hbwr extraction tek questions

[visionaryb3ar]

i have been asked questions by curious youngsters about hbwr prep, but told them not to do anything as it was illegal, but it did get me curious,

one proposed method was to grind and soak seed matter in alchohol, but not everclear of what not, but something like a shot or 2 worth of bourbon ~37% etOH, and then filtering off solids.

would this be sufficient to make a basic tincture type extraction of the hbwr? i see it as kind of a modification to the simple water extraction...

in theory, would this small quantity of bourbon (~2shots) be sufficient quantity for the extraction of ~10 seeds or less?

or would the alch not act the same as in more highly pure etOH because of its hydration with the large amount of water ~2:1 ?

also if this is sufficient, would the bourbon need to be acidified to aid in extraction?

and insight into any of this?

thanks all

vb

i just want to state for the record this is out of curiosity and i would never attempt this myself as it is illegal.

[Smiling Cloud]

I don't see why anyone would bother to make an extraction, I mean you can't get any easier than chewing 5+ seed. Hypothetically Grinding and gel capping is sufficient if you don't want the taste.

peace

[visionaryb3ar]

i think they were wanting to avoid as much nausea as possible...

[Guest electro]

I havent done this, nor do i advocate such activities...

for theorys sake though ..

best would be 93% freshly distilled ethanol, or failing this 55% vodka/tequila/whatever (110 proof) available for $50 from select shops . lower % can be used, just soak for longer.

The stronger % the better ...

if using alcohol dont bother with the addition of acid ... alcohol dissolves a mix of both polar and non polar substances, so making the compound more polar soluble isnt going to help (unless you are using something like 10% alcohol).

Also i'm not sure if lsa extractions follow the basic acid base extraction methods- so adding acid may do nothing to help at all.

Also if nausea is of concern, ive read that a non polar wash helps - ....

wash the ground seed mass with napatha first ..,. filter, keep the solids, let them DRY completley, do that again, THEN do the ethanol soak with the pre washed seeds.

[cubent]

I agree with Smiling Cloud, why worry about extraction if you dont need to. Why not try the recommended method of scraping the outer coating from the seeds and crushing them and then soak in lemon/lime juice for about an hour, add some orange juice to the glass and swill the lot down.

There is no taste so that wont be a problem as far as nausea from the taste goes. A gnome i know well uses this method and hasnt had nausea and he knows a couple of other gnomes who used this method and had no nausea problem either. Why not just try it and see, if you do get nausea then worry about the extraction for the next time. Just make sure you have an empty stomach when taking them and 8 seeds seems about the right dose.

[smogs]

i have heard of people that just put seeds in the bottom of a jack daniels bottle and wait a few days to a week and it works apprently. Also ive ehard if u take a shot of any spririt with a few seeds in it then hold in your mouth for as long as you can then just spit the whole thing out (seeds and all) apprently this works too.

this is all hearsay tho so i take no responsibility

[visionaryb3ar]

all good words of wisdom guys, i think they were getting at w/ the bourbon question was a nice glow from a few shots to relax and ease thier minds as the effects began to come on, kinda like a lil boredom killer... but i think the easiest way i would suggest to them if legal would be the traditional acidified water extract..

with a straight alchohol wash, you saying it would dissolve all the nausea causeing chems aswell if a non polarwas not done 1st?

[Guest electro]

ive read that it does, but many people do not experience this.

Easiest and most efficent is to stick it in alcohol .. a few hrs if 100% a few days if just vodka or bourbon. If that still makes you sick wash the seeds with lighter fluid (shellite) before you stick em in the alcohol.

[Auxin]

electro:

wash the seeds with lighter fluid (shellite) before you stick em in the alcohol.

:confused: Just incase the alcohol by itself wont cause the desired liver damage, right?

You forgot to say 'and let them dry thuroughly'. But even if you did lighter fluid has nasties that wont evap before the stuff your after decomposes from old age. Lighter fluid does have its uses... using it to wash something your gonna eat/drink is not one of them.

[Guest electro]

auxin while i agree with your warnings of impurities i think there re some clean(ISH) lighter fluids around (though they arent recommended for use). i have evapd several bottles of this stuff (multiple bottles at a time) in pyrex dishes leaving no residue upon evapouration (visual and taste wise).

also ,.. auxin is VERY right ... do dry VERY VERY thoroughly .. (otherwise you'll find our first hand what drinking concentrated lichter fluid is like )

Do use caution, and DO realise that this is backyard chem and that it could hurt you ... it IS at your own risk ,.. it is supposedly why it is illegal.

If i were doing this though, i would use shellite, which ive done the evap & taste test with 1L at a time and found no residue to see or taste whn the pyrex dish is licked (metho on the other hand looks like it evaps clean but you can taste it's residue)...

Considering that this is simply a soak and filter, not a concentrate all contents of solvent by evapouration, the damage done by the shellite impurities "should' be negligable compared to the ethanol or the substances in question.

[ 30. December 2003, 07:19: Message edited by: electro ]

[John_Barleycorn]

As I've mentioned before, Shellite seems to be a lot cleaner than Zippo.

[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?

[FragmentedSanity]

Has anyone got, or is anyone capable of creating, a Kitchen Chemistry style writeup for isolating LSA from HBWR. It may not be practical - an will certainly not be as effecient as chewing the seeds. Consider it a theorectial excercise.

I was under the impression that a simple acid / base alkaloid style extraction was insufficient for the amide. Id like to be wrong about that though.

So if ones gonme were to attempt this what steps would be reccomended - The goal being to obtain a reasonbly pure substance, preferbaly crystals, or prehaps a liquid extract; that was easier to accuratley dose, storage stable and obviously less (mass) to ingest. Extra credit for removing the nausea from the experience, but thats not the primary focus.

Any Ideas?

Thanks

FS

[John_Barleycorn]

FragmentedSanity:

I was under the impression that a simple acid / base alkaloid style extraction was insufficient for the amide. Id like to be wrong about that though.

Treating an amide with strong alkali like a hydroxide usually results in hydrolysis (especially if heat and a bit of time is given), and what usually results is a water-soluble carboxylate salt (which of course won't want to go into a non-polar solvent). Acidifying that product results in the formation of a carboxylic acid - also water-soluble. The hydrolysed amide is probably just as psychoactive but, yes, acid-base extraction is unlikely to work. Distillation would probably be the next thing to consider. Failing that, an alcohol extract would probably pull the actives, but whether it would also pull the nauseating stuff, I don't know.

[friendly]

While on Maui a few years ago I was told that the only thing necessary for a very good experience without the nausea was to take a nail file and file off the outer husk from one to three seeds and snort it. My informant swore by the efficacy of this method, but once again I have not had the opportunity to try it myself.

So many herbs; so little time.

[ 02. January 2004, 08:58: Message edited by: friendly ]

[mescalito]

So,I guess we need to know first if the goodies are absorbed more readily in the stomach or the lining of the mouth....anybody know?

My friends gnome said that each time they've tried the chew and swallow tek, that they had stomach cramps and terrible indigestion!

[Fractalhead]

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 ]

[visionaryb3ar]

i know there are certain frequencies of red light that are 'safe' to use, but i was wondering, if you just got a generic redlight, would it be 'better' or just the same as using a normal bulb if it wasnt frequency specific?

[Fractalhead]

The way to check if a light source is suitable is to get spectroscope (don't worry, u can get really cheap ones) from a science education shop and look at the light source thru it to determine whether there is any light in the 'danger zone' frequency range. If you know the safe frequencies (ie. the frequencies at which the absorption spectrum of LSA is at a trough - check the original literature by Hoffmann - its in german - Experientia i think but the UV/VIS absorbance spectrum should be legible). If your light source only emits light in the low absorbance regions then you are safe.

This would be a nice little research project and you'll be making a nice contribution to kitchen chem if you manage to identify safe light sources readily available. A bit of fun and well worth the few bucks it'll cost to do it... oh yeah... and totally legal since you are only reading journal articles and looking at lights thru spectroscopes ;-).

[ 09. January 2004, 06:14: Message edited by: Fractalhead ]

[Torsten]

Just so people don't have to reinvent the wheel.... a friend of mine in germany did a lot of work on woodrose in the early 90's. He extracted by the kilo and found that evaporating the solvent is one of the most difficult processes due to the goodies decomposing from heat and from air exposure. He also noticed that the decomposition was greater if there was any water (especially condensation in the case of evaporating acetone) in the extract. He was not a chemist and did not know about the fragile nature of the molecules he was working with other than by practical experience. I am not even sure if any official work had been done in that field by that time.

Probably the most relevant of his findings was that extraction made little difference to the nausea and GI problems. He was trying to produce a legal (in germany at the time) marketable product that was pleasant enough to rival LSD.

He perceived the greatest problem not to be the tummy issues, but the intestinal problems, and found that a combination of caraway seed essential oil and fennel seed essential oil relieved most of the symptoms.

After 4 years of research he was finally giving up, conceeding that the GI problems could not be eliminated and that the material was too unstable once extracted.

I ebelieve he was wrong on the stability issues, but I think the extract needs something more substantial than ginger or essential oils to combat GI problems.

personally, I get a tummy ache from fresh ginger, so this is obviously not a solution for everyone. I also think that the more robust constitution of some people should not lull others into a false sense of safety. Even with the best seed and with the best preparation, some people will still get sick and everyone should be prepared for that.

[Fractalhead]

[This was misinformation]

[ 27. January 2004, 15:10: Message edited by: Fractalhead ]

[Fractalhead]

A correction to my last post: i actually read that aqueous solutions of LSA salt fluoresce blue-grey under a blacklight.

[Guest electro]

so does the lsa break down after grinding (and subsequent exposure to the air) or once it is extracted from the bulk of the material via solvents ?

ie would it be too unstable to grind into a powder and load a 50 / 50 mix of hbwr seed flour/dried powdered ginger into gelcaps ???

would this be sufficent to store in a blacked out vial in the fridge for weeks/months ? or will the extra exposure to the air promote oxidation / other decomposition ?

[Fractalhead]

That's a good question electro, and one that can really only be tested by experiment which, unfortunately, will have to be left to someone who can legally do it somewhere in another time and/or place.

My guess is that if the powdered material is immediately put away in a vacuum sealed container away from light and moisture, it would be stable about as long as the seeds are normally.

[Stroodes]

My gnome's own experience was with taking 9 crushed seeds which resulted in nausea. The nausea went away for 1/2 hour after he spewed, but then came back. Also, the resultant trip wasnt exactly good... it involved him in his friend gnome's house (whos parents were home) trying to sleep in the early hours of the morning, COMPLETELY out of his mind . Atleast he just stayed in bed... although he COULDNT SLEEP (extremely frustrating)!!!

Anyway, im sure next time in a better atmosphere will be better for him... which is why he is thinking of trying it again and to reduce the nausea, simply soaking the crushed material in vegetable oil for a few hours (should disolve atleast some of the essential oils). Then, after decanting/filtering most of the oil off, he would eat it :D . He was origanly thinking of doing naptha/ethanol extraction (been thinking about it for atleast a year now ) but he is afraid of any nasty residue coming through.

(thanks for reminding me smogs , i havent posted here for a while... only at google groups)

[ 01. February 2004, 09:16: Message edited by: Stroodes ]