Hai Nexians,

SWIM sees the law is getting more and more careless about human rights and individual freedom all around the world.
He feels it's likely a time will come when ordering MHRB or other Entheogenic plantmaterial will become prohibited and harshly persecuted.
Online Entheogenic shops may be further restricted or even completely shut down. It may become harder or impossible to obtain solvents as easy as now.

SWIM thinks it is time we all start finding ways to make the use for buying solvents and chemicals obsolete.
He thinks people should try to replace all solvents used to extract spice, mescaline, psilocybin, bufotenin and similair alkaloids, with readily available,
organic solvents, bases and acids. In this Topic SWIM wants to make a list of these organic replacement chemicals.

Personally SWIM intends to migrate to a (sub)tropical piece of somewhat isolated land, surrounded by an abundance of nature.
There he wishes to build a Self sustaining House + small fruit&vegetable farm and an Entheogenic garden with Mimosa Hostilis trees,
A.Colubrina trees, Cacti, Fungi and similair vegetation. Living in a remote area SWIM wants to continue being able to extract
essential eEntheogenic alkaloids so SWIM needs to be able to produce all needed chemicals himself.


SWIM was pleased to read about d-limonene, which appearantly can easily be destilled out of Orange peels and can extract Mescaline from cacti.
What else can D-limonene extract? Are there other Organic solvents (with the ability to dissolve entheogenic alkaloids) that can be relatively
easily obtained from other plants?


Most often Lye(Natrium Hydroxide) is used to basify solutions. What could be a good natural replacement for Lye?
SWIM's read of South American shamans crushing snail shells to a fine powder and mixing it through pulverised Yopo seeds to make snuff.
Appearantly snailshells(Calcium of some sort) are a strong base. Would these be strong enough a Base to perform a STB extraction
of DMT from MHRB with? Could they be strong enough a Base to be helpfull in the extraction of various other Entheogenic Alkaloids?
What other strong Bases can be obtained from organic sources?

Acid solutions are quite common in the extraction of many alkaloids. What could be used to replace dangerous & expensive acids?
Vinegar and Citric Acid are readily available Acids.
Perhaps there are other, stronger organic acids from other, readily available organic sources?


For now that's all SWIM can think of. If any of you know more organic solvents, bases or acids from natural sources like d-limonene, post it here.

Snailshells are not a strong base, they contain calcium carbonate. The indigenous people burn these for hours, which decarboxylates calcium carbonate to calcium oxide. Mixing calcium oxide with water makes the calcium hydroxide that is used in yopo snuffs. All that is to say that no, you cannot get a lye substitute from snail shells. You may be aable to get enough for a drytek though.

If you want a strong base for STBs, NaOH is what you need, and the best alternative is potash, which contains both sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide among other things. Potash comes from the washing of wood ashes, check how the soapmakers of the past used to make the strong bases.

Potash

u'd be lucky if you can get the pH to 12.
i'm all for green chem, but this is a reason i'm not a fan of hippy teks.
they're just not as effective.

want effective self-sustaining chems? first get over the fear of chemicals. instead, inform yourself and get resourceful; sulfuric acid from car battery refills, bleach, alcohols, salts..you can kind of see where i'm going with this. obviously, there's no such thing as a 'safe' strong acid or strong base. you just have to accept that, and learn how to handle them properly.

you can only do so much with plant oils, lemon juice, and oyster shells.

however, I will say this: by applying rigorous physical methods, you can get away with using weaker acids and bases, and extract with patchouli oil if you want.

i gotta say, i think the opposite is true. i think that freedoms are being increased, and there is no way that these plants will become prohibited. same with solvents. have you been to the home cheepo lately?-prob better off if not

in a former life, i made a batch of ethyl ester biodiesel from:

ethanol: derived from sweet sorghum that i planted, harvested, extracted sugar, fermented, built a still, and distilled to 190 proof, then dehydrated to 99%.

vegetable oil: planted acres of sunflower, harvested seeds, pressed oil using a screwpress.

potash: ran water thru hardwood ashes left over from maple syrup production. dried, had my doubts, but the potassium carbonate was strong enough to force separation--it did take much longer than with KOH, however.

in the end, i was very happy with my hippie fuel. i was able to run the tractor on the farm-produced fuel for the next planting, --closing the loop so to speak, and proving we were able to produce (from scratch) a fossil fuel substitute.



I do like the idea of a sustainable subtropical paradise! who wouldn't?




how about a high-tech hippie solar powered electrolysis set up utilizing a salt water solution. capture the hydrogen for cooking (or welding) fuel, condense the chlorine, and collect the NaOH? im not entirely sure what this would look like yet.!>

sounds awesome

I just have a disdain for people who are blatantly ignorant when it comes to chemicals; they seem to not even want to learn about them.
developing alternative methods to produce fuels and other chemicals, which seems like what you're up to, is an excellent idea. I especially like the idea of using microbes and enzymatic catalysis to generate energy and drive reactions.

but when people misguidedly claim "blah blah blah comes from fossil fuels", well, we in the lab do not combust them; and guess where fossil fuels come from? the earth! xylene is actually considered a green chemical! benzene was originally derived from the word gum benzoin, a compound isolated from the resin of an asian tree.
most hydrocarbons are natural, formed from the decomposition of organic matter under heat and pressure over time. that's what blows my mind, is that granola-types seem to have forgotten this fundamental knowledge from gradeschool; I guess smoking too much pot will do that.

Yes benz but while hydrocarbons can be found naturally, the extraction process has its extreme downsides. When you are buying distilled petrochemicals for extractions, maybe you are not burning them but C02 is not the main problem IMO. Personally if I buy a petrochemical I feel that in part I am responsible for oil spills because these are inherent risks to the extraction of oil from the earth. Im not extremist or naive, I know that we will always have some impact on earth, but I think its very reasonable to try to reduce it as much as possible and using chemicals that have less risky/unsustainable extraction/synthesis. Sustainability is definitely the way to go (for me at least).

But if someone does use petrochemicals, then hopefully they are freeze precip or salting out to reuse the solvent and be less impactful

And this has nothing to do with smoking pot or being a silly hippie

do you own an electric car, recharged by solar power? if not, you're inevitably responsible for oil spills regardless. a relatively small portion of oil refining is reserved for laboratory chemicals. if i had my way, that's all petrochemicals would be used for. you know how much less volume of crude oil that would be?

btw... while CO2 is a greenhouse gas, CH4 causes 200X more of the greenhouse effect than CO2.
natural gas is not very eco-friendly either.
something to snack on

Its not the pot, its the silly human nature that is afraid of "big names", "Books without pictures" and "the unknown". Want someone to suffer from scurvy? Give him the Vitamin C IUPAC name and tell him/her that this stuff is in oranges and lemons OMG LOL!!!!1one!!. "I mean, the name has got numbers and dashes in it and its big, its got to be bad for you!"

People tend to follow trends, people tend to be easily misguided. Actually those people are the source of wealth for other people that have mastered the low-art of turning human foolishness/ignorance into "dollah".

People usually will learn about a matter if they find it of immediate concern to them. Same about psychoactive substances really, the same rules govern the behavior of people. Think of how many people in this forum could gladly be "anti-drug" if they were never interested in psychoactives themselves.Scary eh?

No I dont own a car, I can thankfully go on my bicycle to 99% of the places I go to where I live, and when I dont, I use public transport which is obviously more sustainable than private transport.

As I said, I know that we have an impact just from being alive but this to me is no excuse to not trying diminishing as much as possible that impact. The opposite argument would be: Well if we're anyways screwing the earth, why not throwing your garbage out the window, batteries or toxic things in nature, leaving all lights on forever, driving an SUV even if its just drive one block, etc? Obviously gotta find a balance, dont you think? No need to be cynical/selfish and neither naive/self-contradicting.

And yes I know methane is by weight more damaging (hence one more of the many reasons why I dont eat meat either ), but C02 emissions far outweight the impact overal because methane release is smaller.. If im not mistaken it was responsible for 25%, while C02 was over 50?

As for natural gas, same exact thing, I know there are several not very eco-friendly products/energy sources, hence why I believe in not-naively diminishing as much as possible, saving on electricity, not buying unnecessary things, supporting local commerce, choosing renewable energy sources when possible, etc..

So I think the idea of this thread excellent, and I dont think you need to equate these attempts as stupid hippie fads or something of the sort. You know there are people here who are pretty reasonable even if they use words such as "sustainability" and post in this part of the forum, yes?

if you call a fear of strong bases such as lye and and strong acids such as muriatic reasonable, then no.

if it helps you guys sleep at night, then by all means; do what you do. just don't be surprised
if some teks fail.
seeing as many threads on the matter as there is, it shouldn't come as a surprise anyway.

Can you please quote a single time where I ever expressed fear of lye or acids, in this thread or otherwise, or quote where was this fear expressed in this thread? Or maybe you are arguing with a biased image you have of people and jumping into conclusions without looking case by case ?

This thread is about being self-sustainable, finding ways that one can make the bases and chemicals him/herself or easy to find sources in general. I think its very reasonable and it does not imply an irrational fear of chemicals.

Regarding tek fails, yes, thats how human evolution goes, people try new things, some fail, some go right, and then it advances. If someone uses 2kgs of mimosa for a new experiment, that would be pretty stupid, but I dont see how you would find an issue in people experimenting with new methods and sustainable (and self-sustainable) chemicals.



Now back to the thread:



D limonene cannot really be 'easily distilled from orange peels'. The distillation itself isnt the problem, the problem is quantity necessary. Yuo need 200kgs of orange peels for around 1L of limonene! So I dont know how viable this is for a home extractor and their couple of orange trees

Maybe other vegetable oils in general would work for extractions though. Would be worth a try, with basically any vegetable oil, then salting out and freebasing..

I didn't say this thread particularly, but the forum is littered with such threads, do a search;
and yes, failing is part of the learning process.
did I target you specifically? i didn't even realize i did. you seem to take it personal, when you hadn't even posted anything before my initial post.

the OP was asking for safe alternatives to strong bases like lye and strong acids.
I replied that there are none. strong acids and strong bases aren't hazard-less.

perhaps I am assuming a bit, but it seems 69ron started a whole trend of lyephobia

Well you are posting in this thread in particular. I said that people can also be reasonable and not necessarily naive about sustainability (for example this thread imo), to which you responded that fear of lye is unreasonable, which I feel has no relation to this thread at all, hence what I said. I understand where you are coming from, though.

Im not being offended or taking it personal in a negative way, just having a good ol' argument here I appreciate your perspective on issues and your down-to-earth view, Im just offering my take that you dont necessarily have to fall to the other extreme and think that all of these attempts are unreasonable or naive. No harm intended, sorry I came across as confrontational

ok..

that is where the miscommunication occurred.
self-sustainability is awesome, I encourage it by all means.
I thought SKA was trying to substitute lye with a weaker base, and responded to that
linking Potash, and the subsequent rant; I apologize for stirring the pot.
Doing STB extractions with weak bases will just make a mess,
which is why I also suggested implementing physical methods to break cell walls so that a weak base may then be used, (though I'm not sure how effective carbonate bases will be)
there are multiple ways to skin a cat

Fuego's idea of using cellulase is also neat, if you're patient enough.

Yes indeed STB with weak bases doesnt seem like the way to go. But I have a question to SKA: Why STB? I mean, its easy enough to do an A/B and this way you could use a weaker base (or a dry tek and use CaOH... ). Or is there some special reason for not doing an A/B?

The gras would be an easier matrix to extract from. Perhaps one wouldnt need a strong base. Wait and see if such teks become available. Also, you wouldnt need to plant and grow mimosa and wait all THAT time.

If self-sustainability is the only goal, then perhaps adapt to psychedelics that require chems like water and compost.
Otherwise, keep thinking and experimenting : )

the grasses are indeed the best model for self-sustainability; this is the area I have actively advocated.
and you bring up a wonderful point, I don't know how anyone could consider self-sustainability
while considering MHRB. It is certainly not a practical source in terms of renewability, similar to peyote as a source of mescaline. It takes at least a decade for maturity.
This is why research into grasses with excellent INMT expression is a great idea.

Now that is most valuable information. I would like more of such information to fill this topic with.
You say Hydrogen, Chlorine and NaOh can be seperately yielded by performing electrolysis on a salt water solution?

@ the people here who mistakenly presume I am prejudiced towards "Chemicals";
I'm not affraid of chemicals, I just don't have access to many(IPA, Ethanol, Xylene to name a few) as readily as many of you appearantly do.
Also I like the idea of being able to produce my own, rather than spending money on buying them everytime.


PS: I didn't mean just STB extractions. I'd be fine with A/B extractions too. Or any way of extracting blissfull alkaloids with solvents and chems
derrived from readily available, natural sources (by low-tech means with relative ease).

Can I make on request that the term organic not be used to refer to solvents that are considered more 'green' or natural? Organic solvent typically refers to any solvent that's based on an organic molecule containing carbon like methanol or hexane. This is just to avoid confusion on terminology.

I second that idea

the term "organic" doesn't have the same connotation with chemicals as it does with
foods, which brings me to another term to nitpick..."food-safe".
I don't exactly know why people are so hellbent on using "food-safe" chemicals; they're not making salad dressing. drugs are not food.
with proper separation (evaporation) of the solvent from the solute, which should be done anyway, 'food-safe' becomes a moot point.
I understand if it's a personal preference, but if it's for the misguided view that it's a
"safer" practice, it probably means the practitioner is not confident in his/her ability to perform extraction chemistry.

food-safe acetone

SKA, I apologize for the assumptions I made. I'd be happy to assist you in other ideas for self-sustainability.