69ron
Rising Star
SyZyGyPSy said:So a few nights ago swim was having a conversation over dinner with some friends about sassafras, which made him decide that he wanted to get some sass and see what was up with it. The very next morning, he checked his email and found that he had "co-incidentally" received correspondence from another friend giving a fairly in-depth account of his recent experiences with said plant (further adding to the synchronicity of all this is the fact that earlier today, whilst in the middle of doing some research on sassafras, he received a phone call from yet another friend who told him he had just recently harvested some sassafras, and that during the same night that swim was having his dinner conversation with his friends, this other friend actually had some sort of spirit apparition manifest in his living room which was somehow associated with his harvesting of the sass!).
Anyway here's an excerpt from said email:
"I've found a friend out here, I might have already told you about before, but it seems like not. Sassafras Albidium. Mostly, people know about the plant for its safrole content (which if you smell the roots, I mean....root beer...yum). However, at the rainbow gathering I was given what was called a "shamanic extract of sassafras" which I figured was a solid crystalline form of safrole at the time, but since doing some research about chemistry, pharmacology, and the compounds present in sassafras roots....well, first, I made some sassafras root tea, which [my girl] and I confirmed had identical effects as the extract from the gathering. Then, I collected lots of root and made a strong tincture. The tincture had effects more similar to cactus than before. AND THEN, when I had performed sufficient research, I delved into it. Removed the safrole (which I heard has a sedating effect), then did an acid-base-nonpolar alkaloid extraction and voila! Crystals formed, I sampled them, and that's what it is! And what is it? Well, there are two isoquinolines in sassafras: Reticuline, which has a pain-killing/stimulant effect, also occurs in opium poppies as well as the roots of several varieties of apple tree; and Cinnamolaurine, which has a stimulant/psychedelic effect, and occurs only in sassafras and in camphor. They both have high pH's. reticuline has an interesting structure in that it is almost symmetrical in an L-shape. Cinnamolaurine, it has a methylenedioxy bridge on the primary phenyl ring and an n-methyl group, suggesting that the mechanism of its action is similar to the mechanism of MDMA's action. So this is an interesting development."
Definitely some useful information there, for instance this seems to be a firsthand confirmation that the alkaloids themselves are active, and that the safrole is indeed the sedating property in the plant... though it also raises plenty of new questions, such as what base and solvent was used, what the yield and dose was, etc. Also, this is thus far the only reference swim has found to the presence of cinnamolaurine in sass, though as mentioned above there are reports of other alkaloids not mentioned by swim's friend in this email...
Anyway swim has emailed this friend back, asking for more detailed information, and is waiting to hear back from him. Meanwhile he's ordering a couple pounds of organic root bark powder from a reliable source of high quality herbs, and is considering doing an STB with CaOH and pulling into some d-limonene, then salting out into some gar and evapping to get some acetate salts of whatever these alkaloids are... seems like a good starting point anyway, unless anyone has any better ideas.
CaOH doesn't generate too much heat, does it? Should swim instead be considering cold-basification of a CWE or something?
Swim may even decide to get ballsy and bioassay on top of some harmaloids, to test the hypothesis that MAO inhibition potentiates whatever alkaloids are in the sass. Of course swim is hoping to achieve satisfactory results with the sass alkaloids alone, and based on his friend's report, it sounds like he will... but for some reason the thought of "sassahuasca" sounds appealing, albeit not without some hypothetical risks (best to start small with that one probably).
Also, the ridiculous string of synchronicities that have manifested surrounding this plant during the past few daze seem to indicate to swim that there is a powerful plant spirit reaching out to him here... of course this is probably meaningless to you phundamentalist science-headz, but I'm sure some of the people on this forum know enough to recognize the significance of this
swim will do his best to post results from his own experiments, as well as any further correspondences he may receive from his other friends regarding this intriguing topic.
WOW! I got chills reading this. This is exactly the type of information I’ve been hoping to read in this thread. Thanks for posting it!
If an A/B can be created that can get the cinnamolaurine out and purify it and it is indeed THE psychedelic of sassafras (which it looks like to me) then that would be fantastic!
When using CaOH, there’s no concern about heat.
