Different salt forms of a drug can have slightly different effects from each other because of different absorption rates caused by their different solubility parameters.

SWIM has noticed that mescaline HCl is quite different from mescaline acetate.

Mescaline acetate seems to come on quicker. It also feels more potent by weight but should actually be weaker than mescaline HCl because it’s heavier. I think it feels more potent because it comes on quicker. I believe this is because mescaline acetate more quickly dissociates than mescaline HCl, allowing it to enter the brain as freebase much faster. I’m not sure about that though. Maybe it just absorbs faster in the stomach and that’s the reason it comes on quicker.

Another thing that SWIM has noticed, when using vinegar instead of hydrochloric acid to salt out the mescaline from the d-limonene in a cactus extraction, is that it comes out much cleaner than a hydrochloric acid salting. It doesn’t need much clean up at all. When salting d-limonene with hydrochloric acid, you need to clean it up with acetone or else it remains brown and sticky with lots of impurities. This is not the case when salting with vinegar. Instead of getting a dark brown sticky residue that refuses to dry, you get an amber crystalline material. It’s very slightly sticky, but can be dried almost completely if you have some patients.

When salting with vinegar, it seems like less mescaline comes out of the d-limonene than would come out with hydrochloric acid. Has anyone else noticed this?

Is mescaline acetate more soluble in non-polar solvents than mescaline HCl?

Mescaline HCl smells and tastes worse than mescaline acetate. Mescaline acetate isn’t nearly as bitter tasting.

SWIM’s mescaline acetate seems really pure without doing any clean up on it. I’ve read that you cannot use acetone to clean up mescaline acetate because mescaline acetate is soluble in it. Is there another clean up method that works for mescaline acetate that will remove the small amount of sticky material from it?



There is one thing that is unusual that SWIM has consistently noticed recently that bothers him a little bit. When taking mescaline HCl, after a few hours, SWIM smells hydrochloric acid. He has not noticed this when using mescaline acetate, so he’s starting to think its real and not his mind playing tricks on him. I know that mescaline HCl will eventually dissociate in the blood to allow freebase mescaline to enter the brain. It will not pass into the brain as mescaline HCl, so it must come apart before it gets access to the brain. So what happens to the hydrochloric acid? Is the smell of hydrochloric acid that SWIM notices real? Is the left over hydrochloric acid forming a salt with something in the blood that is coming out in the sweat glands or is this just the hallucinogenic affects playing tricks on his sense of smell?

Mostly unrelated and entirely wayyyy too late, but wouldn't the mescaline acetate convert to mescaline hydrochloride in the stomach anyways due to the natural presence of HCL?

Yeah, that's what you would think. But experience shows that's not the case. If the mescaline acetate converted to mescaline HCl in the stomach and none was aborbed any other way then they should both have identical effects and yet they do not. This is true for all drugs.

It's a common misconception that all drugs form HCl salts in the stomach and only the HCl form is active.

A good example is oral DMT. Freebase DMT doesn't absorb nearly as well as DMT citrate does. No one can explain why. Both should form DMT HCl in the stomach, but experience from hundreds of DMT users shows this is not the case. Freebase DMT is very poorly absorbed while DMT citrate works really well orally. (Of course an MAOI is need in both cases).

If you don't believe me, ask the others on this forum. Freebase DMT doesn't work as well in ayahuasca as DMT citrate or DMT HCl. If you can explain how both passing through the stomach behave differently even though both should theoretically convert to DMT HCl and be the same, and yet one works better than the other, then by all means tell us how this is. It's is A KNOWN FACT. But no one has given an adequate reason why this is the case. It seems to defy logic and yet it its reality.

Some users have put DMT freebase in a capsule. Taken with an MAOI, and had NO EFFECTS AT ALL. And then take DMT Fumarate in a capsule (same dose) with the same MAOI and get tons of effects. If you can explain that, I'd like to hear it. It doesn't make sense and yet it's reality. SWIM has had very bad experience using DMT freebase orally. Many times it doesn't work. So SWIM now always uses DMT fumarate because unlike DMT freebase, it always works. If someone can explain that, I'd really like to hear it because it seems to defy logic. Both should convert the DMT HCl so they should both be just as effective, and yet they aren't the same. It's very puzzling, but it's reality.

that's very interesting. Maybe dmt freebase isn't able to/ as easily be absorbed after a certain point in the digestive track. The same could go for mescaline hcl compared to acetate.

For practical reasons, there is no such thing as DMT-acetate, or DMT-fumarate or DMT-citrate or mescaline-chloride or mescaline acetate when they are dissolved in water. Dissolution means they come apart and they get coated with water molecules. It is the same with all of the water-soluble salts.

What I am trying to say is that an aqueous solution of dmt-citrate is actually molecules of positively charged dmt molecules coated with water molecules and worlds apart, in big distances (in the molecular scale) negatively charged citrate molecules coated with water. The "DMT" part and the "citrate" part are not in close proximity or juxtaposition or even apposition.

That would mean that the "dmt" or the "mescaline" part of the ingested salt would absorb at more-or-less the same the same irrespective of its parent salt. Since it is claimed that it is not the case it could be the "citrate" or "acetate" or "chloride" part that make the difference.

But to resolve this we need to know:

1) In which part of the body do dmt and/or mescaline absorb. Is it the stomach? Or could it be the duodenum/small intestine.

There's a big difference in the chemical environments of these two compartments. The stomach is quite acidic. It has a pH of around 2 and generally speaking it is not quite suited for absorbing stuff. Alcohol does absorb from the stomach because it diffuses into the blood vessels, but the vast majority of biomolecules do not absorb in the stomach.

The small intestine on the other hand is slightly basic. As far I remember, it has a pH of around 8.

2) How do they absorb? do they absorb as an ionised materials like "dmt+" or mescaline+" dissociated from their acid counterparts or do they absorb as a whole salt ("dmt-citrate", mescaline acetate" )?Or do they absorb as their freebases? What do we know on this issue? I probably do not know much to say on that.

3) Different solubilities of the salts can make a difference, especially if the dmt- or mescaline- salts are absorbed as they are, unionized. Or whether they are transported actively (epithelial cells spend energy to transport them) or they somehow diffuse passively.

Right, so now mescaline needs to pass somehow through the cellular membrane of the epithelial cells of the gut. It gets inside the cells and from there it is expelled more internally in the body from where eventually it will diffuse in a blood capillary. This is the standard route of may nutrients and other biomolecules.

Let's imagine now that mescaline salts diffuse passively through membranes. This is not far fetched. In order for this thing to happen, a molecule needs to have some hydrophobic moieties. In other words, something "lipid-like" to help it through the lipid membrane. Cholesterol, estrogen and progesterone diffuse freely through cellular membranes because they are very lipophilic. Same goes for mescaline, which has lipophilic moieties.

The above facts can lead to this theory; mescaline chloride is less lipophilic (for instance it does not dissolve in acetone) and will diffuse through cellular membranes of the gut much much slowly. Mescaline acetate is more lipophilic (it has not only the mescaline's lipophilic moieties but also the lipophilic moieties of the acetic acid), so it diffuses through gut faster and it comes on faster. The latter would of course require re-association of the two components (mescaline+ and chloride- or acetate-) and of the aqueously dissociated salts at some point, maybe spontaneous association just before diffusion?

But yeah, it does sound a pretty complex problem, since there are too many parameters in play. And we know so little about how these substances assimilate in the body. Let's hope we can build a good theory on that!