sodium carbonate would be fine instead of lye - and with sodium carbonate u can never add too much.
i found that adding sodium carbonate directly to the solution doesnt always bring the ph up enough - a solution of water and sodium carbonate must be added it seems.

Oops sorry I edited my post taking out the question about breaking down the cell membrane with NaOH. Good call though on the sodium carbonate that would do the trick.

Any idea about the NaCl amounts? Do I want the solution to be super-saturated?

are the actives not damages by the intense ph of a lye saturated solution ?

36g of salt is the max that theoretically dissolves in 1l water at room temperature. But we are not dealing with pure water, but with a solution containing other things..

For harmala extractions, I usually put around this amount anyways, knowing there will be salt 'contamination' in the next step, together with the harmalas HCl.. But this is no problem, as I do another last step which is to redissolve the salt+harmalas hcl again in pure water, and then add sodium carbonate to precipitate the freebase alkaloids. This way any salt contamination will be eliminated as in this last step it will remain in the solution and not precipitate.

BTW, remember, dont filter things, decant as much as possible.. also repeat the salt step (salt out alkaloids, redissolve in lightly acidified water again, decant again throwing out solids, add salt, decant again keeping precipitates) like twice... Also, before adding the salt, remember to decant the tea first on the fridge overnight, throwing solids away, and only then making the salt step

tell us how it went.. I have passiflora growing around also so would be nice to know ... otherwise its back to rue

i do the same - but just before freebasing - disolve the salt contaminated harmaline and harmine in acidic water - let it sit for 2 days in the fridge then filter then freebase.

Will do! Ever since I had a glowing experience with a strong tea brewed with some local incarnata flowers/leaves I feel the need to work on what I have instead of buying rue. I had the best night sleep of my life with the coolest dream to date preceded by some mild euphoria, a light opiatesque body buzz and some music enhancement.

Getting into bed after drinking a good infusion feels like your melting into your sheets while your brain goes into hibernate mode...fantastic. I hope to use it to help get back into a good sleep schedule for my last semester.

I'm also going to try this tek by drellahcl for the hell of it...any thoughts?

http://www.dmt-nexus.me/....aspx?g=posts&t=4081