Hey guys

I want to make changa and would have all i need for it except some freebase harmala.
Since i still have some harmala hcl left, i thought that i could convert it to get freebase but something seems to went wrong.
I weighted out about 1 g of the hcl added some hot water ( way to much maybe about half a liter) and some washing soda ( also not an exact amount) until it stopped changing colour and looked milky.
After that i put my jar with it in the fridge and left it there over night.
I tried to pour everything through a coffee filter, but just got some wet white stuff, which i though may just be the washing soda (sodium carbonate) since i think that i added way to much. A bit frustrated i threw the filter with the white stuff away, i hope now that this wasn`t the freebase.

So my questions are:
Can someone add to much water and washing soda , the ph of the mixture seems to be high enough?
Must i add it in a certain ration to each other?
Do you think i threw away the freebase?
Should i put my jar with the mixture in the freezer instead , would that help?
How would the wet freebase look like ?

You don't need a certain ratio, however you could follow steps 15 & 16 of the tek linked below as a guide.

Yes, you probably threw away your freebase. If it's still around you could wash it with acidic solution to recover the harmalas.

I don't think freezing the jar would help anything. Be careful with freezing glass jars in general, they have a tendency to break.

There are some pictures of dried freebase here: Harmala Extraction and Separation Guide

The colour likely depends on where you got these alkaloids from, and how pure they are. I haven't seen pure white wet freebase. 'Harmala red' can also make them somewhat reddish.

Edited: Mistake pointed out by downwardsfromzero.

Sodium carbonate is very soluble, so the precipitate (white powder) was either the freebase and/or precipitated calcium and magnesium salts if you used tap water, and possibly also sodium bicarbonate, which is far less soluble than the carbonate and would be formed when an excess of sodium carbonate reacts with carbon dioxide released during the freebasing reaction.

Here I repeat once again the zeroth law of extraction: never throw anything away until you're sure you know where the goods are.

There are some great threads about harmala alkaloid extraction here, you really should take the time to read through them.

Thank you for your replies.
I put the jar back in the fridge for about 6-7 hours and discovered that there was still
a nice amount of sediment at the bottom of it.
I filtered it through a coffee filter, dried what remained in it and ended with some kind of powder
that looks similar to the pictures shown in the guide.
How could i test if it is freebase and nothing else, just vaporize it on some plant matter maybe?
Which would be the right temperature to vaporize it?
Would it be dangerous to vaporize it , if i added to much sodium carbonate?

Fluorescence is a pretty good way to scan for harmala alkaloids, but lots of other things fluoresce as well. A more definitive way would be TLC.

Alkaloids will vaporise/char when heated. Inorganic salts will give up water at most, perhaps temporarily melting and bubbling in the process.

If you're worried about sodium carbonate residue in your harmala freebase, wash it with distilled water while it's still in the filter. Cleaning up harmalas is fairly straightforward.

Hmm i already dried my freebase so it is´nt in the filter anymore.
How would washing it with distilled water help, i thought freebase is not not soluble in water and won´t dissolve?
Why has it to be distilled water instead of just tap water?
Would it be bad for my health, if i just smoke it as it is after it is completly dry?

Maybe i could just use the harmala hcl orally before i smoke spice , but i would like to avoid nausea because it ruins my experience far to easy.
Until now i have just experienced pharmahuasca and alot of strong long lasting nausea.
Is the nausea with vaporized spice taken together with orally consumed hcl as likely to occur as if i would be if take both orally ?
I was thinking about taking 150-200 mg hcl orally about a half hour before vaporizing spice, would
that be to much?

I agree with downwardsfromzero, save everything from an extraction until the very end. Good glass bottles and jars are getting harder to find as use of plastics increase so extractors should start a collection now so they have a supply of bottles for containing all the extraction products. Get aggressive in collecting glass bottles if you ever intend to start distilling solvents, trust me

In pharmahuasca, in my experience, its the DMT that produces the nausea.
Over the last month I've been using half my usual dose of DMT to do a series of tests to find the best timing and dose of harmalas. I got very little nausea even when I used 500mg harmine•HCl with 500mg THH•HCl! In a few days when I use a higher DMT dose with slightly lower harmalas I fully expect more nausea.
Of course, just drinking the stuff can cause nausea from the flavor, I cap up my THH into gelatin pills and take it early just so I have one less gross quantity of stuff to drink.
I havent tried an oral harmala-only dose prior to smoking DMT yet, its on my list, so I cant say if doing so would still make the DMT trigger nausea in me.

As for timing of oral harmala dose, attached is a pharmacokinetic study of the blood concentration curves of DMT, harmine, harmaline, and THH after oral administration in humans. You can see harmaline and oral DMT peaks around 1 hour, harmine is at peak at about 90 minutes, THH peaks at two and a half hours and has a serum half-life of over 8 hours!

That's funny - I obsessively hoard bottles, picking them up off the street if they fit my criteria! (Meaning, they have some vodka left in them...)


The point of washing freebase is to get rid of the water-soluble contaminant, i.e. sodium carbonate, the one you asked about.

Chemistry. Most tap water has too many dissolved salts and chemists can get a bit funny about purity

If you have the opportunity not to inhale fine particles of sodium carbonate, why not take it?
(Actually, if you smoke plant material you'll be getting a whole lot of worse stuff - including sodium carbonate in the ashes - but why add to it?)