Hi all,

I've been reading a lot of articles on different extraction techniques, and I'm a bit confused as to what exactly is being accomplished in some of them.

1) Is the DMT in the plant material a salt, pure(freebase?) or something else?
2) "Freebase" DMT is to a DMT acetate, as sodium is to sodium acetate?
3) What would happen if one were to soak Psychotria in acetone or lighter fluid?

Thanks everyone!

1. It's a salt. The salt varies depending on the plant i think. Leaf would be different but in bark (mimosa at least) it's tannate salt.

2. Yes.

3. The dmt in the psychotria is in salt form & not soluble in non polar solvents.
You would only pull fats & oils from the plant, leaving the dmt in the leaves.

Hey!

I highly suggest you check out the FAQ and links there for a little while, it might help clearing out a lot of doubts you might have now or in the future.

In any case, regarding your questions:

1- its in salt form naturally

2- Sort of, but sodium is an element, not an alkaloid. But yes you are correct in your intuition that DMT is just the DMT molecule, and DMT acetate is DMT with an acetic acid ion attached to it.

3- none of those solvents will effectively dissolve the alkaloids in their natural salt form, so you'd be 'defatting' the psychotria, not extracting it. You could 'dry-tek' it though using a base before. Search our FAQ and wiki for more info.

Ooh interresting. is the DMT-salt in Psychotria leaves completely insoluble in
np solvents like naphtha?

Because if it is that would make yielding decently pure freebase DMT from Psychotria
leaves easy and possible with only some Naphtha and some Lye.




Basically then you could cruh up dried Psychotria leaves, soak them in Naphtha,
filter them out of the Naphtha with a cotton filter, repeat a few times each time
discarding the Naphtha and keeping the leaf pulp. You let the leaf-pulp dry up again.
Then you add some Lye-Water solution to the leaf pulp to convert the dmt salt to freebase.

Add Naphtha again, let basified leaf pulp soak in it and then wait for dmt rich Naphtha
to float to the top to form a transparent toplayer. Separate the top layer of Naphtha and
put into collecting container. Add new Naphtha to basified leaf pulp and repeat this process
about 3 more times, putting the separated dmt-rich Naphtha layers into the collecting
container each time.



Put container with collected Naphtha pulls in freezer and soon enough:
Voila decently pure freebase DMT pulled from Psychotria leaves will come
precipitating out of that col Naphtha.


Such a Naphtha prewash should wash away most impurities beforehand.
I hope this will work as I cannot get DCM, Ether, Xylene, D-limonene
and such solvents as easily as some of you here seemingly can.

Naphtha is really the only reliably pure and legally safe solvent I can get around here.
(Apart from perhaps pure Ethanol)

This is not entirely correct actually. There is a difference between a freebase DMT molecule and a salted or protonated DMT molecule and it explains the differences in solubilities. I hope that I can explain this a bit below, not so much for the sake of correctness, but for the sake of understanding of the mechanisms.

In the scope of this discussion, we could simply say that an acid is a molecule that can be split into two parts; a positively charged hydrogen atom, H+, also called "proton" and a negatively charged part such as Cl- (chloride ion), C2H3O2- (acetate ion) etcetera.

In general, with acids and ions it works like this: When Na (sodium metal) reacts with HCl (hydrogen chloride), the hydrogen proton from the acid is given off as a gas, as if it passes on its "+" ion quality to the sodium metal and returns to it free elemental form, while the sodium is now ionized as Na+. When NaOH (sodium hydroxide) reacts similarly, H2O (water is formed from the liberated H+ proton. In this case, the sodium was already ionized as Na+, but it is accompanied by a negatively charged OH- (hydroxyl ion) that can recombine with the H+ proton into neutral H2O (water).

With DMT it is slightly different than with sodium. [blink] Now here comes the crux of the explanation [/blink] ->

The freebase DMT can actually incorporate a proton! The part of DMT that makes this happen is the amine part. When the amine part of DMT binds to a H+ proton, it becomes an "ammonium" part and the DMT is now formally called a "dimethyltryptammonium ion" and it bears a positive charge, that it got from the proton. Another way that this is named is to say that the freebase DMT has become "protonated". The DMT molecule has actually changed a bit and has has also acquired an electrical charge.

This positive charge is balanced by the negative ion that used to be related to the former lone proton. And just like with the acid, the positive and negative part can be bound together, or freely float apart in a solution. When it is in a watery solution, it will be mostly floating apart as separate positive and negative ions.

The ionic character, due to the positive charge, of the protonated DMT causes the difference in solubility with freebase DMT, which has no such ionic charge. While the freebase DMT molecule is generally liked by "apolar" (neutrally charged) solvents, the protonated DMT is very much liked by polar solvents, that have a more positively charged part and a more negatively charged part that likes to be around the charge of the protonated DMT.

The DMT as it is naturally occuring in living organisms is protonated and paired with some negative anion such as an acetate or a tannate ion. This form is soluble in water.

When you "freebase" (verb) this natural form of DMT with NaOH solution (which is actually a bunch of Na+ and OH- ions), the protonated DMT loses its H+ to the NaOH's OH-, forming water (the Na+ balances out with the anion that came with the DMT "salt" ). The now deprotonated DMT has lost its charge and is no longer very attractive to the water. But if there is some apolar solvent nearby, it will like the deprotonated "freebase" (adjective) DMT.

The reverse process is when you have freebase DMT dissolved in some apolar solvent and contact it with a polar solvent containing an acid that can give off a proton (eg. vinegar). When the DMT meets an accepts a free proton, it no longer wants to be in the apolar solvent and instead moves to the polar solvent.

As a final note, I am not a certified chemist, so I might not be getting all the details exactly right. In fact, as little as I know, I do know that it is much more complex in practice than it seems in theory. But the above explanation might at least help you understand a little bit of the mechanics behind some of the teks.

Wow! I'll admit that some of this is a bit "over my head", but I understand what you're saying none the less. Thank you!

Probably yes.


It is the essence of any Acid/Base extraction. Remember that as the alkaloids are already protonated in the natural form, you don't really need to add an acid. It is already implicitly there naturally.

The rest of your post is a bit off-topic IMHO. All I want to add is the suggestion that the butane hash oil tek could also be used to thoroughly defat your dried leaves. Lighter gas refill cans are available in most places.