...but not so much you find yourself grinding down your molars.
It was also much like a buzz on good flower. However, like other psychedelics', when high, smoking weed is pretty much done out of habit rather than to get high, you are way past that porch landing.
It also provided me the best and most real visuals I have ever experienced. (saw the Ted Nugent's "Great White Buffalo"....so there's that ;-)
The buzz did NOT wire me up like speed. Much more like a buzzy "chill" compared to acid, shrooms, mesc. etc. which can make me a little too wired for my likes.
Lots of laughing and smiles. IMHO, peyote allowed for a more "functional high" than I had experienced with other psychedelics.
- - 2nd Time Taking Fresh Peyote :
Exactly the same but ZERO nausea! We did this:
We each bought a large McDonalds chocolate milk shake. Brought the shakes back to the dorm & LOADED them up with Nestle's Quik chocolate drink powder...poured each shake with the Quik into a blender. Hit the hottest button on that blender and made those "toads" taste better!
It worked great. All we wanted was to cover the flavor long enough to get the peyote mixture down the hatch.
An EXCELLENT unexpected and much appreciated side benefit of the milk shakes...the milk coated our stomachs and none of us got any more than a belch or two!
I have smoked dried peyote a number of times and found it meh.
I probably did not smoke good 'ns.
Hope this helps.
vfm