Hey all, figured I’d post up an intro essay and get my first post in the bag as well.

I’m a 40 something midwesterner, as some will gleam from my username I’m a big fan of Tool, but not one of the insufferable ones like you find on reddit (I am permabanned from reddit, but this place is way cooler and infinitely more useful so that won’t be something that carries over to here).

I’ve been a psychonaut for as long as I can remember. I remember getting handed a neon drug identification ruler in 4th grade D.A.R.E. class and looking at the effects of the drugs and instead of a deterrent that ruler instantly became a bucket list of sorts. Especially the hallucinogens section and the drug nicknamed “businessman’s trip”. I’d eventually knock everything off of that list except for heroin and go on to add TIHKAL & PIHKAL to that bucket list and actually make a pretty decent dent in them.

I’m currently waiting for solvent to finish re-x on my second extraction and couldn’t have done it without lurking these forums and I thank everyone here immensely for their contributions here and am stoked to take part and learn more.

Thanks for reading this and look forward to getting in the mix, hopefully. I am super curious about learning more about re-x and hope to get into some discussions about dual solvent re-x, as my research indicates it has crazy value when it comes to purification of many compounds and I hope to learn from people who’ve tried this out and hear their views. I’m excited to learn as much as I can from the community here and just really glad to be here.

Thanks for reading

Welcome to the Nexus!

Tool is beyond amazing, no doubt about it!

Funny you mention about the D.A.R.E. class, I remember reading a publication that stated people who participate in such class are more likely to use drugs than those who don´t

Good luck on your second extraction! How do you perform your re-x?

What´s your method of smoking?

Did you ever try DMT orally too?

Keep going, spiral out

Greetings and warm welcome. We're happy to have you here.

So what was your first psychedelic experience like?

What hallucinogen tickles your fancy the most?

Glad you avoided heroin

What aspects did you like most about PIHKAL and TIHKAL.

Would you care to elaborate on some of your dual solvent re-x ideas?

One love

Hey and welcome! I just joined myself about a week ago. You're in good company.

I always thought it was "businessman's lunch" which sparked the question: Who the F smokes DMT on their lunch break, then casually goes back to work like nothing happened?

If you like Tool, I would recommend the band Soen. I always roll my eyes when people try to compare bands to Tool, because none of them sound anything like Tool in my opinion (Mastodon, Meshuggah, Deftones, King Crimson, and whatever else people list). So I won't say Soen sounds like Tool - I don't think they do. But they have a certain vibe that is very reminiscent of Tool, and I absolutely love tripping to their music. Their sound has changed a bit since they started out, so I'd start with their first album, Cognitive and go from there.

stinkfister1,

Welcome to the Nexus.

I enjoyed reading your introduction.

I was way too old for DARE but I was aware of it and remember thinking how stupid and ineffectual it looked. Glad to hear it turned you towards the entheogens with that weird a** ruler. Apparently it was better for more than I thought.

Obviously it's probably not going to be discussed here and was probably an archive of your younger years but I must admit I am intrigued about what it takes to become permabanned from reddit.

Did you read the texts in PIHKAL and TIHKAL? These books really are romance stories, but about 2 very extraordinary people, their friends and the creations that came from the mind of Dr. Shulgan. I was plesently surprised and I don't even like romance books.

I'm so glad you were able to complete an extraction. You mentioned re-x a lot but I'm wondering if you have a chance to try your product yet and what you thought?

Again, welcome.

Wow! I wasn’t expecting the response I got here, glad to see some responses and some good questions and a grip of Tool fans and some band suggestions I have to check out.

I’ll go down the line and respond to all in one go:

Pandora:

On being permabanned from reddit - This is a complicated, convoluted story that involves mods from a subreddit - r/tfatk - for one of the single worst podcasts in existence, The Fighter & The Kid. The entire subreddit exists to make fun of Brendan Schaub, one of the hosts who is a former MMA fighter who was famously convinced by Joe Rogan during an episode of JRE to become a stand up comic. He did that, and became the WORST comedian of all time.

I don’t know how many people here are super into the comedy podcast scene, but when I figure in the vast amounts of knowledge and openness I have encountered in my many hours spent lurking the Nexus, I have to think that many here are either enlightened enough or blessed with the capacity to turn healthy perspective into willful actions and thusly would not feel the need to watch some of these awful podcasts.

That said, I am a fan of a podcast called Redbar Radio. It isn’t for everyone - many who see it don’t realize the host, Mike David, is basically playing a character and purposefully being petty and in his own words he operates in a “flow state” where he just talks out of his ass and for whatever reason, I am a fan.

The biggest enemies of Redbar are comedians, because he goes after them for their amoral, criminal, foolish behaviors (Chris D’Elia being a literal aspiring cult leader who habitually preys on underage girls in every town he does shows in), or just being bad at comedy or formulaic to the point of nausea (Andrew Santino, D’Elia, Tom Segura, etc…). Because of this, along with his controversial and outright offensive use of certain words I won’t even use, fans of other comedy podcasts HATE redbar.

They will say Mike is racist, while also using anti-Semitic insults towards him. Typical reddit stuff, really.

Anyways, I was on r/tfatk and I got into two trivial arguments with people in that sub, one was about D’Elia, which was me telling them he’s not funny and he’s a pedophile, which I’ve since been proven correct on. The other was about redbar and people insisting redbar was racist. The argument became so infuriating and pointless I started dismissing all responses to it by pointing out that these people were fans of The Fighter and The Kid.

At that point, I was banned from the subreddit and received a temporary suspension on my main for “hate speech”, when no hate speech was uttered, it was literally power tripping mods in a dumb subreddit. During my temp suspension, I logged in with an alt account for porn purposes and went back on r/tfatk to engage the mods who got me suspended for no reason other than getting tired of being ganged up on and they responded by reporting me for BAN EVASION, which the sitewide mods considered unforgivable due to the fact the sub ban on my main account was for HATE SPEECH.

I could use a VPN and make an account, I hear, but I’m done with reddit. The story of my ban is not as interesting as I may have made it sound and I’d like to tell you it was in my younger days but it was probably less than a year ago.

————————————————————————————
As far as TIHKAL/PIHKAL, my knowledge of the texts is limited to the chemistry parts and commentaries of the catalogued substances. I have been meaning for over a decade to read the full texts but never got to it. I think the reason it became a bucket list for me is how I came to familiarity with it, which was back in the 2000s when a site called “shroombay” existed.

For those not in the know, shroombay.uk was kind of what it sounds like - except it wasn’t just an ebay for shrooms with listings that used coded names. Someone who isn’t me (is that a thing here on the nexus or do we just say “I”?” made one transaction for “Rivea Tea”, which was obviously just dried cubenses going by the description and the picture. Immediately after payment I was sent an email offering me access to a “hushmail inventory” that was full of foreign sounding combos of letters and numbers, but one of them was 2C-T-7.

I remembered that from the Rolling Stone article back in the late 90’s and instantly I was fully immersed in the rabbit hole, researching everything on the inventory list and spent the next several years having parlayed that one shroombay purchase into the best plug a guy could ask for.

So the way I came about learning what the books were was borne of a necessity caused by having too many choices and wanting to pick the best ones. I ended up getting to try more than I can remember, from 2C-B/C/D/E/I/T-7, DOC/DOI/DOM/DOB, TMA-2/5/6, ibogaine, just a smorgasbord of clearnet insanity. Every transaction was PayPal. It was bonkers.

———————————————————————————————————

On extraction: Yes, I have gotten to try and I was proud of myself. My best goes smoking were with the sandwich method, but I also tried out an oil burner. At this point I am finding the effects of harmaline/harmine HCL & capped spice much more medicinal and just fascinating. For a substance to jolt your whole body with this incredible breath of fresh air, the afterglow, the enhanced mindfulness that persists for days post-trip - and how there’s no tolerance break needed, somehow the body clears the stuff out with such efficiency and speed that it is almost as if you didn’t take it, tolerance wise - it seems like there’s something about the chemical itself that has a purposeful impact on our whole being. The tryptamines in themselves all have neat quirks and unique qualities, but DMT done orally with MAOI so far makes me feel like smoking it is, in comparison to ingestion, kind of like a parlor trick.

My interest in re-x comes from reading some organic chem texts on extraction and reading about dual-solvent extraction being the optimum method to limit adulterants and contaminants in the end product. From what I remember it suggested using two solvents at the same time, one which had a certain melting point and one with a certain freezing point and yada yada - I think I placed too much significance on that in my own head as I don’t think it would be necessary.

My extractions both came out fantastic. I did STB with a mix of powdered Brazilian and cut up Mexican bark chips and did two long pulls using hot water baths. I was forced into long pulls because I made the rookie mistake of setting my pipettor down horizontally after accidentally pulling in some of the lye/bark and had to get a new one. By the time I addressed that issue and finished the sodium carbonate wash and the epsom dry I had one cloudy, saturated batch of naphtha to precip. I used a 1/2 gallon Jar and cooled it at first with a small ice pack wrapped around it, then into one fridge and then a colder fridge, then into the deep freeze.

During the freeze precip I kept the jar (which was tightly shut at all points) angled to keep the naphtha in contact with as much of the glass as possible without being near the lid and over the course of ~36 hours I would rotate the jar slightly.

This allowed me to grow white crystals along the sides and sort of steer the formation and location of it while the bottom of the jar was where the more waxy, yellow stuff collected.

I was easily able to scrape the crystals and the waxy stuff into separate piles from there it was pretty easy to sort of sift out any of the dried powdery parts of the yellow spice from the purer white crystals. After it was fully dry, I decided not to bother re-x on the white crystals and am still deciding whether or not to re-x all of the yellow. It smokes slightly harsher, but after drying completely any waxiness gave way to yellow powder and less aesthetically pleasing crystals, but crystals nonetheless.

That was just the first two pulls out of three. The third and fourth pulls required prolonged evap before freeze precip and while I was able to again rotate the jar occasionally during freeze precip and direct the growth of the white crystals, I did a heptane re-x on the vast majority of pulls 3/4, which were the last pulls.

I just realized I wrote a book there and only responded to one person… I’m working on that. Forgive my excitement, I have been dying to talk to someone about this stuff so when I found out I had responses I went full hypergraphia mode. Carpal tunnel is hitting me now, I’ll be back to respond to the rest of the posts and use a bit of brevity, ffs lol

Was gonna include an image of end product but have to figure out how

stinkfister1

First off thank you for this well thought out and in depth reply. You have been on quite a journey and I'm glad it has landed you here doing self extraction.

Please take a moment to use the EDIT key in the upper right hand corner and edit your response to eliminate any reference to actual commerce. You can just say you procured. Please review the Attitude in depth for more information on this policy and ramifications of ignoring it.

Attitude - No Commerce Discussion