Hi all,

So my friend's neighbor's garden gnome has completed his first attempt at an extraction of Peruvian Torch cacti powder.

The powder was obtained from a South American company, and has been quite a disappointment yield-wise. I won't name the company, but i've since noticed they seem to have a fairly poor reputation here on the nexus.

He performed a boiling in a diluted vinegar solution, then heavily based and pulled with xylene (including several o'night pulls with regular shaking), and then salted the pulls with dilute HCl and evap'd to obtain the extract.

The crude product was a dark-brown waxy substance which could be dried, but tended to be quite hygroscopic (albeit within a very high humidity environment). With several washings with acetone the product became less waxy and somewhat lighter in colour - at the expense of a drop in yield of course. Unfortunately however, the effectiveness of the acetone washes (with significant time/energy spent on crushing the product whilst immersed in the solvent), were fairly dissapointing. He is convinced that no further such washes will improve the purity of the product, which still remains a light-brown powder - definitely not the beige semi-crystalline product he was hoping for.

Given that he is not in the position to obtain methyl,ethyl-ketone (MEK), are there any other procedures he could attempt to improve the purity of the product, so as to be more confident with dosing?

If not, can anyone offer a suggestion as to the likely purity of this extract (which will only be a rough estimate obviously), so that a first-dose quantity can be decided upon.

Considering that his yield is already slightly less than 1% he doesn't want to waste any of the extract by under-dosing and then working up. He was hoping to aim for an initial dose of 400 mg (a la Huxley in his famous Doors of Perception experience).

Included is a photo of the extract in its current state.

Any suggestions/advice would be graciously received

peace..

Extract pic
..

You could try to wash further with IPA, or try the following tek

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=10118

You should go easier on the salting step. Use less HCL.

Can't see the picture. The link takes me to a picture of the shroomery logo. You can all ways try cleaning it further with anhydrous IPA. That may help clean it up a bit, but in case it drops your yield even further, i would just eat it as is.

I have heard STB's work better when using powdered cactus, as opposed to an A/B. What tek did you use?

Slightly less than 1% isn't a bad yield for Peruvian Torch, sure there are reports of better, but not much better, at least for that species/form.

Very interesting description of the extract.
It sounds unlike anything I am familiar with.

When you salted... did you test pH?

For cleaned brown sanchez this looks not bad at all (greyish sandy sugar).
I would skip further cleaning and consume as is.

Enjoy your ride!

Edit: if you are familiar with psychedelics like shrooms, acid etc with 400mg you will do fine. If you have enough you could start with 250mg to get a taste of it but this is really on the low-end.

Thanks very much everone

Thanks very much for that link teotenakeltje, i used this process and got some interesting results. Upon evaporating the material was now very obviously crystalline, but also very obviously discoloured an ugly dark brown. What seems suprising is that there are some beautiful large crystals there, but still such an obvious discolouration. I would have thought that if such a significant quantity of impurity were present that it would prevent the formation of such crystals?... So I'm still a little confused as to the likely purity of the material, as an educated guess I would have thought that a purity of AT LEAST 75% would be required in order to form such crystals...

Anyone have any thoughts?...

I didn't use any one specific tek, I just perused a few to get an idea for the relative ratios of reagents and then went via feel (observing consistencies, emulsions, etc.). I expect that (as several of you pointed out) I may have used too great a quantity of HCl when I salted, and hence pulled out a bunch of oily garbage as well. Unfortuantely he did not have anything available to test pH.

I realise the material is fine to consume, I guess I was just hoping to see some nice clean crystals. Also, my friend really does like to quantify what he is consuming. I know some people aren't big on this ideas, others can't seem to go without it. To each their own...

My friend thinks he might start with a dosage of 500mg, which should (please correct me if you disagree), ensure a dosage of more than 400mg. By the way, he DOES have significant experience with all other common (and some not so common) psychedelic plants and compounds.

Below are a couple of photos of the product. On viewing my original photo again I think it may have been a bit too complementary, the actual product appears to be a slightly darker shade of brown.

Thanks a lot!

peace..

Distance shot

Close-up

.

From pics I would agree you used way too much acid...no matter how much you clean it up(Unless you do a hot acetone/freeze precipitation) it will never be anything other than off white at best becuase of the acid oxidation...

Next time if you are blind salting(No PH Meter) try 7 drops 10% hcl to every 200 ml salting water...you are aiming for a ph of 6.6-7.0 to get most of the goodies and leave most of the non mesc stuff behind as well as not getting the acid oxidation again...

Ok, great. Thanks for the advice

I hadn't considered a re-crystalization from hot acetone. Something to keep in mind as an option in the future.

Cheers.