Hello everyone. I didn't even intend on joining... I was searching for something and followed a link and wanted to read something else and had to be a member so I signed up and have spent the last 48 hours completing the Questionnaire. Whew!

When I started reading member postings, I felt like, "this isn't the Internet, this is a Compuserve home brew forum". If you don't get that it's because I'm 60 and you're not. But what it means is that it feels like home.

My background is in social sciences (econometrician) but I started boning up on organic chem about a year ago and am enjoying it very much. Throughout my life, I've been interested in hallucinogens and this looked like a good place to pick up some info about something I've known about since the 70's but never had any exposure to other than in "literature". And here I thought all the passion for mind expansion died with the advent of yuppies (again, please excuse the dated reference).

Anyway, I'm going to shuffle off now to work my way through the FAQ and the extensive information you have compiled here. I'm a little slow so it'll probably take me a while. I look forward to getting to know everyone hanging out here and hope to participate in an adventurous chat sometime before I die (like I said, I'm a little slow so I don't want to make any commitments I might not be able to keep).

Stay safe everyone and don't get crushed in the upcoming BTC market changes. Peace.

MAH

Hello mAH, you're welcome

Please look at all the info as you step in a library, so you can find contradicting info also on the shelfs. We had someone here having trouble with that and admonished the mods to get their sh*t straight, but like in a library you don't step to the desk complaining that you become confused by all those books, it's just all info and relative.

I've found my own advises given as transformable over time so it's is a never ending story and all you get is a pick in time, but that's about the best there is to get I suppose.

The idea that 'all knowledge it set firm by now' showed a bit shakey on some points, other points seem solid though. For a beginner it's a hard nut to crack but then again it's a bit like life? Incidentally the dedication required works as a necessary filter because there is no joking with the matters.

In the end the base will drift above all the clutter, no doubt. Then it all start to make sense more and the variations become less and less confusing.

Like a computer one does not use all whats in there, just find what you need but it takes some digging. People disclose rapidly if they want to be spoon fed or have done some true study. Asking a question in a relative thread works way better, even an old thread no problem, it better than asking by starting a new post. I know beginners have limited posting, but you can always refer to the existing threads and points that are relevant as an alternative.

If no answer follows don't panic, get back to it some later, it's the way it is. And use that chat channel there might be someone online ready to guide an answer, maybe not.

Thanks Jees. This is kinda spooky 'cause when I wrote my brief info, I was feeling fairly upbeat and confident that with a little work and a few quick questions I'd have it all figured out. After reading more, I began tumbling down the rabbit hole and am dazed & confused. So I thought I'd do a post and checked back here before I did and see your message. It's like you're reading my mind. STOP THAT!

"In the end the base will drift above all the clutter..."

Yrs, at least that's what I'm hoping. A little knowledge/experience with chemistry and a lifetime of.exploration in mind expansion doesn't really count for much in the DMT world. A little but not much. My "clutter" essentially does come from "the base" which is why your post is spooky. I lurked on another forum over the last couple years trying to fill in some of the holes in my knowledge of organic chem. I lurked because all of the posts I was reading were over 10 years old. One of the admins there was called "Geez". And your "Jees". Again, spooky.

Without wanting to come off as too defensive I do have to clarify that in no way do I or have I ever believed that "knowledge is set firm by now". I'm exactly the opposite and too a fault. Frequently just sit there not being able to make a decision because all sides of the issue make so much damn sense. But my one unshakable brief that bars being a religion is about open access to ALL information by ALL people.

Okay, off to post some questions. Thanks again for your response to my intro. It's nice to not feel completely invisible. But please do stop reading my mind.

mAH

Thanks for answering

Do you have made up your mind yet what category you are going into first?
Oral recipes?
Smoked ones?
Rather plant tea's or extractions?
Cacti, mushrooms, salvia, (root)bark, syrian rue, ..
Or is all that still in consideration? I do realize this site has gravity on dmt related info and perhaps that is your choice, obviously?

I ask because if you do have a direction, it could cut down the info-mass considerably. Taking on all of them information is a huuge task

Students always

Well Jees,

I thought I'd concentrate first on performing an extraction using hexane and going STB to extract from Mamosa H. powder. But the variation is that I'll perform a water wash, then add my acidified H2O and titrate the salt. I'm very much wanting to use the NAOH/HCL conjugate to extract (they do make such a lovely pair). Titrations with HCL seem to be both potent and spice-specific and I'm supersticious about not using conjugates. The thing is, I'd really like to store my salt as having been titrated using fumaric acid since its salt is reportedly the most stable and I've heard a number of folks complain about the burn when smoking from an extraction using HCL. So I guess I'll titrate the spice using HCL abd since I've got it as a salt at that point I might as well wash & re-crystallize since it's pretty easy to do with a salt. Then basify, acidify and titrate once more using fumaric and its conjugate. Is that stupid? I know that I'll need to basify the dose before smoking but that sounds easy enough.

The funny thing is if I manage to pull anything at all (I don't really know my source's rep so this could be just a "for the hell of it" kind of thing), I'm not really sure what to do with it. I'm completely unfamiliar with how to deal with freebase as an end product. Plus DMT FB seems very sensitive when it comes to heat, dosage and wanting to melt into a puddle. I'll figure that part out when I get there. But I really would like to hear if you think I'm nuts for planning to pull the way I am.

I should wind up with quite a bit of powder but will use only 150g on my trial (however I wind up doing it). I expect no more than a 0.5% yield but will plan my amounts of chemicals for a 0.8% scenario Not that it makes much difference with that small a quantity but I want to get used to crunching the numbers. All that entails is knowing the solubility of the spice for the freebase in hexane and for the salt in water. Haven't seen any hexane numbers around here because nobody seems to use it. But I have read in a number of places that the FB truely likes hexane.

I stayed up about all last night reading a very interesting scientific article I came across while searching for something else. I'm going to post a link and summary of it now in the "DMT Discussion" section of the home forum. It blew me away. I was getting kind of frustrated because there seems to be no concensus on a particular group of teks to use. I mean, there's always debate but I'm seeing extractions yield from under 1% to over 5% using the same MHRB! Even within the same tek, yields/experiences have a wide variation. There's probably some advice/tek that should just be chucked (how old is The DMT Manual anyway?). Well, this article describes what I'd call some pretty freaky behaviors that are hard-wired into the DMT molecule. I think I'll call the thread, "DMT Molecule Smokes Changa and Laughs at Me".

Check it out and thanks for the follow-up.

Hopefully you meant 150 mg, because 150 g would put an elephant into geostationary orbit! However, even 150 mg is a high dose for vaporized DMT. I came across this post the other day, and am planning to follow the consensus advice here for my own first steps into hyperspace: https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=27347

^^ I think MAH means working on 150 gr of bark to extract.

MAH I'll re-read when having a notch more time.

HAH! Ok that makes a lot more sense... Feel free to ignore me at any time

Yes, I'm talking powdered plant root bark. I should have heard something by now so I doubt it's going to amount to anything. I just gotta hunt down somebody else. And that's fine 'cause I probably need to come up with better thoughts than using Hexane. It's not bad but it targets fat more than alkaloids. So it's good for defat and even crystallization but not the best choice for extraction. I guess it should be simple since it's supposedly easy enough to coax DMT to switch to any form you want as long as I don't use a strong A/B pair. It's my understanding now that there are good reasons to pick my A and B so that they sort of match up in terms of strength unless there's some overwhelming reason for it. And that they don't really need to be conjugates as long as they share pKa values that are not more than say 10 units apart (as long as using that A & B pairing is non-reactive).

I think I'm going to try harder finding some real bark and try to avoid pre-powderized if I can. At least then if I wind up paying for a shipment of pine mulch I'll have gotten some good excersized...

^^ sometimes powder drags more suspicion with it. Wood shreds are plain self explanatory that it is no processed material. I know in some countries they consider it the same legally, but for the passing eye it might play a role, even at home.

At least the root bark also gives you just a tiny bit of plausible deniability too. Yes, I doubt I'll ever REMOVED powder again. It is convenient but it's impossible to know what you're getting, gram for gram honey is lower and Norman's Tek (I was planning STB but haven't looked at it in a while) I think requires a not insignificant increase in water and solvent (so acid and base too). I hadn't the tek that closely when I REMOVED the powder and assumed that powder would allow lowering the chemicals a bit. I never read an explanation of why powder requires more water, solvent etc.. Probably out there on our Wiki somewhere; everything else seems to be...

I've read that even fine shreds of bark to just let it sit for many weeks in a good lye water, and (all?) wood gets broken down to a mud. Saves the efforts of powdering. Why not 2 months?

Glass is generally preferred but for this phase (without a solvent!!) I think a HDPE container is suited, because I've also heard of potential lye stress on glass.
Just before processing with a solvent, poor it over it in a glass vessel.
I've not done this procedure yet, but planning to when the time calls.

Hi there!

DMT HCl is insanely hygroscopic so it'll not be at all easy to recrystallise. DMT fumarate is a lot less hygroscopic hence its being favoured as the DMT salt of choice. The fumarate will still turn into goo if left in open contact with the atmosphere unless you live somewhere thoroughly arid.

Out of pure curiosity I ask, what would you consider to be the conjugate of fumaric acid?

Also in the light of this:
it might be a good idea to contemplate this: Attitude page, rule 2.2.

With your best interests at heart

Hi downwardsfromzero and sorry for the delay. I just saw your post here. I've learned a lot since I posted the above. For one, no need to use HCL, I'll use fumaric from the start. And I understand that the salt is difficult if not impossible to Xtalize as far as af being able to obtain nice shards. Nevertheless, the salt's solubility properties do allow it to be washed with a non-polar and dissolved in a polar. That allows some impurities to remain in solution after the spice has precipitated. I don't know if it's going to make an observable difference but it's easy enough and I can't see any harm.

As far as fumaric's conjugate... I don't know if it even has one under Brønsted–Lowry if I understand things correctly. So I intended to search for a base that was within say 10 pKa of fumaric and that wouldn't leave behind too much junk after the reaction. Since I'm replacing acetic acid with fumaric and they are very close in pKa, I shouldn't need to change the base away from NaOH unless they react & produce something bad. Cyb's Ion tek (which I'm going with now) uses NaOH because of it's strength (I think) in making the bark a much less attractive place for alkaloids to remain. The reaction using fumaric with lye (I'm not a chemist so corrections are definitely welcome) would be h2c4h4o4 + 2naoh --> 2h2o + na2c4h4o4 which is just some kind of harmless salt called sodium fumarate. This does not make it into the DMT Fumarate. I don't know why but the compound's structure/weight is only effected by the acid. I'd love to understand this better but don't want to bug the chem experts since they're pretty busy as it is and my question isn't related to either safety or yields.

As an aside, did you know there are over 300 patents for DMT Fumarate? There's only one that calls itself that (an interesting story in itself). Some make claims like "eases stomach pain" and others say stomach pain is a side-effect. Just search by compound on a site like Pub*Chem. Then search by name to find that single entity calling it DMT Fumarate and follow the links to the manudacturer/supplier's website. Interesting stuff.



Okay, yes, I know what you're saying. And I did choose my words carefully when I said what I did. So I'll be more careful in the future if just mentioning that a purchase was made is a violation. Didn't think it was but better to be safe. I can say this about pre-powdered without violating any of the Attitude guidelines: I really wish I had done more reading prior to making a decision to use it. Pre-powdered seems to be associated with yields that are 50%+ lower than bark yields. That's gram for gram and it doesn't seem to matter what tek had been used.

I'll admit now, this was kind of a trick question. The conjugate [base] of any protic acid is merely the anion resulting from the loss of a proton/protons.

My infamous pedantic nerve was struck by your referring to NaOH/HCl pairing as 'conjugates' when this term would really only apply here maybe in a philosophical sense at best. NaOH can be neutralised by any other sufficiently strong acid, and correspondingly so for HCl and bases. But thanks for the interesting diversion on DMT fumarate patents.

My thinking about powdered bark is that it's so much harder to identify adulterants that the producers at best won't bother separating the inner root bark from the rest of the root. Chipped whole root will go straight into the grinder.

Yeah, I'm not sure what's really up with that but what you say makes sense. I thought there'd be some sort of junk that would come out in an extraction no matter which part of the plant that is being processed. But plant biology is new and foreign to my world. So you figure the small percentage of "higher order" plants that produce alkaloids don't contain much of any other organic material big and strong enough to survive the solvents? Every website that talks about plant extraction never mention wanting to extract anything but the few alkaloids it may contain. Food processors want lipids and everyone else wants to remove them from the mix. Nobody ever mentions having to remove non-alkaloid stuff regardless of what part they are processing. So yeah, no pre-powdered.

Hey - I thought the NaOH/HCL was considered a "conjugate" because of the non-reversibility of the reaction (both the HCL and NaOH completely vanish when added in the correct amounts leaving only some salt and water. It's not just a question of being able to neutralize. And I don't know if an acid or base can have more than one conjugate. But I thought I read "not reversible" was a defining characteristic. No?

It's funny. The only time I'm ever sure about anything is when I know next to nothing about it. As soon as I move beyond total ignorance, I'm never sure of anything.

That's what we call progress!


It is reversible but requires input of energy Otherwise, how did we get the NaOH and HCl in the first place?

Conjugate when used as a chemistry term is precisely as previously mentioned. You could just as easily pair NaOH with, say, HBr. The conjugate pairs in question are H3O+/H2O, H2O/OH-, HBr/Br-.

As another example, the conjugate acid of DMT freebase is the protonated DMT cation.

All-in-all, I find the term to be somewhat unhelpful and we should probably just forget about it. It's not even in the index of my inorg. chem. textbook, for instance although in Shriver, Atkins and Langford we get the useful definition of the Brønsted equilibrium:

I think I saw a similar take on fumaric's conjugate. The formula ended with O(-). Or was it water with the negative O? It's coming back to me... I think it was on NIST. After my last post to you, I stumbled across a link that led to NIST. God is that place cluttered. I got sucked in by a link professing to allow the user to interact with fumaric acid to see what happens when a given base is added (my search terms were trying to find a general rule for dealing with the multiple pKa's of polyprotic acids when predicting ph.) It's a nice screen if it would work. I spent hours trying to figure out any base it would allow me to pair with fumaric. But all I could pair it with was water:

Fumaric: Conjugates & Reactions

Let me know if you can get it to work. I'm leaving town tomorrow to visit my sis for a week...

I know you're right but I can't not fall for bait like that link. Hours wasted.

That kind of stuff confuses the hell outta me. I tend to come across a lot of chemistry course fragments. And profs can't seem to resist doing their best to confuse the students. I've seen multiple instances where an example is given that shows something you'd normally expect to be the acid winds up the base and visa-versa. But I've never seen anything like the above.

And then the course is over, the student scratches his head and goes home another $50K in debt.

Ah, the difference is I had chemistry books instead of friends when I was a kid.

Strong, aqueous, protic acids donate a proton to water molecules so the main body of the acid already exists as its conjugate base! The NIST thing only gives water as an option because that's the extent of the data they have.

Welcome

What did you mean by that btc remark?