Hello fellow Nexians, I am fairly new here as a member but have been following and using the info from the forum for close to a decade. Some of the users here are personal heroes of mine as their knowledge has contribute to the expansion of my self and many others i know.
Coming from a jungle country in Latin America and having traveled to most of the continent I have had the fortune of stumble with several of this magical (with proper use) compounds. I have plenty of experience with the most common serotonergic molecules available in the jungles, deserts and labs throughout the American continent. I come from a family of Bio-chemists so I also have a small but useful understanding of organic chemistry (but i would never call myself an expert)
This past year i moved to India and have been focusing my research in some of the less understood (to the average joe, of course, not to most folks here) of the compounds found in the area, specifically harmala alkaloids, natural substituted amphetamines, and lysergamines. Travelling all the way from the Himalayas in Nepal to the north, central and south regions of the Indian sub continent I have managed to harvest interesting samples of different plants. Now that i stopped travelling and based in a small town with a lab supply store next to me, im focusing in further refining and experimenting with my results, with extreme caution, tons of research and some good experience already having done some of the processes and worked with the reagents in previous experiences. Im having great success with my Peganum Harmala extractions, also with some Ephedra Geradiana (Somalata) crude extracts for my asthma (of course never close to the date of my Harmala experiments, this would be ludicrous.)
Now my travel friend is starting an extraction of ergotamines from Argyreia nervosa. He have done this in the past but with the Hawaiian strain, never with the Indian strain. Any of you have some experience with this strain? how does it compare to you to the Hawaiian strain? He noticed the seeds seem a bit bigger than the Hawaiians, He also read somewhere that the distribution of ergotamines is different on the two strains and that the Indian is almost depleted of LSA but contains other interesting relatives of the compound?
Another question,
He is planning on just defat the seed mush with PE 60-80, extracting with solvent (some alcohol), evap and dissolve the remaining powder in Liquor calculating the dosages in 1ml x 3seeds. He has done this in the past with great success. The thing is that here in India they are really careful with their alcohol and getting high proff liquor or grain ethanol is close to imposible. He did manage to get lab grade Ethanol AR 99.9%. Would this Ethanol AR work for making the pulls and then evaping? I would guess so, but the fact that there is just maybe 0.1% v/v water makes me wonder if this will affect the solubility of the ergotamines, as some compounds do benefit from a bit of water. But he does not want to add water to it if not necessary as it would be counter productive once the evap step comes. He also have access to Methanol as a second option. Any help on this would be highly appreciated!

Welcome to the Nexus!

I can't help you with your questions specifically, but perhaps bumping this thread will catch the eye of one of our experts or other more knowledgeable folks. But besides that, I'm sure many of us would be interested in hearing about your experiments, if you feel that they are relevant to share. I've always been interested in LSA extraction, but have never actually got around to doing it. Thanks for taking the time to write up an intro essay, I think you'll fit right in. Good luck with your endeavors!

Peace

Hey TGO thank you for your answer!
Yes indeed the extraction took place and I answered some of my questions while I`m now faced with new ones.
So I will start by saying that 3 seeds collected in Telangana, India produced pronounced effects. They where in fact somewhat more intense than the Hawaiians I grow and others tried in previous experiences. The raw seeds produced nausea as expected and after an hour of a somewhat rough come-up the experience landed in a euphoric, more visual than usual state. For about the first four hours there was a LSD-like mindfuck usually not attained with HBWR ime. This came as a big surprise as with some very potent Hawaiian´s personally a dose of about 5-6 seeds is required to hit a level of intensity somewhat resembling the ones obtained with this Indan sample, but besides the level of physical and mental intensity the experience was still noticeably different from the Hawaiians.
This got me pretty exited and most of the harvest was extracted leaving only a handful of seeds to add to the garden. Also they where to many and traveling with seeds is not well seen by customs officials so reducing the amount was probably a clever thing to do.
The extraction went smooth, the seeds where cleaned with PE 60-80 and then extracted with Ethanol 99.9%. This was evaporated and the remaining redissolved in 40%proof liquor as you would have better luck finding a Unicorn than Everclear in India.
All of my previous HBWR extracts glowed blue or blue-green under UV light. To my surprise this one glows bright yellow. This made me think I screwed it up on the extraction somehow.
A few days ago it was my wife birthday and we went for a full day tour. I took an Ayurvedic medicine containing Nux-Vomica (I DO NOT PROMOTE THE USE OF THIS PLANT OR ITS ACTIVES AS RECKLESS USE OR EVEN SIMPLE IGNORANCE CAN RESULT IN THE MOST HORRIBLY PAINFUL AND MORTAL OVERDOSE, here in India it is purified and the alkaloid levels pretty much reduced to less than half, still very active and is used medicinally for many problems surrounding lethargy and nervous insensitivity). Latter on the day she wanted to try the extract so the equivalent of 2 HBWR seeds where taken. It was definitely active, it changed the experience of the Ayurveda medicine a lot, and if it was just me I would have though of it as placebo intensified by the nux-vomica but my wife was not on it and felt a pronounced effect from the tincture.
I am researching to see what can be the source of the quite different yellow glow under the UV light. Maybe the rumors of different chemical profile and it being almost depleted of LSA and dominant in a different ergotamine are true, who knows. At this point I dont have the equipment at hand to quite get to the answer of this question. Hopefully someone here will be able to help!

Today I remembered that the seed mulch was kept, this would allow to do a CWE and check how that glows under the UV light. Around an Oz of the remaining seed powder was submerged in cold unchlorided water an hour ago, tonight I will report back with the results of this. If it glows blue-green maybe some of the other alkaloids where extracted with the Ethanol 99.9% and most of the LSA left behind. I doubt it as Ergine is quite soluble in ethanol but I think is worth the try at no extra cost.

Well after 12 hours the CWE seems to be very low on alkaloids as it glows in a very dim yellow, almost the same yellow as the tincture but very dim so I think there was not much left in the leftover mulch and what was left is more of the same that is in the tincture. Compared to the tincture the CWE is almost not-glowing at all. This somewhat confirming the success of the extraction but fails to answer the reason for the yellow glow.