First let me say I don't know if this belongs here. I haven't been active here in years and so I'm not sure I have the athority to post in any of the big ongoing disscussions that deal specifically with this topic (what excellent discussions they are too!).

Some background. Okay, so I've popped up here on and off for YEARS, my first successful DMT extraction came as a result of the service this amazing forum provides. Since that first extraction (so many years ago), my interest has steadily moved away from growing these interesting botanicals (I had quite the garden at one point....) to more serious organic chemistry.

I recently rediscovered my passion for botany after a four year old seed grown M. speciosa I had died due to a stupid mistake on my part (imagine that kind of pain...took me years to find those damn seed pods). Hoping kratom seeds have since become widely available in recent years (yea right...) I got online to do do some digging and while I've yet to replace my precious speciosa (PM if anyone has one they are willing to sell/trade. Also looking to replace a dead P. Viridis, 3-4 P. Galindoi prints to the first person who is willing to send me four or five fresh leaves for cuttings...) I did stumble upon an amazing new (well, atleast to me) supplier of super rare ethnobotanical plants and seeds. I won't mention the distributor, I'm sure you all know to whom I am refering. I quickly purchased some exotic Banisteriopsis/Alicia seeds and have since been looking high and low for any information on some of these vines.

Again let me congratulate you guys, DMT-Nexus has without doubt the most accumlated information on the subject, but I have a few questions that while addressed in the "Poorly understood family of vines..." thread are not quite answered. I highly suspect this is because no body can say for sure, but I'm interested in anyone's experiences, however subjective they may be. I also have a bit to add....

First off, B. muricata. Beautiful vine! Quick mention in The Encyclopedia Of Psychoactive Plants (I have an electronic version of this simply amazing book if anyone wants, but if you have any serious interest in ethnobotany you should really pick up a hard copy despite the price), but otherwise I can't find shit about in the literature. So everyone seems to agree that the leaves of this banisteriopsis contain the light, and is my understanding correct that the leaves of said vine have sometimes been sold for D. Cabarena? My question is has anyone actually tried these leaves in a brew? I'm wondering just how bright these guys are. I'm also curious as to whether or not anyone has confirmed that Alicia anisopetela leaves also contain significant quantities of DMT or for that matter if the vine contains any known beta carbolines?

An old aquaintance mailed me a bag with app. 15g of leaf from B. muricata and A. anisopetela as well as around 30g of vine matter of muricata and around twice that of the anisopetela. Extraction of the leaf matter of B. muricata did yeild a small amount (say 20mg) of something, but the product smelled distinctly phenolic (think 4-methoxyphenol with stronger floral undertones), and the melting range for the vast majority of the material was far higher than that of P. viridis extracts (seemed to make more sense than comparing it to M. hostilis alkaloids). There was also the faintist of glows under a blacklight, I've found caapi leaves to contain some harmalas as well so perhaps this is not too surprising. The anisopetela leaf yielded higher (maybe 30mg), but the melting range was far more consistent with that of a P. viridis extract. I understand taking melting points of crude plant extracts is borderline silly it seems so useless, but there wasn't enough material to warrant packing a column and you can get a general idea if there is some DMT in there from M.R..

Simple A/B of the muricata vine produced almost nothing, a few small brown specs of powder (typical greeny yellow under the BL), I chalk this up to human error, I find myself in need of a new pH meter and so I used VERY inaccurate generic yellow full range pH paper. Perhaps it was over or under based/acidified. Also I should mention I used methylene chloride as the solvent in all the extractions. I mention this because I've heard reports of DCM chlornating DMT during extractions yet have found no evidence at all. Synthetic DMT stored in a clear bottle on a sunny windowsill in DCM showed absolutely no change in M.P. or weight after a month (it did however pick up a few mgs in chloroform, perhaps not too surprisingly). Off topic, sorry. The anisopetela went slghtly better, and I was shocked to find almost 200mg of material (from 58g of vine), this is far higher than any caapi I've ever extracted. The melting range had two relatively tight points, about twenty percent melted around 40-75c and perhaps another fifty percent between 230-240c with the rest melting inbetween and some past 300c.

I decided to try some seperating via CC (Benzene/Ethyl Aceate 3:1, no particular reason, simply what was available). This is vastly more complicated with crude plant extracts than say cleaning a post reaction chemical product. The only time I've used a column to sperate alkaloid extracts was with harmala alkaloids from both B. caapi and P. harmala, their blacklight reactivty makes seperating harmalas from other trash easy. This didn't go so well though, I didn't take anywhere near enough fractions (I have a total of 30 25ml ER flasks I use for this, I only ended up taking 12 large fractions simply because I wasn't home much of the time). My goal was to isolate only the beta carbolines (and only the blacklight reactive ones at that) to get a general idea of how strong the vine is, this seemed reasonable at the time, unfortunately I didn't even think to see how the crude extract glowed in solution before begining, as it turns out it wouldn't have...There was two flasks that ended with a VERY faintly blacklight reactive substance (almost imperceptibly yellow), but that was it. These were evaporated and around 40mg of crystalline material was received (M.P. impossible due to ineffective seperation). I didn't bother evaporating the rest down yet because if the vine contains no known harmalas, I can't hope to identify whatever else is in these fractions. I unfortunately do not have access to any methods beside M.P. that I can use to identify unknown substances.

I'm pretty bummed about the muricata vine extract going pear shaped on me, I've heard reports of successful journeys with the vine and those reports claim it to be quite powerful. I've read of journeys with anisopetela as well, and those claim this vine is strong as well, but looking back now I can't remember if any of those reports used the Alicia to successfully activate an ally. I want to say that it seems unlikely, but lack of BL reactivty certainly does not mean there are no active MAO inhibitors in there. With that said, I think it wise to excersize caution when consuming this one, who knows what it is I extracted in such quantity.

So thats what I have to offer, pretty much nothing. After I get the money together for my new pH meter and some spare cash I plan on experimenting further. In the mean time, please share any experiences you've had with either of these plant teachers (I'm particularly interested in the leaves). Sorry for the long rambling post....what can I say, it's good to be back



Tony.