An other way to indole 3 acetic acid:

Normal indole is an available chemical. At us, it is sold relative cheap (100g/25 euro). From this compound there are a lot of ways to get indole 3 acetic aciid what is the direct precursor of the DMT. Let's see an easy way:

Normal indole with diazoacetic acid ethyl ester in boiling ether gives indole 3 acetic acid ethyl ester. The diazoacetic acid loses the diazo part of the molecule and it just get's on the indole. The formation of the IAA ethyl ester is almost near to 90%. The reaction was described by Jackson in 1935.

The precusors are not hard to get. As I wrote, the indole is available in chem. supply shops. The diazo acetic acid ethyl ester can be made from glycine.

Synthesis of diazo acetic acid ethyl ester:
  from   

The glycine ethyl ester HCl is made by adding glycine to EtOH and bubbling dry HCl gas through it at 65-70 Celsius. The EtOH is also the solvent, so use more that the calculated amount. EtOH slould be added again and again to the reaction, because it will boil out from the mixture. You can get a recipe here: http://www.jbc.org/content/175/2/531.full.pdf
The ethyl ester should be diazotated with NaNO2. This part of the reaction is not so hard. Just cool down the chemicals, get a solvent what dissolves both ot the components (the NaNO2 and the glycine ethyl ester HCl). The glycine ethy ester HCl is soluble in ethanol, methanol, ether, benzne. Maybe the best would be to use methanol as a solvent (sodium-nitrite solubility in methanol: 4.4 g / 100 g 20°C). The diazo acetic acid ethyl ester is a yellow oily liquid. -22 Celsius melting point, boiling point, 140-141 Celsius.

The glycine ethyl ester is soluble in ether so just dissolve it in ether, add the indole to it and start to boil it. After the calculated amount of N2 evolved you are ready with the indole 3 acetic acid ethyl ester. Now you should just add the dimethyl amine to the mixture. And hydrogenate it to get the pure DMT.

-Evilblaze

NaNO2 really doesnt grow on trees and its poisinous - this makes this way less atractive, or is NaNO2 avaivable a way i havent recognized yet?

NaNO3 + Pb = NaNO2 + PbO
Just melt these thing together and you are ready.
Or: 2NaNO3 = 2NaNO2 + O2

Or you can buy it in a chem. supply shop. At us it is available and it is cheap, only 8 euro/kilogram.

Thanks, Evilblaze.  I like starting from indole, and still wonder how applicable this reaction is to other primary alcohols:

http://www.orgsyn.org/orgsyn/orgsyn/prepContent.asp?prep=CV5P0654#Ref654N1


The reason being that this product is available OTC in bulk powder as its bitartrate salt:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylethanolamine


I suppose I need to just go pick up a kilo of indole and stink my house up trying   

timecube, DMT from Indol in one step sounds too good to be true, dosent it? also, for the bees unable to get indole (like me ;_;), get "indol-3-carbinol" and reduce it to indol. Health Supplements - what does one want more?

decarboxylisation can be very sketchy, decarboxylation of tryptophan is a good sample, the same catalysator can give 10% or 70% yield depending on the solvent (and vice versa) - so trial and error is not an option (there are too many factor this depends on, if there is an easy procedure with avaivable materials to do this it surely isnt found out by trial and error). maybe bromination and grignard to get a longer tail with an alcohol at the end? and then reductive amination? grignard can be done without working completly anhydrous, but yield will be lower (significantly, i guess) - ref for this is added.

Stainless steel pressure bombs assembled from piping are doable at home, just not the safest things in the world.  The agitation might take a bit of ingenuity.

It should be possible to make the bromoethane into the grignard and add it directly to C-3 without needing to protect the indole nitrogen.

Stainless steel pressure bombs assembled from piping are doable at home, just not the safest things in the world. 

It is not the safest thing in the world, you are right.

Why not try to use dimethyl-amino-sodium-ethoxide?(Me2NEtONa) In that case not H2O would come out from the reaction and it would go much easier with much less heat and with a better yield. And to prepare the dimethyl amino sodium ethoxide from the dimethyl amino ethanol is not so hard. Just need some sodium and you are ready.

The only question is the indole-s nitrogen. With the dimethyl amino sodium ethoxide I think the dimethyl-ethyl-amine will go on the nitrogen and not to the 3 position. So: protect it with something, use two times more reagent or make it on by the original method: alcohol + indole + heat

Thanks, timecube.  Example 1 of US patent 3197479 gives a process for making 3-(2-hydroxyethyl)indole from indole and ethylene glycol.  It looks like you could substitute DMAE free base for the ethylene glycol to get DMT.  You might get better results starting with tryptophan (tryptophan -> tryptamine -> DMT).

1) It's just a strecker degradation, which is fairly well documented.  There's a whole thread on it in the references section, and it's covered at Rhodium's archive as well.

The condensation between indole-3-acetaldehyde and dimethylamine followed by reduction, is analogous to the condensation between MDP2P and methylamine followed by reduction during the production of MDMA, except instead of an imine, an enamine is being formed, which is a bit more reluctant to form, so active water extraction via a dean-stark type of setup or a drying agent may be necessary.  A solution of the aldehyde in say MeOH should probably be added dropwise to dimethylamine HCl in MeOH with good stirring, and water continually removed via some means to push the equilibrium the toward the enamine.   I'm not sure how much heat if any would be needed, or if it could be directly reduced as it forms like with the MDMA prep.  You'd have to play around with it some.

2) Like I said, the DMAE freebase could be extracted from the OTC bitartrate salt with a NaOH solution, then separation of the alcohol potentially via a simple salting out.

Then it would need dried and used as in the references provided above.

Also, thanks Timecube. Im getting my head around this, but Its still a bit off a workable tek.