Hi everybody, iv been following the nexus here and there for the past couple years, finally decided to make an account. But i have to be a seedling first, so this is why this is being posted here. I especially admire the works of 69ron and a few others.

My question being, in a bufotenine extraction, using either ISO or ACETONE can you use calcium hydroxide in place of the sodium carbonate?? Iv been searching for days and keep coming up with mixed results , and seeing as i cant post directly in the topic i was looking under, i am hoping someone can shed some light here. What sort of issues would come about with using calcium hydroxide? thats seems to be all i can get my hands on right now... and took me time at that. I have approximately 250 grams of yopo seeds, before i go about experimenting id like few things cleared up. Sorry to ramble on, but and help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks , Andrew

You can make sodium carbonate by baking sodium bicarbonate for a 2 hours in high heat.

Well thats news to me, thanks for the tip, sounds promising , swim tried an experiment tonight with the later and hopefully will post results if not will be doing exactly as you said. Still would like some back round info on both sodium carbonate and calcium hydroxide why swims experiment could lead to ultimate disaster!!! : P

Calcium hydroxide apparently can cause a nasty reaction with bufotenine that after a certain period of time render it as an inactive molecule. It is also said this happens with NaOH. Sodium carbonate apparently doesn't do this.

I've never really read anything conclusive about how or why this happens but I seem to recall reports from a few members here that verified this.

Swim has started an experimetn with calcium hydroxide and will keep posted. I hope all is not lost, i used less then prescribed. Well i am honoured you replied to my question soulfood, iv read many of your thread posts. Swim is also getting back into the fungi hobby, any comments or or upto date teks regarding that let me know : )

The shroomery or mycotopia are the places you want to look for info on fungi

I also wanted to clarify what FiorSirtheoir said about converting sodium bicardonate to sodium carbonate. Here's the quote directly from The Nexian DMT Handbook:

Also it's important to cover the sodium bicarbonate as when it reacts it can go off like popcorn.

Yes, another important note That should probably be added to the Handbook...

SO swim thinks something went a miss with his extraction.

Procedure went as follows:

Grinded 20 grams of seeds, then added 5 grams Calcium hydroxide

Water added to make a dough type consistentcy, smells strongly of ammonia.

Once dry(approximately 2+hrs), grinded again then used ISO rather then ACETone to wash it. Repeated 3 times.

The 3 washes were combined then filtered through cotton/polyfil.

Swim then added 500mg of Citric Acid, instantly a reaction particles appear to be falling, looks promising.

I decanted the solution to another jar, the precipitate is a redish clay colour, and the discarded(but saved) ISO was Yellow, hmmm??

The reddish clay is a paste consistency and was left overnight to hopefully evaporate remaining ISO. To swims surprise there was still ISO evident in the smell. Its sitting infront of a heating fan to help speed things up a bit.

Before swim proceeds, can he have some feedback. Help would be greatly appreciated : )

UPDATE**

ISO paste has dried up to an off reddish powder.....something is defintely wrong.

The resultant powder was weighed at approx 3 grams. 500mg of citric acid was used, so it cant be just salted out citric acid. Possibily citric acid and calcium hydroxide?? or citric and some bufo? or a combo of them both. Could the yellow iso i saved contain the bufo? I hope all is not lost.

Perhaps a very late reply...

citric acid's solubility in acetone is relatively poor from what I remember. It can take a very long time to saturate acetone with citric acid (hours), and if you just drop the citric acid in the acetone pulls, then probably what you got was the citric acid indeed, I think citric acid's solubility in acetone is around 1gm/100ml.

SWIM also attempted this route, but first saturating acetone with citric acid, then combining the filtered acetone-critic acid with the pulled acetone batches (reduced by a good bunch too), it precipitates a dark goo, and from SWIM's bio-essays, it was a bit bunk with the calcium hydroxide route. Better (rubber-smelling extracts) were made using sodium carbonate and 97% alcohol.

The goo is better preserved in a tincture form, then dried on leaves of something. No breakthrough has been reported as per say, only heavy body-load which can probably be associated with smoking the waxy residues as well.

So, good for changa basically, not much else. (see other teks for bufetonine magic, some tricks with solvent proportions and stuff like that to clean it to go the xtal route)

I don't know how essential it is to have really anhydrous acetone for this method, but it's worth bearing in mind that culinary citric acid is sold exclusively in the form of the monohydrate. Anhydrous citric acid can sometimes be found in sachets for descaling kettles and coffee machines, so it should be safe enough.

For an extraction i dont know which one is better.
But if you want to make the yopo snuff use NaCO3 or NaHCO3 if you want to use it directly.
Ca(OH)2 hurts a lot when snuffed directly but it works better. When you leave it to dry the Ca(OH)2 will convert to CaCO3 and make a really good snuff that hurts way less.

NaHCO3 is just baking soda and can be bought in stores
NaCO3 can be made by heating NaHCO3 for a long time
CaCO3 is limestone
Ca(OH)2 can be made by dissolve limestone in acetic acid and then heating the Calciumacetate.
This produces CaO and acetone. The CaO turns into Ca(OH)2 when exposed to moist air or when put into water.