Fractalhead

I've posted here numerous times on this species dating back over the last few years but the threads must have been lost during one server crash or another... I won't tell the whole story again but to cut a long story short, I followed an internet lead up and found a massive specimen growing in north qld in an isolated patch of rainforest on the atherton tablelands. There were apparently about 4 trees within this patch of forest which i think was a few square kilometers in area. From speaking to pro botanists at my uni in qld that have worked both in PNG and in north qld, the agara trees in qld are much more sparsely distributed usually not in dense clusters but spread out one tree every kilometer or so in specific regions of rainforest. Hence, the needle in the haystack problem ;-) However, in PNG they tend to occur in more dense communities and they are a piece of piss to find once you are in the right spot. In the great book, Plants For Medicinces, the first real chemical and pharmacological studies on this species were conducted and the authors were so impressed with the results they called the species the hilight of the whole project. They even went on to try a number of himbacine analogues for potency and selectivity as (from memory) acetylcholine receptor antagonists (like atropine etc). I think they saw potential for himbacine as a neuropharmacological research tool as a new highly selective atropine alternative (antispasmodic activity) in that it was highly selective for a particular family or subfamily of acetylcholine receptor (can't remember exactly which muscarinic? nicotinic?) Its structure does not lend itself to easy synthesis so would probably never replace atropine or scopolamine in their markets but is interesting tool for neuro research and particularly interesting from a psychonautic point of view as a new way of looking at the datura type pharmacology with possibly less of the danger of scopolamine/atropine etc. who knows... but would be fucking interesting to play around with... carefully. While himbacine was found to be the best alkaloid in the material tested plants for medicines for a particular pharmacological property in animal studies, this does not mean it is the only or the best psychoactive component for shamanic purposes. This issue leads onto another major issue when conducting bioassays on this species. That is, the massive amount of intra-specific morphological and chemical variability. Even within PNG and QLD, there is a lot of variability. Until only recently, there was much dispute over how many Galbulimima/Himantandra species actually existed because of the variability in sample morphology and their chemical constituents but IMHO the time spent arguing over differences in phenotype would be better off invested in getting some genetic studies underway on the various samples to see just how much genetic variability there is. At least then we could home in on what is genetic and what is environmental. This info would allow us to gain insight into the environmental response mechanisms evolved by plants at such a primitive evolutionary stage. It seems amazing that such a primitive angiosperm is laden with such an incredible diversity of chemicals with such complex structures. Anyway, probably the only reason you aren't all growing your own little agara trees already is that the tree is so damn big and i've been so damn busy that i haven't organised a tree climber or rifle owner to come and bring some propagation material down. This tree is about 30m tall with a trunk about 1-1.5 m in diameter. The lowest branches are way up in the rainforest canopy and there just don't seem to be any babies around ? As much as i have been busting to dedicate a good week or two to securing a decent gene-pool for this species into the EB community, i'm sort of stuck in WA atm but am planning to get back up there this year. This dilly dallying has gone on long enough and ppl (inc me) have been talking about collecting this properly for years but always getting sucked into other activities when time is available. I really think another team needs to go to PNG and fully document and participate in a real agara/homalomena usage with the locals and chemical analyse the actual tea and botanically/genetically characterise the actual specimens used. There seems to be even less published research or even discussion of the Homalomena species that is used with Galbulimima and given the nasty toxicity of a lot of Araceae, its use in this tea is particularly curious... Anyway, hopefully this year i'll get an opportunity to finally secure some of the QLD gene pool...

The aim of this thread is to discuss technologies and techniques with applications in the search for new and old psychoactive drugs in nature. I had the idea of starting this thread after a recent discovery involving the use of a $25 handheld UV lamp from good old Dick Smiths. All I can really say is this: Get out into the bush at night with one of these gadgets and see what you can find. If any of you have never looked at Banisteriposis bark or certain members of the Zygophylliaceae under a 'UV' Blacklight then do yourself the favour. It is spectacular! These plants are only the beginning of course as their are many other fluorescent goodies in nature to be blown away by. My favourite use for the lamp would have to be in the pharmacological area however. Next time you take a wizz or a poo on "one of those days", rip out one of these cheap lamps and have a "squizz at your wizz" or "view your poo" and observe some previously invisible excretion in action. If anyone else has made similarly exciting and accessible discoveries or inventions, please post them here and share the wealth of knowledge so that we may all benefit from the discoveries to be had! Cheers, Fractal

Most stories i've heard about cramps have come from females and gnomes who have mixed the things with alcohol. Females can experience uterine contractions due to various ergot alkaloids in the mix and somehow alcohol causes the negative side effects to be greatly enhanced. Nausea seems to be mild in most gnomes though sometimes gets a little out of hand but usually remedied to an acceptable level by the normal anti-nausea treatments. In places where it is legal to do so, the aim of the game in any xtraction tek is to get the LSA into an dilute aqueous neutral solution of dilute tartrate salt and store in an amber vial in the fridge. Storing under helium or nitrogen would also be a nice touch. This can be easier or trickier than it sounds depending on your level of chemical expertise ;-) Check the famous book by Unkle Fester to get most of the details. There is no need to reinvent the wheel (but replacing a few spokes might be in order). Under these conditions, the stuff is stable for years. Under less favourable conditions, you might be looking at hours or at most, days before total breakdown into lumo products (inactive). Crystals (esp. freebase) won't last long unless in the dark and under nitrogen. Calibration of solution concentration is not really neccessary on ug levels unless undertaking serious pharmacological studies and would require super-kitchen teks such column chromatography, vacuum dessication under inert atmosphere and super accurate scales. One hint for the kitchen alchemist gnome is to get a hand held blacklight from an electronics shop. This can be used to check for completeness of extraction of indole alkaloids and can give rough indications of concentrations in extract solutions by brightness of fluorescence but don't keep UV exposure to a minimum as it encourages breakdown. Also, avoid all heating. Evaporate solvents under vacuum and work as quickly as possible. Once the extraction is started (the seeds are ground up) it should be all complete within half a day at the most to avoid total failure. Another hint, always work in the dark and use distilled water. And finally, the most important hint... DON'T BE BREAKING THE LAW! [ 02. January 2004, 14:21: Message edited by: Fractalhead ]

May I suggest that while these sorts of crude extractions may (or may not) serve to remove nauseating components from the mix, they also provide significant opportunites for the actives to be destroyed by chemicals, air, light etc. I must stress to any gnome considering developing a new tek to validate the tek by direct comparison with the 100% reliable and efficient method of: taking ginger tablets or drinking strong ginger tea to prevent nausea wait 15-30 min mortar and pestle seeds IMMEDIATELY prior to use or chew, suck for 10min with 'paste' under tongue and swallowing the lot (waiting for 30 min before washing down with some sort of drink (preferably distilled water). Hold on, the first 1-2hrs may be uncomfortable but adjust environment to suit and its all smooth sailing... smoke your favourite nauseolytic herb and relax This method is failproof if followed exactly. This is the place to start before venturing into the more complicated methods. Validation of teks eliminates false negatives and unneccessary time wasting in preparation. If you don't need to stuff around, then why bother?

Another idea I had was to use a handheld spectroscope in combination with the UV light as a way of getting semi-quantitative alkaloid profile comparisons from different plant materials. The basis behind this is the different wavelength maxima of fluorescence of the different related compounds. With the spectroscope, the light coming out of the plant material or extract thereof is diffracted into a spectrum with an actual nm scale. you can then compare the amount of light being emitted at the wavelengths corresponding to the different alkaloids like harmine/harmaline/tetrahydroharmine (in countries where legal etc) and get an idea how different materials compare. The low fluorescence intensity of dmt may be overcome by using different wavelengths of incident and emergent light. Eventually, I'll be selling small handheld spectrometers that plug into small handheld computers (PDA) and give full spectra in the whole range from Visible to high energy UV (Perfect for in field profiling and way cheaper than GC/MS). With one of those you could scrape a spot off a TLC plate and identify the compound with near 100% certainty within minutes in the middle of the bush running off a solar panel The simple handheld lamp/spectroscope kits (good for semi quantitative profiling of already known compounds) will be available for less than $50. Some good ideas guys. keep em coming. I'd really like to see these pendulums in action [ 26. December 2003, 14:10: Message edited by: Fractalhead ]

I believe piperidine is the other main well known highly toxic chemical found in some of the mesembrine containing Aizoaceae. It gets a mention in the classic book: "The Medicinal and Poisonous Plants of Southern and Eastern Africa" by Watt and Breyer-Brandwijk (1962)

I had very pleasant surprise yesterday afternoon with a Sceletium alkaloid extract. Freebase Sceletium sp. alkaloid extract by hotknife. I took in a bit of the pleasant tasting vapour and WOOOOOSH. Euphoria! This is probably the first time I've had effects from this genus that are not attributable to CO, oxalates, snuff trauma (adrenaline) placebo etc. I just did a simple acid base using two handfuls of chopped up Sceletium branches boiled in ~500mL distilled H2O for ~1hr, filtered, basified with a small teaspoon of NaOH (didn't bother to check pH but a precipitate formed) and extracted with 5 x 100mL DCM. Combined extracts reduced to a yellow residue, scraped onto a knife, vaporised with jet lighter and inhaled via 1.25 L softdrink bottle funnel. 2 ppl were well dosed with this miniscule amnt of alkaloid although i could have sucked on this stuff all night long The stuff that wasn't scraped onto the knife was dissolved in a minimal amnt of acetone, dropped onto a piece of filter paper, dried and the paper shared between two ppl through a water pipe. Both positive results. The actives of Sceletium appear to be extremely potent (possibly in the same order of magnitude as salvinorin). Sceletium SPLCAS's anyone? [ 19. December 2003, 22:01: Message edited by: Fractalhead ]

Ok, i'll try and expand on the extraction method from a to b. I should point out that this was a spare of the moment slop-job. I didn't actually weigh or accurately measure anything or take notes. Rather, I just went by feel and made it up as i went along (the way i cook most things when i'm on holidays First, I went out into the garden and saw that my Sceletium had grown a lot while i had been away at EB and was in need of a prune We had guests staying with us and I thought it would be appropriate to prepare some material for the nights festivities. I cut it back and ended up with a couple of large handfuls of leaves and stems fresh off the plants. I don't have a food processor so i just chopped the green stuff as finely as possible with a chefs knife making sure not to lose any of the juice. The whole lot of mush was transferred to a stainless steel saucepan with ~500 mL of distilled water (the coles variety) and gently simmered for ~1hr or so until the water was opaque and olive green. I squeezed a few teaspoons of lemon juice into the saucepan at the very beginning also. After simmering, the mixture was filtered through a buchner funnel with a Whatman filter paper (can't remember what grade). My memory of the basification step is very hazy (probably due to it being overshadowed by my spilling dozens of little lye beads all over the kitchen area). I can't remember exactly when i added the NaOH but i do remember it was a about a teaspoon into the 500mL of aqueous extract. I didn't calculate this amount or measure the pH but just took a punt as to how much was enough to get the pH right up above 12 or so without going overboard. It is not usually advisable to add solid NaOH directly to your extract due to huge localised spikes in pH causing unwanted reactions in your products but i was in a hurry and was being asked to get out of the kitchen. A precipitate formed but this was not the stuff in the final active extract since it remained suspended in the aqueous phase even after repeated extraction with methylene chloride. The basified aqueous extract was transferred to 1L separatory funnel and extracted with ~100mL of dichloromethane (aka DCM, methylene chloride). This involved gently swirling and inverting the sep. funnel to get good mixing. I got a bit of an emulsion at first but this cleared up soom after i added some saturated NaCl solution to the mix. The DCM layer was drained off and the DCM recovered by distillation over a homemade steam bath (ie. kitchen steamer on electric stove - This is quite safe to do since DCM is not very flammable). The DCM recycled in this way was used to re-extract the aqueous solution still in the sep. funnel and the process repeated ~5 times. Each time the DCM extract was returned to the distillation flask so that the residue left behind each time would add to the previous residues. By this time, a small but significant amount of yellow residue had built up on the bottom of the distillation flask (1L). The problem then was how to get the miniscule layer of yellow stuff somewhere we could smoke it. I dissolved it into ~10mL of acetone and transferred the yellow acetone to a 100mL beaker. The acetone was then evaporated over the steam bath with the above-stove extractor fan going on full. The yellow residue was now accessible. I used i bread knife to scrape up as much of it as possible. So, faced with a bread knife loaded with a match-head sized lump of oily yellow goo, we decided hot-knife action was in order. The remainder of the yellow residue in the beaker was transferred to a 2x2cm piece of filter paper as decribed earlier. I can't wait to try this on a larger scale. The main limiting factor is plant material since it doesn't really take much longer to work on a larger scale, just need bigger glassware in the early stages. The advantage of making freebase is that snorting is a pain in the arse (or nostril) and people with blocked noses can't do it. Smoking piles of plant material is shit for your lungs. Small Paper Legal Chemical Adsorption Surfaces (SPLCAS's: previously referred to using the B word) make calibration easy and while they don't produce much smoke, give quite a big psychoactive punch. The freebase actually has quite a pleasant taste and i didn't even think i'd gotten any until it kicked in a second or two later. The prospect of a sublingual solution of freebase is very interesting and this is quite often my preferred mode of ingestion when plant material is plentiful. I think the next major move in the mesembrine department should be the exploration of readily available Aizoaceous weeds like Carpobrotus spp. I have isolated a conspicuous yellow oil from Carpobrotus edulis simply by putting ~1kg of fresh material through a juicer, adding the juice and pulp to a saucepan with a little distilled H2O, simmering for a while, filtering, adding ~1 tablespoon of CaCl2 to the filtrate and boiling right down until a yellow oily stuff dropped out of solution in the form of a yellow slime on the bottom of the saucepan. There was a layer f water over this and some CaCl2 had also dropped out by this stage. Unfortunately, I didn't know what i was doing or looking for and through the whole lot down the sink. When i later found out that mesembrine is yellow, i kicked myself and made plans to repeat the experiment when i have some more time. Carpobrotus is available by the tonne if you go and harvest it yourself. At todays exorbitant prices for these alkaloids, you could make millions from selling carpobrotus extract. A more responsible thing to do though would be to bring relief from depression via mesembrine into an affordable price range for the broader community. I've never been able to rationalise spending $10 or more for less than a gram of crude fermented plant material with somewhat dubious action lasting for only a fleeting moment. A useful medicine like this should be available to all that need it. Regarding the issue of mesembrine SPLCAS's being mistaken for acid SPLCAS's... I would LOVE to see that! Hehe. I can see it now, perhaps the police officers would be convinced when you smoke one up in front of them or even better pass a cigarette of the things around and give them a go. Perhaps they could distribute them thru the police force and prison system where it is probably needed quite strongly Cheers, Fractal [ 19. December 2003, 22:10: Message edited by: Fractalhead ]

Hi guys, First, I'd like to say thanks to the contributors to the promotion of Nymphaea spp.. Since attention has been drawn to this genus, I've tried a few methods of ingestion but my favourite is now the following: 10g of dried blue lotus flowers soaked in ~1L white lambrusco goon in a coffee plunger for 48 h. Filtered, evaporated down to a sugary brown lotus smelling syrup. Don't burn it but rather, when it gets syrupy transfer to a baking dish (or preferably transfer to a baking dish while still watery and reduce to syrup in the oven), add flower, sultanas, brown sugar and soy milk, kneed and mix with a little butter or whatever and then bake in moderate oven until spongey. Serve hot or cold with icecream or your favourite sauce (we had organic strawberry soy yoghurt and banana slices) yummy. Serves 2-4. Effects were felt by all 4 ppl but we need to repeat the experiment without other confusing factors cya later

Destroys neurotransmitters eh? Sounds worthy of further investigation. Maybe we should take some blood samples before and after to check.

wow. that's interesting. maybe i was given the wrong advice or maybe you were lucky. I could really use some of this stuff.

You may have already, but bear in mind that a boiling point over 100 C does not necessarily mean you can't steam distill something. I'm not much of a physical chemist and haven't got my notes here to give a full mathematical explanation, by my understanding is that as long as the vapour pressure at ~100 C and atmospheric pressure is appreciable (ie. if its a sweet smelling volatile , the oil will steam distill (ie. it doesn't have to reach its boiling pont). Please forgive me if i've missed the point Of course, as already described for fractional distillation of crude oils, you will need to heat to the boiling point of the oil at a reduced pressure. I can't see why just putting powdered plant material into a normal 5L spirit reflux still full of water and running most of the water over wouldn't result in a nice crop of oil floating on the water for most interesting oils.

You will need to sign an End User Declaration form to buy ether from a chem supplier. This involves presenting photo ID, giving them your address, phone number and intended use for the product etc. Chem suppliers are asked to report even suspicious enquiries to the police. Suppliers will sell stuff to you, then straight after dispatch, call the police. If this sounds cool to you, then go for it!

Gom, it sounds like the alcoholic extract was much stronger? I think the ethanol is quite important in extracting the goodies out of nelumbo. Having said that, I'm not sure whether the ethanol content of wine would be enough to account for the activity of the wine if nuciferine is indeed the major active since, apparently, even the HCl salt of nuciferine is substantially more soluble in chloroform (relatively low polarity) than in water or dilute aqueous HCl. That means that a food acid water extract is probably less effective than an extraction into spirits. If you don't want to drink the booze then acetone would probably yield an active extract. Does anyone know is acetone the solvent generally used in making Nelumbo 5X?

hmmm... this all sounds very encouraging. It is apparently relatively easy to isolate nuciferine from Nelumbo nucifera. I reckon it would be interesting to compare the crude extract with pure nuciferine. I once posted the original isolation technique for those that want to give it a go.

I'm still not sure what the traditional method is. The times that I have tried to find out by an internet search i end up getting millions of different methods. Is there an actual infusion step in the traditional method?

I've found that if you distill the wormwood for long enough (still less than 100 C), a dark bluish green ethanol soluble, water immiscible oil comes across. You can probably imagine my excitement when it turned the ethanol a vivid green absinthe colour. Up until then I'd always thought the green colour of absinthe was due to chlorophyll. Have you achieved activity from any non-green wormwood extracts?

I'd like to start by saying thankyou to all you people for sharing your thoughts and experiences here. It certainly highlights the power of the internet for drawing the right ppl together and catalysing social interactions. Well, my experience a couple of weeks before august 13 was one night a series of almost unbelievable coincidences occurred. So much so that I still wonder whether I was having some sort of schizophrenic hallucination or seizure. The thing is, if i hadn't met my wife, i'd probably be inclined to think that i did imagine it or hallucinate (even though i wasn't on anything). The series of coincindences started with my reading a website about 'the day of destiny' which was supposed to be on august 13 1999. I won't go into detail right now because i don't have time, but the series of events following in the hours after were so coincindental that it spooked the shit out of me (in a good way). The next I hear about August 13 is the next week or something when briefly meeting a woman who mentioned she new all about this day of destiny thing and wanted to do something about it. some kind of experiment or something. We planned to get together and talk about it but I never saw her again. The next i heard about it was much later down the track when my wife told me that on august 13 1999 she had the most life shattering experience ever. Like, a death and rebirth experience starting in the middle of the night and taking her several weeks to recover because it was so disturbing [even after the 'night' she had a feeling being stalked by demons and evil energy]. She can tell you the details if she likes and i can't begin to grasp what she went through but she still struggles to attach any meaning to the event or link it in with anything but her and i (as there is an obvious link going on). I think she feels like she needs to somehow define and get a sense of reason so that she can grow since her roots now lay in this 'second birth'. Cheers, Fractal

I think we used to have a pile of seed we collected out of organic black sapote fruit but not sure what happenned to them. We might be able to get some plants next time in north qld. tasty fruit.

How about a transgenic Psychotriopsis caapiridis? Mmmmm... piece a piss...

YES YES YES! I want this mushroom! I have eaten mushrooms just like the photo SFB posted and got effects... i think. I posted a thread about it a few years ago but i'm not sure if its still in the archives. When I discovered the curiously blue-staining bolete, my thinking was as Rev was describing... "Well its not one of the notoriously toxic genera so i'll start with a tiny bit and wait a few days then up the dose if everything is ok." I started with a piece about 1x1x1 cm of the fresh flesh about 6 in the evening. After skating around for about half an hour or so and wondering whether we could feel anything, we decided to drive into the country town we lived near and grab some shopping. When we entered the supermarket, a very strange feeling of something being 'different' was very apparent. My friend was feeling it too and we quickly decided to get home asap both in case we were in for a deep journey and also to munch some more of this curious fungus. Mysteriously, the brown paper bag containing the rest of the mushroom sample had completely vanished. We searched high and low for it and retraced all our steps but couldn't find it. I was sure I had locked the bag inside our shack laying on the kitchen bench and noone had been in our shack yet the bag was gone. That's when an intensely spooky feeling kicked in. Now I'm not normally one to get paranoid - weird things happen all the time but its no big deal. But this night I was excessively paranoid. I was laying in bed too scared to get up and go outside to go for a piss under the big pine tree outside our shack because i was literally concerned about the risk of a feral tiger coming and attacking me. I mean, part of me was saying "of course that's a stupid, paranoid idea" but the other half was saying "well anything is possible. You just like to think that something like that is improbable because it allows you to go about your daily business without freaking out that this or that could happen to you! Really a concept of probability is meaningless." Eventually I did work up the courage and rationality to go outside and go to the toilet. With this came a massive feeling of power and I felt like I had just beaten an illusionary trap in place to test my courage and belief in myself. I saw a massive cartoon like hallucination of a cat with big teeth towering behind me as i pissed under the pine tree. I felt a surge of adrenalin as I sensed the presence of the illusionary cat and felt strong in facing up to it much like the adrenalin rush i experienced as a little kid getting over a fear of the dark and coming to the realisation that there IS nothing hiding in the dark waiting to jump out at me. It is still hard to say whether it was placebo (placebo can be very powerful) or a real effect but it left me convinced that the species was worth investigating further. I should point out that from memory i did not have any other drugs that night and didn't know much at all about magic mushrooms at that point. I therefore did not have any conscious expectations to colour my experience. Unfortunately, we could not find the species growing again before moving away from the town (Denmark, Western Australia). [ 25. October 2003, 00:21: Message edited by: Fractalhead ]

May I just ask, can anyone remember what they were doing on August 13 1999 or have any particularly bizarre experiences around that time?

Hi ppl, I have T. orientalis bark for sale/trade. This material is grown in north qld. The price is $30/100g + postage Also, there are leaves for $15/100g + postage NOTE: I haven't got around to a proper bioassay with this material yet, but have heard of definite positive results with this species. I am offering this material so that those who are keen to experiment (but do not have ready access to enough material) may do so. Eventually we will have a TLC profile of this sample to work with so we can compare to other species and varieties. $$ is preferable but we are also open to trade if you have something we are looking for. Cheers, Fractal

I've got Strychnos axillaris growing in qld. this is a qld native. not sure of alkaloid profile compared to nux-vomica but from memory, the leaves taste very bitter (good sign). I've tried to strike cuttings before without any success. Maybe i just need the right method. I'd be open to trade if i could strike some. Still haven't got seeds yet. Its about 5 ft tall atm. Looks a lot like a Carissa sp.

Hey Gom, how are the Rauwolfias going? I'd really like to grow them if you have some to sell or trade (trade preferable).