Technique for chewing leaves (e.g. khat/salvia)

[MORG]

Ahoy beautiful plant heads.

An embarrassingly simple question.

How do you chew leaves like khat and sally?

I find chewing a small amount of plant material leaves me with massive amounts of saliva. I'm aware I should be aiming for buccal absorption, but how to handle all this liquid? Just swallow and strain the bits like a baleen whale? I can't really get past the first hurdle here - I bail out after the first sample. 

Would love to actually get some effect from my khat some time! 

 

 

[fyzygy]

The khat "quid" is often stored in the pouch of the cheek when not being chewed. It's usually tender shoots of stems, rather than mature leaves, that are bundled for commercial sale and consumption. But that's only what I've read, in books. IMO, you can safely swallow the "bits" (edulis = edible, and khat contains numerous vitamins and minerals). 

 

[Alchemist]

I read that you need a rather large amount 100 to 300g of  khat quid.  Quite a mouthful! 

For salvia someone has a patent for chewing gum containing salvinorin A, which might be easier than a massive quid.

Edited January 13 by Alchemist

[ZooL]

I have always had a thought about khat but not really sure of the practicality of it or how you would get the extract and infusion to work without degradation.

Basically would somehow involve an extraction of I'm guessing preferably fresh leaves, then somehow that is infused into molten sugar or a gum which is then solidified into a lozenge.

I imaging the end product would work well but I'm not sure getting over all the hurdles to reach that end point would be very easy.

[MORG]

21 hours ago, Alchemist said:

I read that you need a rather large amount 100 to 300g of  khat quid.  Quite a mouthful! 

For salvia someone has a patent for chewing gum containing salvinorin A, which might be easier than a massive quid.

Yeah I struggle to get even a small part of that into my mouth. 

 

I've heard of the 'in the cheek' technique, but then don't really understand how the cathinones are meant to get out of the tissue unless your pulverising it in the mouth, at which point it's too liquid to stash in the cheek! 

[MORG]

5 hours ago, ZooL said:

I have always had a thought about khat but not really sure of the practicality of it or how you would get the extract and infusion to work without degradation.

Basically would somehow involve an extraction of I'm guessing preferably fresh leaves, then somehow that is infused into molten sugar or a gum which is then solidified into a lozenge.

I imaging the end product would work well but I'm not sure getting over all the hurdles to reach that end point would be very easy.

There are cold alcohol extractions that are apparently effective, but there would still be some degradation.

[fyzygy]

You can always brew a tea from the leaf, for cathine and norephedrine (but no cathinone). I'm pretty sure I've read of a liquid khat extract being commercially available in some markets. 

 

Has anyone tried a masticating juicer with fresh khat leaf? 

[saguaro]

fyzygy is right, with khat you just pick the tender and soft shoots and small leaves. With red khat, these are dark, almost purple. Best material comes from well-watered plants. It is a large amount of material, your jaw will probably be sore. Chewing heaps of leaves isn't for everyone, it's an acquired taste. I don't think it's gonna catch on as a trendy drug in Australia any time soon lol

 

You end up with a huge ball of plant material in your mouth, keep chewing it and adding leaves. When you end up with tough material you spit the ball out and start again. People generally drink a lot of water, because of astringency from the khat tannins. 

 

Juicing khat works well, but it can make you sick on an empty stomach. 

 

Chewing salvia is quite an ordeal. leaves are wrapped into a cigar-like cylinder and chewed. The taste is memorable.

[fyzygy]

1 hour ago, saguaro said:

 I don't think it's gonna catch on as a trendy drug in Australia any time soon lol

It's a cultural thing - and Oz is culturally diverse.

[saguaro]

1 hour ago, fyzygy said:

It's a cultural thing - and Oz is culturally diverse.

 

sure, it makes sense in Yemen, it's not haram*.

 

I still don't think chewing khat has mass appeal considering australian culture in aggregate. can't see it taking off at music festivals or anything lol

 

Edited January 16 by saguaro

[sagiXsagi]

easy. insert the number of leaves you feel best to handle at once, chew, shallow juice untile its tasteless, repeat. it might be best to chew less leaves at once than more. 

 

Couple friends have told me that chewing Khat is greatly enhanced by combo with chewing ephedra stems, which is is much easier.  also catha varies a lot according to strain.  And of course alcohol. 

[withdrawl clinic]

ok, so more info...

in yemen people chew qat everyday, but there is a big difference in quality, and the strength (the amounts of alkaloids in the fresh leaves).

in yemen the best parts never reach the market, they get chewed eaten by the qat farmers themselves. it's called gizo bomu, or similar, and compromises of short small new shoots.

the strongest material is produced after a drought has ended, always watering, will not produce such strong qat.

of large leaves, further down the branches, you might need more than 100g, but young leaves close to the tips and the tips, are very potent, be carefull, i cant use it as it can give me hypertension. the leaves actually taste very nice, and are easy to chew, one quid might last you for halve an hour or hour.

the most active part, detoriates very fast, so fresh leaves are highly prized. extracting this compounds including the heat sensitive one and fast degrading one is easier than often reported, but close to a useless exercise, as this material degrades very fast as well, after a week or so. this material could be said to be better than ice.

it was legal in oz and got even imported legal, now it's illegal, but maybe still gets imported.

[Halcyon Daze]

I know a guy who had this issue back when both plants were legal. He told me that he changed one thing and everything improved. He decided that it was OK to swallow the juice and to not even try to stop it happening automatically. Pretty soon he completely forgot about trying to hold in the saliva and everything just went well after that (for both plants).

 

With Khat, he would swallow a shot of 'Juiced Tips' first, and then chew a bunch more soft tips for a couple hours, and then swallow some more 'Tips juice' a few hours later, and then keep chewing and keep repeating for hours. It takes an uncomfortably long time so you gotta find a comfortable way of chewing. Basically you gotta go all afternoon and night, which he said "pretty much sucked", but he loved the feeling.

 

With Sal, he'd prepare a scoob or two of simple dried leaf, chew as many leaves as he could for a while until he felt it start kicking in, and then light up with just a normal bic lighter and get as much of the scoob down as fast as possible. Usually by 80-90% of one scoob it was just right to let go and sink right into it and become one with nature like never before. "Most amazing feeling ever" he reckons, and "Best done in the evening or night with the soft golwing embers of a campfire". Apparantly it really helped with some crazy PTSD shit so it sounds like he had a totally positive experience. What a shame they banned it etc.