SWIM has been attempting to extract mescaline for many years, mostly from Trichocereus pachanoi (San Pedro), but also Trichocereus bridgesii (achuma) and Trichocereus peruvianus (Peruvian Torch). He’s tried pretty much every tech out there and has always netted less than 0.08% mescaline (dry weight), which is a horrible yield, considering some are stating contents of up to 5% in San Pedro.

Either all of the cacti SWIM has extracted has been weak or SWIM is doing something wrong in all his extractions.

One thing I’ve heard is that during the freebase state, you can keep pulling and pulling more and more mescaline out of the aqueous phase. I’ve also heard the same is true when salting. SWIM usually performs these steps rather quickly and does up to 4 pulls and 4 saltings.

I’m wondering if mescaline is very slow to form freebase and very slow to form a salt? Bufotenine, LSA, and DMT seem to freebase or form salts really fast. But I know some chemicals require far more time to freebase or form salts, some a few hours, some even require days to complete. If mescaline is one of the slower acting chemicals, that could explain why SWIM’s yields have been so small.

An example of this is calcium hydroxide. It takes 24 hours for calcium hydroxide to fully react with a lot of substances. Just to fully dissolve in water it takes 24 hours. It’s reactions tend to be very slow. Freebasing DMT with calcium hydroxide takes several hours, with 24 hours being best. But you can freebase DMT with ammonium hydroxide in just a few seconds in most cases.

Is mescaline a very slowly reacting substance? Does it freebase in a few seconds like most alkaloids or does it take many hours to freebase it (or salt it)?

you know this may be the reason SWIM has had such horrible luck converting bufotenine fumarate back into freebase with calcium hydroxide...SWIM never knew it took longer to freebase..he maybe able to salvage those extractions after all!! thanks for that piece of info 69ron

Once SWIM used calcium hydroxide to freebase bufotenine in an A/B extraction. SWIM kept adding more and more calcium hydroxide. Every time he’d add the calcium hydroxide, the pH would climb to pH 9.5 (which was SWIM’s pH goal) and then slowly fall back down as it slowly started reacting with the other chemicals in the extraction. SWIM kept adding more and kept seeing the same thing happen. After several hours of doing this, it still never got to 9.5 and stayed there. So SWIM immediately switched over to using sodium carbonate. That got the solution to pH 9.5 and kept it there rather quickly.

If mescaline is slow to react like calcium hydroxide is, then during the A/B extracting steps, you’d get much better yields by letting it freebase overnight while continuously mixing it.

Anyone know about this?

SWIM has heard from people with more experience that mescaline is tough and takes time and lots of base to get stay in freebase form. As far as time to make salt I doubt that is as much as an issue as you can gas it and make salts pretty much instantly.

The meaning of that paragraph is a little vague. Did that person find some water sitting around that was used in a previous extraction or was that THE water used to cleanup the xylene? I assume it was the wash water…but it’s not obvious in that paragraph.

I'm not sure what to make of that.

I’m wondering, if one does a typical A/B extraction using hydrochloric acid, water, ammonia, and DCM (or xylene), what’s the amount of time it takes for all the mescaline to freebase? And what’s the amount of time it takes for all the mescaline to form a salt again?

It could be that the mescaline takes many days to fully freebase. That’s not unheard of in chemistry. Some reactions are very slow. I’ve seen harmine take quite some time to freebase. It doesn’t freebase instantly. It takes several minutes to complete in many cases. Also when mixing hydrochloric acid with sodium bicarbonate, the reaction can also take several minutes to complete. If mixing hydrochloric acid with calcium hydroxide, the reaction takes many hours to complete.


If one was to freebase 1000 mg of mescaline HCl in 250 ml of water at pH 11 using sodium carbonate, and leave it continuously mixing while logging the pH until the pH becomes stable, that would show how long the mescaline takes to fully freebase. The same test could be done for salting as well.

If the pH takes many hours, or even days to become stable, that would explain the low yields had by many.

Has anyone tested this before?

In one of SWIM’s mescaline extractions, he was using sodium carbonate (as recommended by several pros) to freebase the mescaline from a cactus extract solution of water and citric acid. He kept adding more and more sodium carbonate, but the pH would never go higher than 9. He added so much that the solution became saturated with sodium carbonate and so he could not add anymore. SWIM never saw that happen with any other extraction before. He ended up adding ammonia and that got the pH up to 11.

I’m not sure why he kept dumping more and more sodium carbonate into the solution, and yet the pH would not go up. That was really strange. He checked to see if anything was wrong with his sodium carbonate. He tested it and it got water up to pH 11.4 with just a tiny pinch, so his sodium carbonate was fine.

SWIM has been having all sorts of strange problems and always low yields. He’s used many different acids, bases, solvents, etc., and still very little luck.

It’s hard to believe that there’s cacti out there with up to 5% mescaline, while SWIM keeps getting such low yields (less than 0.08%).

If mescaline takes a long time to freebase, that would explain SWIM’s low yields for sure. SWIM normally moves pretty fast in his extraction process.

Yea SWIMs friend told SWIMs other friend that its important to let it sit in base and solvent for long time (SWIM thinks about a day per pull is good) using heat and mixing helps and keep the pH high. SWIM is unsure why this specific plant extract gives trouble in that regard or if its something chemical about mescaline that makes it this way or if there are just better ways to extract that haven't been figured out yet (SWIM doesn't have much experience with this).

Perhaps xylene and toluene aren't the best solvents though.