"Trips", the intense psychedelic experience for the user, may be pleasurable and enlightening or anxiety-producing and unpleasant (known as a "bad trip"). There is no way to know how a user's mescaline experience may ultimately play out.

Common effects during mescaline use may include:

• visual hallucinations and radically altered states of consciousness (psychedelic experience)
• open and closed eye visualizations
• euphoria
• dream-like state
• altered body image
• slowed passage of time
• altered perception of space
• laughter
• a mixing of senses (synesthesia, such as "seeing a sound" or "hearing colors")
• pupil dilation