Hello everyone and nice to meet you , I am happy to find this forum and I have been reading posts since a long time , I decided to register here and wanted to ask you some questions .

To be honest I never took psychedelics but I have saw that all users here are so professional in extracting psychedelic plants ( though I dont know what plants you extract except magic mushrooms and how do you take the extracts later ) so I wanted to ask you about methanol and non polar solvents in extraction since I want to extract some medicinal herbs using methanol , petroleum ether and DCM but I am very concerned about toxicity , since I have read that even after vacuum drying the solvents completely , the residual solvents can stay or get stuck in the crystallized extracts , for example I saw one research in which residual chloroform was around 26 mg/kg after rotary evaporating and the maximum permissble daily intake of chloroform is 0.6 mg/ml !!
I have read one post of Benzyme mentioning that he did methanol extraction of magic mushrooms maybe and then rotary evaporating the solvent and drinking the extract .
I just wanted to ask if any of you guys really did try methanolic extracts and other non polar solvents without any concerns ? Do you think evaporting by vacuum is enough for removing residual solvents and if there is any way to remove any impurities like by washing the extract with water and sodium carbonate solution for example ?

Please tell me any ifnormation you have got since I am sick and want to extract some medicinal plants by these solvents but I am really worried .
Any reply would be appreciated .

Sorry for long story but I just wanted to explain .

Thanks
Kind Regards

Cirrus Sky

Why not use ethanol? Make sure its food grade and not denatured with bitter and/or poisonous additives. There are different brands available depending on which country you are in. Look for something around 90-95% ABV, and check with the manufacturer about additives. I think most alcoholic tinctures of medicinal herbs are produced using this type of alcohol.

If unobtainable, a high proof vodka should work ok too.

Hi, welcome to the forum.


Simple math tells us that the maximum permissible daily intake of extract containing traces of chloroform is 23 grams, assuming your numbers are correct. The question is thus, would you need to ingest more than 23 grams of concentrated extract from your herbs? It sounds doubtful to me. Why can't you tell us what herbs you are thinking of? It would certainly help us to give accurate information if you did.

Alternatively, you could redissolve the chloroform-stripped extract in ethanol and then strip the ethanol. It would leave some residual ethanol, but almost no chloroform anymore.


- Methanol is quite polar actually.
- Vacuum + time = most volatiles gone.
- washing with sodium carbonate solution is done to neutralize excess acid or base from a non-polar solvent. It is not relevant to your questions.


Why don't you just make a simple tea from the herbs? What's the problem with that?

You are right , indeed I will use ethanol as well but since the medicinal plants I want to extract are more potent when extracted using methanol as a polar solvent and other non polar solvents that is the reason I wanted to try and extract by these solvents specially after I read that there are many people here extract alkaloids using many non polar solvents without toxic effects so I just wanted to know their experience but thank you so much for your suggestion

Hello pitubo
Well first of all thanks for the welcome and I am trying to extract reishi mushroom. And that was only one research which said that the chloroform residue was 26mg chloroform per kg extract and I saw that the ADI for chloroform is only 0.6 mg per kg. Could you please send me a link that the maximum permissible intake is 23 grams, I think it would be too much so did you mean grams or milligrams?


Have you consumed yourself any chloroform or methanolic extracts of Dmt? Did you take it orally or by smoking?

Hello pitubo
Well first of all thanks for the welcome and I am trying to extract reishi mushroom. And that was only one research which said that the chloroform residue was 26mg chloroform per kg extract and I saw that the ADI for chloroform is only 0.6 mg per kg. Could you please send me a link that the maximum permissible intake is 23 grams, I think it would be too much so did you mean grams or milligrams?


Have you consumed yourself any chloroform or methanolic extracts of Dmt? Did you take it orally or by smoking?
the reason is the same why everyone here is extracting Alkaloids by using these solvents which is to extract compounds which are unextractable by water

Please re-read my reply carefully. I understand english is not your first language, so you may have to make extra effort to understand things.

What I wrote is that, assuming the numbers you gave are correct, 23 grams of extract would contain 0.6 grams of residual chloroform.

Reishi can be extracted with water, I believe. It may just take some extended boiling.

Please also read the FAQ and the Attitude page, it will answer many questions, so that you will not have to ask them on the forum. If everybody kept asking the same sort of questions, the forum would become unusable quickly. Additionally, it would be nice if you did not needlessly quote all the text of a posting that you are replying to. Just quote the parts that are needed to put your response in proper context for easy reading. Excessive quoting makes reading less easy.

Thanks for the reply, it is true English isn't my first language but I speak and understand English fluently.
And regarding the numbers it is my fault I didn't mean that the maximum permissible daily intake is 26 mg per kg per day but the permissible amount of residual chloroform in general is 0.6 mg of chloroform per kg extract and that research found out that the chloroform residual was 26 mg per kg extract which is in excess of the recommended permissible percentage.

Anyway I couldn't find the answer to my question anywhere and my only question now is did anyone consume chloroform, methanolic, dcm or petroleum Ether extracts orally without any health issues? All I can find on the forum are questions and discussions on the solvents used to extract alkaloids without addressing the health issues or if they are taking it without any concerns that is my only question and thanks again for your reply, I hope I clarified everything.

It would seem to me that a maximum intake is dimensioned in terms of mg substance per kg body weight of the person ingesting the substance. About the ingestion of chloroform, I don't think there is much info on the forum. I have not exhausted the search engine on that question yet though.

Some proprietary cough medicines contain chloroform. So someone somewhere thinks it's safe enough for us to have 15ml of 0.02% chloroform per day for a week.

Walking next to a busy highway is probably more dangerous in terms of exposure to harmful volatiles.

Hello Downwardsfromzero and thanks for the reply .
Yes I understand that but I guess these cough syrups are banned and they aren't being sold anymore .
I wonder if you have tried ingesting any chloroformic extract ?

hello

...do you mind if we enquire about the nature of your illness?
Also, do you want to extract from reishi fruiting body or from reishi spores?
What do you want to extract? Triterpene crystals?
Why go through the trouble when you can purchase them -- they are not illegal?
(Unlike most of our extracts which have been pronounced 'illegal' by some our lowliest rascals)