I recently came across some thh. I had heard thh was amazing from some posts that ava69 has made (specifically involving | High Pobability of Braindamage by Creepy non tested Drugs (forced by scammer 69ron) | too).

Anyway, I was less than impressed with the Thh I got and until recently didn't know how to test to make sure it was what I thought it was. I've since read ava69's posts more thoroughly and realized I can do a simple UV test.

• Dissolve a small amount of the freebase product in vinegar/water
  
• Shine a UV lamp on it
  

Assuming that you know you have harmala alkaloids:
Green glow means harmaline (thh is made via conversion from harmaline)
Blue glow means harmine or thh (bioassay to check)

Blueish green hue would mean either incomplete conversion, or just full spectrum extract sold as thh.

The stuff I have glows bright green with no blue hue to speak of at all. It seems I was sold straight harmaline. The color of the powder and UV glow indicate harmaline.

I will perform a thh conversion some time in the next week, and post pictures for yall to see

I was talking to DF0 about this just the other day, apparently even a small fraction of harmaline can throw a green tinge instead of blue.
I would guess TLC would be a more accurate test.

So there's still a good chance your product is mostly THH.

There's a good chance you're right. Still, I will do a thh conversion and try to make some apples-apples comparisons between the 3

I plan to:

• record a timelapse of the conversion under uv
  
• separate the freebase thh
  
• dissolve 10mg of tetrahydroharmine in 10ml vinegar
  
• dissolve 10mg of harmine in 10ml vinegar
  
• dissolve 10mg of harmaline in 10ml vinegar
  
• UV lamp them side by side
  
• post the results here
  

I haven't seen this done anywhere, and it ought to serve as a decent benchmark for people doing this themselves.

That's OK on the face of it but still relies on having pure harmaline and pure harmine. While pure harmine should have a blue glow, even small amounts of harmaline can confound this because its fluorescence is so much stronger.

The low concentration is a good idea (up to a point) - highly concentrated harmala solutions become self-quenching (or an impurity in my crude alkaloid mixture acts in that capacity) and display only minimal fluorescence.

The harmine I have glows distinctly blue when dissolved, and the harmaline is distinctly green, so I'm fairly confident my materials are pure enough for simple qualitative analysis like this. Mostly though I just want to see if I can see the green->blue conversion while the reaction is occurring, because I think it'd be cool. Maybe we can learn something from the time gradiant. I dunno

That's good to hear, I look forward to reports of your experiments. What will you be using for the reduction?

I was initially going to go the zinc route. I'd bought lab-grade zinc, then when I was going over the conversion some more I came across a thread you were involved in. Somebody mentioned zinc being contaminated with cadmium and lead, and forming double salts with the alkaloids and being very difficult if not impossible to separate in a home lab.

I couldn't find any food grade zinc dust, so I've decided to switch to magnesium. I assume magnesium does not have heavy metal contamination problems, because I couldn't find much about it. I'll have magnesium ribbon coming in around Thursday and will go through with the experiment Friday.

Its probably a good time to mention that I'm not a chemist. I'm just following recipes and trying to be safe about it

Tl;dr: magnesium

The only magnesium ribbon that I could find with a proper analysis sheet had a <= 0.01% lead content, this was a >= 99.5% magnesium ribbon.

As far as I can tell this contaminants are going to be present to some degree no matter what, though blue.magic claims here to get really clean product with their zinc reduction.

Interesting. I haven't been able to find any reports anywhere about lead in magnesium, except that lead, cobalt, and zinc can sometimes be substituted in to dolomite (the ore we primarily get magnesium from). I think it's reasonable to assume that the lead in magnesium ribbon will be in trace amounts. With zinc if you don't have a lab report you can be sure there is significant lead present, since they are deposited in to the same ore.

I'm glad to hear that their reduction with zinc went well in that other thread. I'm just not comfortable with it. TIL about heavy metal test strips though. I will need to get my hands on some of those.

I can appreciate that other people have done zinc reductions and not detected lead, but short of some chemical explanation to where the lead went, I won't be comfortable doing it without my own lead testing. I'm not using the same zinc they used, so I still worry

So, I will do both zinc and magnesium reactions, record them both under UV, post the results, and if I'm happy enough with the samples I get out of the reactions maybe I can send them both off to a lab for testing. I will also buy my own lead test strips just for my own peace of mind

Ok I think I'm beginning to understand now. The general understanding is that there is no need to worry about lead contamination, because lead will have not dissolved in to the vinegar solution? Perhaps the thing I read overstated the concern about lead salts. It sounds like at room temperature and without an oxidizing agent, lead salts are unlikely to form at a dangerous rate, and therefore remain in powder form.

I've successfully separated magnesium from harmala alkaloids after a reduction on rue tea and it's clean and simple, arguably better than the ammonia separation of zinc. The key is to redissolve the initial base precipitate in phosphoric acid and then base carefully with fairly concentrated ammonia. Magnesium precipitates as dense, pure white magnesium ammonium phosphate at around pH 6, then the harmine comes down from pH 6.5 upwards - so it's easy to filter off the magnesium and if the conversion of harmaline is complete there's an enormous amount of leeway before the THH comes out of solution.

Phosphoric acid followed by ammonia is the key to working with magnesium reduction.

The other option (discounting the very friendly and efficient but sadly not very OTC sodium borohydride for the time being) is the possibility we're still exploring of the ascorbic acid reduction/disproportionation which doesn't require any dissolving metals. I've been using the product of this process lately and it's very smooth to the point that I see no reason to fiddle around with any other chemical processes except perhaps to do a TLC analysis.

The mixed alkaloids from a PC/ascorbic acid cook of rue seed gave some beautiful visuals with just a small dash of spice.

Any lead which is present remains in metallic form as it is less reactive than zinc, certainly until all the zinc has been used up and even then lead is only slowly and poorly soluble in cold hydrochloric acid.

Finally performed 2 zinc reactions (one with 1g of harmaline, another with 1.5g)

The first attempt I recorded the whole reaction under UV (which may have effected the outcome). I notice that it goes from green to blue-green to practically no glow by the time the reaction is finished. I see reported in many places that thh does not glow above a certain concentration, so this sounds correct. Another mistake I made was filtering the zinc, then letting the still acidic thh solution sit overnight. By the morning the mixture was slightly more golden, and the precipitates are red and tan. The red i suspect is oxidized harmaline or something. I've seen this on my desk before after spilling a full spectrum freebase extract. I don't know what it really is, though.

The second attempt I took individual pictures at various stages. It seems to glow more blue than the other by the end of the reaction. After allowing the thh to precipitate in a very cold fridge for about 3 hours, I check it with UV to find there is a very distinct harmaline fraction at the top with thh precipitates at the bottom. Maybe useful for decanting the harmaline, but it might be easier to just precipitate the harmaline after separating all the liquid. The presumed Thh precipitate appears bright white

I'll work on figuring out the preferred way to get images here.



I'm not sure how to make the images display better, so I'll just number them:
1. Precipitated thh on the bottom, clear middle fraction, harmaline(?) on the top
2. Same as 1, but without UV
3. Same as 1, but from the top
4. Precipitated failed reaction from the top
5. Same as 4, from the side
6. harmaline freebase dissolved in vinegar on slow spin
7. Zinc added
8. starting reaction under UV
9. 30 minutes later, zinc has coagulated, solution has turned clear with a slight golden tinge
10. Same as 9, under UV
11. Final product, drying and pending final rinse

I took more pictures at 1h and 1.5h during the reaction, but not much changes appearance wise.

I can make a gif of the timelapse, but its not particularly interesting.

Nice documentation Jacubey.

DFZ, love your work.

I think for my next attempt I'll have to look at utilizing phosphoric acid. And still attempt sodium carbonate. If it doesn't work I'll have to make some ammonia concentration when I have the means.

I look forward to reading your work on ascorbic acid.

I have the exact same mag stirrer, and I was very embarrassed about its condition after a few 'accidents' - nice to see one in even worse nick, lol.

Ive adquired some ascorbic acid and intend to try that method soon.

Would vitamin C still reduce harmaline in its acetate form?
I usually add some vinegar in the boiling steps and Im not sure if that would interfere in this case.

I also wonder if it would be more efficient to perform the PCing with ascorbic acid as its own separate step once you have a cleanish extract.

LOL I was a bit embarrassed at first, but I figure its probably somewhat common. This is my first mag stirrer, and early on I underestimated the bubbliness of things. Cleaning up freshly basified mimosa mush is not fun.


I'm looking forward to seeing more conversions and more people picking up thh. I still have yet to try my product, lead test, and do side-by-side UV comparisons. Hopefully I can do that soon, but my family is in the process of moving. Might take a break for a week or two.

Img 1: 1mg/ml thh freebase/vinegar
Img 2: 1mg/ml harmaline freebase/vinegar

My thh is a very white powder, so I assume it either has high purity or perhaps I messed up. Anyway, assuming it IS harmaline, the glow has a slight blue tinge, and is somewhat more dim than the harmaline glow. I'm not sure how well it picks up on camera. Provided only one sample, I'd not be able to guess if it was thh or harmaline. Maybe my UV lamp is imparting some blue which makes the harmaline look similar but I'm not sure. The primary indicator would seem to be brightness, not color.

In other words: to distinguish them, I would need to see them side by side, and I'd always guess the dimmer one is thh. The color seems like a poor indicator to me. Maybe my latest batch of harmaline (not used in the Thh conversion) is contaminated with harmine. Or maybe the UV light just makes everything look kinda bluish.

Hey Jacubey, have you ever tried using some Marquis reagent? It is one of the commonly available tests for substances such as MDMA etc. When used with harmine, harmaline and THH you get three different colours and THH is very different to the other two. While this is a simple presumptive test (indicates presence not anything else like amount or purity) its a lot more obvious than the colours you are grappling with? Definitely worth a try and easy to make really (95% sulphuric acid and 5% formaldehyde) if you have the ingredients.

My THH is usually whitish mostly but I've also gotten some pink too!

In pic on left is Harmine top left, Harmala alkaloid mix before manske Mid Right, Harmaline Bottom left. On right is THH from zinc reduction with Harmaline source. No question imho this confirms a change from Harmaline. Slight bit of yellow there too is probably residual Harmine/DHH? All freebase form. Note re: reagent colors from nexus somewhere...

*Edit - sorry the mixed harmalas were pre-manske, not post.

Pink is probably oxidized harmine contamination, or something similar. Harmine fb seems to produce a reddish/pink powder after some time.

I have these reagents. I have no idea why I didn't think to use them. Lmfao