Hey there Nexus community! This is my first post. Gonna do my best to be appreciative without getting too sappy.
As a teen I started experimenting with various psychedelics and phenethlyamines and had some strong experiences that took a while to digest and integrate. After a lot of reading and question asking, I decided to hop back on the horse, in my mid 20’s. I started intentionally using LSD and a few phenethylamines in an entheogenic context, or in combination with music that evokes spiritual or cosmic feelings for me, or with meditation. Other times just for fun. Through grace and honest self reflection, I’ve found that entheogens are an important part of my spiritual life and help me significantly to connect with Source. They give me that extra little push that, when combined with a practice or sincere intention, takes me “over the threshold” and into that connected heart space.

I turned 30 this year. Between now and then I’ve had a couple opportunities to experiment with spice and was deeply pleased. My first experience, I remember calling out that I felt as though I was “vibrating with love.”

A close friend of mine let me know that extraction wasn’t so complicated. I went looking and found this beautiful community. I want expressed my sincere gratitude to the community as a whole, for maintaining such wholesome values and detailed information surrounding this medicine. I would also like to thank Noman, Cybs, and all of the helpful individuals who have commented on and improved upon their teks with their own experiences and input. THANK YOU!!!
I am deeply grateful to posses the knowledge of safely procuring spice, thanks to you all <3

To give back just a little, here’s what I learned after two STB extractions:
Using 50g bark and 750ml water, I found 20ml of naphtha ideal for saturation and ease of pippetting off the top.
I found that letting the bark and basic solution sit for 24 hours (or more), before pulling with naphtha, shaking whenever convenient, dramatically increased the yield.
I found that letting the naphtha sit with the basic solution longer than an hour helped significantly with saturation and in turn made freeze precipitation easier. I found jars impossible to scrape and used Pyrex for the second extraction - USE PYREX!
Lastly, on the second extraction, I included 50g rock salt in addition to 50g lye. The second extraction had lots of improvements mechanically, but I believe this also helped increase yield.

I reused my naphtha for successive pulls on the same batch of bark to help saturation and reduce waste.
Lastly, I found that running a fan on low about 6 feet from my Pyrex for about an hour and a half (give or take) after pouring off the naphtha was ideal for evaporating any residual solvent without oxidizing the result.

Thank you all again and have a great day <3