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Nutmeg Constituents are Mildly Soluble in Water

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oilman

oilman

Rising Star
I think this hasn't really been discussed in depth.

Shulgin wrote that the likely dose of elemicin in 20g of nutmeg (the dose at which hallucinogenic effects are reported) is 70mg. He considered this to be the dose at which elemicin would start being hallucinogenic. Elemicin is also water soluble at a rate of 133.2 mg/L @ 25C. For this reason, I tried the following experiment.

Setup:
20 g nutmeg (which in my jar was 1/3 of the jar)
1 L water
Stainless steel cooking pot

Procedure:
1) Place 20g nutmeg and 1L water in the cooking pot.
2) Bring the mixture to a boil.
3) Cover and reduce heat to "low" so that the mixture is just boiling (simmering).
4) Continue simmering for 30 minutes.
5) DECANT the liquid WHILE STILL HOT. If the water gets cold it will lose a lot of product.
6) Drink the liquid while it is still hot/very warm. If you see a white precipitate on the sides of the cup, you must reheat the mixture (microwave works well).

This will allow you to benefit from the water soluble fraction of the nutmeg AND the elemicin. Reports have been up on erowid for some time, but they have been dismissed as placebo because people don't realize how little elemicin is necessary to feel effects, and have been told that it is "insoluble" in water. Really, it is very lightly soluble, but that's enough. Generally speaking, the so called "myristicinic fraction", ie the total amount of allylbenzenes in a nutmeg sample, amounts to between 100mg and 200mg for 20g of product. That means that you could extract ALL of the allylbenzenes from a 20g sample if you make this tea. You would have to drink the whole liter of water while still hot to get noticeable effects.

FYI, here is the water solubility for the 3 allylbenzenes in nutmeg:
elemicin - 133.2 mg/L @ 25C
myristicin - 46.43 mg/L at 25C
safrole - 75.98 mg/L at 25C

We boil the water because these 3 compounds have unusually high boiling points, and water's boiling point (100C at 760 mm Hg) is well below it:
elemicin - 279.8C at 760 mm Hg
myristicin - 276.5C at 760 mm Hg
safrole - 233.087C at 760 mm Hg

Effects:
At +T4:00, I feel the dreamlike, trippy, sort of stonerish feelings of nutmeg, but I have NO NAUSEA, no gastric pain, no dry mouth, and really no unpleasant side effects.
 
Perhaps a room temperature water extraction left to sit for a few days would work better. You could cover the jar or what ever you are using and this would prevent loss of allylbenzenes and other volatiles.

While mysristicin and friends may have relatively high boiling points, they are still volatile. So simmering the nutmeg will cause a loss of yield.

This is another interesting thread, assuming that the results can be replicated by other people, because this would mean that the compounds that make nutmeg active in everyone are not only soluble in alcohol, but also soluble in water.

This would also make nutmeg a lot healthier, since it would allow you to avoid the compound trimyristin. This is a fat that makes up a large portion of the nutmeg nut that is soluble in alcohol. It has been found to be able to induce fatty liver disease in lab rats and it may be sedative.

Removing trimyristin might make nutmeg more psychedelic. There has also been some speculation that trimyristin may be what makes the myristicin in nutmeg universally active. This report might be evidence against this idea.
 
I would even go so far as to just do an alcoholic extraction, and then use water to pull out those alkaloids from the alcohol mix and see what the difference is in those, and see what was leftover.
 
Allylbenzene and related compounds are NOT alkaloids. That is why it's so hard to get them to work. Either they become an alkaloid in the body, or there is some kind of receptor as yet unknown in the body that interacts with them. It's possible that it won't become an alkaloid - look at THC, no nitrogen group but it still can be psychedelic at the CB1 receptor.

But no, just extracting the myristicin/elemicin/safrole and ingesting won't work as well as in the context of nutmeg. The other parts of nutmeg do something to your body that makes it work. This is why just drinking nutmeg essential oil doesn't get everyone high (in fact not most people).
 
To try and gain a fuller extraction I tried doing the nutmeg-milk extraction. Success! Not surprising; the fat in the milk probably extracted much more from the nutmeg. However with the milk extraction I did get some gastric pain. The effects were much longer, lasting about 35 hours.

So I may agree with powerfulmedicine that avoiding trimyristin would be very beneficial. But now I wonder - what compounds in nutmeg are water soluble? Perhaps one of them helps activate the volatile fraction.
 
Interesting setup! I like how you were able to experience nutmeg without the negative effects being present throughout the trip.

I'm curious on this specific extraction myself. With nutmeg, I've only taken it by ground form (1 tbsp) and took that with warm water. It wasn't incredibly efficient in terms of preparation but the effects were completely present.. similar to how you are describing your experience with little to no negative discomfort besides dry mouth and bloodshot eyes.. probably due to cannabis but more prominent with nutmeg. Sedation, mood lift, auditory hallucinations and marked visual acuity changes was present. With cannabis smoking, these effects were enhanced greatly.. catching on to some euphoria and small yet dense visuals that were mostly distorted CEV's. It is certainly clear everyone's body works differently with regards to nutmeg and related precursor compounds. I was staying quite hydrated with water throughout the day before initial effects. The trip lasted about 18 hours starting off really slow (around 2-3 hour mark) and building up throughout the day to peak (10-12 hour mark). I feel staying hydrated before / throughout / after the nutmeg experience is essential to balancing effects and reducing negative symptomatic responses. Also, during the come-up so to speak, there definitely was some interesting stimulation occurring. It may have been placebo but I remain quite curious.

I don't really have any thoughts about returning to this rather mysterious and intoxicating plant.
 
Yeah, I'm not sure to be honest! Water extraction does work, but not as well as an extraction with ethanol or a fatty substance like milk. Milk seems to be the one that is closest to regular nutmeg but has less side effects, at least to me.

Space paste is one of my favorite preparations, but eating it isn't that delicious, so I do it rarely - although, I did recently make space paste chocolate rounds that I ate and had great effects from, and the taste was not as much of an issue. I'm trying out different cooking experiments to see the most palateable mixture for me to make with space paste. I'll keep you posted. Glad to see people are still trying things. I'm going to post the space paste chocolate in another thread.
 
Thank you for this OilMan, this is very interesting.
Its also one I think I can try because I understand it.
The taste of nutmeg is to me something that must be very subtle, not overwhelming and persistent and this has stopped me in my tracks in the past.


Cheers and thanks again!
Mealea
 
OK, another way of testing this out is as follows: prepare the volatile fraction of nutmeg or space paste by extraction with ethanol and distillation. Then make the aqueous extract using a further portion of nutmeg or space paste. Mix the two liquids and cautiously ingest. The blend should have most of the interesting stuff and minimal trimyristin.

A combination of the water method and the oil method could be used to make a sort of space mayonnaise :?
 
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