SWIM started with a piece of bridgesii about 18” long and a piece of San Pedro about 12” long. He doesn’t know what varieties they are. Chopped them into small cubes, around 1/4”. Boiled 3 liters of water with some vinegar (whatever amount it says on the Kash tek), then added the plant material and simmered for 2 hours. Strained, added another 2 liters of water, a splash of vinegar, boiled again for an hour, and repeated a third time for an hour. Collected all the water and reduced to 1 liter. Then SWIM basified by adding 100 g of NaOH to the soup. Then added 0.25 l of xylene, mixed for 15 minutes, transferred the xylene to another jar, and repeated three more times. So SWIM ended with 1 liter of xylene. Then he started adding HCl from the hardware store. Here SWIM was a little confused as to how much to add and he added 5 ml, thinking that if he added too much HCl, it would evaporate later. Better too much than not enough. Then added 160 ml of distilled water and mixed it for 15 minutes. Then extracted the water with a pipette, put it in a hot dish and let all the water evaporate. At the end of that SWIM had a measly 0.22 g of tan crystals. Tried the wash with cold MEK but it didn’t seem to lighten the color of the crystals nor the MEK got darker. Dissolved a minuscule amount of the crystals in water and drank it and it tasted terrible.

Did SWIM screw up the process? SWIM thought he would get a better yield, not 0.22 grams. Doesn’t that seem very low? Should SWIM have pureed the plant material instead of cutting it in cubes? Is 10 g of NaOh per 100 ml of water a good amount to basify? When SWIM extracted the acidic water from the xylene and put it in a dish, he took great care not to draw any xylene. However, looking at the water on the dish from the right angle, SWIM could see a very light layer of something on the surface, not so much a layer but a few traces. Did that evaporate or are the crystals poisoned with xylene? Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions.

I haven't done this tek, so can't help you with the specifics. However, a few things that might get you a little further:

1) No need to use "SWIM";

2) Washes of Mescaline HCl are more commonly done with cold anhydrous acetone and/or IPA rather than MEK. MEK seems to be hit or miss for people. There are many posts on this topic, but you can start here;

3) Some people believe the mescaline content of Bridgesii is low, but it feels strong due to MAOIs. That may contribute to your low yield. If you believe this school of thought, then you might want to use a full spectrum tek on your Bridgesii like making a tea or alcohol resin, rather than trying to extract purified mescaline;

4) Rather than adding 5 ml HCl then 160 ml distilled water, add the water first, then add HCl until around pH 6.5. You may find you only need a few drops of HCl;

5) Check out this tek using ethyl acetate for a much easier, safer, and higher yielding process to extract mescaline. It is still a work in progress, but is working very well for some of us;

Good luck!

Thanks for the tips!

I think your method is fine, maybe except adding acid that way as you did, but that should not cause any issue.
IME basing of mescaline is not always quick, although you used quite a lot of NaOH, so it should be fine.
Maybe try to continue with extracting after few days and do more pulls.

There is still a possibility that you extracted everything and your cactus is just weak.

Is there a place where the “latest and greatest” for that ethyl acetate tek is kept? I read the thread and it seems to have evolved quite a bit, from using sulphuric acid to citric acid, etc. Thanks.

This is the latest and greatest: https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/CIELO

Once loveall switched from suphuric acid to citric acid, the evolutions have been testing and refining the amount of citric acid, basing time, pulling time, etc. But the basic process has remained the same: base with lime, pull with ethyl acetate, salt with citric acid, filter.

We only have a handful of folks who have tried the tek, and not 100% success so the tek has not been promoted to the main wiki yet. We are trying to understand the variables involved. It would be great if you could give it a try and let us know how it goes.

OK, so I'm trying a second batch, and something unexpected happened. Made the tea, four boils, each one two hours, then reduced the total volume to 1 liter. Then I added 100 g of NaOH, and after a few hours there was quite a bit of precipitate. See photo. Before the NaOH, it was a greenish, somewhat syrupy liquid. After NaOH, the top one third is clear brown and the bottom two thirds are greenish-brown precipitate. Is that supposed to happen? Where are the goodies, on the clear liquid or on the precipitate? Should I filter it or keep it as is and add toluene? Thanks in advance.