Just hoping for a bit of help understanding the chemistry involved here.
Freebase DMT is insoluble in water whilst freebase mescaline is moderately soluble. Why is this?
My understanding was that if the pH is below the pKa, an organic base should be protonated and so be soluble. (Wikipedia seems to say this, although I have yet to find out why.) DMT's pKa=8.68, mescaline pKa=9.56. Both are well above 7 so shouldn't both dissolve in water?
Is it just the fact that DMT's pKa is a bit lower so this is exceeded more easily by the small amount that dissolves and raises the pH? Being a logarithmic scale I suppose a small difference in pKa relates to a large difference in maximum concentration.