Howdy all!

I had my first trip today, 8 years after planting tiny little Acacia floribunda seedlings in by back yard.

They are now towering specimens that flower profusely in spring and provide nice shade in summer. I cut them back a few weeks ago to stop them over-shading some Feijoas and the back of the lawn. I wood-chipped most of it into the garden, then realised I should save some of the bark and have a go at an extraction.

Method:

-I stripped bark off the larger logs that didn't fit through my wood-chipper and let them dry for about 1 week. I then put these through my wood-chipper, producing shredded, stringy and chipped bark.

-No idea how much bark I have got, I'd estimate about 800 grams (~2 pounds). For my first go, I used about 1/8th (100 grams) of the total bark and froze it over night in plain water.

-3x boils in about 1.5 L water with 150 ml Vinegar in each, strained them all and reduced them down to just over a liter of dark red soup. Based with 75 g of lye, which was probably too much.

-Did 3x 100 ml Naptha pulls, some only about 5 minutes long. There was a lot of emulsion, which I reduced with gentle sitrring.

-Evaporated this, leaving a thick, dark red goo.

-Poured straight vinegar over the red goo and dissolved most of it, leaving behind a thick fatty layer.

-Topped up with water to 500 ml and based with 50 g of lye

-Pulled 3 more times with 100 ml of Naptha each, about an hour long this time.

-Water washed Naptha with water Ph'ed to 8.5, discarding the yellow water.

-I did not have the ability to freeze precip anything, so I just evaporated the Naptha all off again.

-This left behind a rich, golden goo smelling exactly like new sneakers.

I haven't weighed it because it's hard to weigh goo, but based on the dose I weighed to vape, I estimate I got about 500 mg of goo. This is about a 0.5% yield. Not a lot, but this was my first time and I know I made a few mistakes and inefficiencies along the way.

I scraped some up and put weighed out about 40 mg, which I transferred onto an electronic vaporiser with a porous ceramic dab tip. Then I took a ~10 second hit of this and stopped there, sitting back for the experience. Pretty sure I didn't vape the whole 40 mg, probably less than half.

It came on quick, in about 30 seconds. My mouth tasted strongly of the new sneaker smell and the visual started very quickly and strongly. I watched my curtains take on psychedlic visuals reminiscent of Shroom trips and I focused on a wisened old face that manifested in the visual effect.

After a minute or two I closed my eyes and witnessed much more flowing and smooth visuals than I'm used to from tripping.

After about 5 minutes all visuals subsided and I was left with the strong sneaker taste in my mouth, Within 8 minutes I was totally back to normal.

It was a very nice experience and I'm posting this as a confirmation that A. floribunda definitely contains the good-stuff.

I'm not phased by the goo, but I am going to try again on about twice as much material, same method except I will try and freeze-precipitate the first few pulls this time, to see if I can get nice white crystals from this plant.

Any tips or advice for what to do differently?
-Less lye?
-Less Naptha per pull + more pulls?
-Is dissolving the red goo from the first evap straight into vinegar like I did a good idea?

Attached photo shows some of the goo and the device. Note a clear edge of goo - what might this be?

Thank you all for reading and have a great day.

Hello and welcome!

Now there's a story that warms the old cockles. Well done for going through the whole process from seed to product. This kind of sustainable approach is what we wholeheartedly support here at the Nexus.

It looks as though your process has worked out very nicely. Did you check that a sample of your plain naphtha evaporates cleanly, though? This is the first question that arises with respect to the two phases of goo that you appear to have. One other possibility is that your goo displays dichromaticity (Steve Mould has a good explanation of this on youtube) although the sharp edge between the two colours suggests to me this likely isn't the case.

Hi DFZ!

Thanks for the kind words. Yes a sample of the Naptha evaporates completely. My only guess is maybe some DMT crystals melted and separated from the rest of the jungle spice, does that sound possible?

Did a larger dose today, very enjoyable and got some enlightenment into some of my behaviour and worries. Did not 'break through' however - not sure if I need to though, the short visual and mental trips are nice by themselves. I think I'll take a break for a while now while and incorporate.

Am boiling up another extraction now, probably about 400 grams of bark. Excited to see my yields this time and should last me a year or two of very occasional dosing, until the A. floribuna need pruning again!

Ah this one did indeed twang the heart strings a little. Well done on doing things the right way from the get go! I feel very warm and content reading this and genuinely want to offer what knowledge I have which is a rare feeling in this context. Thank you

Some tips from my perspective on working with Aussie Acacias:

1. Backsalt is key to a nice end result - you already seem to have this one down to some extent.

2. Citric acid in my experience seems to lead to a cleaner end result than acetic.

3. Filter, filter , filter. As you reduce your acid wash, filter through cotton balls to remove gunk, as you transfer, filter. Did I say filter? It sucks but it makes everything that comes after much nicer and easier to deal with.

In terms of amounts of lye, number of pulls etc. You're better off getting some litmus paper so that you don't over base - over basing is a bit of a hot topic recently in some discussions around dmt polymerising in to goo and the various ways to resolve said polymers (goop) and get nice pretty crystals.

When using Naptha as the main solvent - I found that 6 - 7 pulls were required to get close to the potential yield.. maybe more depending on the particular naptha.

It seems using DCM as the main solvent, taking this straight in to another vessel with about 500ml of clean ph 2.5 water and shaking the dmt back to a salt that way gave the best results in terms of not needing to do so many pulls - 2x DCM pulls done properly generally gets it all in to the clean acidic solution if you take your time.

You could also just do the above with naptha, taking the naptha from your base mix, salting / shaking out in clean acidic water and then taking back to the base mix, pull again and repeat until you're sure the base mix is depleted and that everything is in the backsalt. #3 from above really, really, and I mean really aids in this process as you should have almost zero particulate matter causing you emulsion hassles and other annoying things. Especially if you start using a separatory funnel.

On Polymers and goo, and getting those pretty white crystals (you'll get there if you play around and end up reading enough). My best advice is:

- Filter, keep clean as above
- Make sure the backsalt is very clean, no particles, aim for a totally clear solution
- Before basing the backsalt, water bath the vessel with said backsalt in it at 55c for at least 45 mins preferably an hour.

Hopefully this aids in your journey

Thank you so much for the help Threshold Explorer!

1. I did filter my acid washes through a few cotton sheets, but not cotton wool - I will keep that in mind for next time.

2. Getting some Citric acid for the back-salting now, thanks!

3. My back-salting was done a bit wrong - I should have dissolved in Naptha instead of straight into vinegar, as I see now that some oils would have stayed in the Naptha after back-salting vinegar to it. Although some oils were left on the precip plate, I'm sure some got in.

I did another boil and base last night on about 300g of material, and pulled with Naptha, a small amount of which I put into a small jar in the freezer. This morning there was a good amount of pure white crystals and some dirty bits and orangey stuff. I warmed it up and decanted it back into the pull jar, then pulled the whole layer into a separate jar.

I'm going to:
-Pull this base solution 6-7 times as you said
-Back-salt it with citric acid
-Re-base with minimal lye
-Pull with Naptha
-Sodium carb wash it
-Reduce volume and Freeze precip, then evap remainder

Feeling good about this extraction based on the crystals I saw this morning!

Hi Ungulate,

There is also talk of concentrated base and basing while warm causing polymerization. Make sure you let everything cool and you dilute your base before adding it your soup.

If you still have your soup you can potentially recover some more dmt from it by re-acidifying and boiling for a bit. Then just base as above and try a few more pulls.