Iv never seen any spice quite like that before - is it really spice ?

hmm

It would be cool if it was the size of your fist and you just had to scrape a bit off each time... ahh the possibilities.

I wondered the same thing when I saw that picture, to me it looks more like some mountain crystal if I'm honest.

Someone please try to grow a crystal like that so we know for sure.

yep always looked to me like something sold in new age shops to 'balance one's energy', not like stuff comming out of SWIM's containers

its magnified

? I doubt it..

yah but even if it is like under 1cm - the shape is so different to anything else iv seen.

I'd take a guess at no.

From Erowid (where the picture is found):


From what I've read/heard over the years that is a real crystal.

Buuuuuuut.....

It was not STB extracted from plant matter in a couple of hours & freeze precipitated overnight, that big sucker took some time & effort to create!!!


1- it is supposedly synthetic DMT, not extracted from a plant, but synthesized from precursors in a lab setting. So it is pure from the start & much, much more pure than anything we can take out of a plant.

2- it was grown in a lab as well. So the conditions for growth are very much more controlled than in our kitchens/closets & cleaner too. Imagine how much dust & other crap (that is small enough to be not be seen to the naked eye) has contaminated the cleanest kitchen-extract, by the time you do the whole process, freeze precipitate & grow a large crystal at room temp, over a few days.
A clean-lab does not have that problem. Plus they use temp & pressure to grow large crystals in a lab setting, not just time & evaporation.
Pressurizing the whole thing as it grows, would alter the shape of the resulting crystals a lot, I would think.

3- it is also magnified a bit. It says in the little explanation that it is "approximately 1 inch across". It's about 5x that big in the photo.


So anyway, I don't know for 100% sure that it is real, again these are just the things I've read/heard over the past few years.
But I do know that under the cleanest possible home-conditions, I've grown very large extracted DMT crystals that have the same exact dense, solid, clear crystalline qualities to them.
Although the round shapes of that one are like nothing I've ever seen, that doesn't mean it can't be coaxed into forming any shape possible using the right tools & under the right lab conditions.

That picture has been on the net for a long time now, so it's hard to say for sure anything about it I guess.


One last very important thing to consider, is that the picture itself...is also a really good professional, or at least semi-pro photograph, with focused lighting, a dark, non reflective background & everything. That photo probably took an hour or so to set up just right. They probably took a bunch of them too, at different angles & different lighting setups, what your seeing is only the best one.
Keep in mind that most of the pictures posted on these web forums are taken with somebody's shitty phone-camera in a quick second, with no special lighting or any kind of special preparation.
Just the room, the crystal & the picture.


WS

ok ok - after thinking some more i think i got it.
The reasons above are all true but dont (imo) explain the totally different shape of the xtal.

When growing xtals u choose ur solvent - different solvents create different xtal shapes - perhaps some other solvent was used as the final re-x solvent -

Anyone agree ? - if so, ideas on what solvent may have been used ?

Like someone mentioned before, the round column type shapes are very, very similar to the synthetic & man-made crystals you might buy at a new-age spirituality shop.
Those are usually made in a pressure cooker type environment, simulating the years of pressure & temp changes happening under the earths crust that create natural crystals.
It seems at least to my eye that is how this one was formed as well.

Also, it looks like many smaller formations where then added together with more syth DMT to seed it into existence.

If you take a small DMT crystal & drop it into a jar of warm solvent, with DMT dissolved into it at a super saturated ratio, the crystals will tend to grow onto, or out of the "seed" crystal & you will grow bigger & bigger crystals.

Then, as this is happening, you slowly vary the temp in the growing chamber of the pressure cooker from very warm to cold, then back up to warm, then back down to cold, etc... over the coarse of a few weeks or even months, ending at room temp.
This forms the crystals then melts them a little, then solidifies it again in whatever shape it melted into & any DMT that re-dissolved is seeded onto that growth.
Then the temp goes up again & that process happens over & over, undisturbed for 2 weeks to a month & you'll get some huge, extremely dense crystals that look nothing like the quickly freeze preciped, or evaporated DMT crystals we are all so familiar with.


That is how a lot of those "power crystals" you can get at new-age shops are made anyway.


WS

I still don't think we know the full implications of synthesizing it. We can only look down so far and I don't believe we can look down far enough.

Huh?


WS

Sorry I was just babbling.
My thought was that we can manipulate Atoms and molecules and what not. but we really have no idea what the building blocks of the atoms themselves are.
I really don't think we can synthesize anything perfectly yet.

Yes we do...and they can.
I have seen a "recipe" for synthesizing DMT on the web in the past, try Googling it.

Here is the DMT molecule & some info about it.

Here is a page where you can select & view 2 different molecules & there atomic components, in both 2D or 3D views.

Pull up DMT from the menu, or any other substance you are curious about.
If you choose to view the 3D version, the atomic elements that make it up are color coded & definitions are shown at the top of the page.

Interesting are the similarities between DMT & Serotonin!!
Also, the simplicity of DMT, compared to the complexity of LSD, or even THC.

BTW, LSD is a synthesized molecule, so is MDMA if I remember correctly.
So an actual chemist in a real lab has no problem synthesizing many things.


WS

I stand Corrected.

I believe this crystal is a picture credited to Nichols Sand. He was performing 1-2 kilogram synthesis of DMT via indole. It is likely that crystalizing these huge batches yields different types of crystal formation. The product was recrystalized by dissolving the product from distillation in 2L ether and adding 8L hexane. Rhomboid crystals would form spont from the mother liquor. (Hallucinogens: A forensic Drug Handbook GREAT BOOK!!!). Different scales and different solvents yield very different types of crystals. Although I admit the crystal does look strange.

We know a great deal about how atoms interact at the level of chemistry. We also know a great deal about how the components of atoms interact (through virtual particles....) however while we know a lot this knowledge is limited in both technology and the fact that we have to model it in terms that we can comprehend (things we are familiar with) our understanding is thus models rather than a true representation of reality.