Items you'll need
1. At least 2 glass or HDPE(should show a triangular recycle symbol with a 2 inside of it somewhere on the bottom) plastic jugs or jars. HDPE is preferred because strong lye solutions will etch glass and cause it to break eventually. I know first hand.

2. RedDevil brand lye

3. Muriatic acid (HCL or hydrochloric acid)

4. Acetone

5. Xylene

6. turkey baster

7. a glass or stainless steel funnel

8. cotton balls

all easy to get items (use NO aluminum)

You should not use any type of open flame at any point during this extraction. Use adequate ventilation at all times.

Preparing your cactus
You'll want to begin with dry powdered cactus if you can. You can dry slices of cactus in the oven with low heat and then use a coffee grinder to powderize it.

NOTE: I've experience a severe reaction to breathing the powder. It screws up my sinuses for a week or two. I'd suggest using a face mask to prevent it being inhaled. Also I have noticed irritation to the eyes if the dust comes in contact with them. Be careful.

Extracting
Prepare a solution of lye water by slowly mixing together 1 TBS of lye for every pint(8 TBS/gallon) of cold water that you think you'll need to completely cover you dry cactus. This will produce a little heat so don't be alarmed. Just swirl it around slowly as you add the lye a little at a time. This is what I will refer to as base or basic water.

Next add you dry cactus powder. Mix the contents thoroughly to ensure that you expose all of the powder to the basic water.

Now add about a pint or so of xylene to the mix. You want enough of a layer to be able to draw off the xylene with the turkey baster later. Shake it all up and let it sit for an hour. This is what it will look like just after shaking.

If after an hour you can see that the xylene layer is separating back out, fine, if not, add a little more pre-made basic water and check again. Now shake it back up and put it away for 24 hours (every second of it).

24 hours later, you want to draw off the xylene so now you need to use the turkey baster to suck it up and put it in a new jar(a mason jar works fine). You don't want any of the water from beneath the xylene to come with it. And put it into your salting bottles

Salting
Now you want to mix your acid water in order to dilute it to the proper strength you want. Be very careful not to breath the vapors that come out of the bottle when you open it. HCL comes very strong and it will burn you.

You want to add approximately 4-8 drops of HCL acid to 1.5 cups of water. Slowly add this acid water to the xylene while gently swirling the liquids around in the jar. Add just enough to make a half inch or so layer beneath the xylene.

Don't worry that you won't get all of the goods because the xylene is going back into the extraction bottle and you'll get another shot at what you missed before. Put the lid on the jar and shake it all up. Wait a few minutes and shake again.

Once it has returned completely to a separated state loosen the lid on the jar and place it in the freezer. You want the bottom layer(the acid water) to now freeze solid. The xylene will not freeze. Once the water is frozen, work quickly and pour the xylene back into the extraction bottle.

With the water still frozen solid, pour in a little warm water and swirl around and discard quickly. This helps get rid of a little more residual xylene. The rest will evaporate later.

Repeat the extraction and salting steps 4 to 6 times to get all of the goodies. You can reuse the xylene over and over again.

Evaporating
Now thaw out the water and put it in you evaporation dish. A large flat bottomed pyrex dish works best. Using heat(heating pad beneath the dish) or not, fan dry it to evaporate the water from the dish. This may take some time depending on how much water you used.

Once all of this is dry you will see a crystalline residue left on the dish.

This pic shows off a mistake that I made and one that some of you may make also. On the right side of the dish you can see a huge brown spot. This happened because I used too much hcl acid in the salting step. This, however, is not a big problem. It will all be gone after the cleaning step, plus much of it evaporated with the water. I might could have even avoided some of the discoloration by evaporating slower, giving the hcl more time evaporate.

Scrape it off with a razor blade. Mescaline  hcl will be a brownish powder.

This is from the first scraping from the first salting. It actually turned out much better than I normally expect. It can be used as is but the next procedure is simple if you've got this far.

Cleaning
Put a cotton ball in the spout end of your funnel so that it can filter.

Mix some acetone with your extracted alkaloids. I use a mason jar so that I can swirl it around easily. You want to get every piece of Mescaline  washed with acetone, so mix it in good.

Next, pour it into the funnel with a clean dry jar to catch the liquids. Use acetone to wash loose needles, that remain in the jar, into the funnel.

You will notice some color draining through with the acetone. Wash like this with fresh acetone until little to no more color is draining through. Put the funnel somewhere to dry.

Once all acetone smell is gone from the funnel and it's contents you need to pour some hot water into it with it positioned over the evaporation dish. The hot water will dissolve the crystals and allow them to flow through the cotton into the dish.

Evaporate as before. The resulting crystals will be considerably whiter and more pure. This is not only for aesthetics, but also it makes for more accurate dosing.

You can put this powder in capsules to facilitate simple dosing with pre-measured amounts in each capsule.

in the beginning of part2 where he adds "small amount" of acid to the water

anyone know some more exact measurements for that amount of cacti?

these videos arent pieced together too great, but i want to give them a shot

also, instead of hcl acid, can i use acetic acid, or citric acid, or anything more readily available?

ALSO, is it really necessary to repeat the ext 3 times (4total) per batch?

I tried a very similar extraction once years ago and got absolutely nothing from it. 
http://www.erowid.org/plants/cacti/cacti_chemistry2.shtml

In the final step, I weighed the citric acid before mixing it with the water, so I could be sure to add enough to convert all the mescaline oil.  After letting the water evaporate, I again weighed the resulting crystals and it was exactly the same amount of the acid I'd originally added!

My best guess was that during the mixing of the xylene and the acidic water, the mescaline never dissolved in the water.  My reasoning is that the xylene showed a distinct greenish coloration, but the water remained clear, despite nearly an hour of mixing.  Any input?

I would certainly think so, DMT could also I bet. Probably make it a ton easier to get nice pure crystals too.

Sorry NP= non polar IE the xylene used in the first part titled extraction.

When alkaloids are freed as there basic amine they are an oil (normaly)that is soluble in things such as ether/benzene/xylene/toluene ect...

Many alkaloids can be extracted from the non polar solvent by the formation of the salt. This is done in this tek thru the use of dilute Hydrochloric acid(HCl). This causes the hydrogen chloride to coordinate with the basic amine part of the molecule and form a salt that is water soluble and no longer soluble in the non polar so you rid all the other oils that where in the plant by leaving them in the non polar.

Hear is what Im suggesting Crucible, instead of taking the salt into a water solution and evaporated the same thing can be accomplished by feeding very dry hydrogen chloride gas, generated by adding H2SO4 to NaCl or adding Muratic acid to CaCl2, into the non polar at which point it forms a salt with the mescaline in this case and causes it to drop out of the xylene in a single step that does not involve evaporation and almost always yeilds a purer product. After no more white salt falls to the bottle as the HCl salt then you can just filter the powder out and dry the filter cake for your goodies.

It sounds more complicated then it is but trust me this is a way faster and cleaner methode then titrating the salt out of the NP and waiting for it to evaporate which can also bring along other compounds you dont want.

Its a cake walk once you get a knack for it. Anhy HCl is easyly generated from the actions of H2SO4 on NaCl this formes sodium bisulfate and dry HCl.

If you take an Over the counter IsoPropyl Alcohol bottol and attach a sealed tube thru the lid you can mix the H2SO4 + NaCl in there and squeeze it to release the HCl gas.

Simple really.

That is perfect and is anhydrous as normal H2SO4 comes Crucible.

As long as you subject your Non polar with the alkaloids in it to a drying agents like epsom salt that has been baked you will know when they have all been converted to a salt. There will be a white whispy precipitate when the HCl hits the non polar and that will fall like snow to the bottom and collect there. When there is no more alkaloid present there will be no more precipitate. At that point you let is settle and decant the non polar from the salt and and filter the last little bit. When your filter cake drys you can wash most alkaloids with Acetone and you will have very clean and very pure product in no time.


Also I forgot to mention if you have 98% H2SO4 this can be driped drop by drop with stiring to precipitate the sulfate salt of the alkaloid also. Your H2SO4 may contain heavy metal contamination though so I would go with HCl.

Sorry if I wasn't clear about it. What I ment buy treat the NonPolar is after you perform the extraction and get the alkaloids in the solvent you want to seperate the solvent from the aq layer and then add the drying agent to it. If you grind the dry MgSO4 to a find powder slowly add this to the solvent and notice if it sticks to the flask and clumps up this is an indication that there is a good deal of H2O in there. Continue to add drying agent until it flows freely in the solvent when stirred just like a dry powder would. At this point add a little bit more drying agent and allow to set for a few hours with the lid on the jar to prevent more moister from getting in. After a few hours are up stir a bit again and make sure the drying agent still flows freely. As long as it does then you can add A bit of drying agent to a filter and filter all the solvent into a new jar to rid it of the drying agent. Add a little bit of clean solvent and wash the first jar to make sure all of your alkaloids are removed and in the new jar.

Your solvent will be completly dry now for all practical uses.


You need not worry about 98% H2SO4 the reason that its always 98% is because H2SO4 is itself a great drying agent and will suck up H2O like a son'a'bitch it will precipitate fine if thats the concentration your using and the powder will be dry.


I know it may all sound a bit daunting but Im giving you pretty much standard text book process. Once you get a knack for it its easy to know when its dry and its easy to produce some HCl gas and watch it snow alkaloids in your solvent.

If all else fails and you put HCl into the solvent and you start to see precipitate but nothing makes it to the bottom and the solvent just goes cloudy and does not settle the apply a very light heat for sometime to drive off the water because your solvent wasn't completely dry. This makes very nice crystals and if you ask me I prefere to breath on Ether till the precipitate goes away because its almost like duel solvent recrystalization. Its just a trick I learned when working with small amounts because the powder gets stuck in the filters a bit while the sparkly crystals produced this way can be decanted and dryed. Get the basics first before trying that though.

Good luck.

That is interested T2P. I believe treger has an account here. If you get a chance could you see if he could spare a minute of his time and fill us in on some of the finer details?

Hydrogen Chloride is a very nasty gas, do this in a well ventilated area, such as a fume hood or outside. A fan isn't a bad option either if you can rig it up properly.

You'll know when to get away from the HCl gas, it is easily detectable and very obnoxious.