nate1924 (Member)
04-03-00 16:11
No 126895
      Mucuna pruriens (velvetbeans) and DMT     

A friend has some Mucuna pruriens beans (velvetbeans, cowhage), which contain DMT and 5-MeO-DMT-N-oxide (also other tryptamines, L-dopa, and steroids).  These beans are very hard even for dried beans.  What would be the best way to extract the DMT?  And can anything be done with the 5-MeO-DMT-N-oxide?
 
 
 
 
    Teonanacatl
(Member)
04-03-00 20:53
No 126896
      Re: Mucuna pruriens (velvetbeans) and DMT     

A typical alkaloid extraction could be used to isolate the alkaloids, although isolating just the DMT (which is what you seem to be implying) would require a further chromatography step most likely.
1)Grind up plant material
2)Extract alkaloids (couple of choices here)
    a)soxhlet it
    b)relux in polar solvent with stirring
    c)soak for about a week at a time with some stirring
These should all be done 2-3X.
3)(optional) defat with similar volume of non-polar solvent. Just bring the pH to 10.68 or somewhere near there (at pH 6.68 and above, 99% of the DMT is protonated (ie. charged) since it is 2 pH units below its pKa, which from memory is 8.68) Once the pH is at 6.68, add a similar volume of non-polar solvent (ie. naptha, DCM) in a sep funnel and shake, then discard the polar solvent.
3a (optional) boil up the aqueous extract with activated carbon...this is rarely done in literature because the compound of interest is often just extracted and then chromatographed...if you are having troubles getting as pure a product as you want, you might try adding a small amount of activated carbon to get rid of some of the extra heavier compounds...
4) Transfer DMT to organic (non-polar) solvent: bring the pH of the polar (aqueous) solution up to 10.68, by which point 99% of the DMT will be in deprotonated (neutral) form. Shake w/ slightly less than equal volume of non-polar/organic solvent. Do this three times, combine the organic extracts, keep them.
5)Remove the solvent either by stripping under vacuum (distillation setup, vacuum is not always used) or simply evaporating (don't do this where you need to breathe, and don't do this if you can do anything else...tough on the environment...
6) You should be left with some goo or crystals....multiple runs through the acid-base transfers may lead to a purer product if you like, but keep in mind that you are likely to lose some product in the process...

------------------
'Oh, you can't help that' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.' 'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice. 'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

 
 
 
 
    Teonanacatl
(Member)
04-03-00 20:54
No 126897
      Re: Mucuna pruriens (velvetbeans) and DMT     

I forgot...some primary literature can be found on this (extraction of DMT) at the following site:
 http://users.lycaeum.org/~desoxy
 
 
 
 
    nate1924
(Member)
04-04-00 06:19
No 126898
      Re: Mucuna pruriens (velvetbeans) and DMT     

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Teonanacatl:
[B]A typical alkaloid extraction could be used to isolate the alkaloids, although isolating just the DMT (which is what you seem to be implying) would require a further chromatography step most likely.
1)Grind up plant material
2)Extract alkaloids (couple of choices here)
    a)soxhlet it
    b)relux in polar solvent with stirring
    c)soak for about a week at a time with some stirring
These should all be done 2-3X.
3)(optional) defat with similar volume of non-polar solvent.

The last thing I extracted I did not defat; I used a soxhlet, and the fat floated on the top of the solution; refrigeration got the fat to coagulate into globs that could just be scooped out. Is DMT fat soluble?  Also, could the beans be defatted chemically and then fermentation used to extract and proceed from there?  Third question, the last thing worked with was a large seed, bigger than this.  The seed was not ground up but used as is and seemed to work fine that way.  I have read that grinding plant materials causes chemical changes to occur on the broken surfaces.  I know that maceration is typically a first step in extracting from plants, but would you happen to know whether it has a negative effect on the chems in question or how I could find that out? Thank you for your very detailed and helpful post.

 
 
 
 
    Teonanacatl
(Member)
04-04-00 09:58
No 126899
      Re: Mucuna pruriens (velvetbeans) and DMT     

DMT would be fat soluble if it is in aqueous solution at certain pH's - just as with non-polar solvents.
Yes, you can defat before extraction...not sure why you're mentioning fermentation, that would be allowing metabolism under anaeurobic conditions...

Maceration is typically used in most quantitative and qualitative plant analyses, so I'm guessing that the level negative aspects involved in this is low...extracting whole plant matter does work, but tends to result in lower yields...

 
 
 
 
    phaidon
(Member)
04-05-00 03:16
No 126900
      Re: Mucuna pruriens (velvetbeans) and DMT     

Hi guys!

I thought, if my memory serves me right, that the
wanted part of the Mucuna plant are the leaves and
not the beans, with the leaves having such a high
concentration of DMT that they can be inhaled without
further modifications.

Does anyone have any refs concerning alkaloid content
in Mucuna pruriens? I got something here:

Oh yeah, sorry, mucuna beans composition:

DMT, DMT-N-oxide, 5-MeO-DMT, L-Dopa, Bufotenine and beta carbolines

(Encyclopaedia of psychoact. plants. Raetsch, Christian)

OK, this is settled then.

- phaidon

 
 
 
 
    phaidon
(Member)
04-05-00 03:19
No 126901
      Re: Mucuna pruriens (velvetbeans) and DMT     

Some refs:

Bhattacharya, S.K., Sanyal A.K. & Ghosal S.: Ind J Phys 25(2); 53-56

Remmen, Shirley F.A. and Ellis B.E.: "DOPA synth in non-producer cultures
of M. deeringiana", PhytoChem 19: 1421 - 1423

Hope it helps.

- phaidon

 
 
 
 
    midway
(Hive Bee)
05-26-04 01:48
No 509596
      a pdf on Mucuna's Tryptamines by Szabo     

http://www.uady.mx/sitios/veterina/servicios/journal/2002-2-3/Szabo-b.pdf

 
 
 
 
    Trenchcoat
(Hive Bee)
05-27-04 07:48
No 509875
      I was reading through the PDF Mucuna's ...     

I was reading through the PDF Mucuna's Tryptamines by Szabo that midway gave.. It said Leaves contained: 8.29 µg/g Bufotenine, 2.73 5-meo-dmt, and 9.39 of an unknown. They said DMT wasn't detected but could DMT have been a part of that 9.39 µg/g of unknown stuff? Is it possible for there to be 5-meo in there without there being any dmt???

Better loving through chemistry.
 
 
 
 
    Avalokita
(Stranger)
06-10-04 02:43
No 512510
      M. pruriens, don't bother.     

On page 8 of the PDF, in Table 2, it states that the Benin sample of dry M. pruriens leaf has a 5-MeODMT concentration of 2.73µg/g.

1 µg is called 1 microgram, there are 1 million micrograms in a gram.
1 mg is called 1 miligram; there are 1 thousand milligrams in a gram.
1 g = 1,000,000 µg
1 mg = 1,000 µg

So 1 gram of 5-MeODMT is contained in 1,000,000µg/2.73µg/g = 366,300 grams of M. pruriens leaf.
So perhaps you don't fancy extracting 366 kilos of leaf, and just want enough for one 5 mg dose of 5-MeODMT.

Then you would need 5,000µg/2.73µg/g = 1,831.5 grams of M. pruriens leaf.
Extracting almost 2 kilos, for 1 mild dose is a waste of time.

Right below Table 2 it states that: "In the current study, neither tryptamine nor DMT were detected in any sample (< 0.5 µg g-1)."

So the best way to theoretically extract DMT would be to use Mimosa hostilis instead.
 
 
 
 
    Lilienthal
(Moderator)
06-10-04 10:20
No 512552
      Whos said the alkaloids are concentrated in...     

Whos said the alkaloids are concentrated in the leaves? Maybe they are in the root (bark) or in the fruits smile
 
 
 
 
    Avalokita
(Stranger)
06-15-04 10:27
No 513504
      Tryptamines in all plant parts, just not enough     


The leaves can be smoked for mild tryptamine effects, which can be prolonged by MAO inhibitors (Danger!! Please read page on MAOI's). Similarly, the beans themselves can be used this way and have often been proposed as an ayahuasca analogue.


The quote is from the shaman-australis website found at: http://www.shaman-australis.com/Website/subcat84.htm

In the PDF mentioned in the above posts, it does say that alkaloids are found in the roots, stems, leaves, pods and seeds, but the levels they found are too low to be considered psychoactive without an extraction on huge amounts of plant material. The table on page 8 of the PDF says that the plant part with the most Bufotenine is the leaves with 8.29 µg per gram dry weight. So you would need 603 grams of dried leaf for a 5 mg dose of Bufotenine.

The table also says that the most 5-MeODMT found was 2.73 µg per gram dry weight from the leaves of the Benin variety, and 2.79 µg per gram dry weight equivalent from the stems of the Gainesville fresh plants cultivar ECHO 91080 991E. So for a 5 mg dose of 5-MeODMT the smallest amount of plant material you would need is 1792 grams of dried weight equivalent of stem. Because the table was standardized to give the figures in dried weigh, if you used fresh stem, you would probably need around 12.5 kilos, as stems tend to be about 70% water as opposed to leaves which tend to be around 90% water.

So this report clearly states in several places that the tryptamine alkaloid concentration in Mucuna pruriens is too low to have a psychoactive effect. After much searching of the internet, I only found a few references to a psychedelic effect from Mucuna pruriens, one didn’t mention what plant part or how much was used, and the other was a reference to Jonathan Ott’s Ayahuasca Analogues. I thought that perhaps this contrast was due to a faulty extraction method, as experiments with Virola bark has shown that aqueous extracts don’t work, and alkaloids are only recovered if dry ethanol is used for the starting solvent. So I though that perhaps enzymes were breaking down the alkaloids giving the false impression of a low alkaloid concentration in Mucuna pruriens. But on page 7 of the PDF in the section “Sample extraction” it states:


Suitability of the extraction method for the indolic alkaloids (~95% recovery) had previously been determined through a recovery study in which a mixed standard containing all analytes was added to ground seed samples at a level of 0.05% dry wt.



So I feel very confident that the authors of this study knew what they were doing, and that their conclusion that Mucuna pruriens does not contain enough tryptamine alkaloids for a psychoactive effect is accurate.

An extraction of Mucuna pruriens seeds to obtain L-dopa to use for increasing mescaline content in cacti is an area that could be a much more promising use for this plant. And L-dopa extraction and purification is something I’d like to learn more about.

 
 
 
 
    fnord
(Hive Bee)
07-24-04 18:00
No 521354
      5-htp     

dont velvet beans also contain 5-hydroxytryptamine?how would this effect the dmt trip?
 
 
 
 
    Precursor2112
08-06-04 07:51
      da velvet beans
(Rated as: insignificant)