noun

• 1A small soft blue-green spineless cactus, native to Mexico and the southern US.

  Also called mescal

  Lophophora williamsii, family Cactaceae

  ‘Its distinctive characteristic is the sacramental use of peyote, a cactus found in the Chihuahuan Desert that contains the psychedelic mescaline.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Ancient Mayan ruins, active volcanoes, the world's only hot waterfall, and a couple of weeks spent with a Mexican bongo troupe who believed in gnomes (interestingly they also believed in peyote, a hallucinogenic species of cactus).’

  1. 1.1mass noun A hallucinogenic drug prepared from the peyote cactus, containing mescaline.
     ‘He was consuming drugs on a daily basis, including LSD, peyote, marijuana, and speed.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘Let me assure you that being in the present won't hit you like the first time you smoked marijuana or had some LSD or peyote or whatever new ‘designer drug’ people are taking these days.’
     • ‘But there have been concerns that the excessive consumption, ritualistic or not, of hallucinogenics like peyote might have some long-term health implications.’
     • ‘A narcotics law was allowed to be applied to the use of peyote in a native American religious service.’
     • ‘In dissent, Justice Harry Blackmun noted that a number of states, as well as the federal government, were letting Native Americans use peyote without any evident adverse effect on law enforcement or the health of the users.’