anybody ever used it as an ayahuasca analog or extracted it? Seems to be loads around SWIM, he was wondering if it was of any interest

Only reference to anybody extracting it that I've seen is in Jim DeKorne's 'Psychedelic Shamanism' book. He claimed the extract caused an allergic reaction that lasted a couple of days. I think he used it as an admixture, not smoked.

The allergic reaction was probably caused by gramine?

I would extract and smoke it first before dosing orally...Gramine apparently wont be active if you smoke it. I am experimenting with phalaris arundinacea this way, but have yet to dose it orally, too many negative reports..

is there any info on separating gramine from the rest? i remember reading an a/b wont do, but maybe it has a lower boiling point so one could remove it by heating in heat plate? or maybe it is less soluble in some particular solvent and then one could separate it.. ?

The XlogP of gramine is 1.8. The XlogP of DMT is 2.0. So you should be able to separate them with the right solvent. You’d want to use the most non-polar solvent possible that DMT is barely soluble in at room temperature but highly soluble when melted. Something like n-heptane might work, but a more non-polar solvent would be a better candidate.

Another option is column chromatography on silica using MEK as the solvent. DMT should elute first, followed by gramine.

Gramine has a melting point of 138-139 C which is much higher than the boiling point of DMT (60-80 C). So it’s possible to distill the DMT to separate it from the gramine. Distilling alkaloids is not that simple though, if not done right it will all vaporize away or just burn.

good info ron!

so with a controlled hot plate one could safely vaporize dmt without getting any gramine

what about instabilities of gramine? Can it be reacted (oxidized, whatever) into a safe by-product in a reaction that wouldnt hurt dmt (or possible bufotenine and 5-meo that might be present in arundo donax)?

the encyclopedia of psychoactive plants from raetsch says about A. donax:

'The rhizome contains at least five tryptamines: N,N-DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, bufotenine, dehydrobufotenine and bufotenidine'

is anything known about these last two?

Bump of this topic, this plant may lead to some interest, does somebody experienced around it in past years ?

Cheers

I think think this plant might be a dead end, though id love to be proven wrong. Since this thread was made years back I researched more and found out the amount of DMT was minimal (like youd have to extract a kg rhizomes for a single dose), and that was only in plants in india, because Arundo in other places like USA it was not found to have DMT. Also the alk profile was not clean, so youd have to clean it up, and need to analyse to confirm. You can find more references to what I just mentioned in Trouts Notes.

Unfortunately I have to agree with you. From what I have gathered from my research on the Giant Reed (Arundo Donax) I have concluded that this particular plant is not ideal for the extraction of tryptamine compounds, specifically those that are of interest on this forum. If interested in similar types of plants containing N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, 5-Methoxy-N,N-Dimethyltryptamine and other tryptamine compounds, I would recommend the Common Reed (Phragmites Australis), Reed Canary Grass (Phalaris Arundinacea), Shortspike Canary Grass (Phalaris Brachystachys), Harding Grass (Phalaris Aquatica) and possibly even Canary Grass (Phalaris Canariensis), a plant that has some documentation pertaining to tryptamine compounds but not nearly as much data has been collected compared to the plants listed before. All of these plants require a lot more research pertaining to the compounds of interest around here.