In certain cases, eg. some Phalaris species, plant matter will contain a mixture of both DMT and 5-MeO-DMT, and it is most advantageous if there is a convenient method of separating these two. From what I have read on the forum so far people are looking into column chromatography for this, what would indeed be the obvious choice.

However, I was reading the attached paper on indolethylamines in Mucuna pruriens: "Alkaloids of Mucuna pruriens, Chemistry and Pharmacology" by Ghosal, Singh and Bhattacharya, Planta Medica (1971), 19, p279-284, M. pruriens being a member of the bean family (Leguminosae) growing chiefly in India and having an abundance of ethnobotanical uses. Next to a sizable amount of L-dopa this vine contains many alkaloids, mainly ring-substituted and unsubstituted tryptamines.

They extract the wet leaves with chloroform in the presence of strong ammonia (15N, 25.5%), the solvent was removed under reduced pressure and the residue poured in dilute acetic acid (4%, vinegar). Now it gets interesting: it says the weaker bases are now removed with chloroform, as the acetates are soluble in it. The acetates of the stronger bases are apparently not and they get processed further on after basifying until pH reaches 9.

You've guessed it, the "weaker bases as chloroform-soluble acetates" fraction contain DMT and DMT-N-oxide. The "stronger base" fraction, which is not soluble in chloroform as the acetates, contain 5-MeO-DMT, bufotenine, an unidentified beta-carboline and an unidentified 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin?).

Notwithstanding that the extraction procedure is rather wasteful and could be tweaked to modern more ecologically-friendly (and home-chemist-friendly ) standards, the important information here is that the acetates of both DMT and DMT-N-oxide appear to be soluble in chloroform, while the acetates of 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin are not.

To call 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin stronger bases... I think that must be the result of increased electronegativity by the oxygen atom on the 5-position? Nevertheless, it is nice that we have a straightforward procedure to separate these compounds.

This is indeed good information.

Thanks so much for this. Any thoughts of other more friendly solvents that could be used in place of chloro for this procedure?

Btw, welcome to full membership.

Welcome to the forum!

Have you been able to personally verify the relevant claims from that article? If the information is correct, it would be very useful.

My first choice would be dichloromethane (methylene chloride) as it is OTC. Although chloroform can easily be home-made from acetone and bleach. It is a well-known procedure and suitable for small amounts (ideal for our purposes). But it would be recommended to distill the chloroform thus made. Sciencemadness.org is a good place for such information.

Although these procedures require some basic lab skills and basic precaution, it is well within the realm of the experienced experimenter. And a distillation setup is required anyway as we should recycle and re-use our solvents. It is good for the environment, our wallet, and to keep chemical aqcuisitions to a minimum as to stay under the radar.

There is a good chance that dichloromethane might work, perhaps other chlorinated hydrocarbons too. An experiment is necessary.

Thanks for the full membership.



No but as it is a peer-reviewed academic journal with a high impact factor, we can safely assume the information is correct.

Would ethyl acetate possibly work as a viable substitute?

That is doubtful. Chloroform is pretty non-polar, while ethyl acetate is the opposite. Of course only experiment will tell.

But in my experience, with other amine salts (phenethylamines mostly), some salts, especially organic salts like acetates, were soluble in dichloromethane when it was not expected, eg. during a workup were DCM was used as a wash, and afterwards it appeared that a good deal of the wanted product (amine salt) was soluble in DCM. These instances were not uncommon with chlorinated solvents.

I think it is best to stick with chlorinated solvents. Chloroform is easily made at home. You just need to distill the obtained blob (from bleach and acetone) preferably twice, it boils at 62°C, and if you store it you must add 1% ethanol as stabilizer. I have done it years ago, you can make up a good amount in an afternoon, cheap and easy. Really I'd use this route.

EDIT: I was about to grow some Phalaris, and I have access to chloroform, so in the future I will check it. I have TLC plates too so we can verify the presence of DMT and 5-MeO-DMT. Or is there plant matter I could order that contains both?

Okay gotcha, thanks for the info.

Chloroform is quite friendly, low odor, and can be prepared by almost any nexus member. I get that naptha 'works'. But it's a disadvantage no matter what angle you look at it. It's like building a boat out of cardboard when you could be using steel. I'll present some arguments:

-It's safe.
-It's non-flammable.
-It cost pennies to make.
-It's optimal for a wide array of extractions, DMT, THC.. etc
-Rediculously easy to evaporate.
-DMT loves the stuff.
-It doesn't do what it does in the movies.
-takes 10 minutes to make, and is available in every country.

Given its effectiveness, it's low cost, it's wide availability, and its general safety I'm completely clueless as to why so many people here turn their nose up at it. Cardboard vs. Steel, easy choice.

I like this guy already. Welcome to the nexus hjalmar!

The big issue with chloroform re: this forum is that it is a watched chemical. Also, distilling solvents isn't exactly kitchen chemistry. It's great if you have the knowledge, experience, and equipment to do this kind of work safely, but not everyone does and it's important to remember this forum is targeted toward the latter rather than the former. Still this is good information and useful for some people. Now for a real revolution let's figure out how to make it accessible to your average noob with absolutely no chemistry experience.

Permit me, dear dreamer042, to correct you, as your post is full of false assumptions. Please, do not be offended, I am giving you positive criticism. I have been active in this hobby (amateur chemistry) and I am well experienced with the chemical trade for the last 15 years, and I still see the same assumptions, misunderstandings and general paranoia towards buying glassware and chemicals, let alone the dreaded "watched chemical" list. Let me go through your post step-wise.


Now, you assume that a distillation is some kind of wizardry, but your mind thinks of the acid/base extractions we know so well as mere kitchen chemistry. My dear friend, a distillation is not harder than putting a kettle of water on the stove, only that now you catch the vapor by cooling and condensing it. There is really nothing more to it, a 12 year old can perform a simple distillation.

Mind you, we're not talking about a fractional distillation or vacuum distillation, just the simplest put-the-kettle-on-the-stove type standard destillation.

The same thought was uttered elsewhere on the forum concerning column chromatography. "This isn't exactly kitchen chemistry", the exact words, while had that person actually looked into that matter, he would have seen that it is a simple procedure actually very well fit to be performed in a kitchen.

And meanwhile the persons who utter these words are performing acid/base extractions using things like lye (which is exothermic on contact with water and so caustic it can easily blind you if precautions aren't taken) and extractions/washings with naphta, which is flammable. An A/B extraction is in fact harder and more elaborate than a simple distillation or running a column, but here it comes: you can use mason jars and wine bottles, so it's kitchen chemistry. As long as you don't have to use real chemistry glassware right? Do you see the flaw in your thinking?



There goes more knowledge and experience into mastering an acid/base extraction than a simple distillation, which a 12 year old can learn and perform in a single afternoon. Who else uses distillation? The small-scale home brewer who wants to make his own schnapps or gin, the hobby-perfumers, who distills a mixture of aromatic plants and water in order to obtain a hydrolate scent (eg. cherry laurel water). Ergo: a simple distillation setup can be bought for $50 and has plenty of legitimate uses, don't worry, nobody is watching them. (We don't want the big copper vessels for moonshining either, just a liter-sized glass setup)



There we are: the dreaded watched chemicals. Nobody know what they are, and nobody knows who does the watching. The already paranoiac brain of the psychoactive aficionado goes in overdrive. Sure we have the listed chemicals, which clearly define what is allowed and what not, and (!) which treshold level. But the watched list, there comes the list Strike posted almost 15 years ago, which includes about everything and their grandmothers. Seriously, have you even taken a look at that list:

VITAMIN E, NIACIN, ACETAMINOPHEN, FOLIC ACID, SODIUM FREAKING CHLORIDE

The list is absolute bullcrap. You can order most of the chemicals on that list in kg quantities without anyone batting an eyelid. Many item can even just be bought off the shelves, like hydrochloric acid and acetone.

Do you know that these two, btw, HCl and acetone, are actually more dangerous to buy than chloroform, today? Especially if your name is Mohammed or Rachid. Only recently in september, there was issued an EU directive to put a thighter control on the sale of acetone, hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric acid, because its use in the preparation of acetone peroxide, the stuff those fools blow themselves up with. Those three are far more watched than a bottle of chloroform, and next to that they are listed too.

There are two things you have to keep in mind when buying chemicals. First is: what are the legitimate uses for my chemical? In the case of chloroform, it's easy: plexiglass modding. There are people who like to make transparent cases for their computers or their electronics projects they tinkered together, and for that they use chloroform as a glue, as this is how plexiglass is commonly attached to each other. So that is exactly what you are going to do should anyone ask why you need a liter of chloroform.

Secondly is, what are the treshold levels for a certain chemical in order for an order to be reported. With the listed chemicals you know, for example for acetic anhydride it is 500ml. That means, every sale of Ac2O (a very naughty chemical) over 500ml has to be reported to the authorities. A bottle of 100ml does not. In case of the chloroform, a liter is safe, as like said before, acetone is much hotter nowadays and it is still available in the hardware store in 5 liter gallons.

That is why we small-scale experimenters are always on the safe side. The people going paranoid over watched purchases on drug chemistry boards, and who should do so, are the commercial producers, the ones making kilos of amphetamine or MDMA. They need liters of solvents and on a regular basis. We need 1 liter of chloroform, and we recycle our solvents so that bottle will last forever. If you really think that such an order would be red-flagged in order for the cops to harass some poor plexi modder than you severely overestimate their abilities and jurisdiction.

As my last point, you know, the funny thing is that the paranoia so omnipresent on "drug boards" gets pretty laughable if you take a step back and practice chemistry for chemistry's sake... the beauty of a Grignard reaction or a vacuum distillation of essential oils. You can find beautiful things at boards like sciencemadness.org, and there you can talk with people who build a complete and fancy lab in their garage or toolshed, people like 'garage chemist' (Stefan from versuchchemie.de) or Magpie (USA), and others. They have ordered things like thionyl chloride and other hot stuff that would give some people throbbing ulcers and many sleepless nights, and next to having to sign an end-user certificate, a very normal thing when ordering hazardous chemicals, have never had a raid or whatever. And they present themselves to the chemical supplier as "chemistry hobbyist". Of course they are well versed in chemistry and know their stuff, otherwise the seller would never give them things like bromine, acetic anhydride or carboxylic acid chlorides. But then you have on the other hand people who are afraid to order a bottle of chloroform. It's food for thought...

I remember reading one comment here on the forum: someone panicing that on the MSDS of dichloromethane it now said "used as a solvent for DMT". Oh my God they're on to us! No-one in that thread realized that the DMT they were referring to was actually DiMethyl Terephtalate, a polymer building block, which is indeed easily dissolved by a solvent like dichloromethane, along with many other polymers. That was quite a facepalm, people actually thinking that the manufacturer of a solvent would actually put in the MSDS that it is used for MHRB extraction.

Well spoken hjalmar! I have failed time and time again to put what you said elegantly and have always come across as a bit of an ass in trying. Dreamer is a good guy, and half of the folks here have issues following any form of direction. But there is also the more intrepid group that are capable of more than mason jars and turkey bastors. Sometimes you have to do chemistry in order to do chemistry.

This is very interesting, thank you for the great explanation.

I fully agree that those of you equipped to do so should do your chemistry for chemistry's sake. We need you chemists to help guide us who are not. To show us how to be safe and explain how things work and what options we have available. You are one of the most important assets this forum has.

This however is what I ask of you. Please use your knowledge and skills to make things more accessible rather than less accessible for those who only have mason jars and turkey basters. If you can synthesize chloroform and use your soxhlet and rotovape and so on to do an extraction that's great, but I'm assuming if you have all this equipment and know how to use it that you don't need to be following a tek for a simple a/b extraction. A more widely useful contribution would be to provide the turkey baster mason jar set with a tek that explains clearly how they can safely do it in their kitchen.

So, rather than have someone read over this and decide it's a good idea to mix bleach and acetone on their stovetop how about a tek that demonstrates clearly a safe over the counter route for those who rely on mason jars and wine bottles?

Dreamer i don't mean to piggyback or bandwagon or whatever term one uses for it, but i think that they may be onto something.
I think a push towards learning to use lab equipment & leraning to use chemistry in a legitimate fashion before beginning a dmt extraction should be something we push for here.

Yes, it's possible to extracr in jars on the stove, but what are the long term effects of things like bpa, rubber jar rings, corks, etc. ending up in product that's going to be ingested?
When doing these extractions at home, where the nexus can't see whats going on, how safely & responsibly are these chemicals being used & how can we be sure everyone is legitimately using them propperly & ensuring their product is entirely clean?
We cannot.
So would it not be better to, rather than make things look like they are so simple a child could do them, make it a point to show new members that while the procedures are simple, they need to be understood, preformed safely & correctly & that you should have a good enough understanding of basic chemistry that you can produce a clean enough product to be fit for human consumption?
The attitude on purity, i feel should be to set high standard & expectations for oneself & make absolutely sure it's as clean as possible, even if that means having a sample analyzed by a lab as well as your own test kit (preferrably tlc plates). Anything other than the best should be thrown out. It's your body & you only get one, why risk it?

I dont mean to come off as elitest or snobby, but do you really think the general population is qualified to be handling an extraction procedure & using a drug they produced themselves?
I've seen numerous reports of explosion & fire due to butane hash. Now what does that say about the common persons use of solvents & chemicals? Very irresponsible & unprofessional no?

That is one thing I never understood about THC extraction. All that money is dumped into an explosive/smelly solvent when once again chloroform is around to out perform it. A 50$ investment into glass, some warm water, amd 15$ worth of haloform reagents (for chloroform) would have not only extracted THC more effectively, but would have negated an explosion to begin with.

Chloroform is a powerful extraction ally, we would be foolish to cast it aside for something more oderous, flammable, expensive, and less effective.

And I think Dreamer is onto something. If we're going to stand up to the mods and say 'no this IS safe, and this IS better' then we should demonstrate it as such.

Back on topic, I'd be happy to test the solubility of 5methoxy-acetate, and other acid salts in dry TCM. If this is true then washing with chloroform would remove so many contaminants right off the bat that we should be institutionalized for ignoring it.

I was talking to Jamie in chat, she claims her aq1 strain holds alk content of .2% with a mixture of N,N-DMT and 5meo. With a separation being so OTC and in reach this could be a big, big deal.

it's the aquatica cv. australia strain that is .2% with 2/1 ratio DMT/5-MeO-DMT that I cultivate, not AQ1..just to clear that up.

thank your for this thread btw...awesome stuff!

Hi hjalmar, welcome to the Nexus! It's great to have you here and I'm sure you'll make a great addition, based on the fact that you've already presented some awesome info


So, first, I would like to second dreamer's statement.

Second we do emphasize understanding the chemical concepts behind extraction techniques here. This has been part of the Nexus ethos since its inception. This is one reason why spoonfeeding is actively discouraged. Similarly, we do emphasize purity of extraction, discourage using non-glass, ingesting potentially contaminated products, etc.

Acquiring/using labware doesn't mean you understand appropriate lab technique any more than buying an engine crane makes you a competent mechanic. This is not to disparage using labware, but to emphasize that it's the principles that count (and yes, using safe materials, labware or otherwise).

Additionally, from a harm reduction standpoint, simplification is important. It is also misleading to present a dichotomy between "simple" or "clearly explained" and "safe" or "correct". Dreamer seems to be emphasizing making chemical concepts readily accessible and as safe as possible. Look at his comments re: chloroform synthesis. This isn't about restricting information or knowledge, this is about making sure that procedures discussed openly here fit the "lowest common denominator" for safety and understanding. This is a clear harm reduction issue, as we have seen from people who jump headfirst into chemical procedures without properly understanding them and end up injuring themselves or destroying their property.


Again, this isn't about what is "safe" for people who have a clear grasp on the chemical concepts presented. And this isn't about what is "better" from a technical purist's perspective (no offense intended, the label is meant as an acknowledgement of your perspective, as I understand it), but rather what is safe, accessible, and easily understood by the average layperson.

The lowest common denominator/harm reduction approach is the reason we have guidelines about procedures/chemicals. As dreamer said, if there are approaches that can be presented for the vetted chemists to review and OK as meeting that standard, then there's no reason not to incorporate them into the discussion. If, however, they don't pass that review (again, as safe for a layperson to understand and engage with, given limited chemistry knowledge), then they don't belong here.

Peronally, I don't see this as being about "standing up to the mods"...we're not here contributing to various projects because we're trying to rain on anyone's parade. This is about maintaining a safe and highly visible forum that is frequented by thousands of people with little to no chemistry knowledge. There are plenty of other places to discuss these topics in great depth with people whose chemistry understandings far outstrip those found on the Nexus.

As a final point


Agreed. Were we practicing chemistry for chemistry's sake, the paranoia would be quite laughable. The thing is, many of us are not simply practicing chemistry for chemistry's sake. While the level of paranoia that is espoused by non-commercial extractors/growers is frequently overblown, I think it's better to air on the side of realizing that we're not just chemistry hobbyists, we're also criminals. This means that it's best to cover one's tracks and exercise discretion.

I hear what you're saying regarding buying small amounts and the likelihood that police are going to come to your door based on small-scale personal extractions. But at the same time, let's not get clever with each other and pretend like we're perfectly in the clear when we're not. If an amateur chemist has a fire at their house as a result of practicing chemistry for chemistry's sake, the consequences are likely to be far different than if they were practicing chemistry for the purpose of extracting illegal alkaloids or engaging in synthesis of scheduled compounds. And that's something that's important to acknowledge.

Again, welcome to the board, looking forward to having you here

Let us be better for everyone, not better than everyone.

It is good when people know a lot and can share a lot of their insights with like minded or -equipped forum members and maybe occasionally a little with the rest. This leads to a spreading of information and lowers the bar for sharing.

It is not good when skills and equipment become an absolute prerequisite for participation. This needlessly raises the bar and limits the actual amount of sharing.

The focus of the Nexus is DMT and not chemistry. Chemistry is applicable, but not the primary aim. Most people here have to deal with chemistry for the purpose of DMT. Let us aim at making the chemistry as unintrusive as possible.

It is great when new insights and techniques are discovered and these can be used to make extracting or using DMT easier and safer. Everyone benefits from that. Not everyone has to understand the fundamentals and intricacies to benefit from improved procedures based on better insights and techniques.

Most people here are unable to do molar or pH calculations. Most simple extractions can be done with commonly obtainable household chemicals and don't need such calculations. This is good. Extracting DMT should not require a rigorous education in chemistry anymore than ingesting psychoactive substances should require a rigorous education in neuropsychiatry. Surely it can make for a better and safer experience for those who care, but it should not be necessary for everyone.

Well said!

I agree with everything pitubo said. I do want to highlight that chrmistry is why we are able to do this, it is the tool that makes us better, and it is thr discussed concepts discussed here that make for user friendly 'teks', and makes this substance available to those that need/use it.

If the information hjalmar presented is correct, taking a page from jamie's book that makes DMT/5MeO not only cheaper, but more available than synthesized DMT. That to me is worth the persuit.