From jgreenw@extro.ucc.su.oz.au Mon Jul 26 22:49:45 1993 Return-Path: Received: from extra.ucc.su.OZ.AU by cs.uwa.edu.au (4.1/SMI-4.0+cs.uwa-1.0) id AA07859; Mon, 26 Jul 93 22:48:30 WST Received: from extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU by extra.ucc.su.OZ.AU with SMTP id AA08491 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for ); Tue, 27 Jul 1993 00:48:26 +1000 From: Jeremy Greenwood Message-Id: <199307261448.AA08491@extra.ucc.su.OZ.AU> Subject: Re: DMT To: welton_j@cs.uwa.edu.au (Jade WELTON) Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 0:48:25 EST In-Reply-To: <9307260331.AA19920@cs.uwa.edu.au>; from "Jade WELTON" at Jul 26, 93 11:31 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Status: OR > Jeremy, > Having obtained the DMT file from fenris.claremont.edu I am > interested in the DMT info (extraction info mainly) that you mentioned. > Would it be possible for you to mail it to me , please ??? > > Thanx, > Jade Welton - University of Western Australia. > > e-mail : welton_j@dropbear.cs.uwa.edu.au Howdy. Always glad to chat to people about dimethyltryptamine. As a Western Australian, you are a long way from Australia's natural DMT sources, Acacia phlebophylla and Acacia maidenii which grow in Victoria and NSW respectively. It is probably possible to obtain the seeds of the latter through the Australian seed bank, but growing it would take a long time. Another possible source is Phalaris arundinacea, which is a grass. I know little about it, but it is supposed to be easily and rapidly cultivatable. At the very least, you can obtain samples of DMT containing plants from ...of the jungle. Desmanthus illinoensis is probably the most likely source from the US. Here is a file containing some chemical extraction details and some accounts of experiences. Jeremy ************************************************************************ The following events are as far divorced from reality as the experience of the drug itself :-) I discovered that a local plant, Acacia maidenii, was reported to contain 0.6% alkaloids in the bark, of which 1/3 was N-methyl tryptamine, and 2/3 was Dimethyl Tryptamine (DMT). Alkaloids of The Australian Leguminosae - The Occurrence of Methylated Tryptamines in Acacia maidenii F. Muell. J.S. Fitzgerald and A.A. Sioumis Australian Journal of Chemistry, 1965, 18 433-4 Some research of old botany books suggested a nearby location, and to my surprise I found many hundreds of the trees growing along creek gullys in a nearby national park. I took about half a kilo of vertical strips from a number of trees, trying to cause as little as possible permanent damage. The bark was thick, red, fibrous and resinous. Smoking the bark directly gave a mild hallucinogenic effect, on the limits of the detectable. That evening, I shredded the bark by hand. This was difficult and incomplete; mechanical milling would be far preferable. I placed the shreds about 3.5 litres of analytical grade methanol from Monday night until Friday afternoon. The methanol quickly took up colour from the bark and turned a deep red colour. As much as possible of the methanol was removed by filtering. I evaporated off the methanol using a fractionating column, a condenser, and a saucepan of boiling water as heating, for some hours, and recovered much of the methanol. I placed this methanol back with the bark and reextracted for some hours while evaporating the rest, then filtered the bark again and combined the extracts, and stripped as much as possible of the methanol, to leave a thick resinous brown liquid. A portion of the extract was evaporated using a hair-drier to give a thick brown resin. Attempts at smoking this using pipe and hot knife proved unpleasant and gave minimal effect. It was decided to perform further extraction. To the extract was added dilute hydrochloric acid (about 20 ml 10M, but well diluted). Immediately, a large amount of tar congealed and was removed, leaving a watery brown aqueous mixture. This was basified with NaOH, although on reflection, I would maybe use NH3 instead as it is less likely to overbasify and react with any of the compounds present. White precipitations were seen on basification, which redissolved on stirring. The aqueous phase was extracted twice into CH2Cl2, and the solvent evaporated as before. The last stage of evaporation was accomplished with a hair dryer, to leave about a gram or so of pale yellow liquid. On standing 24 hours, this liquid crystallised as circular arrangements of needles. Preliminary attempts at smoking small amounts of the alkaloids gave varying mild effects, and a friend and I decided to try a larger dose. He took a cone in one toke, and was immediately on the ground, making strange sounds and looking odd. He hugged me and told me to meet him in that place, and said it was very strong. I managed to finish a large cone in 3 tokes, and was instantly blown apart as if by a large brick through the head. I think I was temporarily blinded, and found myself on the ground grasping my friend, and coughing for air, as I watched all of my surroundings fragment into small pieces divided by lightning bolts, and feeling all the air in the universe escape through the holes. We were both totally astounded and scared shitless. 2 minutes later, the intense part was over. We staggered out into the open, and walked in the park until we calmed down. Pleasant mild hallucinations continued for about half an hour, and there were no after effects whatsoever. The experience was extemely intense, and the smoke has an unpleasant taste. Several other people have tried it since, and the most popular adjective is "wicked". Effects have ranged from mild to intense, and some people say that while it could not be described as "good" or "enjoyable", they would be happy to try it again. My subsequent trips were more bearable, as I was not under any anxiety about the duration or outcome of the trip. Nevertheless, the trip is still extremely intense, and also physically demanding: giving strong tactile hallucinations and stimulation. On a second occasion, I took 1.7 kg of bark, and pulverised it as best I could using a circular saw. The result was mostly a fibrous powder. Some pieces had to be shredded by hand. Methanol extraction was performed as before. Since the amount was larger on this occasion, the quantities were somewhat unwieldy. Stripping the five litres of solvent (aprx) took approximately 14 hours. On attempting to acidify, filter, and basify, considerable difficulty was experienced; the acidified residue seemed unfilterable, and when basified with NH3, a thick pink gel was formed which was impossible to extract. By a painful process of trial and error, I found that at very low pH, most of the resins became dissolved or suspended. At slightly low pH, the residue separated nicely into a tar and an aqueous phase. At slightly high pH, the mixture became a thick gelatinous solid. At very high pH, this solid redissolved. The result of this seems to be that much of the tar can be separated by successive extraction at moderately low pH (dilute HCl), and then that the addition of strong hydroxide will leave the amphoteric resins in solution, but make the alkaloids insoluble. These are then extracted into dichloromethane as before, and the organic layer is back washed with salty NaOH solution to remove impurities. The dichloromethane is then stripped as before, to leave the alkaloids which crystallise in 24 hours or more. The methanol extraction procedure is lengthy and tedious, and methanol is not easy to obtain in large quantites, so I decided to try boiling the bark in dilute sulfuric acid. I boiled the bark for a couple of hours at a time, filtering and boiling down all the residues. I tried multiple attempts at manipulating the pH, extracting into various solvents, and everything proved messy and useless. When I did manage to extract a portion of the basified slurry into chloroform and boiled it down, only a minute amount of DMT was apparant - insufficient for a single serious dose. Hence, it would seem that alcohol extraction is vital to producing a good alkaloid extract. Experiences: Myself and a friend experimented with repeated doses of DMT at close intervals. A base pipe was used for smoking the alkaloids. This pipe allows minimum combustion and maximum vaporisation, and thus is the most economical way to smoke DMT. Because there is little combustion, the smoke does not taste quite as bad, and also the base pipe allows more accurate metering of the dose. After the initial physical rush, it was found that taking small tokes at intervals of a few minutes was sufficient to maintain an extremely pleasant trip, not unlike that of psilocin. There was minimum physical discomfort associated with the cruise. However, while in this mild state, I took two large tokes of the substance, and a few seconds later, without warning, I was blown apart. I was walking, but staggered and choked, gasping for air. The effects were totally overwhelming, like being thrown out of the universe, and I watched my visual sphere being pixelated at successively lower resolutions, until I could see merely individual elements of colour. The intensity was such as to make it very unpleasant. A few more experiences should be related. It seems that the response of various people to this extract varies greatly, and even a single individual can have a variety of responses, from no effect to total dissociation. One girl tried a single toke for the first time, and was completely thrown out of the universe (from her description). She was begging for it to end; the duration was longer than usual: about 15 minutes of heavy peak, and at the end of it she vomited while gasping for air when beginning to return to some normality and bodliy control. One experienced tripper had tried a few small quanities of DMT and had enjoyed it. He decided to take a large amount. He seemed to pass out for a few minutes, then began to convulse, and started screaming, louder and louder. He was taken outside, and his friends attempted to calm him down. Apparantly as he was coming out of it, he said something like "I've been there, I've met them, and I told them I'd be back". A few minutes later he had a big grin on his face, and remembered very little. Following the smoking of a moderate amount of marijuana, I smoked a large quantity of DMT. I was in a living room/ kitchen, and there were various fittings, e.g. my computer, the fridge, the stereo, the oven, etc. Each of six fittings changed before my eyes into robots. Each had sex, age, faces, personalities. Each were wandering into the room, shooting out limbs, moving like multifaceted machines and rapidly mutating. They were not malevolent, simply astounding, and I was severely freaked out. I watched the oven wander into the middle of the kitchen snapping its door and peering around with its six knob eyes. Minutes later, when I turned around, I screamed "they are still there!" as I again looked at the robots. As the trip subsided, I was desparate to be told mundane facts about myself, as I tried to re-intergrate. I was in a disused industrial estate with various scaffolding and machinery, broken concrete, and next to a busy train line - one of our favorite places for smoking DMT. A large smoke of DMT in this location caused me to experience a geometry alteration: I perceived an upright shape with a straight left edge and a curved right edge, meeting at a point on the top left. This shape became all-consuming: my fingers, legs, the person next to me, the trains, the ground, the pylons, and row upon row of clouds in the sky all lined up and changed their form to match this template. While this was happening, I was also severely confused. Another afternoon at this site, I had a large smoke of DMT following a few beers. I was thrown out of our universe violently, and into the presence of what I will describe metaphorically as an alien god-creature. This being was not benevolent, but omnipotent. Our universe had collapsed to a singularity, and I was a naked consciousness, dragged through the hole between the dimensions, into the presence of this monstrous king. I was found wanting - I was an intruder. I was communicating with the super-consciousness, and the communication was burning out my brain. As the dimension hole closed, and I receeded, I saw lightning bolts and fragmentation all around me; wicked visual distortions. When I returned, all I could say was "who am I? what am I??" I was severely shaken and frightened by this experience - possibly the most intense of my life. On one occasion, I first ate a whole bottle of the 4:1 extract of Passiflora incarnata which is available over the counter in Australia. Each tablet contains 500 mg of extract, and I ate 60 tablets. Supposedly a single tablet is supposed to be a herbal sedative, but I was not sedated after consuming the 60. My reason for doing this was that Passiflora incarnata is supposed to contain a variety of beta-carbolines which are mono-amine-oxidase inhibitors, which have been used to potentiate the effects of DMT, and make it orally active. About 40 minutes later, I smoked some DMT, the effects of which were not greatly different from what I am used to. I then had a slightly larger amount, and without warning, felt an intense incredible rush of physical pleasure through my body. Within seconds, I was riding on the most intense unimaginable pure total body orgasm. I was unable to control myself, and I was screaming at the top of my voice until the effects subsided. The visual and auditory enhancement were mild, but the physical hallucination is was on of the most enjoyable things I have ever experienced. Observers, who were taken aback by my behaviour, claim that I was in this state for about 10 minutes. Afterwards, I felt intensely euphoric, and both very excited and very relaxed. I tried eating a significant quantity of the DMT after this experience, and found no effect. This would indicate that the Sedacalm passionflower extract is insufficient to orally activate DMT at these doses. It may be that higher doses would have some effect, or that Sedacalm does not contain appreciable quantities of beta-carbolines. Harman, harmol, harmalol, harmaline, and harmine have all been reported in Passiflora incarnata over the years, but one paper claims that only harman, which is not particularly active, is the only alkaloid present. Some weeks later, I was able to reproduce this convulsive effect with 75 Sedacalm tablets, although it was not as overwhelming. Following an aborted attempt at orally activating DMT using 3g of Peganum harmala seeds, a rich source of the monoamineoxidase inhibitor harmaline, some half hour after throwing up the DMT containing liquid, I smoked a large quantity of the Acacia maidenii extract. The first part of the trip was one of massive visuals, and the typical distortions. I then "took off" in a more intense direction. It was similar to the Passionflower/ DMT combination, but much more intense and much more violent. I had a convulsive fit, which was pleasurable and terrifying, and I was screaming and hissing. Then, as I was starting to come down, I had the realisation that I had been possessed by a demon. It had been struggling around inside me causing the fit, and had synced with my body at that moment, and was able to speak. "If there is a demon, it is speaking through me now" we said, and I felt an immense force of evil power through me. I freaked, and squashed the demon deep down into my interior. I then collapsed into a deeply sedated state in which I felt quite ill, was very cold, afraid of dying, and felt the demon thrashing around inside me trying to get to the surface and take over again. I was whimpering "the demon... the demon". I recovered and felt refreshed and euphoric about an hour later. My references tell me that N-methyl tryptamine is most likely inactive at these doses. Does anyone have any information regarding the physical and psychological effects of this compound? Also any information regarding the hazards of DMT use would be appreciated. I am interested in other people's experiences, and especially on detailed information concerning the harmaline/DMT combination. -- Jeremy Greenwood Ph BH (02) 692 3433 Adrien Albert Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry AH (02) 517 1896 Department of Pharmacology University of Sydney, Australia "eradicate the typical"