mountain ash mescaline?

[Noveltea]

Hey,

Someone was telling me about the possible extraction of mescaline from moutain ash bark-and that aust. was an exporter of alot of mesc. sulfate due to abundance of moutain ash.hmmm Can anyone enlighten me on this topic? sounds strange.

slap me across the head if this has already been touched on here!

[Murple]

Sounds wrong...

Mescaline is found naturally only in various species of cacti and, apparantly, in one species of Acacia - but only in very very low level trace quantities. The same Acacia species also contains methamphetamine, again in traces. Interesting bit of trivia, but useless for extraction.

There is however a synthesis for mescaline which is based on a chemical extracted from a Eucalyptus. The Eucalyptus doesn't contain mescaline, but does contain a precursor. Perhaps this is the basis of the story you heard? I haven't heard anything about Australia exporting lots of mescaline, but you guys do have quite a bit of Eucalyptus species there so I suppose its possible that chemical companies are making it there from the natural precursors.

For more, see:

http://www.rhodium.ws/chemistry/mescalyptus.html

[Yeti101]

Yeah, I've read that too, only then it was on the end of a "Natural High FAQ" page on The Lycaeum. Still had the suposed Dept of Defense involvement, but the author claimed he had "found" the recipe whilst engaging in naughty hacker activities. Ooh, spooky conspiracy. What did our army need all that funky stuff for , I wonder?

[Guest Mesqualero]

Some kind of MKultra setup no doubt.

[somnif]

"D. Amos, Australian Defence Scientific Service,

Department of Supply, Defence St Maribyrnong,

Victoria, Australia."

Perhaps a search through the phonebooks and

a chat would be appropritate ;-)

I mean, it is a rather scary concept that the

Australian defense was looking down these paths at a similar time to the MK-Ultra stuff.

I wonder what other interesting stuff they

were exploring?

[Ed Dunkel]

I thought I'd paste the Aussie Natural highs FAQ bit for you:

EUCALYPTUS

Family: Myrtaceae

Genus: Eucalyptus

Species: diversicolour (Karri)

obliqua (Messmate Stringybark)

regnans (Mountain Ash)

Mountain Ash is the tallest tree in Australia and grows up to 100m. It is

found in Tasmania in the Huon Valley and in Victoria in the Otways,

Dandenongs and Gippsland. E.obliqua grows up to 90m and is found across

southern Australia. Karri grows up to 90m and is found in the sw of WA.

FROM THE NET

From: anonymous

Subject: Mescaline from Gum Trees

----

Hi folks,

Whilst browsing chem abstracts yesterday I came across an intriguing

reference, especially for ozlanders. The Australian Dept of Defence

developed a technique for producing mescaline from eucalypt sawdust in

fairly high yield back in '64.

Here it is:

CA 61,8515

The preparation of mescaline from eucalypt lignin.

D. Amos, Dept. Supply, Defence Std Lab, Melbourne.

Australasian J. Pharm., 45, 529 (1964)

Dried Eucalyptus Regnans sawdust oxidised with nitrobenzene and alkali @

150C yielded 4% of syringaldehyde. Methylation @ 0-5C for 1hr with Me2SO4,

then heated at 70C for 1 hr gave 56% 3,4,5, trimethoxybenzaldehyde.

Converted to the cyanohydrin (ie +KCN+weak acid - jm) then reduced with

Pd black to mescaline. Overall yield 1% from dried sawdust. E. obliqua and

E. diversicolour both gave 0.7% yields.

So there you have it. Our army, or maybe ASIO, wanted a way to make vast

quantities of mescaline (we have lots and lots of E. regnans, and 1kg

sawdust ~20 doses), very cheaply (all the ingredients are chemicals of

commerce, except Pd black, which is a recyclable catalyst), from local

precursors. Which is funny, since there would have been no difficulty

importing precursors or mescaline itself in experimental quantities. Maybe

they didn't want to be reliant on foreign suppliers, or maybe they didn't

want another country to be aware they were importing mescaline by the kilo.

It sounds like we might have had our very own MK-Ultra project running at

the height of the Cold War. It would be very interesting to follow this up.

Anyone out there know if we had some monkey business going on?

Maybe they were even extracting DMT from wattles and turning it into

psilocin, eh, J?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

John Morgan

Physical Chemistry

University of Sydney

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

E D

[This message has been edited by Ed Dunkel (edited 23 August 2002).]

[Auxin]

Of course that procedure is very dangerous and anyone who is not an experienced organic chemist could really hurt themselves, bad.

The cheif culprits being dimethyl sulfate (powerful irritant, causes tumors) and nitrobenzene (toxic by all routes)(and the resulting aniline (an allergen thats toxic by all routes)). Another danger is the occurance of toxic byproducts (like 3,3',4,4',5,5' hexamethoxybenzil (highly toxic) or hydrogen cyanide (violently poisonous gas) via bad synthesis procedures, inadequate protective measures, or a lack of adequate purification.

[Guest Mesqualero]

Im glad we have you to tell us what is safe and not safe to do Auxin

I reckon we should designate you the SAB OH&S Officer!!!

[Auxin]

Interesting idea mesq.

Only problem is I have these moral rules that prevent me from telling people how to synthesise potentially dangerous substances. I only tell people the dangers of what they suggest, as to prevent human suffering.

I'm sure this would end up driving some people NUTS when they just want a quick and easy 'recepie' for this or that.

Im probably lucky those moral rules are there, if I started telling everyone the safest, most effective way to synthesise drugs the gov. would label me a 'drug guru and co-conspirator' or something and I would be in jail for a long, long time.