69rons Mescaline Extraction TEK - Problems with Purification with MEK

[curious1]

"Purification of Mescaline Acetate

To clean mescaline acetate, dissolve 200 mg of impure sticky amber mescaline acetate in 2 ml of cold MEK. Smash the pure mescaline finely in the MEK. You want the mescaline acetate to form a fine powder at the bottom. Wait for a while until the mescaline acetate powder sinks to the bottom and simply decant the MEK slowly, being careful not to disturb the mescaline acetate. After one cleaning, the mescaline acetate will still be somewhat amber or tan in color. Repeat with 2 ml more cold MEK. After a second wash and decant, dry the mescaline acetate with a fan. After all the smell of the MEK is gone, you're left with off-white nearly pure mescaline acetate.


Pure mescaline acetate is a white free flowing powder with a slightly waxy texture very similar to freebase DMT. You'll find that it's much easier to manage after purifying it, being not nearly as waxy, and no longer sticky."


I found 69rons dry mescaline acetate extraction TEK about a month ago. I got hold of some d-Limonene, vinegar and slaked lime. I then found some live San Pedro cut off the peel and dried it.

I followed 69rons TEK with exactly the right quantitys of ingredients as well as I could with the equipment I had. Although it was messy everything went as I thought it should. Finally I had a light brown crude sticky gum that was evaporated without heat [fan only] from the vinegar.

This gum was then put into MEK that had been in the freezer and 'smashed'...Strangely I found that the brown sticky gum did not elicit mescaline acetate as expected. The MEK I poured off was quite dark..what was left behind remained a slightly less brown gum of a slightly more viscous nature..

Any help on what the problem might potentially have been would be appreciated.....

 

[joebono]

Listen, I tried to purify mescaline acetate with MEK the same way you did - about a gram of it. I was left with about 700mg of a light brown powder. I ate it and no trip commenced. A few days later I ate the acetate that I did not MEK about (1.7 grams) and was blown away. I can't really explain it except that I am not MEKing my acetate again. Eat the impure acetate.

 

[69ron]

If the MEK is too WET it will dissolve the mescaline acetate and mess up everything for sure.

MEK is water soluble and absorbs water from the air so wet MEK can be an issue.

Also, some cacti just doesn't contain much mescaline, but is still very active, and doing a MEK wash might make your product less potent. If it mostly contains mescaline N-Oxide (which isn't active according to SWIM's test), then the MEK wash will concentrate the mescaline N-Oxide, making a very weak end product. It will be reddish or brown or slightly orange in color if this is the case instead of off-white.

Always avoid re-drying your mescaline. This is a sure way of making mescaline N-oxide.

 

[Infundibulum]

Ron, do you have more info on the mescaline n-oxide? It is first time I hear about it. Also, how did SWIY procured mescaline n-oxide and tested its activity?

 

[curious1]

Thank you Ron..What do you mean I should not re-dry mescaline?

*Can MEK be 'dried' just prior to purification of crude acetate?

Could only source MEK from a hardware store so am at a loss of any other avenues to purify my acetate.

*Are there any other viable ways to isolate pure mescaline acetate from the crude brown sticky stuff?

I am seeking a way of having mescaline powder that I can store for when the right occasion arises.
*How long does the impure mescaline acetate goo remain chemically active?

It makes no sense to go through the whole expense and time waste of extracting and to stop at the crude impure sticky stuff. At present I ingest San Pedro by simply blending the desired dose of skin with a small amount of water and gulping it down. Although it tastes bad the time and money saved makes it worthwhile.

 

[69ron]

Thank you Ron..What do you mean I should not re-dry mescaline?

That’s one way to make mescaline N-oxide. If you extract mescaline acetate using vinegar and put it in a food dehydrator to dry it using heat and air, inevitably a small amount oxidizes. If you keep repeating this over and over, it will eventually become a sticky mess of mescaline N-Oxide. Mesclaine N-Oixde is insoluble in MEK and inactive. This is according to SWIM’s tests.

It’s less likely to happen if no heat is used when re-drying it.

This happens to DMT, bufotenine, and pretty much all alkaloids. Hot air used to dry the final product in extracts inevitably causes alkaloids to oxidize. Some alkaloids oxidize quicker than others. SWIM’s tests show that mescaline is very much susceptible to oxidation when there’s hot air present.

So dry it as little as possible. Avoid re-drying it.

*Can MEK be 'dried' just prior to purification of crude acetate?

Yes, there are many ways to do this. I’m sure it’s already posted somewhere on the Nexus.

Could only source MEK from a hardware store so am at a loss of any other avenues to purify my acetate.

What brand is it?

*Are there any other viable ways to isolate pure mescaline acetate from the crude brown sticky stuff?

MEK works for cleaning mescaline acetate, but to be honest, it doesn’t work that well. It can be tricky to get it just right. It’s easier to clean mescaline HCl with acetone and then IPA, then to clean mescaline acetate with MEK. But SWIM and other have cleaned their mescaline acetate successfully with MEK, so it can be done.

Without being present, it can be hard to troubleshoot a MEK cleanup step. SWIM knows it works and works OK. But if the MEK is wet, it doesn’t work well. And if the temperature is not right, it doesn’t work well. If too much is used, you’re left with very little product. If not enough is used, the end product remains sticky. There are a lot of things that can go wrong.

I am seeking a way of having mescaline powder that I can store for when the right occasion arises.
*How long does the impure mescaline acetate goo remain chemically active?

At least a year or more. SWIM has never noticed it lose potency over time, but never had it longer than a year, if I recall right. As long as it’s kept in an air tight container it seems to last a very long time. But if you re-dry it over and over it will eventually be inactive.

 

[Infundibulum]

Thank you Ron..What do you mean I should not re-dry mescaline?

That’s one way to make mescaline N-oxide. If you extract mescaline acetate using vinegar and put it in a food dehydrator to dry it using heat and air, inevitably a small amount oxidizes. If you keep repeating this over and over, it will eventually become a sticky mess of mescaline N-Oxide. Mescaline N-Oxide is insoluble in MEK and inactive. This is according to SWIM’s tests.

Ron, out of pure scholarly interest, how do you know that what SWIY got is mescaline N-oxide and/or that the oxidation occurs at the nitrogen via this process?

I am curious about this compound and it would be nice to know more. Would you like to share some insights into that?

Cheers

 

[curious1]

Very interesting - Thanks... I will research MEK drying here.

Unfortunately I am not in the USA so what brand MEK it is not really applicable- however it seems to be bought in bulk and then decanted by the hardware store into smaller containers to be sold to the public.

As the crude mescaline acetate is so difficult to dry [as yet I have no food dehydrator] - I was wondering what would happen if it was not perfectly dry when put into the cold MEK to purify it?

 

[69ron]

Ron, out of pure scholarly interest, how do you know that what SWIY got is mescaline N-oxide and/or that the oxidation occurs at the nitrogen via this process?

I am curious about this compound and it would be nice to know more. Would you like to share some insights into that?

Cheers

Pretty much all alkaloids can form oxides. The reason a lot of references don’t talk much about them is because in general N-Oxides are weaker then their parent compound, and aren’t easily detected by a lot of tests. For example GC/MS can’t detect N-Oxides.

For example, when using GC/MS, cocaine N-Oxide shows up as simply cocaine. So a lot of references don’t list cocaine N-Oxide as being present in coca leaf, but it is.

At one time you could argue that cocaine N-Oxide didn’t exist in coca leaf, but this has since been proven. N-Oxides are all over the place actually. Pretty much all plants that contain alkaloids also contain N-Oxides of those alkaloids.

I recall arguing about bufotenine N-Oxide existing is Anadenanthera and others said it didn’t because they couldn’t find a reference to it. A reference to it was eventually found though. The problem is GC/MS is what everyone uses now and bufotenine N-Oxide shows up as bufotenine using GC/MS. This gives the false impression that it doesn’t exist in the plant, when it actually does.

We have the same issue with mescaline. With such few studies on mescaline cacti present, and pretty much all of them using GC/MS to detect the alkaloids present, mescaline N-Oxide doesn’t show up. That doesn’t mean its not there. Its there. It just can’t be detected using GC/MS. If you can make it in a lab, it will form on its own in nature for sure. This is true for much every alkaloid I’ve studied.

You can make mescaline N-Oxide pretty easily. You can use the peroxide method I posted for making DMT N-Oxide (which is posted on this forum) to make N-Oxides of pretty much every alkaloid there is. Using that method SWIM has made DMT N-Oixde, bufotenine N-Oxide, mescaline N-Oxide, 5-MeO-DMT N-Oxide, and a few others. All of them are sticky by the way, weaker or inactive, and either brownish or reddish in color. Once they are made you can use zinc to turn them back into their parent compound.

 

[Infundibulum]

Thanks for the info;

It's true that gas chromatography/MS cannot detect the n-oxides. It is also safe to say that peroxide treatment makes N-oxides of amines. So how did SWIY bioassayed mescaline N-oxide? Did SWIY made it with peroxide I presume, then tried whether it is reducible back to mescaline with zinc, is it true?

And how much of it was bioassayed? Was it inactive to, say, 400mg?

 

[curious1]

Have been searching MEK drying here. As yet no luck on finding an explanation on how to do it.

Any assistance on what SPECIFIC WORDS to type into the search engine or where to go in here to get to the valued information would be appreciated...thank you

 

[dg]

super basic version....

home chemists typically bake epson salts, magnesiumsulphate(?_)
at 450 for 30 minor so...? (i have never used dried solovents, but i salt a bit differently, and recrystalize from water, so dry isn't important for me. maybe search epson salts?)
then add dried mag-sulf to solovent, and filter

 

[curious1]

apparently the liquid MEK absorbes water from the surrounding air which influences its efficiency....69ron says there are ways to dry it here...have not been able to hit any info regarding the drying of MEK here...so just asking the good fellow nexus users for a pointer to the source of the right info here....

 

[Infundibulum]

apparently the liquid MEK absorbes water from the surrounding air which influences its efficiency....69ron says there are ways to dry it here...have not been able to hit any info regarding the drying of MEK here...so just asking the good fellow nexus users for a pointer to the source of the right info here....

Well, yeah, same thing happens with other solvents polar solvents that mix with water like acetone, methanol, ethanol, isopropanol etc. They all absorb molisture from the air sooner or later.

To dry them, the use of anhydrous magnesium sulfate is universal. It does not matter whether it is MEK or ethanol or IPA, the procedure is the same; bake epsom salts in the oven for some time, then add them to the solvent you wish to dry. Anhydrous magnesium sulfate absorbs its own weight in moisture, so you suspect e.g. 50ml of water contamination in your MEK, then add at least 50g of anhydrous MgSO4, maybe even top it to 100g to be totally sure and throw it in the MEK. Shake, and then let settle+ decant or filter.

 

[curious1]

okay thank you- that is amazingly simple...will research this further here - will be much easier now that I have a starting point ....8)

 

[endlessness]

You can dry those other solvents infundibulum mentioned with sodium carbonate too, or even pure salt, but im not sure about MEK... The principle is basically just adding loads of it, mixing, and it will absorb water and fall to the bottom. Then you decant the dry solvent, and voilá

 

[curious1]

Still have an issue with MEK purification.:?:

Since my last comment I am the proud owner of a food dehydrator :d which saves an incredible amounts of time.I went through the tek again ending up with 1300mg of crude acetate from 110g of dried cactus:wink: . I dryed my MEK and again after removing from the feezer -prior to my purification attempt.

Unfortunately my crude acetate just ended up becoming gunky and within the cold MEK without ANY apparent pure mescaline acetate forming:roll: .

I now wonder if my MEK is indeed true MEK or merely being represented as MEK by my source as I have followed the tek to the 'T'.

Again any help from Nexus would be appreciated. [I was considering attempting to do a BLAB with mimosa hostilis and have lost confidence in my abilities - am I likely to succeed with it as a complete noob who needs to follow teks rather than understanding them?] :?

Again any help from Nexus would be appreciated.

 

[endlessness]

I have read several times people complaining about the MEK wash of mescaline acetate.. Some people lose yields, others have an inactive product, others dont feel it purifies it much... Its not an issue only you are having, dont worry, it seems a reasonably common problem... Im even thinking of adding a disclaimer in ron's tek or asking him to add a disclaimer that some people seem to have problems with this purification.

It could be because your MEK is not pure, or maybe its too cold and its not picking up enough of the non-actives, (or in the cases that people lose yield or get inactive problem, could be because the MEK is wet) or whatever, who knows. Personally I would just keep the acetates impure as they are and consume as they are, its perfectly active and its a great trip. If I wanted pure mescaline I would go for HCl salting instead, and doing IPA/Acetone washes...

and dont worry about BLAB, as I said in the other thread its perfectly easy, and if you dont throw anything away nothing is ever lost it can always be recovered. But considering you follow the instructions and your chemicals are right, it will work beautifully.

By the way, regardless of what tek you use, basically all of them can be followed without understanding much but just following the steps, but it is highly recommended that you do understand what you are doing and why, because if something goes unexpected you can learn to understand why, and also you can adapt things to your context and situation. The FAQ has a small explanation on understanding the principles of teks, but also you should read different teks so that you get the feeling on the processes, some teks explain better than others what is going on and why. I do think you can do BLAB without a problem, but just for the sake of understanding, read a few other teks like AmorFati's non-toxic approach, q21's tek, noman's tek and vovin's tek (and BLAB of course), as they all explain a bit of how it all works. You can find all these teks in the WIKI

Good luck

 

[curious1]

thanks for the valued input....

Yes I have decided just that - I will just use the crude acetate [a powder would have been so nice but another day rather when I have more product and a different MEK source]..

I will give them a read, most definately.. Blab appeals to me as it is simple , space efficient and I can source all the ingredients readily [and it seems easier every time I read it].

 

[Transform]

If it mostly contains mescaline N-Oxide

This is misleadingly inaccurate. Primary amines like mescaline do not form N-oxides (but they can get oxidised, which is not the same thing). N-oxide formation is restricted to tertiary amines like trichocerine or DMT, and compounds with three nominal bonds from carbon to nitrogen, such as pyridines, isoqinolines and nitriles. Any of these may also oxidise in ways which do not involve N-oxide formation!

Just in case anyone was wondering…