Hello DMT-Nexus users. SWIM is totally new to both DMT and extractions and would love some feedback from somebody experienced.
Reading and hearing about DMT, made the curiosity build up so much that SWIM began to research.

Premises are: SWIM only has common reed (phragmites australis) as plant material, so he has to extract it from that. SWIM cannot order or obtain anything else at this moment for plant material.

Question 1 is: What extraction method would you recommend? SWIM is at the moment inclined towards Marsofold's tek
Question 2 is: What quantity of rhizomes should he use, and how does one scale the other quantities involved. Marsofold's tek is written for Mimosa Hostilis, which SWIM understands contains considerably more DMT than Common Reed.

SWIM will be more than happy if , for a start, he would obtain 20-40 mg DMT from the extraction, which he understands is clasified as Common Strength dosage (http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dmt/dmt_dose.shtml) .


Thank you.

SWIM doesn't know anything about phramites, but is very experience with mimosa extractions.

As long as you do the extraction with a defat there is no reason why you should get anything worse than slightly impure DMT, with slight slight plant impurities OH NO!

http://www.dmt-nexus.me/...eneral/common%20reed.pdf cites that using a standard acid/base extraction works.

if you are really worried about impurities you can use a method I use, it is not original, but it works.

Take end product crystals,

1: dissolve in warm naptha
2: pour into zip lock bag
3: add equal parts vinagar, shake vigorously
4: cut corner of bag, keep bottom layer, discard naptha
5: basify with NaOH
6: add naptha, shake vigorously
7: seperate naptha and freezer precipitate

Repeat 6 + 7 two to three times.

there will be in inevitable loss of yield, but pure white crystals are what SWIM gets from this method.

Honestly SWIM wouldn't even bother with that though, the A/B with defat already isolates the DMT enough.

Just try it, that is the only true way to know the answers to your questions

Be sure not to basify until your defatting solvent comes out clear, then it should be all good.

I'd research this thoroughly before doing it. That being said, it could work. A/B will probably be your best bet. You should not have to thoroughly dry your plants before working with them. Be sure you defat alot, and I'd try to do it using limonene - it gives a "cleaner" extraction (i.e. pulls less junk). Also, assuming you are collecting your phragmites from the wild, try to get your plants from a place that has not been treated with herbicides. You do not need any 2,4-D in your crystals.

Thanx for the info. SWIM don't know from where to buy Limonene or what that is. Also SWIM have bought naphta already (Zippo Lighter fluid).

SWIM will be using Marsofold's tek. Very confused about the measuring units. SWIM living in eastern Europe, did a search about gallons and pints, and this is what came up for example:

Liters per Gallon

There are 3.785411 liters per gallon (US).
4.54609 liters per gallon (UK).

Same with pints...

So , there's a pretty big difference. What type of "gallons" does the Marsofold's tek use ? And why are there so big differences between the teks concerning the water-vinegar ratio. Another tek (Lextek i think) says 1 part vinegar to 3 parts water.

Also, all the white vinegars here, where SWIM lives are 9% not 5%. How should this impact the extraction ?

First, don't use Zippo. it isn't a pure naphtha product, look for vm&p or shelite. Zippo will leave behind residues.

Second, get pH strips or a meter at hardware, pet, or a pool store, this is help you a lot! you will not need to worry about converting liters and gallons as long as you pH to 2-4.

teks get confusing.. try giving a step by step of what you plan to do on here.

Swim will not be able to recover 20mg from a dish. The amount is too small and the mechanical losses too high. Swim also hasn't heard any positive results or yields from that plant material (real results not net folklore) so swims time may be well spent elsewhere.

SWIM started today an extraction attempt from Phragmites Australis using Marsofold's Tek.
Altough some of the feedback here was not positive at all regarding this plant material and SWIM's planning to use zippo lighter fluid as naphta, as stated in previous posts SWIM only has access to phragmites at this moment and SWIM's desire to try DMT made him proceed and try his luck with what he has access to at this moment, and in this place.


420 gr roots, harvested about 2 weeks ago and kept in the freezer, were cleaned, chopped and grinded.
A solution of 2 cups (2x250 ml) 9% white vinegar and 12 cups water was pre-mixed in a large plastic recipient.
The grinded Phragmites was put in a large cooking pot, and cooked slowly 2 hours using 50% of the water-vinegar solution. The liquid was then poured through a strainer into a large 4 liter glass jar.
Another 25% of the water vinegar was poured over the plant material in the cooking pot, and cooked for another 2 hours, with the resulting liquid being poured into the jar, and this was repeated with the last remaining 25% of water-vinegar.
SWIM will let the solution in the jar sit overnight, and will keep posting his results here.

Looking foreward to hearing how this comes out.
I'd do a defat on theat acidic solution before basifying.

Best of luck. Keep us updated.

Yes grasses have lots of fats and oils in it would be useful.
Tell us how it goes.

SWIM just got a 1L bottle of toluene with xylene. He could not find a product containing only toluene or only xylene, and the Zippo Lighter Fluid that SWIM needs for the Non-Polar Extraction step is so absurdly expensive it cannot be used for defatting.
SWIM read some forum posts about defatting but is still confused about what it means. Can somebody please explain here to SWIM the process of defatting that people recommended? What exactly should SWIM do before the basification? This defatting step is not shown in marsofold's tek which swim is using.

Update: SWIM just learned that the defatting step refers to mixing the solvent with the acidic juice, shaking it and sucking up the solvent which now should contain the impurities and discarding it. How much solvent should be used for defatting ?

Alright defatting occurs when you add your non-polar (shellite, naptha, lighterfluid. hopefully not the last one its impure and the first two are dirt cheap) to your acidic soup after the boils. Your spice will be in the aqueous acidic layer (soup) as a salt and therefore won't be soluble in your non polar solvent so it will only pull fats and oils out not the goodies. The ammount is up to you but it depends on batch size. 3x125ml would be good for 500g. You will extract much more shit out of there by breaking it into 3 lots rather than one big extraction.

"3x125ml would be good for 500g" - SWIM wonders: Should the acidic soup be broken into 3 separate parts and each one of them should get an oil&fat extraction with 125 ml of solvent?

Negative. You want all your acid soup in one place and extract with 3x 125ml portions or whatever you decide on. By doing it the way you suggested perhaps 10% of the fats will be left in each separated part of the soup and that adds up. By extracting from the soup as a whole you will remove a better % of the fats in there.

Ok, so what are the 500g? [raw material, like rhizomes?]

Conclusion: Perform the defatting step 3 times [each time with 125ml of solvent on an acid soup resulted from "cooking" 500g of Phragmites Australis rhizomes, or any raw material of planty origin for that matter] on the 3500ml+ acid soup?

please be careful with Gramine.. I would research way more into gramine before bioassay... For example I've read that possibly it can be separated from dmt by a very selective non-polar such as heptane, but probably not naphtha, which would carry gramine also.. I've also heard that gramine decomposes at higher temperatures so smoking it wouldnt be a problem but oral ingestion could.. I have no idea if these two affirmations are true, just an example of how there's some information out there and you should def research more because gramine (or other unknown alkaloids) might be very toxic.

I would also use a LOT of lye in the basifying step because high pH is known do destroy some alkaloids (but not dmt), but this is only a guess that it would be of benefit in your situation. So defat at acid stage, high pH in base stage, pull with naphtha or whatever, and recrystalize with heptane, and start the bioassays with VERY small vaporized doses might be a bit more prudent way of going with this, but maybe still not enough, so please do your research on gramine and other possible dangerous alkaloids in phragmites australis

Yeah the 500g is of course the dried and ground plant matter. The liquid from the acid cook will have to be reduced down to 500ml -> 1L via heating, evaporation whatever.

You may want to take your time & wait to do this until you can do it right!! You will be happy that you did.


Doing all of this, especially using grass with a low, low alkaloid content is probably going to be nothing but a waste of your time, if all you get is the short side of one dose out of it!!
Why bother at that point?

Have you read about how difficult it can be to vaporize DMT correctly yet?
It is something you have to learn how to do correctly & everybody has to find which method works best for them...personally.
All pipes are not created equal when it comes to DMT.
So chances are, that one dose that you are going to work harder than necessary to obtain, will just be burnt up during your first attempt at learning to vaporize it correctly!!!
And you will be left wishing you had taken the time to at very least, extract enough to experiment with vaporizing it.

All in all, DMT is not a push-button high!!!
Meaning, it is quite random in it's effects & you may smoke it 4-5 times before figuring out how to actually get it to vaporize without burning it.
DMT has to be "figured out" in a way.
It's not coke or crack, where you easily smoke it & get the exact same effects, from the exact same amount every time!!
It's a bit more complicated than that.

All that work, for less than one single dose, is not a very well thought out plan.


So slow down!!
Maybe collect all the stuff you need to do this right over a few weeks/months, before wasting your time & money on trying to do it small & cheap & getting next to nothing for it.
In the meantime, you could start reading through every tek you can find & see that they are all rather similar.
Understand the actual process, rather than just following a recipe!!


BTW, try typing weight (or volume) conversion chart into google & you'll get a countless number of charts for interchanging metric measurements, with whatever measurements might be used in a certain tek.


One other thing

This is totally incorrect!! And the opposite is true!

D-Limonene actually pulls much more "junk" out with the DMT, that is why it is used (instead of horrible Xylene) to extract "jungle spice" which is DMT extracted using a solvent that pulls out all the other alkaloids present in Mimosa & some other crap that is in there as well.
Extractions using D-Limo, or Xylene come out as a wax or oil, because of all the other crap that comes out with them, not allowing it to full solidify, or crystallize.
They have to be recrystallized or otherwise cleaned to get them to become solid crystals...by removing all that other bullshit that comes out using D-Limonene.



WS

Actually, wombat was talking about using the limonene for defatting the acid solution. Would that work? I haven't tried it for defatting, but it is a very good solvent.