Hey all! First time post but long time lurker, have been reading these forums on and off for many years. I’ve had the intention of extracting spice for myself over the years but the time never felt right, things just never lined up. Thank you so much to all the gifted people that help consolidate information here, it’s made my journey a heck of a lot easier along the way.

My journey with dmt started some years ago when I was gifted 200mg or so of what I think was yellow crystalline mimosa extract. This was shared with a few friends and we all had some lovely light dose experiences using the sandwich technique, none of us felt ready for breakthrough experiences. That was 11 years ago. Fast forward to 3 months ago, a friend messages “I just extracted dmt and broke through” I’m very intrigued and chats are had. Some days go by and he comes around with the extract which is a brown goo, I try some impregnated herb and have an amazing sub breakthrough but very strong experience. I can’t get over it, I can’t describe it and I want to explore more.. He left me with 200mg or so which I mixed in some pg/vg and in to a vape. Some more amazing experiences were had over the course of a few hours that night. Still sub breakthrough, I’m still just getting a feel for this space. Taking it slow.

Lots of research ensues..

Sustainably grown acuminata phyllodes, some appropriate glass containers, pipettes, naptha, pH meter etc are acquired.. evap tests are done, everything’s triple checked. Good to go!

First attempt on 50g of ground phyllodes following CYB’s hybrid tek (found pdf online somewhere) resulted in a yellow goop precipitate. Very active, very lovely but a bit heavy on the chest. I figured even with a defat there was still a lot of nmt and potential other stuff in the mix. Tried to re-x but still got the goop. No biggie, try again. Yield 0.3%.

More research ensues.. Learning to deal with emulsions that happened during the process above. Learning about this “back-salting” thingy that seems to make a lot of sense in terms of cleaning things up..

Got given 100g of confusa root bark and tried the same tek with that. Still a lot of goo but a fair amount of white crystals too. Yield .7% ish .2% of which was crystals. I broke through on those crystals and oh my goodness, it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced.

A week or so later after lots of research I decided to get myself a 2L sep, 500ml sep and proper glassware. Want to learn and do this properly. More research ensuing... thank you nexus community, seriously!!!

Next attempt 100g acuminata phyllodes. Still sort of following CYB’s tek but doing multiple acid boils / simmers - 3 I think from memory, filtering, combining and reducing the aqueous solution to keep things clean in the sep funnel. Also adding a backsalt at the end and using room temp nps for pulls. I basically used the same 150ml of nps back and forth between two sep funnels, shaking it back in to 350ml of acidic water after pulling from the base mix (this is really efficient if you can pour nps out the top of the funnel in to a collection vessel and then back in to the other sep funnel). I like this method a lot. Pulled the bascksalt with fresh nps, reduced by 50% as usual and froze for 3 days. Crystals yay!! But wait, no matter what, fan no fan, hot day, cold day, humid day - they always melted back in to the nps and or turned to goo. Back in the freezer upside down you say? Nope they melt there too.. Wondering if the humidity was messing with me at this point, it was quite warm and humid.

The above was sort of repeated a few times with varying size small batches. All resulting in melting crystals / goop so I ended up just making enhanced leaf. No biggie, the enhanced leaf is really nice and much clearer on the chest than my first attempt with no backsalt. I tried warm vs room temp nps for the pulls and a few little changes here and there to get a feel for the way that the end result was effected.

All the while I’m researching plant ID and learning about local species, sustainability issues, morality issues etc.. Must educate myself.. Read everything on the nexus, read everything on reddit that’s relevant.

In terms of the experience itself, acuminata seemed much more gentle than obtusifilia and confusa extract profiles. It was almost as if it was hard to break through even on larger doses. Maybe this is due to the amount of nmt in acuminata but it definitely feels way more gentle. I still haven’t broken through on it, maybe I just need to up the dose but I have definitely efficiently smoked a good amount of enhanced leaf that would be around 60mg + of dmt. Feels very close but still sub breakthrough and the visuals don’t seem as crisp or well defined. The experience seems generally more blurred and meditative.

Meanwhile my friend Is getting lovely crystals using the same process from dead A. Obtusifolia twigs and sticks..

At this point serious research mode takes over for a little while. I was beginning to wonder how good my nps was (shellite Aus, you know the one). As by now I’m confused as it does not seem to hold as much as people seem to suggest online. I’ve read all of the conflicting info here in terms of pulling capacity and various speculation about the formulation changing. And I’ve now educated myself about polymorphs and what is theorised to cause them to occur, potential ways to resolve (is that the right word?) them i.e. long hot water bath for the backsalt solution or nps with stirring overnight or for some hours. I was also beginning to wonder if something in this particular solvent was causing different polymorphs because I could see that if a backsalt was left overnight, the settled precipitate was obviously not an oil or goop. Strange..

Decided to extract the rest of the phyllodes and try a few different things to learn more and play with the process. 400g ish of phyllodes this time, extracted and backsalted in to 1L of citric acid solution pH 2.5. I used xylene for the defat and main pulls as I was getting frustrated with the amount of pulls required with naptha. Xylene took like 3 pulls from the aqueous solution instead of 6-9 with naphtha. By this point emulsions are few thanks to good filtering and if they appear I have no worries dealing with them quickly with a bit of saturated salt solution or a bit more base., I feel that my pulling technique in the 2L sep is efficient based on testing along the way and everything that I have learned so far.

This time the backsalt was whacked in a hot water bath at 50c for 5 hours and swirled around every now and then. This, I think was the step that made working with these acuminata phyllodes and getting a better end result possible. Thank you to benzyme for starting the DMT polymerisation thread and everyone else that contributed there.

Based the large 1000ml backsalt and pulled with fresh warm - 45c naphtha. Total volume of combined pulls was nearly 1000ml of very saturated naphtha that clouded up instantly on contact with cooler glass. Even the last pull was went very cloudy, instantly. I don’t know why it took so many pulls and so much naphtha but I got frustrated here and pulled the last of it with one last xylene pull that I evaporated down and now have a nice chunk of jungle spice to try..

The 1000ml of saturated naptha was split and left in two seperate 400ml beakers and a little glass tray while I went to have dinner. I came back an hour later to find very nice looking crystals starting to coat a good portion of the sides and bottom of the beakers and tray. WOW, I had not seen this before, the naphtha had gone from cloudy to clear but crystals had formed at room temp (around 20c at this point). Any air movement at the surface of the naphtha caused instant clouding. I left the beakers for 3 days at room temp undisturbed and got very nice crystal growth. 

Decided to try freeze precipitate again but with just one beaker. What do you know, again this resulted in a thick puffy white layer of crystals on the bottom of the beaker after 3 days (at this point I should note that beakers are sealed with cling wrap then put in an airtight container before going in to the freeze to prevent condensation and or moisture issues or nps leaking in to my freezer) but again they just melted back in to solution after pouring off the nps. Same result if I did the entire process in the freezer and left the beaker to drain upside down on top of a collection vessel. BUT the crystals that formed ar too temp did not melt. 

Now I think bugger it there is plenty of crystals in the beakers that grew at room temp, decant all the nps in to a large tray, dry beakers for a few days and collect. 0.5% tan crystals. Nice! We did it but what about all of that still saturated NPS? Freeze it for a week or so in a big tray and the same process repeats, melting crystals. By now I’m not even annoyed and just laughing at this. NPS was evaporated to leave yellow goop brining the total yield up to about 1.2%.

I feel accomplished and very happy with my results and what I have learned along the way, albeit annoyed with not being able to properly freeze percip “stable” crystals aside from the one time with confusa root bark. For the next little while I take a break from doing extractions and do some more experimentation with the fruits of my labour. After a number of experiences, even on quite high doses, the consensus is that the acuminata extract really is very gentle compared to the obtusifolia extract. My friend and I sat down and tried both, one after the other and the difference is night and day.

Here is where things get more interesting.

I think to myself right, I would really love some or this obtusifolia extract for myself and I want to feel more connected to what I am doing, start to finish. By this point I’ve also tried extracting phyllodes of longifolia sub. Saphorae and also floribunda with little or no results and have a rue seed extraction going on the side.

My friend offers to take me to where he has been harvesting dead material from. We got very lucky and found several large dead, totally dry trees. I’m talking 5m high, totally uprooted and knocked down by recent floods, sitting for long enough that the bark was bone dry. I was sad to see some strips of bark missing that had obviously been taken when they were live. Looking around there were saplings, medium and even very large obtusifolia as far as the eye could see. This place had a bit of a magical feel.

I take a moment internally to express my thanks and gratitude to the land for providing this opportunity and promise that I won’t be greedy and take more than I need. I hope anyone else that stumbles upon, or knows of this location might do the same. There are enough large trees that will be knocked down in the next round of flooding and they are easy enough to ID. There also seem to be some fairly large live trees that have had some large strips pealed off which is very sad to see when there are dead trees literally within a few feet..

We only took what we needed, left a lot of material for anyone else that happens to stumble on this magnificent spot, had some lunch and went on our way. I felt good about this, ethical, sustainable and unlike a lot of what’s reported over the years in terms of people stripping bark from live trees.

This brings me to the now. After playing around with a UV flashlight and harmala extracts, dmt polymorphs and the like, my friend and I almost simultaneously thought what if you can “find the dmt” in the bark with UV. Figure out exactly what layer of the bark contains the dmt. So we had a bit of a play around.

The pictures below are of a chunk of dry obtusifolia bark with sections of the outer rough layer lightly shaved off until the inner layers begin to show, some spots I went deeper than others to give a contrast. I also shaved some of the edges nice and clean to give a good cross-section image.

Now, I finally have some actual questions for you lovely learned people.

Is the fluorescence in the pics actually dmt? It’s the exact same colour as it glows in solution or as crystals! If so does this mean that the dmt is not so much in the inner bark as with MHRB but in the outer layer, just beneath the rough surface with some acacia? Is this a potential method to confirm positive ID? 

It does seem that the bark that is not lighting up bright blue also has a bit of a glow although very hard to see, so maybe it’s just more concentrated in that middle - outer layer? Could this be harvested without damaging the tree if one were to harvest from a live tree? Could this help sustainability in terms of people being able to more easily ID dead or fallen material?

We may have shaved the very brightly glowing bits off a chunk and bioassay’d them in a bong.. Definite effects were felt with quite a small amount of material. Maybe 80mg.

I think it’s safe to say that I will be taking my UV light with me on bush walks. Peace!

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading about your journey through different extractions. I don't have any idea about your question other than to say that it certainly sounds like an exciting prospect for helping with identification, maybe take the light out in the bush and see what if any kind of glow you get from species not known to contain DMT and see if you get false positives with this method.
Otherwise, welcome, I am glad you decided to start posting

Hi all, 5iver's friend here.

I wonder if this could be useful for identifying when seasonal trees are at their most active before harvesting.

On another note does anyone know if acacia regrow the outer layers of bark when removed?

Thanks RowRow!

I plan to do something like that when I get a chance to do a night walk.

Although I do keep finding papers stating that dmt does not fluoresce. This is a bit confusing.

Quick update:

Went camping and took a UV torch.

UV can definitely be used to identify active obtusifolia, more notably dead and fallen trees / shrubs. The blue glow above doesn’t seem to show up in any inactive trees like this. Cross checked with some local longifolia, bunch of gums, other wattles that are inactive and anything I’ve seen that looks remotely like acacia.

Some specimens fluoresce more intensely than others and have a thicker fluorescent layer, up to 4-5x thicker, potentially indicating higher content? I’m going to try and test this.

On a really dark night I think I was able to even see which phyllodes contained the most dmt by shining uv from the underside.

I’m really somewhat stumped that this has not been tested before and am wondering how to go about verifying this? Can someone else with access to active acacia take UV light to some slightly scraped bark? I’d love to see if this is the case for active maidenii and others.

My seedlings are all very small so further verification is quite a while off 😂

This get me more interested about UV and DMT

some data i dig up maybe save some time for someone

DMT UV and vis spectra
https://orgspectroscopyi...-dimethyltryptamine.html

Does DMT glow under UV light?
https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=92679

Does N, N DMT fluoresce at any known wavelength ?
https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=41540

fluorescence spectrum and intensity, effects of Ph..
https://bibliography.map...resources/download/13748