opium poppy extraction

[tryin]

I recently had a dream about extracting the poppy alkaloids. It went something like this.

I first took 150 mL of dH2O and added about 8g of Calcium Hydroxide. Then I added 20g of finely grounded poppy straw. I then set this on the hotplate stirrer for about 30 minutes @ 50C, stirring pretty good. I then took this and filtered this to receive 125mL of liquid.

I then took this liquid and added about 1g of citric acid, enough to bring the pH to 4.51. I then let this sit overnight.

In the morning I filtered this and collected the liquid again. To this liquid I added 1g of ammonium chloride and put it on the stirrer for 20min. @ 20C. I then let this sit and cool overnight.

The next day I took and added to the liquid enough sodium carbonate to raise the pH to 9.15 exactly. I then let this sit for 48 hours with stirring every now and again.

According to my reference for this tech, I was supposed to be able to filter this and keep the now opium like substance that was filtered out. But in my weird dream, My liquid is light tan in color and after letting it sit for a while it seperates into two layers one dark brown liquid and one white flakey/syrup-looking layer.

Is this white layer possibly sodium carbonate that did not react?

If so, can what I want (the morphine precipitate, and other opium alkaloids) be washed out of the sodium carbonate?

I have tried to decant the top layer off but the white slimey "stuff" goes with it.

[morpheus]

Swim wishes you the best of luck and wishes he could help you.
He does know that U.S. pharmaceutical companies use poppy straw to make their opiates because the process is very difficult without a sophisticated lab whereas if they used opium gum diversion would become a major problem as its very simple to get morphine and then heroin from raw opium
as you know.
A friend used to make a tea from the pods or straw. He got the idea came from poppy.org
It was not that good but don't know if he used papaver somniferum(opium poppy) or california poppies.
Swim is friends with a organic chemist who currently
inspects dairies for the state.He is cool and will let you know if your procedure will suceed.Keep it up.Glad your tryin.

[tryin]

It seems that the white substance was the ammonium chloride that had come out of solution. I am not sure how this happened, but it did. I wish I could dream next time that I used citric acid and sodium carbonate only. I used ammonium chloride this time because it is supposed to aid in the precipitation of morphine in a basic solution. Oh well it was only a dream.

[wimpy]

Hi - just for the tea-from-straw thing: SWIM used to do so for several summers and it worked very good - was even better than bought material.
He just chopped and stomped 10 - 20 plants completely with pods, straw and everything, cooked them with water and some citric acid, lemonjuice, ascorbic acid or even vinegar, best for an hour or more, squeezed the liquid through cloth, cooked off excess water and drank it as a tea. (the taste is better if brown, dry, ripe plants are used.) The result left nothing to be desired not even in comparison with street material worth 25$ (ok, it was about 10 years from now in a rather rural area ...) One could also cook (carefull) all water off and store the gunk. I'm sorry if this is not in 100% relation to the threads question but after reading the other replies i thought it might be interesting (er, just for the case you did not already know, of course)...
(by the way - sorry, english isn't my 1. language ...)

[sushitake]

I remember an article in the ER that detailed research with alkaloid content in poppys. the most potent % of opiates to wieght of plant material was about half way through the life cycle, and the roots held a good portion. brings to mind some hydroponic applications. also brings to mind that the plant in this state isnt really all that recognizable, especially if the flower is clipped. brings to mind a ball of bitter extract that is consumed as a whole, with all the micro elements and agonist/antagonist interactions intact. feed thebaine to a tobacco plant and it will be turned to morphine. perhaps reticuline and salutaridine, found in a good number of plants could be fed to p. somniferum or even other papaver species to produce greater morphine yeilds.

[ning]

for starters, neither calcium hydroxide nor calcium carbonate are very soluble in water.

Perhaps you should check pH, and if it's high enough, extract with petroleum ether. And use sodium hydroxide or carbonate next time, so you don't have that problem.

Ning would not be surprised if your freebased alkaloids picked up floating particles of CaCO3 on their way to the top.

[wimpy]

Regarding to swim's poppy tea reply (and to consumption of extract from very unripe poppy plants) i just wanted to mention that the contingent of spasmodic/antispasmodic contents in poppy plants varies before, while and after blossoming (darn, if i could remember where i read about that ... but i'm sure it's a reputable information), which can, when consuming a whole extract from too unripe poppy plants, lead to more or less heavy (rather more sideeffects like, for example, stomage cramps (swim had that "pleasure" quite often after drinking tea from plants which didn't drop their petals already).
The hydroponics-roots-thing sounds very interesting, but swim wonders if it wouldn't be recommendable to extract the morphine or any other instead of consuming a whole extract.
Adjust me if i'm wrong.