Please Help! San Pedro Extraction

Hello,

SWIM bought some san pedro skinned it dried it, finely powder the skin.

so 100g of San Pedro Cactus skin is placed in a gallon tea jug.
It is basified with a 2M solution of NaOH, let sat for two days.
add 150ml of xylene to the mix.
Shake, then let separate.
SWIM then separated the xylene from the mix.
SWIM then add the dark brown xylene to a lightly acidic hcl solution.
Separated the acidic hcl solution from the xylene.
The hcl solution was then evaporated leaving a brown residue.
The brown residue was scraped up and .2g weighed out and placed in a gal cap.
Then the gal cap was eaten.
Waited...... Waited............. Waited....... Nothing happened, only very very slight feeling of different but differently no trip. WTF where did SWIM mess up? Should SWIM try more are wash whats left in acetone.

SWIM also just evaporated the xylene, leaving a brown residue, swim scraped up the brown residue and ate .2g of it and waited........... and waited........ and waited, and nothing happened! WTF SWIM is so let down, please help swim out.

did you add lemon or citric or some other acid to the water in the first stages?

No, I did not defatt; I went straight to base

hmmm, I don;t know if you oversimplified, but you can do a few xylene washes, collect them, then wash that a few times with the HCl mix. PS rather use too little than too much, like 4 drops on 100ml is cool, else you get yellow "burned" mesc. This method normally require quite a few washes before all is extracted.

I'll give it a try. I also took some of the extracted xylene, and added a sulfuric acid solution (2parts SA 1part DH2O) I was told to only add 20 drops and shake and little white practicals should forum, I ended forgetting and added close to 50ml and the xylene became clear and the sulfuric acid solution turned dark green, does anybody know what the green practicals in the SA?

I think you should write this one off to experience. Hell even just eating some of the dried skin should have gotten you off.

That's what I told myself when I was waiting, after 2 1/2 hours I was about to go chop down the little cactus I have growing and eat it. I still have the whole thing extracting so I try to wash xylene with light hcl solution, maybe I'll get something good outa it. Also I got a really dark brown powder from other hcl washing, do you think I should try and clean it up?

In chemistry class the teacher said not to dump everything out until you get the compound you want. So does anybody think that there still might be hope; maybe 160g of lye for the gallon of cacti mush to make 3M, maybe this will force the compound out?

My conclusion is either I'm not adding enough hcl in salting, or not enough base to force the compound out, or the local san pedro has really really low mesc. content, but I really don't think that its because of low alkaloid content. Anybody have any say? please help!, if anybody knows whats up; but doesn't want to say on the forum please PM me.

Ok, I got beautiful crystals now, I had to make 5% hcl, which got purplish brown residue, I then back extracted the xylene again with just DH2O, evp the water and was left with beautiful whitish yellowish crystals. It may have been easier to freeze precipitate out the base, or freeze then bubble hydrogen gas in instead of back extracting.

Ps, an easy hydrogen gas-er can be made, by dripping sulfuric acid on hcl acid in a plastic bottle with a hose coming out the top, DO NOT LET THE GAS TOUCH YOUR SKIN IT WILL BURN YOU, REMEMBER STUPID HURTS.

To be honest, X is easier and funner to ----.

Awesome, well done, the gasing setup isn't worth all the fuss. My one friend has a very nice lab grade gasing finger thingemajig, and never uses it.

lol SWIM, hows SWIM doing> did he ever recover haha

I like the term SWIM someone-who-isn't-me, lol.


"You think your the only one who gets sick if you don't have your jelly beans?"......... LOL

haha helll yah man i never knew that haha thanks!! u know what i am talkin about -_^