• Members of the previous forum can retrieve their temporary password here, (login and check your PM).

Calea Zachatechici resin. How do you do it?

Tsuchinoko

Tsuchinoko

Rising Star
There's a basic outline on Erowid, which says 2 parts alcohol to 1 part Calea. Let it sit for 3 days, and then strain and evaporate the liquid.


But I have questions, if anyone can help.

1. The 1:2 ratio is weird, considering the calea isn't a liquid. Would I just add 2 ounces of alcohol to 1 ounce of calea?

2. Is the resulting resin anything like the goopy resin you find in your bowl? If so, any tips on getting it in to capsules? And it doesn't sound easy to weigh sticky resin, and I'm not even totally sure how much you ought to take.


Basically, the guide leaves me a little unsure of the whole process, managing the resin and weighing/dosing it properly.


I'd appreciate any info (or even an in-depth, reliable tutorial.)

Guess I'll have to experiment either way.


Thanks in advance!
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Hi.
I might be able to help with this. I am in the middle of an extraction
If thus myself. Let's see if I can shed some light.

The ratio I believe is meant to be interpreted like this.
Are you putting the mix in a mason type jar? Let's say you have two
Inches of herbs in the jar, then you want to make sure there
Is four inches of alcohol. Just make sure the herb material
Is completely saturated and then some.

I left my mix for 3 weeks. Keep the lid on and shake everyday.
I filtered it several types. I was going to keep it as a tincture, but
Decided to make then resin instead. I dupmed it into a glass baking
Pan to dry.
I liked the idea of a tinicure, but it tasted vile.

I am still waiting for it to dry, so no idea after this.
I wouldn't worry to much about dose, just start low.
Good luck, let me know how it goes and I will also post my progress.

I really like working with this plant. In hope with an extraction
And more potent form I can learn and enjoy more.

Hope some of this helps.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
That helped, thank you!

When you say you filtered it several times, does that mean you restrained the same alcohol a bunch of times? What did you use to strain it with?



I'd appreciate it if you can keep me updated on how that evaporation is coming, too!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I used to make an alcohol based resin as described, but then I found a water based resin is equally as effective and water is a lot cheaper than ethanol.

I just make a tea out of the calea, 3 pulls 30 minutes each, then I combine all the pulls and evaporate to a resin (carefully) on the stove.

The end result of both a water and ethanol tincture is a gooey sticky resin, one way to make it easier to work with to infuse it back into a small amount of leaf material or you can mix the resin with flour or some such. I usually just scrape it up the old fashioned way re-hydrating and re-drying when necessary to make it easier, the water resin dries out a bit better than the ethanol resin.

My preferred dosage with calea is ~5 grams worth of leaf material. So I'll make like 50 grams into resin at a time and split it up roughly evenly 10 ways so I have 10 ~5 gram doses. I worked my way up to this dosage and I recommend starting smaller at first in the 1-3g range till you get a feel for it then work your up till you find your sweet spot.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thank you, Dreamer. I kinda suck as making tea, and I don't think I'd trust my ability to not ruin the whole lot of it.

Surprising that the water extracted resin would evaporate faster. I assumed ethanol, like rubbing alcohol, would evaporate fairly quickly.


But one thing you mentioned... I didn't realize that much calea would only amount to 10 doses of resin... That's a bit disappointing. I have 56 grams of plant material coming. But I guess it all amounts to the same quality of doses in the end.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Hey Tsuchinoko, I just filtered it through a couple coffee filters a couple times to make sure no plant material would get through. Then poured it into the drying baking dish.
I will def keep you updated on the process, its still very wet so, it will be several days a least.

Thanks Dreamer! I never thought about using just water. I will try that next time. Everything is a constant learning process. I am curious, Did you find your efforts well rewarded? I know its not like the spice, but Have you had
interesting experiences using your extracts?


sorry for all the typos in the last post, was posting from my phone from work after
a 10 hour day..
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
@Tsuchinoko
The combined water pulls are evaporated in the pot with heat (boiled down), which is why it's so much faster than soaking for for multiple days and then evapping booze under a fan (remember alcohol and heat don't mix! I know everyone already knows this, but safety first and all. :?)

Consider that you will probably want to begin with 2-3 gram doses which basically doubles the amount of doses you'll end up with from your batch, 5 grams is probably a bit heavy for most folks.

@Mz.Gypzy
Absolutely! calea is a fantastic dream medicine. It usually takes a few days of dosing it nightly before the effects really start to kick in, but there is no denying it's effectiveness once they do. I didn't find it helped a lot with lucidity, if anything it made it more difficult to become lucid because it seriously increases the intensity and chaotic nature of the dreams and it's just that much easier to get wrapped up in them. It does help with recall a lot, I found myself remembering 6 and 7 dreams a night vividly. A bit of calea in a changa is blend is really nice and seems to increase clarity within and memory of the experience. As always, this is only my own experience and your mileage may vary.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks Dreamer, I agree. I have Calea and Mullein as the 2 main herbs in my Changa.
Not sure if its the DMT and/or the Calea in the Changa but I have noticed a change in my dreams since starting to smoke on a regular basis.
After my first breakthrough on said Changa I had a very lucid dream, where I had someone come to me with a message and some advice.
I tried drinking just Calea tea a couple times, but it made me nauseous with no effects. smoking it alone didn't do much either. This is why I decided to do an extraction of sorts.
So, here I am waiting patiently as my alcohol drys. I will update after I start to try it.

Tsuchinoko have you started your project yet? which way did you decided to go?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I attempted a somewhat similar method to the method of tea to resin as Dreamer suggested. I did 2 hour long boil/reduce to simmers and then transfered all the liquid into a baking dish and put it in the dehydrator. Checked it a day later and it looked like amber glass. Have 4.5 grams of it put into capsules of 200mg each now. Didn't really weigh the amount of leaf I used, I just threw the remnants of an ounce in there because I have more on the way. If doing this method I suggest pouring the liquid onto wax paper or something to avoid scraping, it gets messy and flies everywhere.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Hi,

Im new to this forum and mainly interested in Calea Zacatechichi since it became a plant I started growing on my own.
Recently I started harvesting leaves.
I used some little portions, without any effects.
So last week I started making a tincture, took about half a jar and covered it with 96% alcohol (about 192 proof) and a little water.
It started looking greenish pretty fast. I shake it on a daily basis and I am curious about the process in general.
I've read people let it sit for 5 days, others let it sit for an entire month.
I would like to know what the best preparation would be. I think I would prefere a tincture over a resin, because it would be easier to take and also a little easier to make.
What dosage you guys recommend? I read that Calea tinctures can be pretty strong, but how does a strong dosage feel like?

Best regards,
Bob
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Quote from Mayagoitia, L; Diaz, J; Contreras, C (1986). "Psychopharmacologic analysis of an alleged oneirogenic plant: Calea zacatechichi". Journal of Ethnopharmacology 18 (3): 229–43. doi:10.1016/0378-8741(86)90002-4. PMID 3821139.

“Good” samples of C. zacatechichi were collected under the guidance of
the Chontal informant near Tehuantepec, Oaxaca during November, 1978.
Specimens of this collection were identified by Dr. Miguel Angel Martinez
Alfaro at the National Herbarium of Mexico as C. zacatechichi, despite the
fact that there were minor morphological differences relative to previously
collected material. The samples were identical with collections made in the
area of the isthmus of Tehuantepec. One kilogram of the dried plant (stem and leaves)
was mashed and extracted with hexane until exhaustion in a Soxhlet apparatus. This
fraction was dried and 30 g of an solvent-free hexane extract were
obtained. The remaining material was thoroughly extracted with methanol
and the organic fraction evaporated. This procedure resulted in 86 g of a
solvent-free gummy residue called the methanol extract. Both extracts
were separated in fractions and packed in gelatin capsules for
pharmacological experiments.The dose was estimated in the following
manner: the human dose for divinatory purposes reported by the Chontal
informant is “a handful” of the dried plant. Since the mean weight of
many handfuls taken by several people was 60 g, we decided that the
average human dose (HD-1) is around 1 g/kg of dried-mashed material.
Therefore, the HD-1 for the hexane extract was 30 mg/kg, and 86 mg/kg for
the methanol extract.
Click to expand...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks Ufostrahlen.
Unfortunately I will not be able to make the preparation as stated above. I just recently started making my first Calea tincture. I have no idea how strong it will be, or how much of it should be taken.
After the extraction, I still could make resin out of it, but unsure about if this relay is necessary.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Foreverbob said:
Thanks Ufostrahlen.
Unfortunately I will not be able to make the preparation as stated above. I just recently started making my first Calea tincture. I have no idea how strong it will be, or how much of it should be taken.
After the extraction, I still could make resin out of it, but unsure about if this relay is necessary.
Click to expand...

You're welcome. Let us know of the outcome of your experiments. Good data is always appreciated.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
First test:

Took about 1 teaspoon of 2 week old Calea-tincture and mixed with a little water. Kept it in my mouth for about 5 minutes and swallowed it.
Taste was not too bad. Went to bed, read a bit, then I decided to go to sleep.
I felt that while I was drifting away, my imaginary state was more profound. I could more or less feel where my dream was going to.
However it made almost no sense what it was about, I could feel the dreamstate much more sooner than normaly.
I woke up a few times during the night, remembering what I was dreaming, but none of the dreams made a lot of sense.
I liked this first tincture experience, there is definitely something going on with Calea that is worth investigating more.

Best regards,
Bob
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Further tests resulted in chaotic and intense dreams with a little more recall.
Does anyone recommend loading the dose over some days to feel the effects profounder? Or do we need to stop and wait a while in order to use Calea again?

What is better? Resin or tincture?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Foreverbob said:
Further tests resulted in chaotic and intense dreams with a little more recall.
Does anyone recommend loading the dose over some days to feel the effects profounder? Or do we need to stop and wait a while in order to use Calea again?

What is better? Resin or tincture?
Click to expand...

Even though I'm a total Calea noob myself - I'm currently growing my own leafs - you could try making an extract with different solvents. I'd suggest Acetone and Naptha. You are using Ethanol which is a Polar protic solvent: Solvent - Wikipedia

But maybe the dream activating compounds of the Calea plant are more likely to dissolve in a Non-polar solvent. To test that: get a residue-free, non-polar solvent, dissolve some leafs in it, filter the plant matter (don't discard it, make an ethanol extract) and let the solvent evaporate. Just a rough idea, I could be wrong, but also right :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Foreverbob said:
Further tests resulted in chaotic and intense dreams with a little more recall.
Does anyone recommend loading the dose over some days to feel the effects profounder? Or do we need to stop and wait a while in order to use Calea again?

What is better? Resin or tincture?
Click to expand...

Absolutely! Take it several nights in a row and effects just get more and more profound, no need to wait between doses at all. In fact most people don't really start noticing strong effects till after they have taken it for 3 nights or so.

The tincture/tea or any other oral dosing method where you have to taste it is incredibly difficult. Calea makes cactus and aya sludge seem downright pleasant, so far it is the most bitter thing I've ever tasted to date. Resin is most assuredly the way to go.

Sweet Dreams 8)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Back
Top Bottom