Hey Nexus members.

I'm currently neck deep in a very tiresome, long, and possibly failing Bufotenine extraction. I'm here to enlighten my dilettantish mind, enrich an unprovoked understanding of mind-expanding psychedelics, and learn from those educated beings that bare forth into unknown water. I hope to explore there too. But in the present situation, I'm very wrapped around this extraction. I followed Noman's TEK accordingly. (It's the one he posted in a well known thread about 5-HO.) I took a concentrated, filtered solution of IPA and vinegar water containing the alkaloids, and brought it down. I added large amounts of sodium carbonate until it took a 'sand-like' clustered profile. Stirred it for a while and let it sit. The mixture doesn't smell much at all. I can associate a small 'fishy' smell but that's it.
When does freebasing occur?
I stirred the solution a LOT to break it up. Maybe during this period? Afterwards I smelled it but it only had a vague smell of fish and latex. Nothing strong. Could it be possible it was bicarbonate? I'm curious about this. I know that failure is common when you're first going at an extraction. I've probably been smelling too much vinegar and Isopropyl alcohol and I've become delusional.

Would it be safe to nuke dry? Like periodically then cooling it down.
[update: This seemed pretty safe. Nothing bad happened, the Bufotenine didn't vaporize!]
The freebase melts at around 300 Fahrenheit. To be safe, I'd throw it in for a minute, cool it, and repeat. [update: only once dried it pretty thoroughly]
From there, I'm going to powder it and dissolve it in some 100% Acetone I got for that purpose. I'll see what that yields. The defat / filtrations seemed to pull a TON of the precipitated junk. My final juice was clear bright yellow under light...

I'll update with more pics and news if I break through. Thanks everyone.


UPDATE: unfortunately the acetone evaporated yielded a little under 40mg of sticky black tar. Horrible yeild. I'm keen on trying a salt TEK so I can precipitate the Bufotenine straight out of the solution instead of spending many hours evaporating. Anybody reading this who plans on doing any sort of extraction whatsoever– patience is the key to success!!