Yeah, unless some people are extra sensitive to eucalyptol, I just can't see it being responsible for the sedative effects felt at 20 drops (0.55 ml of SWIM's oil). It must be from something else present.

Look at this:


Myrcene is the main active compound in lemon grass oil. It alone produces the full effects of the oil.

Lemon grass oil is apparently mildly sedating at doses of 1-3 drops. This is caused by myrcene. So myrcene is very potent.

Elemi oil contains 2.5% myrcene, while Lemon grass oil contains 12%. That’s about 4.8 times as much as Elemi oil. So a dose 4.8 times a dose needed for Lemon grass oil should be the amount of Elemi oil to use to get effects from myrcene. Assuming the maximum of 3 drops Lemon grass oil, that comes to a dose of 14.4 drops of Elemi oil. That sounds just about right to me.

I think the mystery is solved. Myrcene is the sedative present that is causing the undesirable sedation.

Now because myrcene’s XLogP3 is so high (XLogP3-AA=4.3) compared to elemicin’s (XLogP3=2.5), it should be easy to separate from it.

SWIM will do a test and attempt a simple solvent based separation of the two. I’m pretty sure DMSO will dissolve elemicin and not myrcene. If so, this will be a very simple way to remove the sedative present if my theory is correct.

30 minutes ago, SWIM mixed 2.5 ml of DMSO with 0.6 ml of elemi oil. The DMSO is the standard kind that is 99.9% pure DMSO mixed with 30% water, so it’s only 70% DMSO. He mixed the two liquids vigorously with a tiny lab spatula. He then let it settle. It settled into two layers really fast. He then got his 10 ml pipette and sucked up the liquid and let it separate inside the pipette. It separated into almost exactly 2.5 ml of DMSO and 0.6 ml of elemi oil, or so it seemed.

SWIM dispensed the two liquids into two separate micro beakers. The DMSO glowed blue in UV light. The elemi oil did not.

Immediately SWIM drank the DMSO portion.

Now it’s been 30 minutes since he ingested it, and guess what? It seemed to have worked!

SWIM feels the stimulating elemicin and NO SEDATION AT ALL. Not even a tiny hint of it.

Now SWIM has tolerance because he used elemi oil yesterday, so he should not get much from the elemicin, but should be feeling very noticeable sedation at this point. All he feels is the elemicin.

SWIM is going to have to repeat this test again when he doesn’t have tolerance to the elemicin. I know the separation was a success at removing the sedative, but just how much elemicin was extracted I can’t be sure because SWIM has elemicin tolerance from yesterday’s use. So even if it was all extracted, the effects will still be weak.



UPDATE: Without a doubt, a lot of the elemicin was extracted into the DMSO. It's been 6 hours since SWIM took it. He went to sleep for a while and then woke up with very noticeable effects from the elemicin: stimulation, euphoria and visuals. It seems pretty strong, almost as strong as the day before. It's VERY CLEAN and feels almost like acid.

So this method very easily removes the sedative component of the oil while maintaining a good portion of the elemicin.

Since the oil is cheap, any loss of elemicin by this cleanup step is of little concern.

Note that the DMSO was slightly numbing and tasted more like very strong bitter NUTMEG than elemi oil, indicating that a lot of the elemicin was extracted into it. Apparently the Elemi oil compounds that are insoluble in DMSO are responsible for most of Elemi oil's flower-like flavor.

Considering most of the elemi oil was insoluble in the DMSO, it's safe to say that the limonene, beta-phellandrene, para-cymene, myrcene, and elemol were all removed by this cleanup step. I am 100% positive that the limonene was removed, and since it has the lowest XLogP of the others I mentioned, it stands to reason that there were also all removed. It's also likely that the alpha-phellandrene was removed too. It seems like maybe only 5% of the Elemi oil actually dissolved into the DMSO and alpha-phellandrene makes up about 15% of the oil, so it's likely it didn't dissolve in the DMSO. It's likely that the DMSO contains a large amount of the carvone, elemicin, eucalyptol, and methyl eugenol because of their XLogP values being so low (all are 2.5 or lower). Probably some terpinolene, alpha-pinene, and gamma-terpinene were also dissolved, but they occur in such small amounts in the oil that they are of little concern. The important thing is that it seems most of the elemicin dissolved in the DMSO, and the sedating component did NOT.

Prior to mixing the DMSO and the Elemi oil, the DMSO would not glow in UV light, while the Elemi oil glows very light bluish green in UV light. After mixing and separating the two, the DMSO glowed and the Elemi oil did not, indicating something in the Elemi oil completely migrated into the DMSO: the elemicin perhaps?

SWIM is very pleased by this little lab test. Now he has a very simply way of getting a far more pure form of elemicin from Elemi oil.

@The Traveler: It's good to hear you had similar problems with reading your computer screen. For SWIM it seemed like focussing was a bit harder.

About sedative effects of elemi oil:

Don't you think that eugenol could also be involved here? At least after smoking clove cigarettes I notice a (very nice) effect of relaxation and even a bit sedation. It is almost like an MJ effect if you smoke the right brand of clove cigarettes. Clove's oil contains a lot eugenol and this is (was) also used for anesthetic purposes sometimes.

This is very true. In indonesia people use cloves against tootache, so it must have some effects on the nervous-system.

It seems to me that the sedating effects are not caused by one single ingredient but are the result of a synergy between the various sedating compounds. You see the same thing with cacti. This is also why cacti are different each time you take them. It's never the same because the mixture of all the different substances in them is always a bit different, resulting in sometimes a fuzzy feeling and sometimes a more clearheaded feeling.

but how do you know this is not set and setting differences and self-suggestion in the cactus experiences? I mean, if you take once a cactus and for a variety of non-chemical reasons it feels more fuzzy, and then next time if you take from same batch you might expect fuzzy non-clear feelings and therefore self-suggest it or smt?

Im not saying there arent different alkaloid profiles in cactus and that these dont make a difference (who knows...) but I think people are too quick to judge differences in effects without properly controlling variables. I see a lot of qualitative comparisons even when its different dosages taken, or in different situations, or in different modes of ingestion, etc etc, and anybody with a bit more scientific attitude will see there is a flawed logic in the assumptions

Its pretty clear to me that at least in a big part these set and setting and self-suggestion issues play a role, and people never seem to consider them. Its very possible that there are other more chemical aspects that make a difference too but its impossible to separate them and to make realistic hypothesis without proper blind testing

Sorry for the skeptic off topic here, its just that I see these kind of comments very often and I think its a relevant discussion.. I might make a new thread about this sometime

About synergy's.
I have one experience experience with nutmeg that is pretty remarkable: i ate nutmeg in the morning and got stoned from it. It lasted for a few hours and at the early evening i started to get sober again. Then later on at nighttime i smoked marihuana through a pipe and besides the MJ effects, the effects of the nutmeg came back again. Especially the visual effects of it came back VERY STRONG. Combined with the cannabis they where even stronger than the effects where when i had just eaten the nutmeg.

I also have experience with combining a low dose of datura and calamus, wich also is said to contain TMA-like compounds or compounds that are supposed to convert into TMA, with LSH. The two seemed very synergistic. At that time i wasn't interested in calamus that much, mostly because of the stories af vomiting for hours on, but a low dose made the LSH much more LSD-like in the sense that the effects and especially the visuals where enhanced without the negative effects to increase. I would even say that this was the best 'organic LSD' brew i ever drank.

I bet that nux-vomica (strychnine) has a positive effect on it as well. It goes well with LSD because there is a synergy with both it's stimulating as well as it's sense-enhancing quality's. I suspect that it generally combines well with stimulating psychedelic's.

No, this is not the sedative present. I'm am 100% sure of that for two reasons.

First off, I have clove oil and used it orally before. I know the effects of it orally. It's very unlike the sedative effect SWIM gets from large doses of straight elemi oil.

Secondly, the methyl eugenol present in Elemi oil is soluble in DMSO. In SWIM's test above the methyl eugenol was for sure extracted into the DMSO along with the elemicin and the end results were not at all sedating, but very stimulating, visual, and euphoric. There was the typical numbness in the mouth present from the methyl eugenol, so I know it was extracted into the DMSO (other than the fact that methyl eugenol is known to be soluble in DMSO).

The sedative is one of the DMSO insoluble components of the oil such as alpha-phellandrene, limonene, beta-phellandrene, para-cymene, myrcene, or elemol. Eugenol is soluble in DMSO, and SWIM's tests also confirm that elemicin is soluble in it. Anything present in the oil with an XLogP of 2.5 or lower is very likely also soluble in DMSO. Since the DMSO extract was not sedating one bit, even at a very large dose, we can be fairly sure only the highly non-polar compounds insoluble in DMSO can be responsible for the sedation.

Yeah, the nux-vomica is worth a try. I bet that will be excellent. SWIM is out of his extract. Nux-vomica is fantastic stuff to use with any psychedelic (but also very dangerous if you use it wrong).

Concerning the calamus, there's something in calamus that's psychedelic other than the commonly talked about asarones. Calamus washed with acetone is still active, slightly psychedelic, and not at all nauseating or sedating. From now on, SWIM will only use calamus washed with acetone. His one experience with a concentrated acetone extract of calamus was HELL. All the asarone present caused endless and hellish vomiting. Fortunately, calamus washed with acetone is still very active, and actually a much better experience. So if SWIM tries the calamus combo it will be with acetone washed calamus only.

This sounds really promising! More tests need to be done to be absolutely sure, but from the looks of it it seems like you have found a way to remove the sedative effect. Is anything else than DMSO likely to work? I can't seem to find DMSO...

Methanol or a mix of ethanol and water will likely do the job also. It's all about removing the components insoluble in DMSO. Those are the components with a high XLogP. So any solvent mix that excludes those should work.

I can get DMSO easily. It's 70% DMSO with 30% water that SWIM used. It's food grade. It's found at the local health food stores. But in some countries it might not be easy to get.

Methanol is a little scary to use because its not edible.

A mix of ethanol and water is probably the next best thing besides using DMSO. But just how much water to mix with it? I have no idea. Several tests will need to be performed.


AFTER THE SEDATIVE COMPONENT IS REMOVED BY USING DMSO THE EFFECT IS MUCH MORE LIKE LSD. SWIM currently feels like he's on acid. Apparently the sedative present has been altering the effects all along even at lower doses, but SWIM just didn't notice it. It's quite stimulating once the sedative is removed.

For sure this test needs to be repeated to be absolutely sure it works, is not somehow placebo, or just a fluke. Until SWIM can repeat this test, and others can, we can't be sure it actually did work no matter how convincing this single test was to SWIM.

Would you say it beats calamus?

Are you referring to Elemi oil beating calamus?

After mixing the Elemi oil in DMSO, and then separating the DMSO and discarding the Elemi oil, which seems to remove all the sedative junk, the effects are nothing short of fantastic.

With calamus on it’s own, yes, the DMSO extract of Elemi oil definitely beats calamus by a long shot. But if we’re talking about calamus washed with acetone, that’s a different thing. SWIM doesn’t have that much experience with calamus washed with acetone and has only experienced very low doses of that. It is nice. SWIM needs more work with calamus.

The thing that sort of steered SWIM away from calamus and sassafras in the direction of Elemi oil is that Elemi oil is active as is, while calamus and sassafras need work on them before they become anything very interesting. With Elemi oil, it seems that all you need is to mix it in DMSO, remove the non-DMSO soluble crap, and you have an excellent psychedelic very similar to LSD and mescaline with the sedative crap removed from it. (MORE TESTS NEED TO BE DONE TO CONFIRM THIS.)

Hmm... Would it explain SWIM single nice Nutmeg experience ?

He ate freshly grinded nutmeg (at least one whole, he can't remember) WHILE DRUNK, it was a drinking night.
He went to sleep (didn't felt anything at first) slept few hours (dissipating the alcohol), and woke feeling exactly the same as on a low dose of clean LSD. Not sedated at all. Not this stoned feeling users had with nutmeg.
Did this binge wash away some stuff and let SWIM with a clean experience ?

This was like 7 years ago..

I don't know. Maybe the alcohol was making you get tolerance to the effects of the other compounds present?

It's hard to say.

Nutmeg is such a mixed bag. Many report unpleasant experiences while some report fantastic experiences with it, on par with LSD.

Like Elemi oil, nutmeg probably contains undesirable components that are sometimes not present in sufficient quantities to do much, and other times present in large amounts.

Nutmeg is very likely the next oil SWIM will investigate. With so many people using nutmeg as a cheap high, it's worthy of investigation. I'll bet there's a way to minimize or remove most of undesirable compounds in nutmeg. With nutmeg, I believe you want both the elemicin and the myristicin. That makes it a little harder to deal with than Elemi oil, because you're targeting more than one compound.

The main reason I'm interested in these legal herbs is because of the recent Bouncing Bear Botanical raid. It's possible that Trichocereus, Mimosa, Anadenanthera and several other important plants might soon become unavailable. Alternatives to these plants need to be found before this happens, if it ever does.

SWIM's tests have shown that in calamus, and in sassafras, there are psychedelics present other than safrole and asarone that are virtually unknown to most. In Elemi oil you have elemicin, which is somewhat known, but it's psychedelic action is virtual unknown. In nutmeg you have both elemicin and myristicin. While nutmeg is well known as a psychedelic, it's know as a horrible experience, one most people will never repeat. That makes it relatively safe from being banned I think.

Nutmeg is sort of a diamond in the rough I think. It needs some refinement. There's probably just 1 or 2 compounds in it that are messing up the experience, and they can probably be removed easily with the right tech. To this day I haven't seen anyone really approach nutmeg seriously from a kitchen tech point of view. I think a method that is a kitchen tech method can be developed that improves the nutmeg experience by a lot. It's possible just a few washes with the right solvent, or some temperature changes, or something else simple to do can remove the unwanted compounds from the oil while leaving behind the good stuff.

I do remember DMSO from the health food store scene in the 70's and 80's. I called a few southern California health food stores today - after transplanting a few of my thriving T. bridgesii's into some 15 gal pots - and asked if they carried it. The uniform response is that they stopped carrying DMSO years ago, but instead now carry it's cousin, DMSO2, also known as MSM, which is sold as a powder. I did notice that DMSO is still widely avialable, but could only find it as an online purchase.

So, naturally, I'm wondering if there's a way MSM could substitute for DMSO in the elemi oil/DMSO tek in producing "cleaner" elemicin?

DMSO is (CH3)2SO, while MSM is (CH3)2SO2. The store mangers who know about both products said that DMSO was getting through the skin too easily, carrying with it any bacteria present. Wikipedia says this about MSM:

"MSM is structurally related to dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), but the behavior of these two is different. DMSO is a highly polar solvent and an excellent ligand, with water-like dissolving properties whereas MSM is less polar and less reactive. MSM is also a metabolite of DMSO.....MSM is promoted as a natural source of sulfur by the supplement and health food industry. There is no Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) or Daily Value established for sulfur. MSM is sold as a dietary supplement that is marketed with a variety of claims, and is commonly used (often in combination with glucosamine and/or chondroitin) for helping to treat or prevent osteoarthritis."

I'm no chemist...but marketing-wise, MSM is being presesnted to the public in almost the same was DMSO was 35 years ago.

Would be even better if the new elemicin clean up tek could work with MSM. Anyone have suggestions? Thanks! This is pretty exciting stuff.

DMSO is a solvent. MSM is not a solvent and wouldn’t work.

The whole reason DMSO was picked as the solvent for the elemicin extraction is that it’s very polar, nearly as polar as water, but not quite. If it was as polar as water then things like elemicin and DMT wouldn’t be soluble in it. Elemicin and DMT have roughly the same polarity, with an XLogP3 calculated as 2.5 for each. Things with an XlogP3 of 2.5 are generally insoluble in water, but seem to be soluble in DMSO.

Keep in mind that the DMSO used was 30% water. Pure DMSO without water in it might not work as well because it would be less polar and might dissolve more junk from the elemi oil.

Getting back to the original topic of this thread... A couple years ago during a festival a wonderful woman was giving out liquid raw chocolate cups as part of a chocolate ceremony. I watched her mix everything together - fresh ground cacao, coconut oil, vanilla, etc. At one point she pulled out an amber bottle that she said was an extract of sassafras and poured the liquid (which was clear) from the bottle into the brew. Myself, my girlfriend and two of my friends drank this raw chocolate. It had an incredible flavor, and within a half hour we all felt like we were on light doses of very natural ecstasy. It was very different from anything any of us had felt. Very gentle, aphrodisiac like, and euphoric.

I know that in ancient times raw chocolate was often combined with psychedelic mushrooms to potentiate the effects of the mushrooms. I'm wondering if somehow the coconut oil helped the proper digestion of sassafras extract and the raw chocolate helped to potentiate it's effects? Can anyone please help shed some light on this? I remember fondly of the experience and would really like to replicate a natural and easy to extract empatheogen

raw cacao itself feels like a very mdma/mescalineish phen glow, and if I have even 1 full teaspoon of the stuff it's too much for me. There are 9 active phenethylamines in cacao when it is raw..So I wouldnt discount the possability that alot of what you felt was the cacao itslef. I dunni much about sassafras other than some conflicting reports but I would imagine it would synergise somehow.

Thanks for your reply Fractal Enchantment. I do know for sure that it was more than just the raw chocolate as I've experimented with raw chocolate extensively. I do think it helped to provide some of the euphoria but not nearly all of it. I'm also curious if it really was sassafras extract or something else. I've tasted sassafras before and this tasted distinctly better than sassafras (you could definitely taste herbs in the chocolate. can't pinpoint it but it was really great flavor addition)