Hi all.
So I have happened upon an unopened bag of Dmt that I had all but forgotten about, which I figure i have had in my possession for around 7 years. It's gone pink as I guess it's oxidised, tho is still completely sealed... My question is - is it still usable and/or would it have lost all potency like psilocybin does for example?
Thanks guys 🙏

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Gaffrilla!

I mean this in the most loving way...

Coming from a place of harm reduction, never take expired drugs of any kind. I am trying to save your life. All drugs expire, whether they are pharmaceuticals, psychedelics, herbal remedies, hard drugs, inhalanats, doesn't matter. How that drug changes over time is going to differ from drug to drug. One-year expired yerba mate tastes nasty, but it's not lethal. Two-year expired Lithium, on the other hand, will make you suicidal (not to mention you'll have peripheral neuropathy, as well) and you will jump. This I say from personal experience. I'm full of titanium. Thanks to surgeons, I walk around normally. I don't want your curiosity about the expired DMT to result in a negative outcome that is irreversible.

As a DMT Nexus member and fellow DMT enthusiast, I implore you to throw out any expired drug you have. DMT or anything else. I know we think of DMT as "special", but taking seven-year-old DMT is not worth the risk, especially when it's super easy (and fun!) to extract fresh DMT. Don't take any chances with expired drugs. I don't want anything bad to happen to you.

Through a basic Google search, I found this article by the Food and Drug Administration, titled Don't be Tempted to Use Expired Medicines. Please read it. You will find the information to be helpful, not to mention life-saving. Here is the link:

https://www.fda.gov/drug...ed-use-expired-medicines

When they say "expired medicines", they're talking about expired pharmaceuticals, of course, but since DMT is OUR medicine, the spirit of the information contained within that article applies to psychedelics, as well. There is a paucity of literature out there about what happens to you as a result of expired DMT or other expired drugs, because no research study is going to give expired drugs to participants to see what happens. Back then I was young, back then I didn't know that drugs expire, and back then I didn't read the label on a bottle of Lithium I had for awhile. I'm full of titanium for the rest of my life.

Not sure if this is satire... But no, DMT doesn't "expire". It may get partially oxidized but only partially! A simple recrystallization will get rid of the oxide but that is not really necessary because the oxide is not active anyways.

Not satire, just safety.

Lithium (at least as lithium carbonate) shouldn't expire either - what form did you take? It sounds more like you were suffering from chronic lithium poisoning.

DMT in a plastic bag might become contaminated with traces of plasticizers but that can be cleared up with a simple re-x as Dasein suggests, or mini A/B to be a bit more sure. The oxidation does not appear to form the N-oxide but rather leads to some degree of oligomerisation/polymerisation. Oxidation does not necessarily involve addition of oxygen - it can refer just as much to the removal of one or more electrons from a system.

What I believe to be true is that all drugs expire. However, I'm 100% open to the possibility that I am wrong about my theory. As a hypothetical, if I am wrong about my theory, what is it about DMT that makes it the exception to the rule? For example, does DMT have eternal life because of it's endogenicity in all living organisms?

This is actually a really interesting topic, but after my serious lapse of judgment taking expired Lithium, I'm never taking any kind of expired drug ever again. Even if you are right that DMT doesn't expire, I wouldn't be willing to take expired DMT when I can just make fresh DMT. Why take a chance?

I'm curious to hear more thoughts from more of you about why DMT would be the exception to the rule. It's ubiquitous endogenicity? The important role it plays in birth and death? That sounds plausible. Like I said, I'm 100% open to the possibility that I'm wrong. I might be wrong. Personally, I'd rather be wrong and safe, than curious and dead.

I'm sorry if this sounds too intense. It is intense. It was a very scary experience jumping off of an overpass. As a hypothetical, if DMT does expire, I doubt the effects of expired DMT are similar to the effects of expired Lithium. Those are 2 very different drugs. I just...don't want anything bad to happen to a fellow Nexian. Just in general.

You might be 100% right that DMT doesn't expire. But why not? What makes it the exception to the rule?

Hi df0

That day, I took Lithium salt in gel capsules. The medication was about 2 years old. I never read the label. Biggest mistake of my life. I threw away the bottle. I knew there was Lithium in there, and there was. Had I read the label, I would have seen that it expired a year ago. Any prescription drug that's NOT a controlled substance expires 1 year from the date the prescription is filled, as I learned several years later, in school. The label says Discard After. I'll never forgive myself for not reading.

To add some context, I stopped reading for about 20 years for anything other than school (from about age 12 to age 32). So, I never read the label. The fact that I stopped reading for 20 years - why I stopped reading - is painful to talk about. I stopped reading for a combination of reasons. It's very painful to talk about, and this is only one reason: I was in a treatment center for troubled teens, they took away my books (which were NOT drug books), and I escaped. I was their only successful runaway in the history of that place. Other people had attempted, but I was the only one who was successful. I did alot of drugs after escaping, and I wouldn't crack a book unless it was for school, and I was always high doing my homework. This is senior year of high school, I'm talking about.

Now, I'm 34, and I read and read and read. My reading is a little bit disorganized, and I have to be a little bit more organized about it, but at least I'm reading. I've gone back to being the heavy reader I was as a kid. I have a B.A. from a prestigious university, and 1 year of education beyond that. And, I'm looking for more education. And, of course, nobody is confiscating my books, at my age.

Why didnt you read books after scaping? Did you not have acces to them?
Im curious, did you never read that label for the same reason you never read a non school book in those 20 years?


Why not?

I had an abusive mother for 18 years.

Somewhere in THIKAL (I think it's not PHIKAL but not sure) Dr. Shulgin mentions that he kept samples of many of his creations. Rather than in the "dirty pictures" vials in his lab he kept some, well stored in a shoe box in a dark closet for 25 years. Some drugs aged better than others. Some did degrade. Some were as pure as on the day of storage.

Obviously, err on the side of caution.

There is a chat participant who also has pink DMT and swears it is awesome.

"Mystery School in Hyperspace" mentions Simon Posford, Raja Ram and others being initiated with part of a batch of pink DMT (probably synthesized).

And then there is my own experience. Some of my LSD is 35 years old. My MXE is 12 years old if it's a day. Same with my 2CB. My 5meo was poorly stored and degraded into a brown sludge. I discarded the 5meo and kept/have been using the others.

In general best storage conditions are amber vials/containers in a cool, dry, dark place.

Okay so.. while magic does exist, it's definitely and conclusively not at work in the shelf life of foods and medicines. It's chemistry, and with food, biology. Which means, it is knowable.

DMT is not a special case. It's a chemical with known characteristics, so we know exactly what happens to it in storage. It oxidizes. The oxide produced is less (and arguably unpleasantly) psychoactive, but not dangerous. Old DMT will not harm you, it might just fail to deliver the experience you were counting on.

So no need to sow fear from a high horse. You talk about 'this being the Nexus', well yes it is, please refrain from exhibiting too much condescension. This place is literally filled with expert organic chemists and pharmacologists, and driven amateur researchers. A question was posted about a specific thing. It has a specific answer.

That answer is: old DMT is safe, but there are TEKs to clean it and return it to its full glory if wanted.

A few words on the idea of 'expiry'.

Food does 'go bad', as in microbes start populating it, producing toxins and posing a potential infection risk. Even freeze dried food, such as mushrooms will start to degrade after a while, and as the complex proteins break down, they can produce toxins, and fats can go rancid, which is just bad news. A pure, non-protein chemical is typically quite different. Drugs do not 'expire,' they degrade. Either the ingredients react with each other, or they react with air.

Expiry is an artificial concept to decide when you can consider a certain substance to be 'the same' as its fresh state. In fact, with many medicines, the expiry date doesn't even mean it will be dangerous after, just that it might not have the full original efficacy. Also, expiry dates are typically determined with immense safety margins, accounting for all kinds of storage conditions, and there is arguably some capitalist logic embedded there as well.

In general of course it is safer to throw (long) expired drugs, but if you know what it is, how it degrades, and what the safety profile of that is, then there is no need to worry.

If you still have any chance of remembering, it would be quite helpful to know exactly which lithium salt you may have taken - carbonate? chloride, perhaps? Or maybe you don't know, because, as you say, you didn't read it (apart from the "lithium" bit, clearly).

The one thing I can possibly think of is that lithium carbonate may have absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to become the bicarbonate, affecting its bioavailability. If this meant that you absorbed more of it, it would help explain your apparent lithium overdose - besides the high likelihood of you not having followed the dosage instructions either. I hope this seems like a reasonable inference to you. This is the only mode of expiry I can imagine for any nominally (and radiologically) stable inorganic lithium salt.

And here's a very important bit about dosage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_(medication)#Monitoring

I've had a jar of DMT freebase for quite some time, which was originally pure white, but after a while, it turned pink, resembling the color of Himalayan salt.
I've tried to vape my pink DMT with emesh and it was indistinguishable from the DMT I've just extracted.
If I were you, I would re-crystallize (re-x) that DMT, because storing it in a plastic bag is not good due to the potential reaction with plastic.
I'd do re-x and save it in a seal glass jar.

So, Gaffrilla, you have heard alot of different perspectives here!

It's been awesome hearing other people's perspectives, because I have learned wonderful new things. Cheers to knowledge! As a DMT novice, I was/am unfamiliar with the DMT oxidation process, and I would very much like to learn more about it. What exactly is the definition of "oxidation"? After research, I'm still unsure I understand the process, in my own words. Something is being gained and something is being lost? An oxygen atom is being gained, and what is being lost? So, the chemical formula changes from C12H16N2 to what? I would love to learn more from all of you. I don't have as much experience with DMT as all of you do, but I would love to catch up, heehee.

I'm curious to hear what you eventually decided to do, Gaffrilla. Did you end up smoking it?