[quote:4c4b2275f4]Contaminating alks are potentially dangerous and nasty[/quote:4c4b2275f4] Sure but without having a chromatograph, I fear that there is no way to know unless trying a bio-test. Then it has to be defined what means 'dangerous'. As long as ones smoke something, it is potentially dangerous... there is a price to pay for everything. The issue is to get something no too pricy Are there any physical feelings very specific to DMT freebase when smoked in very low amount ? For example, I can clearly identify salvia feelings, even if it's a very low dose not leading to a breaktrought.

So, Alchasham, have you actually extracted spice from phragmites and bioessayed it? How do you come by your data for yeilds, if not? I would like to think this is real, but i have this unfortunate suspicion that someone is hoping to have the actual investigation done for them.....

Astral Time, Do you have some photos of your phragmites in nature ? I digged around 3 kg of rhizome of what I though to be phragmites but they do not look as yours I wonder if I digged Arundo Donax rhizomes (which are quite toxic for what I read) I started a Quick Tek on them but made several mistakes, boiling too hot so half of my soup was lost, then added some naphta on the remaining liquid+solids but no naphta floated, beeing captured by the fibers. Then I added some water to 'extract' the naphta and have now a very solid emulsion. Well, I will add more lye to break down the emulsion and hope there is still something in the naphta. Dealing with such amount of material without a good equipment is indeed a pain. But I'm looking forward to know if a bioassey gives some interresting results !!

Arghhh ! From what I can find on Google it seems that I gathered Arundo Donax. All that time already spent... for what may be a toxic alkaloid... Great ! Thanks Astral for having posted your rhizome photos, I would have continue thinking I had some phragimtes without that.

[quote:38d50fc37b]The spice will vaporize at 140°F because it's in the freebase form[/quote:38d50fc37b] Ah yes, good point. Can you say what amount of tryptamine SWIM may obtained from 24 ounces ? [code:1:38d50fc37b]Makes for an interesting journey though.[/code:1:38d50fc37b] Does it worth the effort ? Is it a real 'journey', or just strange body feelings and a headaches ?

ATT, I try to carefully read your posts [quote:1bb8baf60d]With the Quick Tek, sometimes you can get 200mg from 4 ounces dried, and sometimes only 50mg. [/quote:1bb8baf60d] Do you mean that SWINY made several extractions from phragmites and not only on the batch showed on the photos ? Anyway 200mg/4 ounces is not that bad, that would mean 1.2g from 24 ounce. Enough to journey several times. Just a different trip than the norm is not a problem as I don't know the norm. My only 'norm' is with Salvia and I guess that this is very different but can be quite interresting.

Ah ok. 24 wet = 4 dried. At best you got 200 mg from all that stuff ? Uhhh.. I planned a phragmite hunt but I wonder if I will not wait spring for a phalaris tuberosa hunt instead... What a pity that Arundo Donax can not be used, rhizomes are quite easy to extract from dirt.

Astral, I'm no botanist but I recently dug up what I thought were sweet flag roots that look identical to what you've got there. Perhaps what I had was phragmites (they weren't bitter) but perhaps that is sweet flag. Either way, I had no difficulty gathering the roots. I'd really love to find a practical and ubiquitous source of dmt/5meo. MHRB is great and its wonderful that he price has come down so much but there is something trully fantastic about being able to gather all the materials to acquire good spice without resorting to entheo vendors.

A friend did a/b with 100gms dried Lu Gen (phragmites australis) obtained from a commercial source. Result- nothing. Then the friend did a straight to base extraction on 500 grams that , by the time he'd finely ground the commercially obtained dried roots had been reduced to 484 grams. The grinding process was time consuming and involved adding handfuls to a blender and then a coffee grinder. About an hour and a half was spent grinding. Only a single pull was performed with xylene (to maximize the chance of pulling alkaloids) and the extraction was done using 6 quart sized jars basified to over ph 13. After evaporation a small quantity of oily stuff that smells like corn was left. The material was scraped up and dissolved in room temp odorless mineral spirits. When he saw that it dissolved in room temperature spirits his hopes of anything worthwhile being in the oil dropped. The oms/oil is in the freezer attempting freeze precip. If all the oil crystalizes into tryptamines it might be 100-150 mgs but the friend does not believe that much will recrstalize. The friend says that phragmites is of no value for extraction unless you've a team of slaves or intelligent machines to do it for you..... The experience was of use because it was found that phragmites is not an alternative to mhrb. Course, some acacia obtusifolia seeds are on the way and swim lives in a climate that this plant should like. As for potential mhrb replacement materials are concerned , swim says NEXT!

500 g is too few anyway. 5 kg would be more interresting. The issue is to convert oily stuff in nice crystals. Freeze and refreeze seemed not working for SWIM. But using the oily stuff in a new A/B extraction or maybe just B extraction, removing the oils could give some results.

[quote:0be32cd15c="Garulfo"]500 g is too few anyway. 5 kg would be more interresting. The issue is to convert oily stuff in nice crystals. Freeze and refreeze seemed not working for SWIM. But using the oily stuff in a new A/B extraction or maybe just B extraction, removing the oils could give some results.[/quote:0be32cd15c] I really hope you're jokeing. The reason the extraction was performed was to determine if phragmites australis was useable as a reasonable source for dmt/5meo or hell, even bufotenine. Remember, this is 500 grams of [b:0be32cd15c]dried[/b:0be32cd15c] material, not fresh. With mhrb an extraction of just 100 grams has easily resulted in 800 mgs unambiguous crystal. That's around .8% and better than the oft reported .57% but is reasonable and others have reported better and worse. With this extraction of phragmites australis/communis despite their being five times the material the yield wasn't even 50 mgs of crystal. For those who don't mind spending their time and money extracting plant materials with a potential alkaloid content of around .0005%, I say have at it, your time and money is worth a helluva lot less than SWIM's. I'd also like to point out that this is completely consistent with the reported analysis and extraction experience of other plants in the graminae family (or phyla or whatever it is). I think it signifigant that Trout no longer recommends bothering with desmanthus illinoensis in favor of desmanthus leptolobus , at least with plants that are wild crafted, the reason is that illinoensis does not present a reliable concentration of alkaloids.

[quote:38134eb9ea]I really hope you're jokeing.[/quote:38134eb9ea] Somehow I see 3 main issues with plant others than Acacia and MHRB : 1- Getting the most possible yield with a minimum effort 2- Getting white crystals instead yellow gunk 3- Getting some DMT in that crystals. We can't do anything about point 3, but point 2 and point 1 may have some positive solutions. SWIM will explore some of them...

Do you believe that this Tech (this one earlier you stated in the thread) for phragimtes would work for Phalaris arun. grass?

My friend hasn't tried it, but experimentation has shown him that DMT as present in MHRB is not soluable in acetone or heptane but is soluable in methanol. Not sure how that would translate to phalaris, but one would think that it would be similar. A methanol extraction followed by an A/B on the resulting goo? Dunno. He's only extracted phalaris once.

A couple suggestions. If you harvest (dig out) a fresh plant, try freezing it, then thawing it, repeat a few times. Water expands when frozen and explodes each individual plant cell wall. With Phragmites, its delightful that there is a huge supply in nature that can never be eradicated. But there is also a huge supply of dried, harvested, quality controlled Phragmites Communis (same plant as Phragmites Australis) rhizome at any Chinese herb shop. Let's use this up first before getting our hands dirty. When used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) its called Lu Gen. Not every chinese herb store will sell it to you but with proper social engineering or by mail order, it can be obtained easier than digging. If you want to make tea, I'd suggest soaking it for 30 minutes and boiling it for up to an hour, adding a teaspoon of vinegar from time to time and eventually letting it boil off. There is also powdered extract, but I'd like to confirm if this is effective because they make that using water extraction. I don't think DMT is very soluble in water, unless the water has an acid pH. The other good news about Phragmites is that Chinese medicine has been using it for several millennia so at least the water soluble phytochemicals are unlikely to be toxic or mutagenic. Here is the Merck Index 14th ed. entry for DMT [quoteeefd97c76]Monograph number: 03262 CAS Registry Number: 61-50-7 CAS Name: N,N-Dimethyl-1H-indole-3-ethanamine Additional Names: 3-2-(dimethylamino)ethylindole; DMT Molecular Formula: C12H16N2 Molecular Weight: 188.27 Percent Composition: C 76.55%, H 8.57%, N 14.88% Literature References: Occurs naturally in plants with hallucinogenic properties. Isoln from the leaves of Prestonia amazonica (Benth.) Macbride (Haemadictyon amazonicum Spruce & Benth.), Apocynaceae: Hockstein, Paradies, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 79, 5735 (1957). Metabolism: St. Szára, Experientia 12, 441 (1956); B. R. Sitaram et al., Biochem. Pharmacol. 36, 1509 (1987). Relationship between hallucinogenic activity and electronic configuration: Snyder, Merril, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 54, 258 (1965). Synthesis: I. Fleming, M. Woolias, J. Chem. Soc. Perkin Trans. 1 1979, 829. Differential interaction with serotonin receptor subtypes: A. V. Deliganis et al., Biochem. Pharmacol. 41, 1739 (1991). Fluorometric detection: O. Jules et al., Anal. Chim. Acta 169, 355 (1985). Review of biosynthesis, metabolism and bioactivity: S. A. Barker et al., Int. Rev. Neurobiol. 22, 83-110 (1981). Properties: Crystals, mp 44.6-46.8°; also reported as plates from ethanol and light petroleum, mp 46° (Fleming, Woolias). bp 60-80°. pKa 8.68 (ethanol-water). [beefd97c76]Freely sol in dil acetic and dil mineral acids.[/beefd97c76][/quoteeefd97c76]

[quote:138ce4a115="Astral Time-traveller"]You did the extraction WRONG by not using enough lye (You are supposed to use at least 1:10 ratio of lye:water) and then you complain that you got low yields of alkaloids? And you didn't do a freeze precipitation to get crystals and you used Xylene. You basically did just about everything wrong you could have, then you act like your test is proof that this plant contains no spice. READ THE THREAD IN IT'S ENTIRETY before posting this nonsense![/quote:138ce4a115] I'm not sure why you've taken such offense to my post but SWIMs results and my post were'nt aimed to offend you. Perhaps I can clarify some things. First, SWIM really made no attempt to follow your post. Your post neither inspired nor guided any of the actions that SWIM took. The PH was tested using a calibrated digital ph meter so failure to read, acknowledge or replicate any lye:water ratios that you posted did not influence the results of the experiment. Second, xylene and evaporation were chosen over naptha/heptane/oms/ether and freeze precipitation in order to positively skew the likelihood of yeilding alkaloids. No doubt heptane/starting fluid and freeze precip are effective under certain circumstances but xylene and evaporation are more effective in the same circumstances and pull a larger spectrum of alkaloids. This is exactly the reason many choose NOT to use them in mimosa extractions where purity is a primary concern and high concentrations of alkaloids are a given. 3rd, those that actually performed the experiment do so in a very different legal climate than the area I am posting from and the primary motivation for the experiment was to determine if the commercially available preprocessed material is useful as a RELIABLE and cheap alternative to MHRB to extract dmt from. I don't doubt that tryptamine alkaloids are present in phragmites and likely dmt is one of those alkaloids but to qualify as an alternative to MHRB requires more than merely containing dmt. One of these considerations is a high likelihood of what one considers success given that an effective extraction process is followed especially in light of the time, effort and resources an extraction may involve. I honestly believe that the individuals who performed the extraction did so in an manner that would have yielded alkaloids if a sufficient concentration existed in the material used. The lack of sufficient concentration is precisely the reason SWIM's have chosen to investigate other materials and cease extraction attempts with phragmites. Finally, Astral Time-traveller, your response to the information I posted was rude and I don't appreciate it. If you feel it necessary to take any experimental data that runs contrary to your own experience so personally perhaps you'd be a happier person if you placed your interests elsewhere.

Are there any good ways to extract it without all of these fancy, rare chemicals? I only want to be able to extract it enough to use it, I don't need pure crystals (although that would be nice).

[quote:885bcfdace]Are there any good ways to extract it without all of these fancy, rare chemicals?[/quote:885bcfdace] You can find all the chemicals you need at the hardware store, or if all else fails, the internet.

What's a good method with those chemicals then?

Straight-to-base: http://www.erowid.org/pl.../mimosa_chemistry1.shtml Acid/Base: http://www.erowid.org/ch..._extraction_guide1.shtml Read up on both, and this message board thoroughly before asking anymore questions, or someone's likely to tear you a new asshole. It's not hard, just read as much as you can about it.