Hows about this for a tech?

Well... basically, do an ayahuasca approach, where we drink the liquids... except that we are going to first put in NaOH to break down the tree-bark. After it is broken down, we add some acid (perhaps HCl conc) to neutralise.

NaOH + HCl = salt-water... so in theory that shouldn't be dangerous.

Imbalances would be dangerous, of course. We'd need something else to mop up any imbalance, perhaps sodium-bicarb?

Then basically treat it as a salty-ayahuasca mix. So we would prepare ourself with harmala, then drink the "ayahuasca".

I have a feeling that this idea is going to be awful and probably highly regrettable Anyone wanna tell me why this is a bad idea?

Please no one take this seriously enough to try it. I know nothing about chemistry... well not enough. At least I know that I don't know.

I'm assuming someone has done this before. The idea seems too simple to not have come up.

In theory this should increase the DMT availability greatly, relative to normal ayahuasca.

Main concern I would have, is contams in the NaOH and in the HCl. No idea how pure they are. Also possible "harmful chemicals" generated by contact with NaOH and tree-bark... these would probably be highly unpleasant perhaps poisonous.

Thinking more about this... a basic batch of aya would only need 2-4g of MHRB, is that right?

So really... the amount of NaOH and HCl needed, would be very small! Also... drinking contams (yuck) is less bad than smoking them, for sure.

Just an idea. I don't know what kinda contams can be found in NaOH or HCl anyhow. I'm assuming nothing particularly nasty? What I mean is, if my NaOH is 99.9% pure, what is the other 0.1%? Hopefully nothing too bad.

I'm wondering about mixing the result with activated charcoal. (AC)

This could soak up contams. But would it soak up DMT too?

AC is really good at depoisoning people... somehow. Very effective.

For oral consumption you don't need to base the bark. A traditional water extraction is efficient.

Also, are your NaOH/HCl food grade? They are hard to neutralize, not a lot of room for error. A gentler acid like food grade citric acid in excess over NaOH would be safer.

However, I don't see any upsides and only risks to this idea. I would not do it.

Yes I agree.

I agree the whole thing seems like a bad idea. But this is more of a thought experiment. WHY is it a bad idea? What risk specifically do you see happening?

Theres a lot to learn in "Why NOT to do this particular dangerous thing"... rather than a simple "just don't do it, but we don't know why".

This is why ChubbyEmu videos are so interesting to people. Informs about a lot more than the "bad event"... You can learn useful things from knowing WHY exactly not to do something.

For proper hydrolysis of bark you would need quite a lot of NaOH, and after neutralizing with HCL acid, would have a lot of salt in the mix. Ingesting huge amount of table salt together with quite irritating liquid could be very unpleasant.
Probably better would be to neutralise sodium hydroxide with ascorbic acid to produce sodium ascorbate.
Imo best is to use NaOH during proper extraction of alkaloids.

Risks I can think of:

- Not enough HCl, damage to esophagus.
- Too much HCl, damage to esophagus.
- Metal contamination/poisoning if NaOH or HCl is not food grade (they are usually not).
- Dehydration and irritation from excess NaCl.

The 'overly simple' title is misleading - the whole idea is way more complicated than just sticking the plant matter in a pot and boiling it up with plain water :S

And definitely don't drink a load of salty water if vomiting isn't your thing - of course, this is debatable since it's ayahuasca we're talking about.

I agree... contams seem like a real danger.

I really think though... its possible that the by-products of (NaOH + bark) could be unpleasant in themselves?

Simply put... my instincts tell me its a bad idea, but my mind can't identify any REAL dangers. Thats why I raised the question in first place.

So I'm guessing the only "Holes" (as in dangers I can't rule out) are contams+by-products. I mean, drinking a black nasty-looking sludge can't be good for you, right?

I guess I'll stick to the freezing method. Maybe acid+Freezing.

Honestly it might be safer and way easier to just consume the plant matter directly like this sandwich method:

https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Ayahuasca_sandwich

(not endorsing this, but it seems safer than possibly consuming HCL or NaOH)