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Psilocybin extraction

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Infundibulum

Infundibulum

Kalt und Heiß, Schwarz und Rot, Kürper und Geist,
Moderator
OG Pioneer
Chemical engineer
SWIM would like to ask the community if anyone ever had experience with psilocybin extraction. He wants to perform the extraction just for the sake of it. He has some fungal material that is reported to contain high amounts of psilocybin and only traces of psilocin.

SWIM is not interested in psilocin extraction which can be troublesome and having to deal with the fact that psilocin is unstable in acidic as well as basic solutions. For this reason he's not planning to go for an A/B in his fungal material.

He believes that psilocybin extraction may be a simpler extraction. According to the Merck index psilocybin is soluble in 20 parts of boiling water or 120 parts of boiling methanol and almost insoluble in ethanol. Psilocybin can be crystallised out of boiling water.

According to this information, if one takes the mushroom material that contains a suspected amount of 100mg psilocybin and boils it in 1000-2000ml of just water for some time then after filtration of the fungal material and cooling of the water extract psilocybin should start precipitating. The precipitates may be washed with ethanol and/or acetone to remove any impurities to result in almost pure psilocybin.

In practise however things may not be as simple. SWIM wonders whether anyone has ever attempted something similar.

Alternatively, SWIM may wash the dry fungal material 3-4 times with ethanol to get as many impurities out and then perform the water boiling step. The reason for the latter strategy is that psilocybin may not precipitate nicely out of a crude aqueous extract that contains so much diverse stuff from the fungus which may keep the psilocybin either in suspension or in solution (=messed up extraction)

Any input would be highly appreciated!
 
Assuming something along the lines of psilocybin being soluble in boiling water and less so at room temperature, someone did attempt something of this sort. Spent cakes were used as starting material. A stab in the dark, the hot solution was saturated with NaCl- ala Manske- and cooled. Material did indeed precipitate although would not settle. The precipitate was filtered out and dried. A very salty, tasty mushroom condiment resulted which showed sub-threshold effects at 200mg. The someone lost interest at this point.
 
its interesting that people claim to be getting it active when vaporizing it... very interesting.
 
SWIM has heard of goo floating around... crystals however, of coarse, seem much more appealing... especially if they can be vapoed...
 
richierich_931 said:
This might help someone who is looking to play with some psilly fungus...

Simple Extraction
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Thanks, SWM is aware of these teks, he'd like to ask whether anyone around here have tried them. SWIM sees similar teks around the net but sometimes they write some stupid stuff and they put SWIM off as unreliable. The tek on the link does get crystals, but what crystals are they? Psilocybin? psilocin? carbohydrates? It could be all sorts of crap. SWIM would like something more pure than that.

In the tek on the link the guy also says that he smoked the crystals (which are most certainly not pure psilocin/psilocybin and not a freebase) to have a longer-lasting stronger-than-dmt experience.
Dorge said:
its interesting that people claim to be getting it active when vaporizing it... very interesting.
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...exactly this. Now this is pretty much unverified and not so reliable. Sure it needs to be tried by other people since it is not possible to say that it doesn't work if not tried.

burnt said:
A crude methanol extract will make a very strong goo.
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Has SWIY tried that? Did SWIY see any psilly crystals (or other stuff) precipitating while methanol was evaporating?
 
swims read that those xtals precipitated from a methanol/ethanol extraction are inactive orraly - never heard of smoking but it could work - perhaps the xtals are some unknown oxide or breakdown product.
if the ethanol is consumed before xtals for apparently it is active tho - xtals would be the prize tho.
 
Yup; SWIM had performed an ethanolic extraction (70% Et-OH) of shrooms. Upon evaporation of the alcohol, crystals did precipitate but they were inactive. Just because it is crystalline and looks nice it doesn't mean that it is also active.

Apparently there are plenty of sugars co-extracted with methanol and/or ethanol. According to Dd-eE-aA sugars co-extracted with methanol can be precipitated by adding acetone

some random dude said:
...Quantitative determination of psilocybin and psilocyn is accomplished by stirring freeze dried mushrooms in methanol for 12 hours, followed by analysis by HPLC and TLC (12). In a more refined method, the mushrooms are extracted with methanol, and the co-extracted sugars then precipitated with acetone; the resulting solution is concentrated prior to analysis by GC/MS (13)... (source)
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anyone got more info on smoking these xtals ?
perhaps it is mainly some sugars with some tryptamines inside.
 
Phlux- said:
anyone got more info on smoking these xtals ?
perhaps it is mainly some sugars with some tryptamines inside.
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SWIM doubts whether any reliable sources exist to answer this...

People have tried smoking mushrooms and even though it is a controversial topic some of them report some effects. This implies that something from the mushroom can be smoked to elicit some effect. SWIM never tried smoking the crystals but it is not too fat fetched that something will vaporize to produce an effect. And this can be much more intense in the case of an extract as opposed to smoking the mushroom material

SWIM doubts whether it is psilocybin that gets vaporised. It could be:

a) some psilocin salt (since it is some psilocin salt being extracted with alcohols, not freebase!) being vaporised

b) maybe some dephosphorylated psilocybin? Think about it; psilocybin is an internal salt; it is an "autonomous" entity, a salt of itself. Now, if heat somehow dephosphorylates psilocybin to psilocin, then one is left with psilocin freebase which can be vaporised to produce effect. Of course, this is all a theory!
 
I was planning on having a friend try my posted tek this weekend. I believe he has a vapo as well so I'll have him let you know how it goes, good or bad.
 
burnt said:
Many years ago SWIM extracted a few grams of dried fungi with methanol and evaporated the methanol. A brownish crystally goo was left that SWIM put in fridge for months. Months later SWIM decided to dissolve it in a tea and drink it. A few hours later SWIM was crawling around on the floor. It was potent. Very potent.
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:d That's what SWIM likes to hear!!!!
 
burnt said:
Many years ago SWIM extracted a few grams of dried fungi with methanol and evaporated the methanol. A brownish crystally goo was left that SWIM put in fridge for months. Months later SWIM decided to dissolve it in a tea and drink it. A few hours later SWIM was crawling around on the floor. It was potent. Very potent.
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My friend extracted over an ounce of aborts with everclear and evaped. Similar outcome as above.
 
So is there a good way to take such an extract and purify it a little further so that you have a manageable powder?
 
SWIM'd assume that doing a methanolic extract, evaporating it down and then washing the residue with DCM or chloroform would definitely remove some of the (lipid or otherwise) impurities.

Re to Burnt, the phosphate group is covalently bound to the psilocin (ester bond). This makes psilocybin a zwiterion that can form internal salts. Just like amino acids can do.

Now, since psilocybin is a zwiterion, it means that it can act both as a acid, a base, or an internal salt depending on the pH. The pH at which psilocybin is an internal salt (thus has no charge) is its the isoelectric point (called pI).

The above means that at a pH higher than the pI of psilocybin, psilocybin will have a negative charge and will be (at least in theory) form salts like sodium psilocybinate.

And at pH values lower than than pI value psilocybin will have a positive charge thus being able to form salts like, say psilocybin chloride.

So, it all depends on the pH and most importantly the pH inside the fungal material. Plus, can anyone find the pI of psilocybin? That might be of some help....
 
Calcium salts are often poorly soluble in water and alcohol. If you were to make calcium psilocybinate by adding a little calcium hydroxide, could that be precipitated from water?
 
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