Yea...benz also guesstimated his product at ~40% purity, iirc, lending further credence to ND's initial reply

I think extracted psilocin/psilocybin is by itself an entheogen on par as DMT, if not better since it doesn't require MAOIs. I don't see the point in converting it in DMT.

it might be ok for extracts ,

however if making a tincture , don't use methanol (toxic)

I was thinking methanol and iirc the stability is due to oxidation and heat just speeds up the process but heat is not the actual cause of degradation (please correct me if Im mistaken). But a word of warning I have no formal education in organic chem and also I have not tried a methanol extraction out so take everything I say with a huge grain of salt. I was just thinking if its possible to extract then convert all the product to psilocin and vaporize the 4ho (whilst the molecule remains intact) why bother trying to convert it to dmt? I havent tried to freebase and vaporize the 4 subbed tryps I have but if you could clean up an extract to a reasonable degree (re-ex maybe?) and have a product that you could vaporize it would be interesting enough even if it wasnt dmt. But as far as extracting with heat in a manner to prevent oxidation in a kitchen without lab equipment I havent the slightest idea. Perhaps doing the heating steps with a nonpolar liquid that wouldnt mix with your polar solvent to reduce a loss of product to oxidation? Anyone wanna chime in on that?

If I ever get around to trying to freebase and vape my 4 subbed tryptamines Ill report back but life is pretty busy for me at the moment...

If you want to extract reasonably pure psilocin from mushrooms, then you will need to exclude primarily oxygen from as many processing steps as you can. Bright lights and heat should also be kept at a minimum. For cleaning up the extracted psilocin from other substances co-extracted in the initial methanolic extract, you'll need about half a dozen different solvents, if I remember the procedure correctly. Equipment for solvent evaporation under vacuum is also required. There is a practical description of all the steps somewhere on the internet. You can also study the procedures Albert Hofmann used when he first isolated psilocin from mexican mushrooms.


In that case you probably want to put any thoughts of extracting vaporizable pure psilocin on the mental backburner for now.

BTW, you can make a methanolic extract and easily convert it into a safe-for-consumption ethanolic tincture.

1. Extract with methanol
2. Evaporate nearly all the methanol
3. Add ethanol
4. Evaporate nearly all the ethanol and methanol
5. Add ethanol

In case of doubt about traces of methanol remaining, steps 3 and 4 can be repeated.

The evaporation should ideally not be done in open dishes, but using a warm water bath and reduced pressure from eg. a water jet (venturi) vacuum pump.

This discussion gave me an idea... I wonder if it'd be possible to create a mushroom extract (not pharmacologically pure, but safe) to be used as a nasal spray or snort powder...

The extracts that I have seen are sticky, AFAICS it would be hard to turn it into a free flowing powder.

And with regard to a spray, I think that spraying relatively high concentrations of alcohol onto the nasal mucus will give a burning sensation. I am not sure if the actives are sufficiently water-soluble to make a salty water solution from it that would be agreeable to the nasal mucus.

Feel free to try though, it is an interesting idea if it would be feasible.

The concern is that the phenol will turn into a reactive radical species, correct?

Blessings
~ND

correct.
this is of particular concern at high pH.

now that I think about it, I also wonder about the geometry of the molecule, analogous to DMT... namely, if rotamers exist, and if they change conformation under certain conditions.

the charged side groups across the pH range make psilocin isolation a challenge in itself. the most stable form is a maleate salt;
and you can pretty much forget about removing any substituent from the benzene ring. that isn't happening, even enzymatically.

I'll read up on this and have a go when my crop is ready.

By the way, since there are some people here quite versed in the chemistry of mushrooms... I remember reading that while drying the shrooms, most of the psilocin is destroyed via oxidation.

So... would drying the mushrooms in a household vacuum canister (eg. Zepter Vacsy) improve psilocin retention?

For proper storage, mushrooms must be dried to a crisp. Ordinary drying to the air does not sufficiently dehydrate the mushrooms.

Store the mushrooms over a drying agent. I use calcium chloride bags that are sold for the purpose of drying damp basements etc. Don't use too little of it or else the moisture from the mushrooms will liquify the calcium chloride and mess up the mushrooms.

Pulling an additional vacuum could help too, but most important is a container that can be sealed and the presence of a drying agent in the container together with the mushrooms.

I would agree with this. Psilocybin even by itself is very like Anahuasca though nowhere near as healing and brutally therapeutic (rue). Honestly for me Psilocybin contains everything that DMT does and more (which makes sense structurally) but I'd say that psilocybin is more dangerous psychologically than Anahuasca/DMT and in terms of duration of the experience.

You’ve got to be very careful you don’t fall victim to psychosis and delusions with mushrooms -just as you may with LSD- and I would advise anyone wanting to push to the outer extremes of the psychedelic experience to do so with the much safer/shorter DMT and not attempt to go to hyperspace with mushrooms. I believe fully it to be possible but six hours there? People will crack up!

I think if you've broken through to full on hyperspace with DMT after that you'll find it pretty hard not to do the same with mushrooms and into pretty much the same place.

Its interesting from an OChem point of view though in that looking at the two molecules one would think it would be very easy to go from psilocin to DMT.

from an ochem point of view, one would know there is no feasible way of removing a hydroxyl from a benzene ring.
the covalent forces are too great.

The Man has spoken.

Blessings
~ND

I feel you really are being unjust to mushrooms. They are an extremely well researched and much used entheogen, with tens (hundreds) of thousands of years of human use, and they are much more prevalent than various forms of DMT in today's psychedelic subculture as well...

My personal experience is that unlike LSD, mushrooms seem to "have your best interests at heart". By no means do I want to imply that a shroom trip might be without risk, but in comparison, it's one of the most "well moderated" substances around..


Not on mushrooms they won't. LSD, shrooms and DMT are similar, but ultimately very different experiences in terms of emotional charge.

Generally, "pushing the outer extremes of the psychedelic experience" is always risky, especially because such ambitions tend to have their roots in various negative emotions, a lack of faith in oneself, escapism, fear of death, fear of life, alienation and lack of aim, etc... That tends to come back to haunt people during and after the trip.

Picking out probably the least jarring entheogen around, and calling it "less safe" than others is just pointing fingers in the wrong direction.

Revisiting this thread, I've just been thinking that a simple hot water extraction followed by a precipitation of the insoluble calcium salt of psilocybin by adding calcium chloride solution just might be feasible for producing a stable, solid product. Do it right and it might even turn out crystalline. I never tried it though .

I would love to hear from those chemistry savvy on the following theoretical process :
The difference between DMT and the 4-HO-DMT molecule is in fact an extra oxygen atom on the indole , hence the 4-HO - DMT. With the phenol molecule , the oxygen seems to be easy to remove by zinc dust that forms ZnO (insoluble in water). Wouldn't a similar process render DMT from Psilocin ?
I know that some heat is required for the Phenol molecule to release the oxygen and change to benzene but don't know how much heat. Is anything else other than Zinc suitable ?
Psilocin isn't water soluble but it is soluble in acidic water. Also, at about 70 - 80 ^C psilocybin (water soluble) changes to psilocin. Not hard extraction, or so it seems. Is the next step of getting rid of the extra oxygen atom feasible ?

run the experiment, then PM me, and I’ll give you my address to send the sample. I will test it with LC-MS for free.
That’s how certain I am that such a conversion is unlikely.

recent runs have shown, the instrument is very accurate/sensitive to the DMT parent ion.

No, this will never work.

Maybe at 100PSI under H2 at 300C, which would utterly destroy everything of course.

The only practical way to do such a transformation would be palladium hydrogenolysis of the triflate after it has been prepared from the -OH, completely expensive and ridiculous. On top of the fact that the dosage for DMT is many times higher than that of psilocin, and that psilocin is produced in much smaller amounts relative to the DMT producing plants. Not really worth pursuing. At that point, its better transform that triflate into something more valuble.