Fruit

I made the extract. I'm now sitting with about 3.5 grams of dark brown semi-sticky goo, it's fairly similiar to some varities of soft hashish (I've seen it on TV...). Now, how much is a starter dose? I've tried smoking it but it burns poorly, so eating is next. Any dosage recommendations?

Now I've put ~10 grams (+/- 1 gram) of powdered Kratom, perhaps 50% powdered at arrival from the supplier and 50% krushed by me, into ~700 ml of hot water (above 60 Celsius but not boiling or shimmering) in a glass container, added ~1 ml of ascorbic acid (as an anti-oxidant), and will let it steep until tomorrow. My intent is to filter of the herb mush and then reduce the water solution to resin. One thing I noted was that before adding the ascorbic acid the powdered herb floated on the water surface, but as soon as the acid hit the water, the herb powder sank to the bottom of the container (and went back there after stirring). Now, before I hurt myself or waste a lot of Kratom, can somebody tell me if this seems like a reasonable proceedure? I already have second thoughts about the ascorbic as this seemed to decrease the solubility.

As I've mentioned, I find the possibility of a 100 times more potent substance possibly appearing in the stuff if not prepared properly is pretty scary (though it's not an all-bad thing, ofcourse :-) ). Would it be possible to prevent oxidation into pseudoindoxyl by adding something like ascorbic acid to the water when making tea? Among the recipes for Kratom tea or water extract I find, I rarely see any dosage information. How much dried leaf material to use for one beyond-placebo dose? If you make the resin extract balls, how much is a resin ball? BTW, how soluble is mitragynine in different solvents? Would adding a bit of ethanol make for better extractions? [ 04. March 2004, 05:57: Message edited by: Fruit ]

I made a tea (slight boil for ~5 min) from 4 teaspoons of crushed (into a coarse powder) dried Kratom with 2 cups of water tonight, and added sugar, and I must say it tasted horrible. It was very bitter with a hint of sour spinach or something. How anything with this herb in it can ever taste nice is beyond me. Definately tasted poisonous. The kratom was filtered off (but saved) and me and a friend drank half a cup each (starting out low). After ~40 min I decided it didn't do anything so I drank another 1/2 cup. Still nothing. However my stomach didn't like the Kratom at all; I got all bubbly and semi-diharreic. However, circumstances makes it difficult to tell if this was the Kratom. [ 03. March 2004, 11:57: Message edited by: Fruit ]

Thanks! After refreshing my chem-know a bit I realize my question was a bit naive... Seems harder to do real extractions than I first thought, and hardly something I'll attemt in the kitchen. And Sinicuichi seems to be a real witches' brew of a plant :-) I suppose I should simply make a methanol extraction then? Would the old method of first washing the stuff with a polar solvent, letting the residing goo dry, then extracting it with methanol, work to reduce the plant-stuff?

I posted under the mitragynine pseudoindoxyl thread, but come think of it my question is more general: Is there a general way of making "crude extracts" of herbs? I've tried reading up on the chems but the herbs I'm interested in, the ones that have only lately become available through herbal suppliers, seems to be quite unknown. On stuff such as Sinicuichi and the lilies I can't even find out if the active substances are alkaloids or not. My reason for wanting to extract is mainly that since I'm new to the herbs and their effect, I would prefer smoking as that way the effects come on quickly so it's easier to level the dose. As I don't use tobacco and only rarely cannabis I am no big fan of inhaling huge amounts of smoke, either. Additionally, where I live only dried herbs are available and sometimes ridiculous amounts is said to be needed, and anyway, I have no idea how potent my supplier's stuff is (and I don't think he has a clue or gives a damn, unfortunately). I don't have the chemcical confidence, knowledge or equipment to try anything advanced, so what I'm looking for is more of a kitchen chemistry recipe I guess. The herbs mainly in question are kratom, sinicuichi, blue lily, and why not leonotis. (if this doesn't belong here, I'll go away, but please direct me to the proper forum. It's hard finding a place for serious discussions on these matters nowadays)

I would like to make an extraction from my Kratom as my source reported it to be quite weak and I'm sitting with almost a litre of yucky tasting leaves. Does anybody know of a simple but safe way of extracting the active substances? This pseudoindoxyl stuff being 100 times more potent sounds pretty risky... I am primarily interested in the reported low-dose stimulating effects (as in getting as little mitragynine pseudoindoxyl as possible), but most of all I would like to know what I'm getting, so if it would be more reliable to try to convert all of the mitragynine into pseudoindoxyl then I'd go for that. FWIW, I have no intent of selling any of this stuff. If you want to send me a private message, I will keep it private.