Working on being a full member. That questionnaire is long!

Let me know what you think or if anything could be improved!

INTRODUCTION

I recently posted the results of just the first pull using this tek on reddit, and there was a huge amount of interest in how I did it, so I decided to write my own adaptation. I hope this rendition is straightforward and easy to follow. I loosely followed a tek I got from another redditor; I have no idea where it originates, but several redditors insisted that this is based on a “spiritveghead” tek. It falls under the “straight to base” category.

SAFETY AND OTHER TIPS

- Do not get NaOH (lye/drain opener) on yourself. This includes the saturated water solution and root bark soup. This will cause a nasty chemical burn. If you do get it on yourself, use plain old white vinegar to neutralize the base.
- Make sure to use heat resistant glass for mixing your lye solution. Adding lye to water causes an exothermic reaction; it will spontaneously heat up. If you add the lye too fast and you’re not using heat resistant glass, the heat shock could cause the glass to shatter.
- Do not use heat at any point if you want the whitest of crystals. Heat will cause potentially unwanted plant matter to dissolve in the solvent (naphtha/heptane/hexane).
- Do not let any of the polar layer (water/lye/root bark) get in your precipitation vessel. You do not want any fibrous material in your spice. Extracting the nonpolar layer (solvent) from the top of the soup is best done with patience and delicacy.
- Do your best to not breathe solvent fumes. Work in a well-ventilated area. These solvents are not life threatening (unless you light them on fire) but breathing them is not great.
- Do not drop or otherwise break any glass containers involved. You will have a bad time.
- Splash goggles are a good idea when working with lye. An N95 mask is not a bad idea if you’re grinding root bark; that shit is dusty and it’s probably not great to breathe.
- Do not use aluminum gear in any step of this process (except for the foil covering on precipitation vessel). Stainless steel, glass, or ceramic are all good to go.
- Feel free to halve this recipe. Then you can use a quart and half gallon jar instead.

BASIC LAB SUPPLIES (purchase links after tek)

1. A stainless steel whisk. Daddy. (choose the best size for your root bark soup vessel)
2. A scale that measures in grams. The higher precision the better, but it must be able to tolerate your bowl plus 200g.
3. A bowl to mass the lye (stainless steel or ceramic – no aluminum!)
4. A half gallon mason jar (mason jars are heat treated so they can withstand the heat).
5. A gallon mason jar (I used a Fido jar – since the soup will be room temp by the time you use it, heat resistance doesn’t really matter).
6. A 1L (or 2L) measuring cup that shows decileters (a decileter is 100 mL). I used a borosilicate glass model. Doesn’t much matter because you’ll just be measuring water with this.
7. A glass baking dish. I used a 9x9 (8x8..?) pyrex baking dish. A flat bottom will help with scraping. I’m not sure pyrex is necessary, but it can’t hurt. It just needs to be able to easily contain your solvent volume and be able to go in the freezer.
8. A glass turkey baster
9. Aluminum foil for covering freeze precipitation vessel
10. A razor blade for scraping spice
11. A spoon for…spooning…lye

OPTIONAL LAB SUPPLIES THAT I PERSONALLY USED (purchase links after tek)

1. A spice grinder for shredding/powdering root bark. Not necessary if you’re starting with shredded/powdered root bark. Use the 4 blade cup instead of 2 blade if available.
2. A stainless steel funnel for getting the lye into your lye mixing vessel.
3. An infrared thermometer gun to ensure your lye solution is cool enough to proceed.
4. A 2L pyrex Erlenmeyer flask for mixing lye solution. Not exactly necessary, but it is really nice and then you don’t have to worry about heat shock. This would be instead of the half gallon mason jar.
5. A magnetic stir plate and stir magnet. Also not exactly necessary, but it’s really slick for mixing your lye solution.
6. A smaller glass pipette. This will help you get the most nonpolar (solvent) layer into your precipitation vessel without getting any root bark soup in there.

THE INGREDIENTS (purchase links after tek)

1. 200 g mimosa hostilis root bark.
2. 100 g NaOH (lye/drain opener)
3. 300 mL naphtha (I’m sure heptane or hexane would work too)
4. 1500 mL water (I used brita filtered tap water)

THE TEK

1. Measure 1500 mL water and add it to your half gallon mason jar (or 2L Erlenmeyer)
2. Add lye slowly to water. Don’t let the lye stick to the bottom and stir until all 200g of lye is dissolves in the water. Be careful not to add too fast, because it will heat up. You do not want your glass to break from heat shock. This is where the pyrex Erlenmeyer and magnetic stir plate are really nice. You can stir with the whisk if you do not have a stir plate. Just be sure not to splash on yourself, and clean the spoon thoroughly afterwards.
3. Allow lye water to cool to room temp. If you have an infrared temperature gun, wait until it reads 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. While the lye water is cooling, use the spice grinder to grind up 200 g of mimosa hostilis root bark. Just go until the spice grinder won’t grind any further; a combo of shreds and powder is fine. Obviously you can skip this step if you’re starting with powdered.
5. Add the ground root bark to the gallon jar. I made a funnel out of a piece of computer paper to do this without spilling much.
6. Pour your lye solution into the jar with the root bark. Stir it well with your whisk. Good time to use splash goggles. Give it about 10 minutes for the bark to react with the lye.
7. Use the measuring cup to measure 300 mL room temp naphtha (or chosen solvent). Pour it into the gallon jar with the root bark and lye water.
8. WHISK, DADDY, WHISK! But not too hard. But hard enough. You do not want it to emulsify. You just want it to homogenize enough to maximize surface area contact between the polar layer and nonpolar layer. I whisked for about 20 sec each time. IF YOU DO ACCIDENTALLY EMULSIFY you can add some NaCl (plain old salt) to make the polar layer more polar, which will encourage separation.
9. Repeat the whisking every so often over 24 hr. 4 times would probably be enough, but I don’t think you can really overdo it. I just casually watched the jar and whisked every time I noticed complete separation.
10. After 24 hr of whisking on and off and the layers have completely separated, use your glass turkey baster to remove the top layer (nonpolar/solvent) and transfer it to your precipitation vessel.
a. MAKE SURE TO GET NONE of the polar (root bark soup) layer in the precipitation vessel. If you see dark brown particles go up into the turkey baster, expel it back into the gallon jar, wait for it to settle, and try again.
b. This is where the smaller glass pipette comes in handy. A turkey baster is only capable of being so precise. Once you’ve gotten as much as you can with the turkey baster, switch to the smaller pipette. You will be able to go more slowly and precisely, and you will be able to remove more nonpolar (solvent) layer without getting any of the polar (root bark soup) layer mixed in.
c. If you *really* want to go for the gold, after you’ve maxed out the precision of the smaller pipette, use the turkey baster to transfer ALL the nonpolar (solvent) layer into a narrow glass, not worrying about mixing in root bark soup. Then let that settle, and you will have a larger vertical span of nonpolar layer to work with, and you can pipette even more into your precipitation vessel before you encounter accidental mixing in of root bark soup. Again, DO NOT GET ROOT BARK SOUP IN YOUR PRECIPITATION VESSEL.
11. After you’ve gotten as much nonpolar (solvent) layer into your precipitation vessel without getting any dark particulates in there, cover it with aluminum foil and put it in the freezer.
12. After 24 hr, remove your precipitation vessel from the freezer. Remove the foil. You should see delectable crystals stuck to the bottom. Pour the solvent back into your gallon root bark soup jar. It’s ok if a few suspended crystals get poured off; they’ll still be there if you decide to pull again.
13. Allow the crystals to dry completely for several hours. Not a bad idea to prop the precipitation vessel upside down ish leaning against something to let gravity aid the drying. You’ll be able to tell visually when they’re dry. Make sure you do this in a well-ventilated area.
14. Once dry, use a razor blade to scrape up the crystals, and transfer the powder to a glass jar. Try not to touch them with your fingers; not a bad idea to use disposable gloves here. I store my spice in half cup mason jars and line the lids with circles of PTFE to ensure the crystals have nothing to react with, maximizing shelf life.
15. If you think you haven’t extracted all the DMT from the root bark soup, feel free to try repeating the entire tek from step 8 up to 2 more times.

Hi, nice to see you back here again, Slew! Hope the last 5 years have treated you well enough.

Your method looks like it has a lot of the helpful nuances added. What sort of yields have you been getting with it? And did you get any nice pictures of crystals for us?

One thing I would suggest is obtaining one of those Pyrex dishes that has a clip-on lid with a silicone seal. This will help stop naphtha fumes from permeating your freezer, and also minimises the amount of water vapour that might find its way into the freeze precipitation if you happen to live somewhere very humid.

24 hours seems like a long time for the pulls. I've seen excellent results (>2%) with pulls that took no more than half an hour. But a flat 'potato masher' type whisk can be quite handy for mashing solvent through the paste of a drytek.

This was a nicely laid-out post. We do have a few threads with tips on getting promoted - they can be found in at least one part of the new members' area. And positive engagement is one of the key elements in getting full membership. This can also be achieved via the Chat function - although you may have to be patient sometimes as it isn't always busy.

You've made a real effort with the questionnaire, too... (Pendell references always win Brownie points from me, I love the Pharmaco* series )

If there's more you'd like to share about the experiences with psychedelics/entheogens that you've had, and/or what brought you to them in the first place, how they've affected your life, why or whether you continue to use them - all that kind of stuff - we'd be very interested to hear.

And if there are any other threads that interest you but area in an area where you don't yet have posting rights, just start your own thread with a title along the lines of "RE: [title of thread you'd like to post in]" (without the square brackets, of course) and we'll take it from there.

So, stick around and you'll very likely get the promotion you've been hoping for.

I think you have done a nice job of writing the tek up, it’s easy to read and would be simple enough to follow. Only problem is that I am not sure it brings anything new to the table. Essentially it’s just a fairly standard STB that uses a whisk rather than a spoon / stick or whatever else people tend to stir with. I have actually used a bent stainless welding rod before.

Now this isn’t to say that nobody would find your instructions useful. As I said it reads well and would be simple to follow. As this is just a standard tek that would probably be of more interest to a novice I would suggest advising them to wear gloves as a safety precaution. Possibly include some advice on neutralising lye if it were to get on your skin. One last idea would be the suggestion to put the extraction vessel in a plastic washing up bowl. Then if it cracks or they do something stupid it won’t spill caustic soup everywhere.

Another thing that might be nice for a novice is a simple explanation about what is going on. You could put a couple of paragraphs explaining that the DMT is in a water soluble salt form whilst in the bark and that by adding the lye you are freebasing it whilst simultaneously breaking down the cell wall to lyse the bark. Then explain that once it is freebased it is no longer water soluble but will dissolve into your solvent. It doesn’t have to go into great depth but would give the novice a rough idea of what they are actually doing. I have noticed that a lot of the simple teks fail to explain any theory which is a shame as it is quite valuable information.

There is also one mistake I spotted. You say that the tek requires 100g lye in the ingredients list and then say to add 200g to the water. Obviously one of these is wrong. 100g would probably be the safest.

The users of the nexus website tend to be quite knowledgeable compared to Reddit so don’t be surprised if this doesn’t get a lot of traction. Generally if people know what a STB is they are already capable of performing one without any instructions. I hope none of what I said sounds condescending. I think it is nice that you took the time to write this all up and hopefully it will be useful to someone just starting out on their journey.

i think a whisk is probably a worse idea than a spoon. would this not encourage emulsion?