Welcome to the Nexus!

Im very glad that you have been on a path of self-development, bettering yourself in different levels. One side question, were your eating habbits also affected thus far in your path for self-improvement?

I think you have a good attitude, which will play on your side when exploring DMT and these substances.  I hope to hear more from you in the nexus!

Re: your extraction questions:

Lye is perfectly ok to use and will probably be the most 'guaranteed' good results in this case, just take the safety precautions (add it slowly to water because it warms the container, use safety goggles and gloves, wash your solvent with dilute sodium carb solution after its separated from the main acqueous basic solution)

In any case if you dont want to use lye, you could try sodium carbonate and using a solvent like xylene (yuck!) or limonene or some other vegetable oil like the teks mentioned in our sustainable nexus subforum.  But sodium carb is known to cause a lot of emulsions so mix carefully and add plenty of table salt to help clearing emulsions. Also careful sodium carb will bubble/foam if you add it to an acidic brew (CO2 being generated) so add slowly.  Im not sure how good the yield will be with sodium carbonate. Dont use naphtha/hexane/heptane because with sodium carb pH your yield will be very low, so use the other abovementioned solvents, and salt them out like written in BLAB tek.

Yet another option is to evap your solution down plenty, make a paste with calcium hydroxide (a very safe base), and then pull with a solvent, like q21q21 or amorfati's tek.

Let us know how it goes!