I just edited the post to organize it into four categories. In order from most severe to least severe:
- Health & Safety Issues (unfortunately these were also the most numerous... following the tek as written is bad juju!)
- Technical Errors
- Practical Considerations
- Miscellaneous Gripes
Dear editors of Erowid,
Many of us at the DMT Nexus have some very serious concerns about the
QT's DMT Extraction for Students. We know that some of our members have contacted you about it in the past, but their comments do not seem to have been meaningfully acted on. We know that with Erowid, harm reduction is a core value... we sympathize completely! It is because of this that we as a community feel compelled to impress on you the need for action to be taken regarding QT's tek.
Our largest concerns with QT's tek are related to health and safety. Throughout the tek, comments on safely handling chemicals are scant. If we've learned one thing, it's that people doing extractions by following a tek as though it's a recipe (without really understanding what they're doing, else they wouldn't need a tek) are not sticklers for proper handling and safety. The tek occasionally tell the extractor to "use proper safety precautions" but never gives any details on these. Safety goggles and gloves are listed under "Materials" but the tek never says when to use them, nor does it mention that you could accidentally blind yourself permanently if you neglect to use them. Further, no mention is made of the flammability of some of the solvents (like ether and naphtha) or of how one can handle them safely. The tek says to use warm naphtha, but fails to mention that warming it on the stove can easily lead to a solvent explosion, causing severe harm to the extractor and possibly starting a house fire (which could in turn lead to another "DMT Lab Busted!" headline in the papers when the firefighters come to put it out).
Besides lacking comments on safe handling of chemicals, the tek also repeatedly makes suggestions which, if followed, would result in the final product being tainted with toxic contaminants. Several of the varieties of naphtha named in the tek have been known to contain non-volatile contaminants (particularly anti-rusting agents). The tek also recommends using a ziplock bag as a makeshift separatory funnel... aside from the high probability of spilling caustic materials everywhere, this is strongly inadvisable because ziplock bags are not made from a grade of plastic suitable for holding naphtha or other nonpolar solvents. A quick test may show that the solvent doesn't eat through the plastic, but that doesn't mean it's not leaching toxic plasticizers from it. And since the tek recommends collecting the product by evaporation (and includes no information on further purification), any and all toxic contaminants from the solvent and from the ziplock bag will end up in that final product. One final note from a harm-reduction standpoint: Recommending that people not weigh their doses is simply irresponsible; sure, you won't have a toxic overdose of DMT (though you might from those contaminants!), but it is much safer to work with a known dose to learn how your body reacts to the substance.
Aside from these very important safety considerations, the tek also includes a substantial amount of information which is simply not correct. Some of this is incorrect chemical terminology, which in the grand scheme of things is not terribly serious. But there are also some substantial errors regarding what methods are and are not effective when extracting from
Mimosa hostilis root bark. Time and time again, people have come to the DMT Nexus or other web forums because they were following QT's tek and it either didn't work or they ran into serious issues trying to follow it. Using ammonia (as the tek alludes to) will only result in really nasty emulsions, it simply can't raise the pH high enough for a extraction on
Mimosa hostilis root bark. Even using lye, the tek does not recommend a high enough pH. A pH of 9 simply won't cut it; you'll again end up with a nasty emulsion. What's worse, the tek treats emulsions as though they were inevitable and tells the extractor not to be concerned if they take several days to resolve. Under proper conditions, an emulsion (if one forms at all) should resolve in a matter of minutes.
There are a handful of other issues with the tek being wasteful of resources and occasionally nonsensical; at one point QT tells the extractor to discard the volumes of naphtha which would contain DMT! But our most serious concerns are for the health and safety of any would-be extractors who presume that QT's tek is safe to follow because Erowid is, in general, a trustworthy source of information.
Below you will find a complete list of the problems we have found with QT's tek. In light of these issues, we hope that you will strongly consider removing QT's tek from Erowid. If it is not removed, we feel that in the interest of public safety, it should contain a large, prominent, strongly-worded warning that following the tek as it is written could lead to serious bodily harm, that it may not successfully extract DMT, and that even if some DMT
is obtained there is a strong possibility of it being contaminated with toxic substances.
A complete list of our grievances regarding QT's tek:
Health & Safety
- The tek recommends using hydrochloric acid without appropriate guidance on safe handling. Admittedly they mention other acids, but HCl is the one specifically recommended. Weaker acids like citric acid and vinegar are preferable alternatives because they can be handled more safely and are readily available at grocery stores.
- While the tek mentions the health hazards of working with DCM, it fails to note the flammability hazards of naphtha and ether. It likewise does not mention the intoxication hazards from the fumes which necessitate minimizing contact and using them in a well-ventilated (and spark-free) area.
- The tek describes a method for obtaining ether from starting fluid. This method will generally not obtain pure ether. Unless the extractor has a good working knowledge of chemistry and has consulted the MSDS on the starter fluid, this could very easily lead to very unhealthy contaminants. This issue especially needs to be addressed.
- The tek specifically mentions Coleman fuel, Zippo lighter fluid, and Ronsonol. All have been reported to contain non-volatile contaminants. Particularly since the tek instructs the extractor to obtain the final product by evaporation, this also seriously needs to be addressed to prevent people from unwittingly smoking harmful contaminants.
- No health & safety warnings on proper handling of chloroform.
- Ziplock bags as separatory funnels? What the fuck?! Ziplock bags are not HDPE2. They also contain plasticizers which would likely leach into naphtha, and since the naphtha is being evaporated these plasticizers will end up in the extracted DMT. He does suggest making sure your solvent won't melt the bag, but this ignores the fact that it may leach harmful contaminants.
- The tek calls for "warm naphtha" on multiple occasions, but makes no mention of how to go about warming it. If an unwary extractor were to heat it on the stove, they could easily find themselves with a fireball in their face!
- Insufficient safety warnings with regards to lye. "Take proper precautions" is not very good advice. Teks should tell the extractor what the proper precautions are (especially the necessity of wearing goggles and gloves to prevent blindness and chemical burns, and having an acid on-hand to neutralize any possible spills).
- The tek recommends obtaining the DMT by evaporating the naphtha. Before the age of freeze-precipitation this might have been excusable, if not for the fact that many of QT's recommended varieties of naphtha include non-volatile contaminants, and he suggests employing non-HDPE2 plastics. Considering the processes recommended in the tek, any DMT obtained by evaporation is reasonably likely to be tainted with harmful contaminants and is not safe to consume.
- The tek acknowledges that the product will be impure, but provides no information on purifying the product. It explicitly seems to recommend consuming it, impurities and all.
- "Don't worry about weighing it." Bad advice, plain and simple.
Technical Errors
- Incorrect terminology in step 3. You're not converting the DMT to a salt; it's already a salt in the plant material. And of course the ions dissociate when salts dissolve. The step might be more appropriately titled "Dissolving DMT cations in water" or at least "Dissolving salts of DMT".
- Incorrect terminology in step 8. We are not unhooking the DMT salts (remember they're in solution, so they aren't really hooked together at all). We are deprotonating the DMT cations to generate the free base.
- Suggests that ammonia is typically used to basify and that this tek's use of lye is a departure from the norm... but ammonia is not an effective base for MHRB. All you'll get is an awful emulsion.
- Recommended pH after adding the base is too low. pH 9 is not good enough. With MHRB in particular there are serious emulsion issues at pH 9... but even ignoring that, pH 9 is only 0.32 above the pKa of DMT... not terribly efficient.
- The tek states that it is ideal to extract an alkaloid at its pKa. This not necessarily true. At its pKa, half of the alkaloid is protonated and the other half unprotonated. In ideal conditions (i.e. assuming infinite solubility in the nonpolar extraction solvent) this is sufficient since Le Châtelier's principle is on your side... but unless there are instability-related complications or other factors to account for, it's better to have the vast majority of the alkaloid in the desired form (in this case unprotonated). Especially with MHRB, where emulsions are a crucial issue.
- The tek acts as though emulsions are inevitable, that you should not be concerned if these take several days to resolve, and that it's near-miraculous for an emulsions to resolve in less than an hour. This is insanity. Emulsions can be prevented by ensuring sufficiently high pH and mixing gently (rather than shaking as QT suggests). The addition of plain salt may be employed as a further preventative measure.
- The tek suggests that the final product may contain "hydroxide". Hydroxide is not a molecule, it's an ion. It is possible that the product could contain sodium hydroxide or other hydroxide salts, but neither of the recommended methods for eliminating the "hydroxide" would actually help at all if the product actually were contaminated with sodium hydroxide or another hydroxide salt.
Practical Issues
- Unnecessarily low pH for step 2. While pH 2 won't hurt anything, it's a waste of materials.
- Ridiculously long times recommended for the aqueous acidic extraction. QT recommend 24 hours for the first soak, and a whole week for subsequent soaks. Really, simmering 15-30 minutes three times will get just about all the DMT out of the bark and into solution. No need to spend two weeks; this step can be done in two hours or better.
- Recommends defatting even though the tek is designed for use with MHRB. MHRB is not a fatty material. This is a waste of solvent and time.
- Step 7 tells us to add warm naphtha to the acidic MHRB extract and shake it for 5 minutes before adding lye. What is that possibly going to accomplish?
- The tek says to repeat steps 7-9 two more times. In step 8, we added 5g of lye to the mix. Do we repeat that too, adding more lye each time? Of course, that extra lye isn't going to hurt... on the contrary, it will likely bring the pH up into a more practical range than QT recommends. But why is the tek suggesting that we add more base prior to each extraction with nonpolar solvent, instead of adding all that we're going to use at one time? I suspect it's just an artifact of poor phrasing.
- Uses way too much naphtha for extractions. The tek calls for 100 ml per pull for 30 g bark. About one tenth of that would be sufficient.
- In "Lab notes" under step 6, QT suggests that we are saving the naphtha from the defatting process, but discarding the DMT-laden naphtha from the later steps. Why would we want to save the (practically non-existent) fats from MHRB but throw away the DMT?
- "You will know when DMT is in the final product by the smell." This is a seriously concerning statement. DMT is supposed to be the final product, not merely be contained in it.
- Outdated info: The tek suggests using Red Devil lye. Red Devil lye was discontinued roughly five years ago.
- The three sets of "lab notes" from QT's extraction record that the extractions took 24 days, 39 days, and 61 days. Yikes! A quick and effective acid/base extraction can be completely finished in 24 hours (and that includes time for freeze-precipitations); a big, leisurely (and frankly unnecessarily long) extraction is still done in a week. From a legal standpoint, it seems prudent to complete the extraction as quickly as possible so that (if worse comes to worst) the extractor is only on the hook for possession of a controlled substance and not manufacture.
- The tek is written for MHRB with lye as the base and naphtha as the non-polar solvent, yet it acts as though it would be just as effective for phalaris grasses with chloroform as the solvent. Unfortunately different factors need to be taken into account for different plants and solvents. Getting clean DMT out of phalaris grasses in particular is a massive chore and would require its own specialized tek.
Miscellaneous Gripes
- Measuring pH with beets and cabbage? Seriously? That's pretty ghetto. Litmus papers and pH monitors are pretty cheap if you care to measure the pH. (Of course with MHRB it's not necassary; a dash of acid is fine for the initial extraction, and MHRB provides its own handy color-changing reaction when enough base has been added)
- Typos. At least six times, the tek refers to "naptha". Should one really trust extraction advice from a person who cannot correctly spell their solvent?
Thank you again for your consideration.
Sincerely,
The people of the DMT Nexus
