Early stages of crystallisation?

[dromedary]

I began my first attempt at a spice extraction yesterday from some local flora. There is something uniquely spiritual about getting to know and respect your local wildlife and then carefully extracting part of its essence so that you can use it to connect with the universe even more profoundly. In my case the local government had lopped this tree to put in a walking trail, and I was lucky enough to recover some of it. Today I am waiting on the final stage for the solvent to evaporate.

I read all the teks I could find on this site, though I'm not specifically following any of them more closely than the general theory of an STB extraction. I am comfortable enough with the chemistry and stoichiometry to make my own way through, but the teks have been full of great practical tips that I would never have thought of on my own. As comfortable as I am with the chemistry I am very unsure about my botanical recognition skills and when I look at the evaporation plate I am plagued with doubt and second-guessing. Perhaps I will have my answer before anyone can reply, but I am hoping that someone can have a look at the attached pictures and tell me if what I have looks unmistakably like the beginnings of spice crystallisation. I think it looks a lot like water pooling on the bottom of the tray in little bubbles under the solvent - there are no visible crystals. I can supply other pictures if necessary, but it is very difficult to get a picture in focus with my camera, given that I'm basically trying to focus on a liquid underneath another liquid and and top of a transparent solid.

Do successful extractions look like this during the evaporation stage? Or is this kind of pattern common to both successful and unsuccessful extractions? Or is it uncommon to have this kind of pattern at all?

Thanks in advance!

 

[۩]

It's hard to say until it's fully evaporated. Take a picture when it is!

Welcome to the DMT-Nexus!

 

[dromedary]

Thanks!

That's what I was afraid the answer was going to be. Unfortunately I don't have enough space in the freezer, so I guess I'm going to have to wait this one out. I've had a little fan heater sitting next to it on 'fan only' for the past 18 hours or so and progress is slow. Assuming I care more about usable product than beautiful crystals, is it worthwhile to turn it up to the 'low heat' setting?

 

[۩]

That should be fine. Many people use hot plates underneath their pans as well. Looking forward to your results!

 

[dromedary]

When the solvent was fully evaporated I was left with an oily yellow substance which was extremely difficult to collect up and use. I wasted most of it trying different ways of getting it off the tray, and then thought to mop it up with one of the leaves from the tree. It filled two bowls which I smoked through a bong. The smoke was harsh and whatever the active ingredient was in that goo was definitely not DMT.

The visuals came before the psychological effects, while I was still holding in the smoke. They were quite unlike any visuals I've had from anything else (and I've tried a few things) and difficult to describe. It was like several overlapping rectangles in my field of view each containing a fine grid of shimmering dots, different colours for each box, superimposed on my vision. It was fleeting but recurring while my eyes were open. The psychological feeling of 'tripping' built up slowly over 5-10 minutes and lasted for at least an hour but probably more like two. It's hard to say what the duration was because I fell asleep towards the end. It was relaxing and sedating with virtually no body load, unlike any other psychedelic I've tried. I felt like I could comfortably take ten times more and it would simply be ten times stronger without any peripheral negative effects getting out of control. I was quite happy at the dose I had, though - amazing clarity of thought and stunning closed eye visuals.

I am definitely going to try to extract some more and hopefully I can find a friendly organic chemist to run some analyses on it so I can find out what on earth it is!

 

[Ljosalfar]

Wow, I'm really glad you are o.k. - extracting and vaping from a tree you have not identified is very, very foolish. DO YOUR RESEARCH! From your initial post it sounds like you were relying only on a good vibe from some random plant.
And you got lucky - please post photos of the tree - there is a scrum of Ausies here at the Nexus who can help i.d. it.
Be well,
L

Your description is similar to those concerning NMT. Check it out.

 

[dromedary]

Thanks for your concern, it is a fair warning given my original post. I'm not quite that foolish though - I did make sure to get a positive identification of the plant (A. Cyclops), checked the scholarly journals for potentially harmful chemicals (didn't find any) and searched these forums as well as others for bioassays - turns out someone from here had already tried it and had similar but weaker results to mine.

Interestingly one of the papers I found was a metastudy of all the studies of plants in my state for their content, concentration and location of various classes of chemicals including alkaloids, gums, tannins and the like. They had a separate table for plants that were dangerous for farm animals to eat - which would probably be the best indication we have for a new species as to whether it would be harmful to smoke an extract - and there were only a handful of acacias there, which all looked vastly different to the known OK varieties. I don't mean to imply it's anything less than reckless to smoke an extract of an plant you're not 100% sure about, but it doesn't seem to bear the same risk as eg: picking and eating mushrooms you're not 100% sure about.

Are there any cases you can think of where an acacia may look superficially similar to a usable species but actually be harmful?

 

[Ljosalfar]

Cool, thanks for clarifying; you did indeed do your research, and continue to do it. I don't have experience or knowledge of Acacia, but many here do.
Best, L

2 great threads:

Trying to improve Acacia info

entheogenic effects of NMT