Hello explorers!

I smoked damiana recently, and it was a mild, but very pleasurable experience. Now I am thinking about making an extract or fortified damiana similar to salvia extracts.

Did anyone of you has some experience with damiana extraction? Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

interesting idea... could be worth while... let us know how it turns out...

Do we know what the actives are in damiana? I only ever got very mild effects off of a very strong tea. I sometimes use it to help me sleep.

I've read several pages, citing many-many resources (books, sci. articles) and they mention lot of possibly active ingredients.

I smoked it twice and I noticed definite effects invluding calmness and slight euphoria.

On an other forum somebody posted a report about his/her successful 5x extract experiment. This researcher wrote that the effects were strong and similar to that of cannabis.

My acetone extract is evaporating right now. I will post the outcome of the experiment right after I finished with it.

no actives are known, so no properties can be figured out = no extraction.
swim tried simple crude acetone extraction. Works definitely stronger.

Now I can confirm that. I've just finished my 5x damiana joint. It is stronger indeed. The effects include calmness, and euphoria, so it is nice.

I've made a simple crude extraction like nadir. There were 4 pulls, each with 100ml aceton, 4 grams of damiana. The resulting acetone extract was evaporated down to 1 gram of damiana leaf. When it dried I rolled up half of the resulted fortified leaf. Now I feel stoned.

I've made a search after the active ingrediends: essential oils, alkaloids.

One source (Programa de Agricultura de Zonas Áridas, Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste (CIBNOR), P.O. Box 128, La Paz, Baja California Sur 23000, México) states: "The most abundant constituents of the oils were caryophyllene oxide, caryophyllene, δ-cadinene, elemene and 1,8-cineol."

Caryophyllene binds to CB2, but not CB1, so it's not what we looking for (but it at least has to do something with the cannabinoid system ).

So I don't (and nobody seems to) have an idea about what causes the CB2-ish effects I am currently experiencing. I think it should be investigated.

EDIT: I meant CB1-ish.

The CB-2 receptor has not been shown to be involved in the psychoactivity of cannabis yet. It seems to be more involved in regulating immune functions both in the body and in the CNS.

However it is likely that the terpenoids are responsible for some of the sedating effects you report experiencing. Other plants with similar compounds have similar effects. However the mechanism in which they do that is currently unknown.

From a professional standpoint I find the lack of understanding of the mechanism of action of many essential oils / terpenoids to be an interesting problem in the field of ethnopharmacology. More research is being done in this area.

cli_hlt
how long do the effects last? is it energizing or sedating, clear or foggy headed?

It was strange. I felt foggy, calm and euphoric. The music was was very nice.

When I first looked at the clock it was 17:56 here. By then I was experiencing the full effects (this was roughly 30 minutes after I started smoking). The plateu was about 1 hour long, and I still feel a mild afterglow (22:05 is the time here).

The effects came on slowly and gradually, and wore off in a similar way.

On an other forum somebody stated that several terpenoids have been shown to be active at some GABA sites, but the experience was not alcohol-, valerian- or benzodiazepine-like. I will experiment with it few more times and will see. In my opinion it has to do something with CB1.

Interesting, I really have never felt any effects from damania, but I've also never made an extact from it.

It makes a wonderful tea, very nice tasting, but without any real effects. I wonder if an IPA extraction would extract the same chemicals as an acetone extraction. I guess I can spare a jar, an ounce of damania, and a few 100mL of IPA.

its a common additive to some liquors... which is basically an extract...

Interesting that it hits CB2 receptors..will have to try it sometime.

It's not sure that it hits CB2, it just feelt like it would have done so.

beta-caryophyllene has been shown to bind to CB2 receptors.

http://www.pubmedcentral...entrez&artid=2449371

So far no essential oils have been shown to bind to CB1 receptors (doesn't mean they all don't however no one has found any that have and people are looking). There was suspicion that thujone (the stuff in wormwood) acted via CB1 but in vitro studies showed it only very weakly binds to the CB1 receptor. Very weakly. The doses needed to interact in the body would be dangerous as thujone is quite toxic.

Wrrrrr! I keep on mixing the two. Yes, it binds to CB2.

But the high was similar to a CB1 high. Sorry for the mixup.