B.Caapi

[Neoshaman]

Hey Guys has anyone come across research regarding the breakdown of the active constitutes of B. Caapi over time I found a really old piece the other day while cleaning to my place to move when i say old i'm talking 5 years plus maybe like 8 or 9 actually still looks ok although I quite hesitant to play with it unless I can verify the actives are still viable

[Alchemica]

5-10 years shouldn't be an issue:

...Maybe over the years, harmaline spontaneously loses a molecule of hydrogen, and becomes harmine. Not an easy thing to reckon with, chemically, but I am running out of possibilities. I was led to a comment that had been once made by a quiet hero of mine, Bo Holmstedt in Sweden, concerning the analysis of an ancient sample of plant material from Banisteria caapi (now known as Banisteriopsis caapi). The herbarium specimens he was looking at had been collected by the 19th century plant explorer Richard Spruce in the Rio Negro area of South America and had, after a few years of storage in a moist and mildewy hut a few miles down river, been rediscovered and sent on to the Kew Botanical Museum where they had quietly rested for over a hundred years. When Holmstedt worked them up some 30 years ago, he reported that the alkaloid content was 0.4%. This was virtually identical to a newly collected, botanically verified specimen of Banisteriopsis caapi which he analyzed at the same time and found to contain 0.5% alkaloids. The latter material contained, as described by many authors, the main alkaloids harmine, harmaline and tetrahydroharmine. By contrast, the alkaloid content of the Spruce material consisted exclusively of harmine. It is open to question whether the samples collected by Spruce in 1853 originally contained only harmine or, perhaps more likely, that harmaline and tetrahydroharmine have with time been transformed into the chemically more stable aromatic b-carboline harmine.

www.erowid.org/library/books_online/tihkal/tihkal13.shtml

[Neoshaman]

Thanks for that alchemist muchly appreciated

[shruman]

Should still work i would think. Heres something interesting "Dr. Shulgin found that an old sample of harmaline (commercial reference material) had evidently decomposed into a 1:2 mixture of harmine and harmaline. [Ott 1994 and Shulgin 1994 (lecture; BPC seminar, Maui.)]

Published analyses of old samples of plant material have also suggested a conversion of harmaline into harmine over time."

http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online...nversions.shtml

[Neoshaman]

Should still work i would think. Heres something interesting "Dr. Shulgin found that an old sample of harmaline (commercial reference material) had evidently decomposed into a 1:2 mixture of harmine and harmaline. [Ott 1994 and Shulgin 1994 (lecture; BPC seminar, Maui.)]

Published analyses of old samples of plant material have also suggested a conversion of harmaline into harmine over time."

http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online...nversions.shtml

Ok so what your saying is yes the actives are still present yet the experience will be somewhat different to that from freshly harvested plants hmmmmmmmm intresting lst time i researched caapi was when i purchased staffords psychadelics enclyclopedia lots of reading to catch up on as that was probably around the same time I purchased the material

[Teotzlcoatl]

I would think it would be fine to attempt to use it... the worse thing that could happen is a little lose is potency.

[shruman]

Not saying that but I think its a reasonable assumption. Maybe more like rue though I do'nt know how stable THH is, so maybe like rue with a little THH.