SWIM's FOAF has found bufotenine (and other alkaloids) crashing out of the aqueous solution at alkaline pH. bufotenine is very slightly water soluble, but still most of it will crash out.

This however is pH dependent. At certain alkaline pH bufo will crash out, then if pH is increased it will redissolve. It may even be able to crash out the brown stuff alkaloids at certain pH and filter them out, then move to another pH and get purer bufotenine. SWIM has been dreaming about doing this for ages, he never had the time though...

Are you sure about that? Last year SWIM tried to get bufotenine to crash out of water at pH 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5, 9, 9.5, 10, 10.5, and 11. Nothing crashed out except a tiny bit of DMT. So how did your friend do it?

He initially extracted bufotenine citrate and crap-citrate from yopo seeds via SWIY's method. Considering the fact that dmt citrate is a little bit soluble in acetone and is found in small amounts in yopo, he assumed no dmt present in his citrate extracts.

He then dissolved the latter citrate extracts in water,and he basified by adding 10M NaOH dropwise. He did not take any intermediate pH measurements at this point. He saw clouds of precipitation after some point so he started adding more NaOH solution. At some point he observed that as the pH was gradually raised the clouds of precipitation disappeared.

He thought it was weird, so he added a few drops of 10M HCl, to bring the pH down a bit and the precipitations appeared again. He promptly centrifuged the liquid to collect the precipitates (which looked dark brown with a some white patches). He then took a pH measurement of the pH an found it to be just above 11. He does not remember the value very well, but it was not more than 11.5. Maybe 11.3.

The brownish freebased precipitates were not further cleaned. They were bioasayed and yes, they were bufo-like but pretty much unpleasant.

He then got the idea of trying to make a fresh extraction and selectively remove the brown crap out by selective precipitation at certain pH values. But he never got the time to repeat everything properly.

He has no clue at this point of why precipitates appear and disappear at certain threshold pH values. But he is confident that bufotenine can precipitate out of basic solutions. Even bufotenin's logP value hints to aqueous insolubility of its freebase.

At pH 8.5 the liquid does become cloudy. However, even after 1 month in the refrigerator, no bufotenine crashes out. The bufotenine stayed as a suspension. Maybe you need a centrifuge? SWIM does not have a centrifuge anymore and is not planning to get a new one.

Bufotenine is soluble in acid and alkali. The reason it's soluble in alkali is because of the hydroxyl group.

There are many alkaloids present in yopo, nearly a dozen. It could be any one of the alkaloids that crashed out in your friend's tests.

SWIM tried this, but without a centrifuge and it never worked at any pH for bufotenine. Maybe the amount of water used was in excess?

Now that SWIM has found a simple way to obtain 98% pure bufotenine, the next time he does an extraction he can test this out with a few grams of pure clear bufotenine crystals and see exactly what happens at different pH levels in water. Without the other compounds present, if anything precipitates he will know for sure that it is bufotenine and nothing else.

SWIM is also planning on adding salt to the water to see if that helps.

Exactly, SWIM's FOAF thinks that centrifugation could have made the difference. He did not really wait for the clouds in the basic solution to settle; the centrifuge does that in seconds. The amount of water in this guy's case was not in excess, it was kept to the minimum (i.e. enough to dissolve the citrate salts)

Now, the solubility of freebase bufotenine is certainly increased by the hydroxyl group. This contributes to hydrogen bonds between the freebase bufo and water molecules. But on the other hand, the freebase dmt which is fairly water insoluble has polar groups (it has two nitrogens) that are both hydrogen acceptors, while the indolic nitrogen is a also a hydrogen bond donor.

The addition of a hydroxyl group to the dmt molecule effectively introduces an extra hydrogen bond donor (the "H" ) and an extra hydrogen bond acceptor (the "O" ). That is why the partition coefficient of bufotenin is reduced to 1.6 from 2 (dmt's partition coefficient). Which SWIM's FOAF interprets as such : bufo s more water soluble than dmt but not necessarily totally water soluble. On the other hand, Salvinorin A is full of hydrogen bond acceptors but it is extremely poorly soluble in water.

In any case however, this guy's precipitates were active. He assumed he had precipitated bufotenine, and he did in fact bioassayed bufotenine in the precipitates. But this is his interpretation of his observations. In essence, things are more complicated; his batch could have been bunk. He has not done many bufo extractions so he admits that he has made only limited cross-observations among different batches.

BUT! In any case, if a certain basic pH causes precipitation of the brown crap alkaloids (but not bufotenine) it can be employed effectively for cleaning the solution from the latter prior to pulling with NP solvent. SWIM's FOAF thinks that this approach still holds some promise, even though he needs to experiment more.

He is also very interested to see how pure bufo behaves in basic solutions, this will clear up a lot of this confusion.

Thanks!

I'm sorry to disturb your conversation, but I just wanted to stand up and applaud. This is a real breakthru and I can't wait for the nextGen Bufo teks. I really can't say how much I value you guys work. Especially 69rons friend has done great things here ...really appreciated!!!

SWIM cant get it to work. Even his FASA step failed to produce precipitate and when evaporated down a little to see if that would help little balls of oil fell to the bottom. This sucks man.

try citric acid saturated acetone to drop bufo

SWIM has found this method is much better than boiling xylene...boiling xylene is stinky and slightly dangerous(fire) and hes been ahving a hard time getting nice decent crystals..but the MEK:heptane is always white as snow

I don’t like xylene. It’s stinky. Boiling it is a fire hazard. But it worked very well for SWIM’s extract.

I guess it all depends on what you're cleaning up. The xylene worked best for SWIM’s DCM based A/B extract. It produced nearly pure crystals in one shot, and tons of them. But they were small crystals. With SWIM’s A/B extract, the MEK:haptane mix produced less results per ml, but far larger more beautiful crystals, however there was also some amber contamination present.

It’s good to have two different options. Now that SWIM has a better idea of how to clean up and crystallize bufotenine, he’s got some other ideas to try. Hopefully a simple tech can be put together soon that starts with seeds and ends with clear crystals in just a few steps.

yeah definitely..its been a long slow stinky road..but now that SWIM knows how to crystallize bufo..its getting much easier to deal with...at the moment he has some BEAUTIFUL bufo crystals growing in a show glass..it almost looks like dmt snow globes..hes pretty excited about it...seeing as how new years is coming up..

here are two different purities of bufotenine...one SWIM used just a bit more MEK and it made it all dirty as you can see...the other...is about 60mg of beautiful..pure bufo(yes just a TAD of yellow..oh well!)

this is from MEK:heptane

I'd say the one on the right is probably 95% pure. The left is probably 90%.

Have you noticed a difference between the two in terms of effects?

the stuff on the left is nice..but it causes a bit of nausea...when SWIM smoked around 20mg(-+3mg) he threw up pretty solidly..and the stuff on the right causes NO nausea..much nicer...SWIM only tested about 6mg of the stuff on the right..but the effects were much MUCH less heavy..granted it was a smaller dose but it tastes cleaner and the effects are so much nicer...

hes got tons of bufo fumarate he needs to freebase..and then crystallize..hes going to go with the MEK:heptane..much nicer crystals and the effects are soo clean..THIS is what hes been looking for..hes happy he was able to get such nice crystals out of it..cant wait to crystallize the rest!!

he would have tested more of the white stuff..but its bed time..and the nice little visuals hes got now will be great to fall asleep to

Hey, does heptane go by another name? I think I saw Bestine, is that pure heptane? Well if SWIM can't find heptane he will use naptha and either acetone or MEK. Hope this works!

Bestine is a brand name for heptane.

So SWIM did a few experiments with acetone and naphtha. He tried a 35:65 acetone to naphtha, then a 50:50, then a 20:80 ratio.

Dark brown sticky goo that was extracted from seeds using IPA was placed in the 35:65 to give a light amber color when evapped in the pyrex dish, while the 50:50 gave a more true amber color in the dish, both of which gave some effects. The thing is, both were scrapped up to give a darker brown colored product, not amber at all. Though SWIM scrapped with residual solvent in it, which he thinks added to the darker color.

The 20:80 ratio was put directly into the based seeds (skipping the IPA step), which gave an off-white yellow looking product in the Pyrex dish. The thing is, when this was scrapped up (SWIM was impatient and scrapped it before it completely dried again) it gave a light brown waxy product. This product was definitely stronger then the IPA goo but wasn't crystal looking or off-white yellow anymore. SWIM probably smoked like 3mg on top of caapi vine. Something was felt, euphoria, no nausea, but no visuals too.

SWIM's question is (assuming the 20:80 ratio was mostly bufo), does the color of light brown mean it's not pure bufo or should he have waited till it dried up more to get a more true color?

69ron, did SWIY ever get a light brown waxy product? If not could you assist SWIM with what this might be.

SWIM thinks maybe he'll try a 10:90 ratio. Or maybe just pure naphtha. Would just naphtha work? I will try but any opinions on this would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

damiana

The end product was yellowish white long thin crystlas. You can see it here:





Keep in mind that SWIM did an A/B extraction using DCM, and it included lots of defats so the starting material was already a very pure mix of alkaloids.

When it was powdered by SWIM, it had a texture similar to table salt, or sugar. It was not at all waxy.

The waxy texture you talk about may be oils present, or even some 5-MeO-DMT or DMT.

Just naphtha would NOT work, but maybe boiling naphtha would. SWIM never tried boiling naphtha. SWIM tested the solubility of pure bufotenine crystals (as shown above) in naphtha, and they are insoluble. They are also insoluble in xylene, but soluble in boiling xylene, so maybe there’s a chance bufotenine is somewhat soluble in boiling naphtha. There’s only one way to find out.

I think trying the 10:90 mix of acetone to naphtha is a good idea. I don’t like the idea of using boiling flammable solvents.

Damnit Ron! Those crystals look like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow... you are the man!

10 mg of those crystals smoked in a test tube vaporizer setup (includes tubes, and stuff, it's not just a test tube) produces very intense visual effects. It's enough to see reality repainting itself from scratch when you open your eyes. It’s enough for very intense closed eye visions. There’s no nausea at all, not even a hint of it. It's VERY STRONG.

It’s easy to get to that point if you start with a standard A/B using DCM, citric acid as the acid, sodium carbonate as the base, and do plenty of defats with DCM before freebasing. After the A/B you get an amber sticky sickening mix of alkaloids. Then you dissolve the sticky mess in MEK:heptane mix, decant the solvent leaving behind a bunch of crap, evaporate the solvent, and you get those nice crystals when it evaporates.

SWIM has done it many times. Anyone can do it.