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extracting pure mesembrine from sceletium tortuosum?

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lorax

lorax

Rising Star
has anyone done this before? I have seen pure mesembrine for sale on the internet but the prices were outrageous. So there must be a way of extracting it. I have heard of alcoholic tinctures.

I like to snuff my kanna, because it holds the most euphoric effects for me. The only thing that bothers me is all those dark brown boogers I get from snuffing it. So I thought it must be really great to have it in pure form or at least in crude extract form.

It would be great to do this also because its still legal everywhere.
 
sceletium is a very nice plant with nice mild effects nice to hear someone else interested in it. anyway a friend of a friend did some studies on the alkaloids in this plant they are very easy to extract in crude form. a crude mixture will be a mix of mostly mesembrine and small amounts of similar alkaloids.

i can provide some details on how to extract if you are interested however the toxicity of this compound in high doses in pure form is not known so please be careful. let me know and i will ask my friend.
 
Ok here is some basic info based on some information from friend and literature. I am going to leave out volumes and weights because they depend on how much you are extracting but it becomes intuitive if you know what you are doing. I can give more details on this if needed but I do not think its so necessary. Anyway:

Extract 3 times with 0.05 M H2SO4

Defat 3 times with hexane (naptha will also work in this case)

Bring pH back to 11 with NH4OH (this can probaly be replaced with NaOH I see no reason why not)

Extract basic solution 3 times with DCM (this can probably also be replaced with toluene I would not recommend naptha or hexanes for this step as mesembrine is not very soluble in them)

You will be left with a brown/yellow oil containing mostly mesembrine and a few other alkaloids depending on the plant material, when it was harvested, and how it was processed. Now pure mesembrine freebase is an oil so if you want crystals you are going to have to make a salt. I have no information on this process. I also have no information on the safety profile except that sceletium is a very safe plant so I do not see why the alkaloids in crude form will be much more dangerous but please be careful with doses and salts as not much is not known about how the salts effect pharmacokinetics and dose etc.

The yield should be somewhere around 1% (I believe thats the concentration of alkaloids in good quality material.

Best of luck let me know how it works out for anyone who does this.
 
Thanks Burnt,

Do you think that xylene could be used instead toluene ?
I understand that freebasing is usefull to get the most possible pure extract, but if the salt is orally active, coult it be "enough" to just do an aciditic extract ?
My friend do not mind ingesting a bit of chlorophylle or a bit of tannins, it can not be worst than the raw plant right ? (the raw plant is not that bad, just a bit harsh on the stomach of a friend)
 
i had put 1g of sceletium in a test tube and pulled on it with 2x 25ml ethanol. each time it was in the ethanol i heated the whole thing and shook the hell out of it. it seemed to help the ethanol take on a more darker color. i evaporated the ethanol and it gave me some oily crystalline stuff.

when i scraped it up i had this little ball which looked and felt a lot like dark nepalese hash but smelled VERY strong of sceletium. (like the same smell you get when snuffing it)

so it seems to be in the plant in its freebase form.

1g yielded a ball which weighed 0.08g. i snuffed 0.02g which resulted in an instant rush of euphoria.(the only problem i had was getting the stuff powdered to fit my nose).. i just stuck the whole 0.02g ball of it deep in my nose and kinda squished it into my membranes from the outside)

then i took another 0.02g and vaporized it in a lightbulb kind of vaporizer. it intensified the euphoria even more including nice tingly sensations.

then i hit some good outdoor weed in a vaporizer after that. man i was wasted! very nicely wasted tho!
 
so maybe one can skip all these evil solvents and just do it with ethanol. since 1g yielded 0.08g my guess would be that i have gotten nearly all of it out of the plant material. i could probably have pulled again.. but since this was only my first test with a small quantity i didnt feel the need to.

maybe the downside of this is that one might need quite a bit of ethanol to do this.. i used 50ml of ethanol for extracting the stuff from 1g.

i have seen alcoholic tinctures of sceletium on the web.. this made me think of this way of extracting it.

does anybody have any info on the soluability of mesembrine in alcohol? will heat help the mesembrine to go into the alcohol or is it not needed?

might it be good to first extract with ethanol and then defat the yield using naphtha?.. but with the freebase form being an oil.. wouldn't the naphtha pull out some alkaloid?

a method for making mesembrine fumarate would certainly be very nice.

also burnt.. do you have any idea of mesembrine's shelf life? is it stable in oil form?

the good thing about the oil form is that it is possible to make a ball of it so not very much surface will be exposed to oxygen.
 
burnt.. please add all the details like quantity, yield, solvent quantity used, time used for pulls etc.

this would be great as i will be doing a lot of experimenting on this matter in the near future. if you have any kind of lab notes.. i would greatly appreciate it!
 
The ethanol idea seems to work great for a crude extract. You got almost the maximum normal yield anyway it should be around 1%. I would skip the other stuff I posted, which is more intended for purification, unless you want more pure stuff or want to do a very bulk extraction. Mesembrine is freely soluble in ethanol though so its expected.

Unsure about shelf life but if you keep it cold and in the dark I am sure it will be fine. These alkaloids are fairly stable from what I have observed. The other ones in the plant seem to break down into mesembrine but that has not been proven directly. I think thats why people have the processing steps but anyway...

Making salts will call for experimentation I don't know anyone who has done this.

I can post more information on amounts of solvents and details later today.


Cheech question about the effects from this extract. Did it seem stronger then just eating plant material? I have only eaten or smoked the stuff never snorted. How would you compare, just curious. Thanks.
 
I have tried all ways of consumption. For me snorting it is the best method. It produces an almost overwhelming euphoric effect with no stress.. its almost like in that one ren & stimpy episode where stimpy invents the happy helmet. (if you dont know it.. check it out. then you will know what i mean!)

try snorting 0.25g of good quality ready to use sceletium. this is the highest recommended dose for nasal consumption. usually one a snort of 0.125g takes me as high as i wanna be. 0.125g fits perfectly up one of my nostrils. when i go for 0.25g doses i use 0.125g in each nostril. squishing your nose after sniffing helps the membranes with the uptake of the substance.

maximum doses:
smoking: 0.25g
snorting: 0.25g
oral: 0.5g

it is not recommended using more than 1g or sceletium per day. i have also read about people getting addicted to this stuff... just don't do it more than once or twice a week then all should be fine and you won't build up any tolerance.
 
the extract didn't seem any stronger than the processed plant material. i only took 1/4th of the extract because thats about the maximum dose for one way of applying it. also i think that with the extract i put in my nose not being a powder it probably didn't go into my bloodstream that good.

i had an idea yesterday right after putting it in my nose that it would be kind of cool having something like nasal spray containing mesembrine. although it will probably need to be in salt form to be able to dissolve in water. tonight i will try vaporizing a double dose of it. i will tell you what happened.
 
interesting. yes i have always had pleasant effects from taking it orally. helps one focus and gives a nice happy warm feeling without edge feelings. also it synergizes well with cannabis. but lets think of ways to make some salts. i think in water solution it would absorb nicely with the nasal mucosa. haha ok ill get those notes about weights and volumes later on.
 
ok.. i checked a double dose of it in a bong yesterday evening. i guess it was a little too much. it was SO euphoric that all i could do was lie down on my bed and laugh my ass off. i got all these warm feelings like thousands of women were stroking my body very gently all at the same time. in fact it was so euphoric that i thought to myself - this can't really be healthy for me. it instantly peaked for about 30mins right after smoking it. then it got weaker until all that was left was a very warm meditative state.

i can recommend it to anyone just to see how this substance feels at maximum dose. but at the same time i think that it is not meant to be taken at such doses.. its supposed to be more of a subtle thing.

gotta get myself one of those nose spray things today. i'll just try and dissolve it in some distilled water. by the way.. does anyone happen to know how much milliliter fluid is emitted from pushing the spray button once? that way i calculate how much to saturate the solution.
 
Wow sounds like an interesting effect! But yes you are right that you could be entering unhealthy use territory. We simply don't know for sure. SWIM might have to give this a try sometime but at the lower end. Was your blood pressure and everything else ok?

Same story with coca chewing the leaves is fine but once you purify and snort it, it becomes risky.
 
I had put 8g of dry sceletium in a jar and had added around 100 ml of ethanol. Slowly boiled the soup for 10 mn, then filtered and evaporated.
Added 200 mg of carbonate calcium to help gathering the sticky material. Weighted 560 mg of extract which makes a 0.07% yield. A bit more can be extracted I guess.
Carbonate calcium was not needed as I noticed that once put in the fridge, the sticky material became harder and can then be scrapped more easily (it is not an 'oil', like DMT N-oxyde). Bioassay will follow later.
I wonder if it will do something with sublingual route. Quite bad taste tough :x
 
Blood pressure seemed normal if not lower than normal. It was a very relaxing state but at the same time very intense euphoria. Euphoria can be nice if its light but heavy euphoria is very intense. I had to take deep breaths all the time because it was so intense.
 
i just vaporized 0.05g of the extract. very nice euphoric but also relaxed feeling. tastes like crap tho. i'd rather be snuffing it.
 
So a kitchen type tek for Burnt's extraction would be,

1- Extract with 5% vinegar or other acid (probably to do an overnight crock-pot type extraction).

2- Defat with Naptha or other NP.

3- Base with ammonia to pH 11.

4- Pull with Toulene, Xylene or DCM.

5-(extra step) Salt out with Vinegar, HCl or Fumaric acid. Evaporate to yield the alkaloid salts.

Let me know if you see any problems with this.

I'm unclear on the properties of Mesembrine Fumarate. Would I be able to wash the Fumarates with Acetone to remove excess Fumaric acid but still leave behind the alkaloid salts, or would the salts dissolve in the Acetone too?

Here's some additional info on the physical properties of Mesembrine, Mesembrine.
This site reports effects from 200 micrograms of Mesembrine and has extraction info, Pharmaceutical compositions containing mesembrine and related compounds - African, Natural Health CC.

I'm working on getting some Kanna. If anybody has a good source please PM me.
 
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