So I recently tried reducing harmaline (1.5g dissolved in 100ml of 11% ascetic acid) to THH with Zinc. I couldn't find pure enough zinc powder so I decided to use zinc pallets instead. The reaction was, as expected, very slow, but I was in no hurry so I waited a whole week, but the reaction still wasn't complete... and in the mean time I had found a good zinc powder source, so I bought it and added some of that as well. I waited another few hours, checked with my UV light, the fluorescence was blue. So I filtered out the zinc, basified with 11% Ammonia, left it overnight for the crystals to settle. Before filtering, I noticed that the aqueous part had some dark suspended particles. In the hindsight I think I should've decanted the aqueous part, but I ended up filtering it (which was even more stupid because the whole point of leaving it over night was so that I could decant...). The crystals at the bottom were very light colored before filtering, after filtering it probably mixed up with the suspended particles of whatever it was, and the precipitate became more dark. The initial yield was 1.14g (around 70%).

I re-dissolved in 40ml of 20% ascetic acid, added 50ml of warm saturated salt solution. Let the solution cool down, put it in the fridge for about 20 hours. Took it out today and poured the still dark orange/brown colored solution in another beaker. The precipitate from manske had a lighter layer at the bottom which could be seen from the bottom of the beaker. The top layer, however, was more red-ish brown. I bio assayed about 30mg of it and it wasn't distinguishable from harmine (which is strange because I only used pure harmaline). I will re-dissolve it and increase the ph to 7. and see if it really is harmine. In the remaining decanted solution I added some more salt and some more lighter colored stuff crashed out, I will add some more salt and see what else crashes out.

So, does anyone have any idea what those darker colored suspended particles could be? I added excess ammonia, and washed with 3% ammonia afterwards but it didn't disappear. Also, any ideas about the red-brown colored precipitate?

I also noticed that the left over liquid after basification and filtering was also fluorescent but I don't quite understand what the reason for that could be. Could there still be some alkaloids left in there?

Ok so, there was no harmine in there. I re-dissolved the manske precipitate and basified it, cloudiness occurred only near pH 9. However, the precipitate from basification also had some finer dust like particles and some thicker, slightly darker particles, so there's probably something else in there, but I don't know what.

I bio assayed the precipitate today. It has a more grainy texture, not like the soft powdery texture of harmine and harmaline. It did not taste as bitter as harmine or harmaline. At 40mg sublingual dose I still didn't feel any noticeable effects. I took another 40mg, there were no CEVs or tingling sensation etc. but my stomach felt a bit weird, which it often does when I swallow after sublingually taking harmine/harmaline. I waited about 20 minutes, after which I started wondering if it wasn't THH but only some zinc salts... anyways, I loaded up 30mg of DMT freebase on the e-mesh. I took one long toke, it was probably around 20 mg or so (since there's still a fair deal of oil left on the e-mesh). I didn't even have the time to lie down... the come up was very fast, and the experience incredibly intense. I was shown what insanity is, and for a while I was completely insane. There was this bug like time altering entity which took me to random memories which I re-lived as if I was actually there. I was listening raag Bhairav, and in between some completely different music started, something I heard on TV when I was 5 or so, and then I returned to my music only to be taken to some other music, time started running backwards and... it was all... beautiful and exquisite chaos! Anyways, the peak was about 15 minutes, the hallucinations gradually became less crazy over the next 15 minutes, took another 20 minutes to return to sanity. So... I guess there was THH in there! I did experience nausea afterwards, but it was comparatively much better than harmine/harmaline.

I would appreciate any suggestions about how to purify the precipitate.