First of all, since this is my first post I figure a hello and a thankyou are in order.

Hi!
Thanks!

A little summary of my relationship with the spice

For 11 years I've been longing for a site like this; for this wealth of information and candid discussion regarding that most mysterious of molecules, DMT. Thankyou.

I've had a few run ins with dimitri and his relatives over the course of my explorations in the world of psychedelics, though all seemed ill-fated untill recently.

I first heard about it from a strange man in a dingy london squat party while we ranted acidically at each other about the mayans, the nature of the universe, and what the hell was going to happen in 2012; you know, the usual stuff. In all my studies in psychology and philosophy nothing piqued my interest more than the reported states accessible via the spice. As I continued my psychonautical adventures over the next few years I kept my eyes peeled for any sign of it, hearing little but passing mentions and the usual stories about a friend of a friend's mum's brother's loose aquaintance.

Finally my best friend stumbled across an opportunity to procure some while stocking up on other essentials and so did. Barely containing our excitement we headed to my place and, since it was a nice night, set up a hamock in the garden and tentatively prepared for launch. Here enter our mistakes: we had no idea of the amount we were using, simply that it was said to be 2 doses, we didn't know the supplier well and we smoked it incorrectly. After inhaling and lying down the back of my brain began to effervesce, I heard a rising tone, had a sensation of being launched and saw some light geometric visuals, intensifying to something akin to being mentally shot backwards out of a cannon through an infinite hedge. Interesting but not exactly a soul-shattering communion with hyperspace. My friend experienced much the same only with an added sensation of boundless energy that had him rolling around in the grass. Anyway, it turned out on further inquiry to have been 5-meo-dmt. Attempt 1 failed.

A couple of years later it once again appeared on my horizon. This time we adjourned to the countryside and my friend's forested dell, prepared with a glass bong (no water and a layer of ash in the bowl to stop it from burning) and helpful advice from terence mckenna via the medium of shpongle ("and you take let us assume a third toke, long and hard, and you vaporize" etc); more tokes, hold it in longer, vaporize it, gotcha. However before we had even begun we ran into a problem; it had accidentally been through the wash in my friend's trouser pocket......doh! Nevertheless we proceded after the usual psychedelic preparations (set, setting, fasting etc). As I attempted to inhale for the third time my lungs burned, the world crystallized, the tone started and my brain fizzed. All of a sudden I had too much energy, felt rather nauseous and began crawling through the undergrowth to throw up at a respectable distance. As I crawled the world became pristine, digital and yet full of vibration. The vibration rose up through me until I threw up a glow-in-the-dark orange pool of psychedelic goo which, 5 seconds later had been replaced with dry earth. Standing up I found the world transformed yet somehow unchanged and myself drawn to the lip of the dell which I found myself climbing towards; emerging from the treeline I found myself in a field of knee-high grass with a full moon overhead and a quaint cottage in the distance. Then I noticed that everything was shades of luminescent green, that the air was a strange miasma of indigo and green and that the whole landscape was somehow familiar, as if I'd walked out onto an alien field that just happened to be vaguely similar to one on earth. After a while I had a sense of my time being up and rejoined my friend in the dell. Again we later discovered that it was 5-meo-dmt. Bugger.

Fast forward another year and this time my friend managed to get some from someone we trusted absolutely. A week went by before we found a suitable time and place. Then we discovered we'd somehow lost half of it; on top of that as my friend attempted to smoke what we had he once again cocked it up (shitty pipe, lungs not handling it etc) and wasted it. The gods were starting to take the piss.

Finally, in casual conversation with a mate a few months ago dmt came up, at which point he revealed that he actually had some and was a long time afficionado. I jumped for joy. Then I started to question my luck; if all my previous encounters were ill fated, what on earth would go wrong this time? I took a step back and decided to brush up on my research, stumbling upon this site I was blown away by the level of detail it contained and started studying properly.

After much mulling it over I decided that extracting it myself was the only way to go. It seemed the powers that be wanted me to put the effort in and make it that much more personal and involved. After brushing up on my basic chemistry and perusing the available teks I've selected Jorkest's D-Limonene/FASW method for it's simplicity, reported yields and the inocuity of the chemicals involved (hcl, no thanks; naphtha/xylene? I'd rather keep my nostrils in tact) along with their availablity. For the material I've chosen MHRB for several reasons including the lack of necessity for defatting and the presence of the so-called jungle alkaloids. [As a side note, while working out what I'd need, a gram of supposedly high quality spice fell into my lap courtesy of a reputable old freak. Every time I've thought I'd try it tomorrow something silly has happened to get in the way so I haven't pressed the issue, for now it'll have to wait.]

Rambling aside, down to the questions:

Equipment; what to go for? While I don't want to spend a fortune, money isn't too much of a problem so I've been considering some proper glassware as opposed to macgyvering it with a milk carton and some random glass jars. I am however not really sure what kind of materials I need to be looking for. For example I'd obviously like to make sure everything (by which I mean all containers, funnel, pipettes, stirrer, ph meter etc) isn't going to get weakened by or otherwise react with any of the chemicals involved. Is pyrex good for everything? What sort of plastic do pipettes need to be to not get munched by strongly acidic/basic solutions? Can anyone point me to a good value supplier for the uk? Does ordering labware raise any flags?

Jorkest's tek specifically mentions using a food dehydrator in a couple of places on the freebase; what sort of a difference does it make time-wise (i'm not impatient, i've just noticed they seem pretty expensive and often don't offer much in the way of temp. control) and does it not make a significant difference to the oxidation process?

A couple of specific tek questions: are there optimal and minimum lengths of time to let the bark sit in the lye for? How long should it be agitated for, are we talking 30 seconds or 10mins? Does adding heat to the lye/bark mix increase uptake? Likewise mixing the lye and limonene, how long per pull, seconds/minutes/hours? Is it possible to bollocks it all up by adding too much heat?

Finally, what are the optimal conditions for storage of dmt and how long can it be stored for before degradation sets in?



Thanks for bearing with me, I'm itching to get cracking and start learning by trial and error but for the meantime all I can do is go over it in my head and try to get the details worked out while I prepare.

Hello and thankyou.



[for legal purposes all instances of 'I' and 'we' are in reference to my cat, Floyd.]