Is safrole psychedelic?

[69ron]

I'm currently doing a lot of research on sassafras, as some of you know, a standard tea made from sassafras is mildly psychedelic. There's an extraction tech SWIM is working on in another thread that makes it more psychedelic, but that's another topic.

Is safrole itself psychedelic? This is a precursor used to make MDMA. I've read lots of conflicting data on it. Some say it is mildly psychedelic, some say it is not psychoactive at all. Some say it's a stimulant, others say it's a sedative.

Now with sassafras, which contains a ton of safrole, a MEK wash removes a strong sedative component from the root, making the root a better psychedelic. I believe this sedative being removed by the MEK is safrol. But I don't really know. I know safrole is highly soluble in MEK.

Does anyone here have any experience at all with safrole or oil of sassafras? Is it actually psychoactive? Is it a stimulat or is it sedating?

 

[69ron]

Not a single reply. So no one knows?

 

[burnt]

Safrole is toxic and possibly carcinogenic. SWIM would never recommend that anyone ever ingests it in its pure form. Even sassafrass is only supposed to be consumed in relativily low doses. In real world people use it as pesticide and also to synthesize other pesticides (i think).

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[burnt]

I forgot to answer your question. Is it psychedelic? As far as I know safrole itself has never been administered to humans in pure form on purpose. But myristicin was speculated to be converted into MMDA in the body. By Shulgin actually.

This wiki page has a pretty accurate account and references.

Myristicin - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Most people don't think these reactions happen in the body. Its unlikely like the compound itself is active in that way as well. It seems anyway.

A professor who taught me a lot about what I know about biosynthesis talked about this issue and he was totally not convinced its psychedelic in anyway. But he also admitted to taking nutmug and saying it was horrible and just gave him a headache. But he also knew a lot so who knows. I believe him I think nutmeg just gives people fevers or makes them sick in a way and then they get messed up. Well its certainly psychoactive for some people but it doesn't sound like very psychedelic.

 

[bufoman]

Ron plenty of people take sassafrass tea and do not report these effects what so ever. People have been ingesting it and other safrole containing products for quite sometime and no one has reported these effects. I am not attacking you but I think you are highly susceptible to getting psychedelic effects from almost anything. Does anything not give you psychedelic effects? I think you should have friends run some placebo effects with these things for you just to make sure you are not "tuning into" your own mind. I can get mild visuals completely sober if I try hard enough. I have experimented with novel substances and know how easy it can be to have a placebo effect or rather ssociate natural effects to actions of the compound. One has to be very careful, repeat all experiments with an OBJECTIVE unbiased outlook, and if necessary perform some blind experiments.

The old amination of allyl benzenes theory.... there is a talk by Dennis McKenna were someone asks about this and Nichols stated and it has been published that this does not happen in vivo in humans. It would be unlikely to be metabolized to a N containing compound b/c the body wishes to inactive compounds and make them more water soluble so they typically add hydroxyls which can be conjugated to big polar groups to aid in excretion. Also no enzymes exist to add a N to a double bond that I am aware of. It is possible/likely the compound is active on its own as myristicin has MAOI properties, although the experience sounds anything but pleasurable.

 

[69ron]

I already read all the stuff I could find on safrole and there is nothing conclusive either way about its effects in man. There are overdose reports of sassafras causing hallucinations, and also such for sassafras oil which is mostly safrole. But there’s also reports that don’t mention hallucinations at all. There’s a bunch of conflicting information out there, a bunch of theories, and the like, but no one I can talk to with actual real world experience with it. I hope someone here has such experience and can clear this up.

Sassafras doesn't cause effects unless it’s prepared properly. You should read my report on it. Most people boil it, and that makes it pretty much inactive, so the fact that the traditional method of boil it produces no effects is no surprise to me.

As for reports of sassafras being psychedelic, there are enough of them out there that compare the effects the MDMA for it not to be “placebo”. I didn't believe it either at first. I was skeptical like you. I drank sassafras tea many times and didn’t notice anything. But I was preparing it wrong. Most people do. Heat apparently inactivates it.

Take a look at my report on it in the sassafras thread. I was very surprised to find it is active if prepared properly.

Bufoman, I know you are a skeptic. You didn’t find bufotenine as active as SWIM did, but now many others on the Nexus are reporting the same amazing effects SWIM reported which you had a hard time believing. You thought SWIM was somehow extra sensitive or something, but lots of others do get the same amazing effects from bufotenine.

Being a skeptic is good. We need skeptics to question everything. But I assure you, the effects from sassafras are NOT placebo if you prepare it right, it is quite obvious, and I’m sure you would even notice it yourself if you prepared it the same way. You might need a larger dose though. But I would be shocked if you didn’t feel the effects.

There must be someone with personal experience with safrole on this forum who can answer this question from actual experience. The references are not good. There’s too much misinformation out there. They cannot all be right. Some say it’s a sedative, others say it’s a stimulant, others say its not psychoactive, others say it is. It’s a mess.

Hopefully I’ll find someone on this forum that actually knows from experience. If I keep this thread alive periodically maybe someone with such experience will see the thread and answer the question once and for all.

 

[69ron]

Burnt, my experience with nutmeg was that it did nothing at all. But it could have been old nutmeg. Apparently it needs to be fresh to be psychoactive. I’ve talked with a lot of other people who use nutmeg periodically for it’s marijuana like psychoactive effects.

Nutmeg is definitely active. Enough people use it. Malcom X used it while in prison and found the effects very enjoyable.

Nutmeg is active. So is sassafras, and so is calamus. All three contain very similar compounds.

Just because my tests with nutmeg found it inactive doesn’t mean it’s inactive. Enough trustworthy people I know say it is active. I know calamus and sassafras are active. SWIM has first hand experience with those confirming their effectiveness.

You guys can play the skeptic, that’s fine, but there are enough other people out there that also find all three effective. They are weak, but definitely effective. Nutmeg is probably the most widely abused of the three and you can find countless reports of its effects, some including full blown hallucinations.

But that aside, no one really knows what causes the full effects of nutmeg, sassafras, or calamus. It's assumed to be the essential oils. Pure myristicin doesn't produce the full effects of nutmeg and that’s a fact.

I'm assuming safrole is a sedative with action similar to MDMA but very weak. Once sassafras is washed with MEK, it's sedating effects are gone and it becomes a mild psychedelic stimulant. MEK should wash away the safrole. I'm hoping someone can confirm this is why the sedative effect is absent after the wash.

 

[rOm]

I've never put my hands on safrole. But I experienced the psychoactivity of Nutmeg.
A night drinking rum with friends I decided to give a try and ate one or two whole nutmeg, that I grinded beforehand, so they were quite fresh. I didn't notice anything that night as I was so drunk.
I went to bed, and when I woke up the next morning, I noticed afetr two minutes: Hang on! I'm feeling trippy, like a low dose of LSD, or some cacti.
I say this, there was no visual but it wasn't like marijuana at all (or nothing stoned as far as I remember) . So I had a light breakfast and rapidly went out to enjoy this amazingly nice energy. Very creative and full of joke, well energized. And so surprised that a spice found in any food store could be working so much.
I've been lucky to don't be sick that time.

A few weeks laters, I tried again this nutmeg with some Lsa seeds but felt so damn sick, puking so much, I never tried it again (well I think I was mixing a bit of mexican psylocibe with the a bit of lsa), the very stupid attitude of: I have a little of few thing why not smash them up and eat them all to have a decent trip (that was Many Years ago) .

Calamus is working for me, I never got sick with the acetone wash + cold water extraction with 10 grams nor a simple CWE on 10 grams. the taste is better after an acetone wash and goes very well with Vanilla and Cinnamon, Hmmm so refreshing and euphoric drink !

So the question is what wash/extraction could be done on nutmeg ?
Probably a CWE at least.

 

[burnt]

Even if it is active its risky to ingest in doses higher then those found in food (like using sassafras as a spice) simply because of the potential carcinogenic effects. Terminal methylene groups like that can be quite reactive. But anyway I never heard of sassafras being associated with increased cancer risk and even if it was it wouldn't be conclusive prove that its actually carcinogenic.

Just doesn't seem worth it to me.

 

[69ron]

Even if it is active its risky to ingest in doses higher then those found in food (like using sassafras as a spice) simply because of the potential carcinogenic effects. Terminal methylene groups like that can be quite reactive. But anyway I never heard of sassafras being associated with increased cancer risk and even if it was it wouldn't be conclusive prove that its actually carcinogenic.

Just doesn't seem worth it to me.

Yes, safrole is carcinogenic in rats if they are fed tons of it everyday for a very long time, but it's carcinogenicity in humans is debated, and no human eats it all day long everyday for many months like the lab rats are forced to do. So, yes the risk is there based on rats being fed massive amounts of safrole, but I'm not a rat and it's not been proven to cause cancer in humans. However, that's not what this thread is about. It's about it's pharmacology in man not it's carcinogenicity. The questions are: is it a sedative or a stimulant, is it psychedelic or not? That’s the information I want to get cleared up, and only someone with actual experience with it can answer that.

I've never put my hands on safrole. But I experienced the psychoactivity effect of Nutmeg.
A night drinking rum with friends I decided to give a try and ate one or two whole nutmeg, that I grinded beforehand, so they were not quite fresh. I didn't notice anything that night as I was so drunk.
I went to bed, and when I woke up the next morning, I noticed afetr two minutes: Hang on! I'm feeling trippy, like a low dose of LSD.
I say this, there was no visual but it wasn't like marijuana to me as I felt so energized. So I had a light breakfast and rapidly went out to enjoy this amazingly nice energy. Very creative and joky, well energized. And so surprised that a spice found in any food store could be working so much.
I've been lucky to don't be sick that time.

A few weeks laters, I tried again this nutmeg with some Lsa seeds but felt so damn sick, puking so much, I never tried it again.
Calamus is working for me, I never got sick with the acetone wash + cold water extraction.
So the question is what wash/extraction could be done on nutmeg ?
Probably a CWE at least.

Nutmeg, like calamus and sassafras, seems to have more than 1 active compound in it. The effects vary somewhat from one batch to the next. Some batches just make you sick and others produce very pleasant experiences. I’ve heard that it is sometimes sedating and sometimes stimulating. That hints at more than one active compound being present.

Nutmeg in non-hallucinogenic doses is used as an aphrodisiac, and also to potentiate the effects of other psychoactives. I’d like to experiment with it at such a dose at some point in the future.

My opinion is that the current theories on what makes nutmeg work are wrong. With calamus, people have always said it’s the asarone that makes it work. But washing calamus with acetone totally removed the asarone, and yet the calamus works very well after that wash.

For some reason people have concentrated on researching the effects of the volatile oils and have overlooked the rest of the compounds in these herbs. Calamus, nutmeg, and sassafras are all very similar in their chemical makeup. They all contain precursors to known hallucinogenic phenethylamines. Asarone, safrole, and myristicin are very closely related.

Calamus and sassafras lose potency when boiled. A cold water extraction is best. I think they both contain heat sensitive alkaloids that don’t survive most of the tests used to analyze the compounds present in these herbs. It’s likely they contain alkaloid versions of their volatile oils (asarone, safrole, etc.).

Take a look at the image I added. It shows how very closely related these oils are to known psychedelic phenethylamines. It’s very likely that analogs of these oils are present in the plant. This is usually the case. For example, plants with DMT often contain 5-HO-DMT and 5-MeO-DMT, analogs of DMT. It’s possible that these herbs contain heat sensitive analogs of asarone and safrole that are alkaloids. This is the case with sassafras. It contains cinnamolaurine which is an analog of safrole. Unlike safrole, it is an alkaloid, and might be quite potent. The structure looks very fragile to me. Its likely to easily come apart with heat. There may be other alkaloid analogs of safrole present that have not been found yet that are actually responsible for the hallucinogenic effects. The same could apply to nutmeg.

I bet if you take nutmeg and wash it with MEK or d-limonene, it will still be active. This is true for calamus and sassafras. For me, this is proof that there are hallucinogenic substances present other than the oils. I am willing to bet that nutmeg contains an alkaloid analog of the oil myristicin that’s active, but extremely fragile, and that’s why no one has found it and identified it yet. It’s a fact that myristicin does not produce the full effects of nutmeg. Nutmeg is stronger than it should be, and more hallucinogenic than it should be based on its myristicin content. So that is proof that myristicin is not the only active compound in nutmeg, but just one of them. It’s probably one of the least desirable compounds in it. I’ll bet the oils are responsible for most of the unpleasant effects of nutmeg, and that there are fragile alkaloid analogs of myristicin present that are responsible for the positive effects some people get with very fresh nutmeg.

 

[bufoman]

If these plants were going to make similar alkaloids they would not use allyl benzenes as starting material. The route that plants take to alkaloids typically starts with amino acids in the case your specifying tyrosine. Thus one cannot draw the conclusion that b/c these these allylbenzenes are present that the corresponding alkaloids are. If you are really interesting look up the bio-synthesis of these compounds maybe you'll find something interesting.

Amphetamines have not been found in any plants in significant quantities and those which have them there has been some doubt raised as to the methods and assuming these are not a prob the levels are insignificant . The piont being that both the phenethylamines of safrole and asarone are completely inactive only their amphetamines are active. It is far more likely that, assuming something is present, it would be a PEA not an amphetamine.

Also check the literature (pubmed or google scholar) to see if people have looked. As these plants are used as commercial and medical sources, and have been for centruries I bet people have already looked. Thus anything significant is going to be known. The mild activity you claim to be getting is likely to come from the essential oils of which several are present in varying concentrations. How extensive is you wash? I would use a soxhlet to make sure all of the stuff is removed.

Maybe some isoquin or beta-carb compounds are present which could potentiate the effects of the oils some how.

 

[bufoman]

Here is something I found on the alkaloids present in Sassafras albidum :

"Isolation and identification of boldine, reticuline and two new alkaloids, sassafrasine and sassafrasinine from the root bark."

Unfortunately don't have the method and have no idea of the concentrations. Reticuline and boldine are isoquinolines Reticuline is found in poppies. The presence does suggest that that the PEA are also present, as they are the most probable bio-precursor to the isoquinolines. However this sources gives the alkaloid content at less than .2%.

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Not sure how they got that but the alkaloids don't seem to be too significant for sass. 6 alkaloids have been found but reticuline is the major one. They have some good references one is a GC analysis of the tea.

 

[69ron]

Bufoman, things are often not as black and white and easily tested as we'd all like them to be. Many tests destroy or alter the contents of plants. In many tests they use heat to aid the extraction process, and that alone causes the destruction of quite a few compounds in nature. Also the solvents used for extraction can have a big impact on what they find. So just because a test doesn’t find something, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Cinnamolaurine is an alkaloid analog of safrole and it exists in sassafras. I bet it's active. I bet there are more than that despite the tests that have been done. I just don’t believe they are as extensive as you believe they are. Very little work has been done on the non-essential oils of sassafras. It's been long believed the good stuff is in the oil, so the other stuff is often not even tested.

I know the direction you’re taking in your thinking on this, but I don’t believe you are correct. If I did, I wouldn’t even be interested in this subject. To date, no one has found the reason for the hallucinogenic effects of sassafras. Many say safrole is not psychoactive. Washing the root with MEK removes the safrole, and then a water based extract (no heat is ever used) produces effects like that of a low dose of LSD. The effects after the wash are very different, slightly less potent though, but not much so. The effects before the MEK wash are sedating and like MDMA, and the effects after the wash are stimulating and more like LSD. I don’t think residual safrole would account for that. That doesn’t sound plausible to me.

 

[69ron]

However this sources gives the alkaloid content at less than .2%.

Even at 20 grams (after the MEK wash) the effect is light. At 20 grams 0.2% amounts to 40 mg of alkaloids. LSA is active at about 2 mg, so is psilocin. Salvinorin A is active at 0.2 mg. TMA-2 is active at 7 mg. Perhaps cinnamolaurine or something else present in sassafras is active at a similar dose.

Despite the tests, I don't believe that salvinorin A is the main active compound of fresh leaf of salvia. SWIM got very distinctively different effects from a leaf picked and chewed in less than 5 minutes after picking, than he got from a leaf that was many hours old. I believe the main compound is extremely unstable, and is destroyed within minutes after picking the leaf and it has not been found to show up in any tests so far. With SWIM's plant the effect between a 1 day old leaf and a freshly picked leaf were like night and day. But this apparently varies by strain of Salvia. Anyway, for me that is proof there is something present in Salvia that has still not been found, and probably will never be found because it's way too unstable to test it. There are compounds like this in many plants that are destroyed shortly after killing the plant which are extremely hard to detect using our current methods of detection.

Again, just becuase a test doesn't find something present, doesn't mean it's not there. Salvia is a good example of this. For a long time salvinorin A was unknown. For many years no one could even find 1 single active in Savlia until pretty recently. It took many tests before the right test was made that found it present.

 

[jamie]

There are no other strains of salvia..not in the usual sense of a strain. Salvia divinorum is salvia divinorum..what they call "strains" is a plant prodcing seeds that when germinated might have a tiny different in leaf shape etc from the mother..but its not a diff strain...its just that that one plant wil then be cloned over and over and over and over so all the leaves from the clones have that characteristic. Its essentailly all the same plant, and if you got that one plant to seed than those seedlings might have very very slight morphological differences..weather that actaully creats a chemical differnce who knows..

I still have yet to feel any difference at all between rehydrated dry leaves and fresh leaves just picked..eventhe rehydrated leaves I get that sort of mushroom like feeling when its quidded.

 

[69ron]

There are no other strains of salvia..not in the usual sense of a strain. Salvia divinorum is salvia divinorum..what they call "strains" is a plant prodcing seeds that when germinated might have a tiny different in leaf shape etc from the mother..but its not a diff strain...its just that that one plant wil then be cloned over and over and over and over so all the leaves from the clones have that characteristic. Its essentailly all the same plant, and if you got that one plant to seed than those seedlings might have very very slight morphological differences..weather that actaully creats a chemical differnce who knows..

I still have yet to feel any difference at all between rehydrated dry leaves and fresh leaves just picked..eventhe rehydrated leaves I get that sort of mushroom like feeling when its quidded.

SWIM experienced the same as you with a friend's salvia plant, but not his. So there is a difference between them. Also potency varies a lot from one to another.

 

[urtica]

"Reticuline and boldine are isoquinolines" I have heard that many isoquinolines act in a manner similar to RIMA's or MAO-I's in that the potentiate the effects of compounds that may otherwise be inactive. Shulgin wrote a whole book on them & a teacher of mine was really excited about them as a potential whole new class of entheogens, so perhaps the alkaloids mixed with the isoquinolines have a synergy that causes activity? Pure speculation on my part, mind you...

 

[69ron]

Urtica, that is definitely a possibility. It may be something like the ayahuasca effect happening.

I have read that taking sassafras with an MAOI makes it more like LSD. I don't think an MAOI would affect safrole, but it should make the alkaloids present stronger.

 

[bufoman]

I saw your other post where you washed with acetone. Have you tried multiple washes. Root bark can be 10% essential oil. It may take multiple extracts to remove these. The alkaloids if in a salt form would likely not dissolve in the acetone (although some salts do). It could very well be the alkaloids that have been found. Also you seem not to make a distinction between psychoactive and psychedelic.

This is why I think I always am skeptical as you claim everything is psychedelic when I think you really mean psychoactive. Stimulant like is far different than psychedelic. You seem to use them as if they are the same word. Do you have experience with other classes of psychoactive agents?

I am skeptical of psychedelic effects but never the less I agree there could be trace actives. I have not personally read the methods so I don't know. An MAOI effect alone from the above two alkaloids may describe the effects. Why not find the articles and isolate these alkaloids (as they would likely still be present after the MEK wash). Isolating the pure alkaloids would likely help clear this up.

 

[69ron]

I saw your other post where you washed with acetone. Have you tried multiple washes. Root bark can be 10% essential oil. It may take multiple extracts to remove these. The alkaloids if in a salt form would likely not dissolve in the acetone (although some salts do). It could very well be the alkaloids that have been found. Also you seem not to make a distinction between psychoactive and psychedelic.

The washes removed a total of 14% of the plant’s biomass, a lot of which I am sure is safrole. Safrole has a distinctive and strong root beer taste and odor and so you can easily detect it with your taste buds and nose. Before the wash, the taste is like very strong root beer, and the smell is fantastic. After the wash, the boot beer taste and smell are faint, so a large portion of safrole is removed. I would say near 90% is removed by the wash. The wash is VERY DARK, nearly black. There is some safrole remaining after the washes, I'm sure, because there is a slight smell of root beer and faint taste of it left behind.

This is why I think I always am skeptical as you claim everything is psychedelic when I think you really mean psychoactive. Stimulant like is far different than psychedelic. You seem to use them as if they are the same word. Do you have experience with other classes of psychoactive agents?

I do use the term loosely. I would classify MDMA as a psychedelic, but others do not. SWIM has extensive experience with many different kinds of psychoactives: alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, ephedra, strychnine, atropine, scopolamine, hyoscyamine, coffee, yerba mate, guayusa, kola nut, cacao, cocaine, passionflower, caapi, peganum harmala, DCM, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, 5-HO-DMT, yohimbe, mescaline, psilocin, LSD, DOM, DOI, muscimol, kava, calamus, sassafras, damiana, valerian, ginkgo, to name just a few. SWIM has tried somewhere near 100 different psychoactives in his life.

SWIM is very attuned to the various small nuances of each stimulant, each psychedelic, each sedative, etc. He can tell the difference between most of them blindfolded. SWIM has been studying the effects of herbs since he was 11 years old.

I know you tend to be a skeptic, and I was too for a long time. As a teenager I drank sassafras a lot and never got any effects at all from it. So these findings are a surprise to me. Perhaps the sassafras SWIM has now is simply fresher or more potent. I’m not sure. But it is definitely mildly psychedelic, not just a stimulant or other simple psychoactive. I classify yohimbe as a mild psychedelic too.

The dosage needed for sassafras to be mildly psychedelic is very large. 20 grams is far more than people use to make tea, and you need to NOT use heat. So lots of people who try large doses don’t get much out of it and simply think it’s not really active. That is what I thought. I used to make tea of 20 grams or more, but I always boiled it, which ruins the effects.

Bufoman, rather than take my word for it, you really ought to give it a try yourself. It’s not illegal and is easy to do. You can get mild MDMA like effects from 20 grams of powdered root bark and cold water only.

Here’s how you do it the easy way just to verify that it is psychedelic. Mix the powdered sassafras bark for about 10 minutes in two cups of cold water. Then strain it into a cloth tea bag. Then squeeze out every last bit of the water. As long as no heat is used and the bark is good quality bark, I guarantee you’ll get a mild sedating MDMA like psychedelic effect from it. (The effect is very different if a MEK wash is performed before extracting with cold water.)

I am skeptical of psychedelic effects but never the less I agree there could be trace actives. I have not personally read the methods so I don't know. An MAOI effect alone from the above two alkaloids may describe the effects. Why not find the articles and isolate these alkaloids (as they would likely still be present after the MEK wash). Isolating the pure alkaloids would likely help clear this up.

Without isolating all of the possible actives and testing each separately, it's really hard to say anything for sure. But I do know a large percentage of the safrole is removed by the wash and the effects after the wash are extremely different, and almost nearly as active.

I’m not interested in SWIM testing safrole first hand. He does have the skills to easily isolate it. But as mentioned above, it is a carcinogen in rats, so it is possible to also be a carcinogen in man. It’s something to be cautious with. Also, from what I’ve read, safrole seems to be very unpleasant. I’m hoping someone else already has first hand experience with safrole, someone I can talk with on this forum.