Hi everyone!

I registered a bit over a year ago - some FOAF had just done their first extractions and wanted me to tell you all about it. Somehow, I never posted that essay and now I can't find it anymore. There was an STB and an A/B from MHRB powder, both with KOH, d-Limonene, Acetic Acid, then Sodium Carbonate, both yielding ca. 1%. The STB resulted first in a nasty emulsion, then in a very dark jimjam freebase that was absolutely delightful both on its own and in changa, with a very strong forest presence. The A/B went smooth and resulted in slightly tan jimjam freebase crumble with slightly less of that forest vibe. They also extracted some rue alk freebase and experimented a bit with changa proportions. I liked Harmalas:Carrier:Spice at 1:2:3 best, and they seem to agree.

So far, our preferred carrier herb is Salvia Officinalis, it's pretty easy on the lungs. I plan to test-smoke many different herbs and spices though to come up with a mixture to improve taste. Cinnamon is surprisingly nice to smoke - I'll have to see if it fits in a mixture.

Now, a few days ago, those FOAF decided to try a Limtek.
- They mixed 300g MHRB powder with 390g Calcium Hydroxide in a glass bowl. Once well mixed, they added water until the consistency was doughy.
- They then stirred this mixture using a hand mixer with dough hooks, for a minute every few minutes during about an hour.
- They then poured ~500ml d-Limonene into the bowl and stirred a bit every now and then for maybe 25 minutes. Then they decanted the limonene through a coffee filter into a sep funnel, trying to get as much of it as possible.
- They pulled 3 times with ~50ml FASW (shaking limo/FASW in the sep funnel for 3x3mins each time), put the combined FASW pulls on a stove at maybe 60°C and called it a day. It took almost 36h to evaporate and yielded 2.1g jimjam fumarates (~1.6g freebase?) with little fumaric acid contamination. Once the evaporation dish was free again, they did another 2 FASW pulls which yielded almost only fumaric acid. They washed the limonene twice with demineralized water, then poured it back into the MHRB dough in the bowl.
- They did the second limonene pull (at ca. 48h after mixing the dough), this time leaving the limo and bark together for almost an hour. They then pulled with FASW 3 times, combined the pulls and put them in the evap dish on the stove. They're still waiting for evaporation to complete, but from the looks/color of it, they expect a similar yield to the first limonene pull. They have a 4th FASW pull in the sep funnel waiting for the dish to be free, and won't make a 5th. They suspect that the 4th won't yield anything either, in which case they will stick to 3 from now on.
- They plan another limonene pull at the 7 day mark, and if that yields well, another one at the 14 day mark, and so on until the bark is depleted. They keep stirring the dough a few times every day, whenever they think of it.

Lucky me, they gave me some of the fumarates from the first pull. I wanted to smoke some in changa, but I was out of Sodium Carbonate for freebase conversion.
I still had some sage infused with rue harmalas (2:1 sage:harmalas) that I had prepared some time ago (for mixing 1:1 with spice freebase -> 1:2:3 changa). And I wanted to smoke some of the new spice really badly. So I dissolved 0.13g fumarates in a bit of water in a shot glass, added 0.1g of the harmalas sage, and put it on the stove overnight. I thought if it doesn't work, it'll have been worth a try. And boy, it did work! I first smoked a third in the bong, which was buzzing but not very much. I then smoked the rest for a nice visit to an inner crystal palace.

Now I wanted to know more. I also had some rue harmalas HCl. I dissolved 0.12g rue HCl and 0.35g spice fumarates in some water, added 0.18g of sage, and put it on the stove overnight. A few hours ago, I tested it, and this also works great! In effect, it means that with Limtek, FASW, Manske, and water, one can make changa without ever needing any base other than lime, and no alcohol or acetone.

Because I had never thought of smoking fumarates (my FOAF only worked with vinegar before), I wanted to know whether anyone on the nexus had already tried it. As it turns out, some people have talked about it in 2010.

In that thread, some health concerns were raised, which I take very seriously. One was the possibility of toxic burn products of fumaric acid when smoking fumarates, a second one was about smoking HCl salts, my guess is because that might produce Cl gas (noone seems to have tried that?).

I can't say anything about the first one, I don't think one can assume that fumarate ions behave the same as fumaric acid molecules, but then again, if the DMT works, it was probably transformed from ion to molecule as well, so if anyone actually knows what's going on there, I'd like to understand.

About the second one, I can definitely say that no noticable chlorine gas was produced, no suspicious or unpleasant smell/taste, no pain or difficulty breathing. The opposite is the case, somehow the smoke was a bit sweet and felt nice.

As per my bioassay, I'm really tempted to only work with salts in the future. But I'd like to know if that's safe. I think it would be interesting to burn a bit of all-salt changa in a gas chromatography. Is there a way for mere mortals to do that?

So, I'm Homo Trypens, I stop by the nexus every now and then, and now I have spoken for the first time

My FOAF just updated me.

The second limonene pull yielded 2.4g fumarates, so they're at 4.5g total so far, which means that 1% is already surpassed. They decided that they won't wait for the 7day mark, but wash the limonene and pull again today (4day mark). I'll keep posting updates when they come in.

For the first pull, they had the stove tilted at a slight angle, which produced a thin film on one side of the dish, and a thick (~1mm) platter on the other. It had no apparent structure.

This time, they set the stove flat, and the fumarates crystallized in little roses, somewhat similar to rue alks in manske (hard to see in the pic, but most actually were needle stars)

Scraped up and dried some more (bottom side was still moist):

Given that this is the introduction essay section, I should probably tell you some things about myself. I don't want to disclose a lot about my life in general, but will go into some depth regarding my journey with substances and beings containing them.

Sorry that this wasn't my first impulse, but I was so intrigued by my 'discovery' of salty changa, I had to get that off my chest, and I obviously couldn't post in the appropriate section(s) because new user.

I am just about 40, male, I fix computer problems for a living, and I live in central Europe. Matter of fact, I've never physically been outside Europe in my entire life (unless you count the canary islands as Africa).

I grew up with loving, caring parents. They're adorable, still together, and I think happier than ever. I was great at school, probably a bit quirky. I never liked sports (apart from snowboarding and trampolining). I spent my spare time reading, listening to music and building/modifying electronic circuits. One of them was a blinking LED, which I modified to allow for frequency and pulse width adjustment. I found that when I cranked up the frequency to the point where I still noticed that it isn't just lit solid, but couldn't make out individual pulses anymore, then played with the pulse width (ratio of time lit vs time dark), and held it close to my eyes in the dark, that this produced geometric visuals similar to when I pressed my fingers on my closed eyelids. (DO NOT try this if you're epileptic). That in my mind qualifies as the first psychoactive product I ever made.

At age 14, I started smoking Cannabis - all day every day - and drinking alcohol. At 16, I quit alcohol and had LSD for the first time (after reading several books on psychedelics and shamanism), mushrooms at 17. I was the first among my friends to successfully grow Psilocybe Cubensis (first growbox, then from spores). I limited tripping to 3 times a year until I was done with school.

Around that time, I was also experimenting with herb mixtures. Some dangerous herbs like Datura Stramonium, some rather non-psychoactive stuff like birch tree bark. I worked with the principle of using sub-treshold doses of each herb, but the mixture would have subtle effects one could dive in to or out of at will. I think I'll start doing those again, maybe without nightshades.

After that, I went a little crazy. I was at psychedelic trance parties all the time - first every saturday, then every friday till sunday, then added clubbing during the week. At 21, I tried MDMA and went from once a month to 4x per week within half a year. At which point I got really depressed and realised I had to stop. That took a few months, but I got there. Then I tried Cocaine, which soon wanted to be in my life every day. Thank the universe I was always broke - having money at that time would've been bad. However, I quickly realised I was going down the same hole as with MDMA, so I stopped. Not entirely, but restricted to a few times per year. Of course, all this time I was also taking LSD too much, trying 2CB, TMA2 and others, and totally losing the initial focus of shamanic exploration.

Approaching 30, I paused all but the Cannabis for about 10 years. I just wasn't stable enough and had a ton of integration to catch up with. I finally started growing my own weed - I had never grown any green plants before but now I can't do without some gardening. At some point, I even paused Cannabis for two years in order to get back my drivers license (and no, it never crossed my mind to quit entirely). Tbh, it took quite a few attempts where I kept smoking some after a few days of abstinence. On maybe my 10th attempt, I made it to 3 weeks, and I knew I wasn't going to mess up this time, and so I didn't. After that point, it wasn't even hard, but for a few months I kept dreaming that I had smoked and waking up angry at myself until realising it'd been a dream. By now, I know what it feels like to be sober as an (so-called) adult. Since resuming Cannabis, I only smoke after work, which is much healthier for my mind.

The two years of forced abstinence (I participated 'voluntarily', but had to do hair and urin testing) brought back my desire for psychedelic exploration. As soon as I was free of testing, I asked someone if he could find DMT for me - a topic I was interested in for almost 20 years, but had only once managed to get a (too small) puff. He asked "do you mean changa"? As I hadn't heard of it, he explained the concept to me, I ordered some, and went to the internets for more info. I think that was when I first found the nexus.

My first time smoking changa, I was at a beautiful place beside a river, in a little bay, leaning on some tree roots that enclosed my space safely. I also had a friend nearby, just in case. I am someone who likes to build up carefully, so my first puff was really small. Instead of crazy visuals, oobe and whatnot you hear about DMT, I just felt at home, warm, and cared for. So I took a second puff, laid back and closed my eyes. There were beautiful geometries in deep, dark but glowing, blue and red tones, and that feeling of being safe and home was strong and nice. Not a breakthrough by far, but the start of a friendship. I knew right then and there that I wouldn't smoke changa again until I'd made my own.

I spent the next few weeks reading nexus teks every evening. I started ordering equipment, then supplies. When I realised that this was very illegal where I live, I approached my FOAF, because I know they don't mind - I guess they live in international waters. They did the extractions, I prepared my own changa with the results. That was 1.5 years ago. I had a month or two with many bioassays, then paused for almost a year, until it called me again. And now here we are.

I have three little Mimosa Tenuiflora grown from seed, just a few weeks old. I hope I can get them through winter (should probably buy a grow light), and increase the selfmadeness of my changa even more in a year or two. Given the difference self-growing makes in weed and mushrooms, I almost can't wait.

Welcome to the Nexus, and thanks for sharing some of your story and your experiences.

Regarding smoking fumarates, what is your precise smoking method? My thinking is that it's possible the material gets freebased in situ because plant ash tends to be quite alkaline. And how does the smoke measure up in terms of harsh/smooth when compared with vaporised freebase, if you have had such an experience?

The plant ash explanation sounds pretty convincing to me.

Would that mean that the fumarate ions are also converted back to fumaric acid, which would make the health concerns pretty real? I mean, the fumarates could easily be replaced by acetates to retain water solubility - I think the smokability of acetates has been thoroughly verified. But with the HCl, would that be converted to hydrochloric acid or to chlorine gas or something else?

As for the smoking method, I smoked it in a small-to-medium glass bong, lit with a normal lighter.

The first try was with freebase harmalas and jimjam fumarate. It smoked pretty much the same as with jimjam acetates - the smoke is a bit less harsh than with jimjam freebase, but almost the same. As described, I had 2 hits of that, the first one being about 75mg, which would equate to 11/22/33mg of harmala/sage/jimjam in freebase terms (the rest being fumarate and HCl ions), the second one being around double that.

The second try was with harmalas HCl and jimjam fumarate. I dissolved both in a little water and infused sage with it. I measured everything so that 1/6 of the weight would be equivalent freebase harmalas and 1/2 of the weight equivalent jimjam freebase. I let that dry completely. I then eyeballed a portion of maybe 100mg and smoked that in the same bong. It was a bit sweet and rather pleasant to smoke, and very nice in effect. The next evening, after writing it up here, I tried another slightly larger hit, but had to cough. So I need to repeat the experiment, but I didn't feel like smoking yesterday.

I have tried to smoke feebase jimjam in a crack pipe last year, but I couldn't make it work to my satisfaction. So all my experiences are with changa (some just with enhanced leaf). I have also never made my foaf isolate pure white crystals, because I like the full spectrum Mimosa so much. Just as I like to dab some bho, but don't feel attracted to the idea of smoking pure THC.

Maybe I'm in the mood tonight to smoke some more of the all-salt changa. If so, I'll report about the smoke quality.

I think what I need to do is prepare three changas - all-freebase, freebase/fumarate, and HCl/fumarate, designed to all have the same proportions of freebase/equivalent weights. Then sample them in measured doses, rather shortly after one another, to compare not just smoke quality, but also effects strength and quality. I might be able to do that this weekend.

We don't swim in the foaf around here, dude. You're not fooling anyone.

Everyone seems to swim around here, I can't swim so I thought I'd foaf. Is that too wrong?

I'm not actually trying to fool anyone.

I did smoke two small bowls of the HCl/fumarate changa earlier. It really does have some sweetness/creamyness in the smoke once it is going through to the lungs, and especially when exhaling. But it causes resistance when it first hits the throat. I didn't notice that the first time. I can't make out an actual taste at that moment.

My lungs don't feel abnormal now, and also during effects I had no sensation of toxicity. In contrast to when I once tested some changa made with freebases that felt dry, but had ipa traces, that was just a bit noticeable in taste, but was a strong interference with body comfort.

I'll do a side by side comparison sometime soon.

I did some thinking about my salts experiment.

- I stumbled upon the feasibility of smoking salts by accident/impatience. I got inspired by the idea of not using any volatile solvents for my changa, with the added benefit of not having to freebase my fumarate or acetate. I also thought it opens the possibility of making changahuasca. I made some changa with Harmala HCl and Jurema fumarate. I loved the fact that this looked almost like the uninfused herb, even though 70% of weight wasn't.

- There were some health concerns, however: Fumaric acid pyrolisis products could cause respiratory problems, and HCl might be even worse of an idea to smoke. These kind of depend on why smoking the salts even works, which isn't clear to me.

- I still wanted to know, and I'm a cigarette smoker, inhaling all kinds of nasty stuff all day. So I decided to just try. My trial told me a few things for sure: it didn't kill me (quickly), it tasted rather good, it worked well as an administration route, and it didn't feel toxic to me. It was however a bit offensive in the moment of first hitting the throat.

- downwardsfromzero brought up a very plausible explanation of why the salts are active when smoked: they might be freebased by the alkaline plant ash. If this is true (and the only mechanism at work), my salty changa shouldn't be active in a vaporizer.

- I have two hits left of this HCl/fumarate changa. I will put them to good use in two tests:
1) I'll vape some in a vaporizer. If this isn't active, I accept the plant ash explanation as the full truth. In this case, I will never make such changa again, because I want it to be vaporizable.
2) I'll smoke some in a bong, right after coming back from a regular hit of changa made with freebases, for as direct a comparison of harshness as I can think of.

- No matter the results, I will return to making my changa with freebases until I find a way to actually measure the composition of smoke. If and when I can manage to do that, I will report those measurements. Until then, I will presume that salt changa is more toxic than freebase changa.

It's good to see that you've been thinking about this sensibly.

They brought 1.4g fumarate from the third limonene pull, for a total of 5.9g fumarate or about 1.5% freebase. This is starting to sound too good to be true, probably still some fumaric acid in there. It's based and in the fridge now for slow water precipitation. I'll know the percentage in a week.

After test-smoking a few plants, I decided on a new blend: equal parts mistletoe, elder flowers, and sage. That is curing now. I've also infused some cinnamon with harmala freebase.

I don't have a 'real' vaporizer, just some dab pen. Might have to try that one too though.
A friend gave me her DaVinci2 for the weekend. I tried 30mg Jurema freebase in the oil thingy, it worked a bit but there's so little vapor, I had to take like 7 lungs full. Opened my heart, but no journey. I still need to try with a bed of herbs instead of the oil chamber, but I guess this isn't the device for spice.
I did try my harmala cinnamon in this device, and that worked beautifully. At 161°C, the cinnamon taste was unbelievably mild, and after a few lungs full, the harmalas came through. Administration speed doesn't seem to matter that much for the harmalas.

I have an answer to tracid1987's 10x caapi question, but I can't post there. So I'll do it here.

Edit: I forgot to think about IPA probably also dissolving things other than alkaloids. That simplifies my answer substantially, therefore I removed the first version from the post.

- You know your starting weight of caapi.
- You dissolve in IPA until nearly 100% of alks are in the IPA.
- You decant and keep the IPA solution and evaporate IPA residue from the depleted caapi.
- You weigh the depleted caapi. You note the difference from starting weight.
- You subtract this difference from your target weight to get the amount of depleted caapi you need to put back into the IPA solution.

To celebrate 1 month of above-soil life of my first two mimosas, I bought a grow light yesterday.

For those who have never seen the early life of Mimosa Tenuiflora, and for those who have but enjoy seeing it again, I attach a little collage of pics I took along the way.

In the top-right corner, you can see one close its leaves over night. On day 7, it was warm enough so they could be outside. The last pic is with the new light. I think that within a few days, they'll stand upright again, now that light doesn't only come from one side anymore.

My experiments are slowly progressing.

Extraction (Limtek):

I freebased most of what was left of my fumarates (pulls 2+3), and there was definitely a 2-digit percentage of fumaric acid still in there. Because of various factors I can't determine exactly how much freebase resulted, but it was between 1% and 1.2%. Which is as good or better than my previous A/B and STB, with much less hassle, so I'll stick to Limtek for the foreseeable future. There will probably still be maybe 0.5g in a 4th pull, which will be done soon.

All in all, I now have a few g of changa (1/3 of it with cinnamon as a carrier, 2/3 with a blend of mistletoe, elder flowers, rose petals and leaves of Salvia officinalis), which should suffice for me and the few friends I share with for all of 2020. I also have a bit of freebase left to try and vape.

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Vaping:

After the DaVinci2 was a fail for DMT, I read some threads and decided to try the Aum_Shanti direct e-mesh vaporization tek. I bought a GeekVape Aegis Solo 100W mod, a VandyVape Mesh RDA, a Sony battery, and a long glass drip tip.

I am a complete newbie to these devices, so I had to read a bit to learn the meaning of settings on the mod. I have it just about working now, but I'm sure I'll make improvements soon, and I'll wait for that to happen before I contribute to that other thread.

I haven't had a chance to vape a full dose yet, did some tries with small amounts (10-20mg) yesterday. What I can say so far:
- the method works great. With correct temperature/wattage settings, there is zero burned spice.
- no matter what I do to my changa, smoking it will never be as smooth and tasteless as vaporizing freebase.
- somehow, I still have trouble getting a lot of vapor into my lungs. I can rip almost 100mg changa in a bong, 60mg in my selfmade pipe, but I was unable to complete 20mg freebase in the vaporizer. I'm pretty sure that will resolve with better settings and a bit of practice.
- my tan full-spectrum Jurema freebase almost certainly has other alkaloids besides DMT in it. The 10-15mg I was able to vape had no visuals, but strong euphoria, and lasted for about 20min without harmalas. I can't exclude the possibility that those additional alkaloids were another reason for me being unable to inhale more at once.
- even though it was nice, I doubt that DMT without harmalas is my preference. I will try until I get a full breakthrough from pure DMT, but then I'll probably just continue using changa.
- the method also works well for plant material - i vaped some of my harmala cinnamon again, with great success.

I guess I'll have to find naphtha to make some pure white crystals and try those. That bums me out a bit, but hey, it's for science

Once I get the vaping down perfectly, I can finally perform the vaping test of my salty changa.

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Plants:

The grow light improves the situation drastically. The two Mimosa tenuiflora from the pictures thrive. One other that I thought was dead is recovering, it's of the Brazil variety, has 3 leaves now and is still very small (~5cm). The last one I thought was recovering but is heavily struggling, it has deformed leaves that don't grow well at all. So I have 4 live mimosas, of which I'm sure 2 will survive, probably even 3, but 4 seems unlikely at this time.

I have 4 tiny live Nicotiana rustica. They're about 2cm now, and they look very healthy.

I have 4 just as tiny Verbascum nigrum, 3 of which look good, 1 is undecided.

I have some beautiful flowers, Salvia splendens, Calendula officinalis and Malva moschata, that seem to be on to a good start.

I had also sown some Peganum harmala and Papaver somniferum. The peganum didn't even sprout, the papaver did but died soon after. I had everything in one box though, next try I'll give them more fitting conditions.

So now the box is free for another round of seeds. I still have seeds of various Acacias, Trichocereus pachanoi, Psychotria viridis, Phalaris brachystachis and aquatica, plus all species mentioned above. I want to get Banisteriopsis caapi seeds as well. I'd like to have Erythroxylum too, but seeds and plants seem to be next to impossible to obtain.

The plan is simply to get my living room full of plants that will be ready to move outside in spring. I'll need more Mimosas because I want to try out a few things.