Dear nexians,

I'm a newbie and I'm sure this has been discussed before, however, I googled and couldn't find much.

I completed my first successful extraction about one and a half week ago. I used a STB technique, everything worked fine. The final product looked good, it was not very colored and was a bit powdery. The next day it seemed to have dried, it still smelled a bit though. I used a spoon to move it around a bit in the coffee filter and then I saw it was still a little... waxy I guess is the word. Perhaps it had not properly dried.

I infused it in caapi leaves anyway using a technique I found on the forum, without the use of any chemical, simply by letting it melt over the caapi in a little container in a hot water bath. It was 1:1. I rolled a pure joint, of which I haven't really smoked much, only two tokes, and I rolled one with damiana and sage as an admixture. It's light but it felt very nice, a comfortable sensation.

However, after having smoked about 1/4 of this joint over the course of a week I felt my hair starting to get really thin. Like, I'm 32 and perhaps I'm just balding, but it has gotten notably thinner over the course of just a week. I even went to the doctor to ask whether there was something wrong. She said that if you are sick the hair breaks, which it didn't, she said I didn't have to worry about cancer or anything. (sorry to bring up the "c" word.)

Anyway, I have smoked product before, not made by myself, where after I had smoked my hair also seemed thinner. After a few weeks of not smoking it would usually start to get fuller again.

I have made another pull from my soup, I dried it for not just a day but a few days, and I noticed it does not smell at all anymore. The powder/crystals are now completely odorless.

I feel that as long as the crystals "smell like spice" it is basically the solvent that you smell. Is this correct? I now sincerely feel the smoking of "smelly spice" is very harmful to one's health. Am I mistaken in coming to this conclusion or not? I feel as long as it smells there is still solvent in it that has not evaporated properly.

So this is both a question and a warning. Be careful with smelly spice. Does anyone else have experience/knowledge regarding smelly/non-smelly powder/crystal?

Please share any thoughts. Thank you in advance.

HI,

I am not a full member and I have no experience with what is happening to you but spice definitely has a smell.. the smell of "mothballs" that many seem to associate with spice is not the smell of any solvent used in the extraction but of the spice itself.

What solvent did you use for extraction?

I have no idea of hair loss problems associated with spice consumption, in fact DMT seems to have helped some to regrow their hair.. https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=37454

All the best, I hope your problem is resolved soon.

Yes solvents are poisonous, but the tiny amounts available in a few mg of spice is not going to make your hair thin... and if it did the hair would take months to thicken out again. The effect you are describing is psychosomatic.

It's interesting how it can give you this curious illusion though. DMT never ceases to amaze.

I used a Dutch tek that I found on this forum, which used "wasbenzine", which I think translates to petrol or gasoline. It may not be the safest of products, but I don't yet know what the alternatives available in the Netherlands are. I don't know how mothballs smell, but the smell was a bit "plastic-like". A smell I associate with spice that has been burned, so for sure a spicy smell. I simply conjectured it should only smell like that after smoking it, not before. Thank you for your reply. :-)



Hm, interesting. It may be psychosomatic. The mind is a powerful thing for sure. Thank you for thinking along. It's reassuring to know there are only tiny amounts of chemicals in the final product.

I will make a smoke mixture with the spice which I think is properly dried, and I will report back.

Thanks for your replies!

Also I forgot to add:

if you haven't done it yet please make an evaporation test with your wasbenzine: put a drop on a piece of glass and wait for it to fully evaporate, if it leaves a smelly/oily residue then it is NOT good for extraction and will definitely leave some nasty stuff in your final product. With this I don;t mean to say this may be the cause of your hair thinning - I think it may be psychosomatic too - but it's just safe to test.

all the best to you.

hi there kleineschat!
ill separete your subject for 2 parts.

1. maybe the spice have impuratis but its seems like small amount of solvent would not do this to your hair, i think most of this forum has expirienced some solvent intake one way or another but this seems a bit strainge,
about the waxi spice, maybe its just oils and fats from the plant matterial, can you re-x this stuff to see if the oils and xtals can separete?

whitch bark do you use?

the smell that you describe sounds correct for the usual spice smell but only you can smell it
maybe try to smell the solvent and afterwatrds smell the spice to see if theres any smell of solvent in the spice.

2. about the psychosomatis, in the chineese medicine the head hair relatede with the kidneys,
do you femilar with kidneys issues?
also on the mental side of it, the emotions thats can weakens the kidneys is fear.
i know its hard to tell because the ignitions to hyperspace lots of the time can come with fears but can you see a diffrents in fear perspective of you vs other with regarding to spice?

Very pure DMT (white) hardly smells of anything imho.

The plant oils do. The more plant oils, the more NP (naphtha) can get trapped inside. If too much is trapped, it will give a distinguished smell.

In that case let it dry for several days in a cool dark ventilated place. Don't worry about oxidation too much. Or better yet, do a clean up tek.

I prefer to do a FASA DMT Fumerate conversion and back to Freebase with a mini A/B. This is a lot of work and there will be some yield loss but it can turn oily dark orange DMT from MHRB to fluffy white without smell. I'm into that, but can be personal.

Update: created a mix with properly dried crystals and it was definitely a totally different experience for me. I am convinced this does make a huge difference, despite the claims above that state my problems were psychosomatic in nature. This new mix feels totally "clean", beautiful and healing, like a polar opposite from the mix with "smelly" spice. My advise to everyone attempting to learn from the substance is to properly dry the crystals before smoking or making it into changa. Also, be careful when others have prepared changa if you don't know the method they have used. I am convinced the almost odorless spice is way superior to the smelly one. The strength is not diminished at all but the smoke is less harsh altogether and there are no adverse side effects as far as I could tell. It felt cleansing, healing and very much positive. It was joyful. I used caapi, passion flower and blue lotus for the changa mix.

Happy journeying!

DMT on it's own has a very light smell. The oils that get pulled with it when doing an extraction on the other hand can be described as having a plastic like or "new-sneaker" like smell. That new sneaker smell is most noticeable and relatable to me. Being someone who actually has mothballs in my house regularly, that is not a smell I would consider even remotely similar. This smell you are getting is not necessarily solvent. You can put your oily/fatty spice in a container, cap it for 20-30 minutes and take a whiff. Any remaining solvent will clearly be there and smell like the solvent used, not like something entirely new or different. I do find the smell can blend with that of a solvent like naphtha when first doing the pulls and freeze-precipitating, however the solvent becomes very easy to distinguish if I put the spice in a container and cap it for a while then smell. If is still smells like solvent, I uncap it and put it somewhere warm at around 27c/80f at the warmest until I can cap it for half an hour or longer and not catch any traces of solvent. From what I have noticed, my sense of smell is quite in tune though so any traces of solvent are quite easy for me to pick up on. usually the instant I take the lid off the container.

That said, cleaner spice is definitely less harsh to consume, even when made into changa. I've had waxy stuff that was fine, but I have also had waxy stuff that was quite harsh and got a cleanup done and then was just fine. I find that the darker it is, the harsher it is due to an excess of other things that get pulled from the plant material. Everything up to a very light yellow is fine with me. Anything dominantly yellow gets re-AB'ed and re-x'ed.

As for thinning hair.. I am not sure on that one. I wouldn't blame waxy spice. Maybe you just became aware that your hair has been thinning for a while after using spice. Not really psychosomatic, just that you hadn't noticed. I know it caused me to notice a lot of things I had subconsciously been ignoring for years. If your hair were thinning actively, you would notice quite concerning clumps coming out if you did something like brushed/combed it or took a shower. My hair is dense enough I can clog a shower drain on a good day and that isn't even concerning to me. If however I were able to brush mine and get a handful of hair, I might start being a little concerned.

This is one of the strangest threads here.

I currently have some spice that is several months old that smells pretty strong.

I started losing hair at 16 so what do i know though?

This seems like a very reasonable explanation. Thank you! Yes, the spice does make one more aware of things that may have previously been unconscious. I think that may be it. I shall have to find peace with this. However, something just felt off; I don't think the thinning hair was due to the spice. It was not necessarily thinner I noticed later, it just felt dry and unhealthy. And the mix I made was leaving me feeling uneasy. This of course may just be psychological. I think that patience, awareness and directed intention that go into making the medicine certainly pay off though. Maybe I was just not feeling okay about what I made and got paranoid. However, I can safely say that with some more time and patience I was able to produce something that feels wholesome and fantastic. :-)

Also, I did not mean to bring anyone down or to complain or whatever. I have had amazing experiences with the spice that have been more than life changing, in a positive sense, and it has helped me work through issues of my past in a way I never thought possible. It helped me grow and evolve as a human being and I regard the molecule as something very special. I was simply insecure about the mix I prepared myself.

Thank you for your input. :-)



Then I guess you don't have to worry about balding anymore

When I dry the crystals in a coffee filter for a few days they become almost odorless is all I know, but are still very much potent. I think that this is the best end result of the STB technique I used. But each technique may yield different pleasurable results :-)