cyanoglucosides in HBWR+MG seeds

stratosphere · Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:01 pm

ive heard on various sites like erowid that if you wash said seeds in a NP prior to extraction it gets rid of nausea by removing cyanoglucosides.
but i have trouble believing this because arn't glucosides polar?
so whats really going on there?

in fact from my understanding of why plants have cyanoglucosides(countermeasure agianst herbavores), crushing the seed and perhaps slightly moisting it should release an enzyme that breaks the c-glu down to prussic acid which should evaporate off if allowed to sit long eneough, typically in the range of 24hours.

plus won't the NP carry away the lysergic amide (unless its attached to endogenous plant acids)?

finely i allways hear that lsa etc are delicate molecules prone to heat oxidation etc, what particular features of them are prone to detrimental effects.

paranoid · Mon Jun 27, 2005 2:17 am

The use of the NP solvent is not to remove the glycosides, but rather the oils and saponins that cause nausea. The glycosides are indeed soluble in a polar solvent, which is why the use of methanol or ethanol is recommended over water as the alkaloid extraction solvent, which is much less polar than water.

Frankly, the cheap and dirtiest way to do it is the cold water extraction the old mexican natives used to use. The cold water dissolves the alkaloids relatively well, while leaving behind most of the oils and glycosides.

If you're more creative, try an acid/base extraction. A bit time consuming, but the easiest way to produce fairly pure product.

Given my experience though, it's probably not worth it when LSD or shrooms are available.