I sort of have been loitering here, on and of , for a few years now and it was high time to register.
I have been interested in psychedelics since I have been about 14 years old. I am about a year from "official retirement" now. So it has been a while. In that time I also read anything I could get my hands on about these amazing plants and substances.
I have had experiences with LSD, Mescaline (low doses) in my teens. Cannabis has been with me almost all my life. I was lucky enough to catch the end of the first great psychedelic revolution.
Three day concerts. It was a great time. I could do what I want. My parents didn’t care. OK, I had a shitty family, but people out there were kinder, more caring. It was a less dangerous time.
I saw Jimmy Hendrix life! (Brag!)
I was in London in the nineties and got involved in the rave scene. Mainly Jungle music. New years Eve in Paradise Club, Jungle Fever rave. It was awesome. No alcohol. I knew clubs that stopped selling alcohol altogether. Just water and MDMA of course. The real stuff, mostly.
For those who do not know what Jungle is, it later was named Drum and Bass. Jungle began getting a bad reputation. Coke arrived. Some deaths. Fights between dealers.
Suddenly we had Drum and Base, happy hardcore and “intelligent Jungle”.
Gone were the deep, dark Jungle tunes. Everything sounded pretty dippy. No offense to Drum and Bass fans here, there are still some good tunes around.
I found the mushrooms and Salvia Divinorum about 15 years ago.
I have not had any experiences with DMT, but have been fascinated by it and everything connected for a long time.
In between I also had lots of beer and wine.
This is a bit about the comedy of errors and learning re psychedelics over the last 2 years, with a bit of tragedy thrown in.
It did say Introductory Essay, so I probably will be waffling on for a bit. Please let me know if I have overdone it. I am thick skinned.
Two years ago I burned out at my job. No tragedy here. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
It was my job to work with the most vulnerable people we have and find them housing. Government here promises heaps of housing and never, ever delivers. So it became part of the job to lie to my clients. M questioning of corruption within the organization led to me being “micromanaged”. I quit!
All and all I had spend about 20 years working in the streets, drug and alcohol counselling, withdrawal units in hospitals and crisis response.
I had to make plans and get my shit together.
I also had Ayahuasca I had ordered 10 years ago laying around and never got around to use, because of bringing up my kids, work and being chicken!
I decided to do an extraction on the Mimosa Hostilis bark.
Success, after all that time I still managed to get about 110 mg of white crystals and a bit of Jungle Juice!
I used Cybs' Hybrid ATB 'Salt' Tek. Thanks Cyb!!
I started getting on to The Nexus and studying Acacia trees around my area. Rain forest in the hills. I learned to identify some of them. Longifolia and Floribunda. I have plenty of A. Melanoxylon and a mystery acacia on my property. A lot more about the mystery tree later.
Still not very good at it, but I know some now.
I started to take hours long drives. Sometimes with my, now grown up, kids, sometimes with my ex wife, sometimes alone. Suddenly I saw acacias everywhere.
I extracted from a lot of the trees I found. No worries, phyllodes and twigs only.
At first it was winter and there was a lot of rain. A. Longifolia and A. Floribunda almost always got results. I even got a bit of an oily substance out of A. Melanoxylon. Sometimes very little though. 8 to about 250mg and never as crystalline as the M. Hostilis extraction. Yellowish, sometimes sticky, sometimes dry with a bit of glitter. I always used the Salt Tek, with defatting.
I returned to the same trees in midsummer. It was very dry, but I had no difference in yield altogether. I observed no difference. Don’t forget I am a noob and I am not doubting contrary evidence.
I realized what I had been oblivious of. The beauty of my surroundings, even my property, as wild and overgrown as it had become. A lot of work there.
I gave some attention to what is near my house and the mystery Acacia and decided to do an extraction. The lower branches were gone due to another tree coming down and knocking them of years ago. I had no clue at the time it happened and everything was removed.
I could not reach the top and decided to take a little bit of bark. I took a sharp knife, stood in front of it and could not do it.
I knew the tree was special around here. I had never seen any like it in my travels and there were none nearby. I am sure somebody planted it.
I looked down and noticed massive roots, together with a few thinner once, growing for a about 1 to 2 meters above ground before disappearing in the soil.
It was as if the tree it, him, herself gave me a nudge telling me “Hey mate, leave the trunk alone, but you can have a bit of root”.
Synchronicities and a sort of “sixths sense” have been with me all my life. I do not like “sixths sense”. To new agey for me. It’s a sort of feeling that something bad, good, important, is going on and it needs attention. Nowadays I accept and recognize it and try to analyze the moment rationally.
Most of the time this provides important information. When I first noticed this it made me slightly paranoid, as this applies to the impression I have of some people I met as well. Eventually I accepted it and got aware that it actually is something good, as long as I do not believe everything blindly. I hope that what I wrote is somehow understandable.
Back to the tree. Sorry for sidetracking.
Here is a full description of the tree: About 6, maybe 7, meters high. Trunk, slightly leaning, forking at about 4 meters into 2 parts. Large round canopy. Narrow phyllodes. Yellow flowering.
Large roots growing above ground before going into the ground.
I do have photos. Hard to see the flowers though, because they are so high above ground.
I tend to think that it might be Acacia Confusa. Some photos I have seen on the net look very much like it.
I cut a piece of the thinner roots. Roughly the length from my fingertips to my elbow.
Yes, I did say thanks as well.
Dried, the root-bark was about 86 grams.
First pull. I put it into a Pyrex baking dish and it turned to milk. So did the second and the third.
After the eight I had most out.
Now the real problem started and it still isn’t solved. Nothing would stick to the glass. There were particles floating around. That was it. I left it for 24 then 48 hours. No change.
I combined all the pulls. Very large particles formed and did not stick either.
Some stuff was on the glass now. I scraped it of. It was sort of gooey and could be handled.
I filtered the floating particles through a coffee filter and ended up with a light yellow, largish very light rock. Dry and glittery. I started to think that the stuff I was using (Diggers Shellite) was no good.
I bought some lighter fluid, redissolved the stuff I scraped of into a tiny glass container. I noticed that the top of the inside of the container where the solvent had evaporated were some tiny white crystals. The solvent turned pure white. I returned it into the freezer. Same result. Floaty things.
I will come back to this tree and this issue again a bit later.
I had 500mg. That was enough as far as I was concerned. I knew that this was for my first DMT experience. The tree had been here way before we first moved in. It had seen my kids growing up.
All the ups and downs. It became a friend.
That was about a year ago. I spend many hours crawling around the tree trying to find seeds so I could start some new trees of its kind. No luck.
It was winter. I had no intentions of touching the tree again, but I decided that it was time to give something to nature. I ordered Acacia Acuminata, narrow phillodes and Mimosa Hostilis seeds.
I am happy to announce that I have 4 little Acuminata, narrow phyllodes and 2 little Mimosa Hostilis trees growing, still in pots, in the garden. Plus one Acuminata with wider phyllodes.
It stowed away in the in the seed pack somehow. (Once I figure out how to upload photos, I will.)
The place is big enough for 5 more trees and I will transplant when they are a bit bigger. Not sure about the mimosas. We are in temperature zone 9, but is on top of the mountain. Hill for non Australians, but it,s highish for us down under.
Lowest about 2 centigrade, dark and a lot of rain in the winter. I probably will take them in when it gets colder.
Now Australia is burning. There are fires a few hundred kilometers away from Melbourne and we up here had one of the wettest spring and summers in years. A few weeks ago Melbourne was hit with thunderstorms that brought down hail the size golf balls.
We had thunderstorms and it was pelting down.
Here is the tragic, sad part. When I looked at my beautiful tree outside I noticed that half of the top, at the point where the trunk had forked, had broken of, taking some bark of the rest of the tree.
One third of the tree.
I was devastated but had to try to do something. I cut about 30 small twigs of what had fallen. I had some plant rooting powder and coco peat. I dipped the branches into the powder and planted them in the coco. I did not have other equipment and thought that it had to be quick. I also dissolved some of the powder in water ans poured it over the cuttings and put them on a heating mat.
That was 3 weeks ago and it does not look good. A lot of the phyllodes have dropped. Then again, maybe one of them will root. Wish me luck, but I have not much hope.
For the more cynically inclined, like I am on occasion, nothing of this was my doing. I have no intention to just cash in and if it would be possible I'd climb up and glue it back on.
I know about how people feel about bulk extraction and have no intention to do so, but I’ll be damned if I just let everything rot away. It is medicine and there is a reason why some things happen. I will dry and store as mulch and this gave me an opportunity to try to find out what is going on with these extractions.
After I started putting the branches through my mulcher, I realized that these were part of a friend.
I am very worried now that the rest of the tree will die. When the branch came down it also took a roughly 60 centimeter strip of bark from the main trunk. It survived other disasters though.
I do have a question right here. Is it possible to repair some of the damage, even after a few weeks time? I would consider to try to get up there with a long ladder. I’ll get my son to hold it.
He offered to do it for me. No way will I allow it though. Ground not straight etc.
If somebody is going to attempt something stupid, it will be me.
.
I ended up just sitting down leaning against the tree, being very sad.
I finally got up and brought the rest of the branches to be mulched. When I picked up the last one, I noticed, right on one of the big roots, was a seedpod containing three seeds.
Another Synchronicity. I am sure they are the right ones.
That is the story of my tree so far.
Back to the extraction issue. I took some bark I had peeled of. Ripped it into small pieces and pulverized in a blender and did three pulls. I had 700grams of dried bark powder. (1.3kg fresh) Still heaps more there in the glass with the extraction.
Each pull was like a glass of milk. I used 200 ml of Shellite with each pull. I had about 6 pyrex baking dishes in the freezer.
After 30 hours in the freezer, again, lots of floaters. This time it was a deep freezer at -22 centigrade. I thought an extra 5 degrees might help. Nope.
First dish I tried to put straight through coffee filter. Stupid. Everything disappeared.
Second looked as it was supposed to. I dried and everything melted and ended up in a few drops of very milky water plus a very thin, very hard film of a see through substance covering the whole of the baking dish.
Third, fourth and fifth were combined, solvent almost removed and returned to the freezer.
This started to look a bit better. Still no proper crystal formation though. I took it out and dried as per tek. Lots of wet, yellowish blobs left. I scraped these of ans put them on baking paper where they dried very quickly. I now had some pieces of light yellow, dry material. I scraped the stuff left of the dish. This was sticky, but it was possible to handle.
Rest was again the very hard, clear substance. Almost like a thin layer of glass.
Still no crystals, but I was determent. I redissolved half of what I had in Shellite in a tiny glass jar.
Then in a flatter container and put it in the freezer.
The other half was dissolved in vinegar and rebasified. Then repulled.
I was utterly frustrated by now and even thought that I fooled myself and that there was nothing useful there.
I had used a knife to stir the hot solution. When I looked down on the blade ten minutes later it was covered in snow white tiny crystals.
When I took out the containers the next day they looked perfect. Lots of white dots. I dried with a fan. White dots were still there, but absolutely everything was covered with the now thicker “glass” film again. Almost rock hard. I still have some of the containers covered with the stuff, but managed to waste almost everything, bar perhaps 100mg of crystals.
I just wish I would not be so incredibly stubborn and try to solve everything on my own. I should have been here a year ago and asked for help.
I think I probably made some really stupid mistake. Over and over again.
I have tried to find a solution on the forum until my head was spinning. I could not find anything.
If at all possible please point me in the right direction. Heaps of thanks in advance and sorry I am asking questions in the introductory essay.
Finally a few general thoughts. I still have not had my first experience. The plan is to have it soon and I will report
I am glad that I able to establish a relationship with many plants and some trees that I grow.
For me that is very important. There is a lot more to this then “just” a substance. If anybody has the opportunity, try growing stuff. If you don’t, don’t worry about it.
We also live in very, very troubled times. A minute amount of people are destroying this planet through their unrelenting greed, but I strongly believe that they will not succeed.
As many people who are involved with substances like psilocybin and DMT have asked: "Isn’t it strange that right now they have become so popular again?"
There is a phrase from the sixties: “Looking from the outside in”. We have to do something totally unexpected to stop this madness.
The medicines can help us finding it. Just never, ever, with violence.
Not only is it morally wrong and against everything I believe, but it simply, realistically makes no sense either.
The French revolution tried. They did not even get any rest before they had Napoleon Bonaparte and the bullshit never stopped.
I am very grateful that I was able to become a member of this forum and hope that I will be able to provide some useful input as well.
Respect, Love and Peace to all of you