Harm Reduction Cold Water Extraction (CWE) Mega Thread & FAQ v2.0

[viddywell]

Oh and also, my water looks pretty clear during the first filter.. If it is heaps clear, is it still recommended that I do the second filter?

 

[tunesey]

The way i do it put the required amount of pills in a jam jar.pour in some warm water just so its not enough to burn your finger. Swirl it takes 10 to 15 mins but keeps the APAP at the bottom of the jam jar. When the tabs have dissolved put in the freezer for 15 mins until cold sometimes longer. You will have the APAP at the bottom of the jam jar and a cloudy watery substance at the top. cut up an old pair of jeans and place over a bowl and pu an elastic band round it. Get a t-shirt or dishcloth the one you use for drying the dishes place over the top of your jam jar and pour onto your denim filter. The cloth over the top of your jam jar will stop the APAP running out onto your denim filter.It makes for a perfectly clear CWE every time but be sere to change the denim as your CWE willn go light brown for some reason. I think the die in the jeans

 

[tunesey]

100 mg o f codeine should sort ya

 

[tunesey]

Yeah, I'd be willing to give cold water another bash. I guess poor technique could account for my low yields. The solvent I used to use is far more strictly controlled now; CW is my only real shot at this now. What's most annoying is I used to know a formula to make freebase codeine, but that was donkeys years ago.

I guess the key to decent yields would be investing in some really good filters; I think this could make a big difference. The funny thing is, I recently came into a shopping bag full of co-codamol, over 150 of the things, and these have 30mgs of codeine in, (you need a script for that in the UK), so I've got my "raw materials". I guess I'll try a small sample batch. What's a good amount of pills to put into an extraction btw?

100 mg of codeine should sort ye

 

[Sickpeache]

Sorry if this is answered already. Can different opiates/apap/Ibuprofin combos be cwe'd together? I have the following:
(6) 7.5 mg hydrocodone/200mg ibuprofen
(3) 5 mg hydrocodone/ 500mg acetaminophen
(2-4) 5 mg oxycodone/325mg acetaminophen

It's not much but i haven't used in over a month so I think my tolerance is pretty low. I'm just not sure if they can all be crushed and CWE'd together and still be as safe/effective/potent etc
Thanks in advance

 

[Poppinmolly]

Need help with cwe

Can you turn the end product of a cwe of tylonol with codiene in to a powder
plz help

 

[pasha]

homeless -> other drugs (cold water extraction megathread)

 

[elittle]

I just did a CWE on 20 percocet 5/325. I used the following method:

- Crushed all pills into fine powder using a mortar and pestle
- Filled a 125 ml Florence flask with 100 ml of near freezing water
- Dumped all of the powder into the flask containing the 100 ml of distilled ice water
- Added a magnetic stir stick and threw it on to a stir plate for 5 minutes at med stir speed
- After the solution was done stirring I put the beaker into an ice water bath and placed in the fridge for 1 hour.
- I took the solution out of the fridge, stirred it again then put it back in the ice bath for another hour.
- I got another 125 ml flask and took a pre-wetted coffee filter and placed a stainless steel mesh filter on top of the coffee filter, then placed another coffee filter on top of that, like a filter sandwich. I then placed the filter I made into a funnel and put the funnel into the top of the empty flask
- Using a pipette and suction bulb I transferred the layer of solution off the top of the material in the first flask into the filter funnel to strain out any remaining solids
- I put the newly filtered solution back into an ice water bath for another hour just to make sure there was nothing that would settle to the bottom of the flask
- Once I was sure the solution was filtered enough I poured the solution into a 13" x 7" pyrex baking dish. I put the dish on top of a frying pan on the floor and set up a small high speed aimed right at the dish. I made a small enclosure to go around the fan/dish and let the fan blow on the dish for a few hours until all the water was evaporated off

What I was left with was a baking dish coated in a white material. It had a nice crystalline shine to it and was chalky white in color. The material was very fluffy. When burned some would char and some would burn 100% clear and trail down foil very well. I found the long pieces of final material that were very wafer like to be the purest part of the extraction.

This method worked really good, I was happy with the results. Much better than ingesting 6500 mg of APAP! There was obviously still some APAP in the final product but not enough to be concerned about.

I would really like to try using solvents next time instead of water only to see what kind of material I could get out of it.

Stay safe!

 

[Ksa]

^ I assume you're trolling us. Whatever CWE method that takes more than 15min is fuckall. We have a life.

Btw, it's all wrong, adding cold water is wrong (add room T water, mix is cooled afterwards then stirred to remove supersaturation), the water volume is wrong...we use 1mL/pill. Also, no instrumentals. People don't have a lab at their disposal so whatever CWE method that involves more than household items is fuckall too.

Please don't teach, you should probably learn first.

 

[tricomb]

Yeah my CWE's happen in a matter of minutes, but everyone's method is built on a different skillset and patience I suppose.

 

[wildcardlv]

CWE - The Fastest - The Purest - The most AWESOMEST method I've tried

This post is for those of you who use the CWE technique but get frustrated at how long it can take for the water to filter through a filter (even lab grade filters!). It will save you time. I can do a full CWE from start to finish in about 10 minutes with this technique, and it even leaves far less residual APAP than my previous methods. This is a long post, but well worth the read. It could save your life in those moments when you say "the hell with it! I wanna get high NOW so I'll just filter with a sock (or something as equally ineffective).

This idea came to me one day when making poppy seed tea (unscrewing the cap to drain the yellow solution without getting a lot of seeds in your cup) And it works great. And also with much lower levels of APAP compared to typical methods and only takes a fraction of the time compared to traditional gravity drip filter methods that pass through clogged filters

So, for years I've been doing CWE's as my tolerance rose and I now require a minimum of 20 hydros (200mg) to get high, 12 (120mg) to maintain and 18 (180mg) for a semi-high (but only mixed with Valium and an Anti-Histamine) ... Those amounts would kill me if I didn't CWE the drug from APAP.

**On a side note... I'm well aware that I'm a junky so please no lectures, and thank you. I'm also aware that I should graduate to H or OC, but I have principles, and those drugs are for "loser junkies" dammit! Ha!**

Although if you do insist on criticizing me, I won't take offense. It's ok. I know that you're just advocating for harm reduction.

But I'm not JUST a junkie.... I'm also a practicing architect (a successful one too), so I self-destructively justify my usage by thinking that creativeness comes more easily while stoned out of my gord. Plus I actually do have a herniated disk, thus furthering my self denial. (It hurts, but if I wasn't a junky, I'd just need my prescribed 3 10's/day. Instead I only get three days of fun out of a month supply by takeing my 120mg morning dose for maintenance and then another 180 in the evening to get that awesome 'twilight sleep' we all love so much (it's the freaking best!!) Rarely do I take a whole bunch (200mg+) to get the 'drooling/nodding-on-the-
couch-while-watching-tv' high.

ANYWHO... Back on track...

For years I've done my CWE's with the most common techniques found here on BL (I've read them all many times... And although this forum is surprisingly well semi peer reviewed with all of the debates about best practices, there is still a decided lack of professional references or well design scientific experimental research) But I've done a couple of tests (that aren't quite scientific experiments) over the years, to see how much leftover APAP is in my final "drink." And it's a lot. Hell... It turns out it was a LOT.

This added APAP is mostly due to the impatience I feel when the damned filter gets clogged. I also end up squeezing the rest of the water that "just won't drain " into a cup (which causes tears in the filter as if one single layer of coffee filter would be sufficient even without tearing) and I could actually see, with the naked eye, the APAP passing through the filter. I know it's APAP and not binders because one if my "not quite scientific" experiments was to let the solution settle for a long time. When the filter works, nothing settles. Ever. The binders are dissolved along with the hydrocodone. With my old technique (found here on BL and other sites) there was always some (sometimes a lot) of settling. through trial and error, I found that my new method is much much clearer and as an added benefit: less bitter.

Without further ado: the steps!

1. Crush the pills to a fine power on something that will easily allow you to dump the powder into a water bottle I use a pint glass (inside of the glass, so that I can rinse it all into the next container).

2. Dump said powder into an empty water bottle (size only matters to the extent that the bottle needs to hold enough water ... Approximately 2 cups)

3. Put between 1 to 1.5 cups of hot water (not boiling water) from your faucet tap into the bottle. (warning: even at cold temperatures, around 1g of APAP will dissolve in 100ml of water (FYI - 100ml is just shy of one half cup) and water becomes fully saturated with hydro at 70mg per 100ml. So use 1/2 cup of water per 70 milligram of hydro, but stay below 2 cups if water total or you'll be getting dangerously high levels of APAP. If you need more than 140mg to get high then it's time to graduate to a stronger, APAP free, drug.

**I use 180mg of hydro normally (18 pills of 10/325 hydrocodone). Using the 70mg rule, I'd need almost three cups of water to ensure I get all the hydro but I still only use two cups of water because; 1. I add ice to cool the hot water more quickly which melts and adds a small amount of water and 2. Two cups of water is a semi-dangerous 2g of APAP. And I do this shit twice a day. Everyday.**


4. Put the lid back on the bottle and shake vigorously to ensure the chunks compete dissolve. Additionally this ensures the breakdown of the crystallization between the hydro, APAP, and binders (the hot water does most of the work, but the mechanical breakdown from the friction between water and solids from shaking finishes the job)

5 . Add a small amount of ice to the bottle to quickly cool the solution, but not enough to add significant amounts of water to the solution after it melts. Place the bottle in a freezer for a couple of minutes (don't let it freeze but the colder, the safer)

Now the rest of the steps are the parts that make my method so much faster than other methods.

6. Unscrew the bottle top a small amount. Squeeze the bottle to make sure a moderate amount if air leaks through the bottle top.

7. Using string, securely tie 4 coffee filters to the bottle top with the string wrapped around the neck of the bottle (place the string below the threaded part of the bottle where the "flange" is. You could also just use one filter folded twice to make 4 layers if it fits over the opening and goes down past the flange... Just be sure that the filter is 4 layers thick). Oh yeah... The flange is the ring the bottle cap tightens against when it's screwed on the bottle (for those who don't know what I mean by "flange") Also.... make sure this string is REALLY tight.

8. Turn the bottle upside down and squeeze over a cup. The liquid should come out fairly clear (depending on the bindings used in your DOC). It will be more of a trickle than a drip. After a minute the flow will slow to a trickle. This is the filter getting clogged

9. Shake vigorously to remove the APAP gunk away from the filter and repeat number 8 till it's all gone. At some point the water will only drip no matter how hard you shake it. At this point remove the filter and start at number 7 again by replacing the filter with a new one. (you'll see the massive amount of gunk on the filter and on the bottom of the bottle top. Set the old filter aside for later use.

It usually takes about 3 filter before all the water is transferred to the cup and out if the bottle. Once there is very little liquid left in the bottle, the solution still in the bottle will be so saturated that it'll clog immediately every time you try and squeeze it out. At this point there should only be a spoonful of remaining solution. Just carefully dump it into a single dry filter over the cup you have all the filtered solution. Just fold up the edged and drain by squeezing the filter with all the other filters you put aside in with the remaining sludge (remember I told you to set those used filters aside for later use).

Your solution should be as clear as the pills will allow. Some pills leave a milky solution even though the APAP is removed. Some pills leave a clear solution. To test if there is any solid APAP left in the solution, simply put it in the fridge for an hour or so. If nothing settles to the bottom then your solution is as APAP free as it can get. And remember that the colder the water is, the less APAP saturated the water can become. So if you need to re-refrigerate between filter changes, then do so for safety's sake.

 

[pasha]

basic drug discussion -> other drugs (cold water extraction megathread)

 

[Ksa]

Without further ado: the steps!

1. Crush the pills to a fine power on something that will easily allow you to dump the powder into a water bottle I use a pint glass (inside of the glass, so that I can rinse it all into the next container). (unless it's a special formulation you don't have to do this).

2. Dump said powder into an empty water bottle (size only matters to the extent that the bottle needs to hold enough water ... Approximately 2 cups)

3. Put between 1 to 1.5 cups of hot water (not boiling water) from your faucet tap into the bottle. This is unsafe, only use 1mL/pill. (warning: even at cold temperatures, around 1g of APAP will dissolve in 100ml of water (FYI - 100ml is just shy of one half cup) and water becomes fully saturated with hydro at 70mg per 100ml. This is false, hydrocodone is freely soluble in water. So use 1/2 cup of water per 70 milligram of hydro,(NO.) but stay below 2 cups if water total or you'll be getting dangerously high levels of APAP. If you need more than 140mg to get high then it's time to graduate to a stronger, APAP free, drug. Or, you can find a better extraction method.

**I use 180mg of hydro normally (18 pills of 10/325 hydrocodone). Using the 70mg rule, I'd need almost three cups of water to ensure I get all the hydro but I still only use two cups of water because; 1. I add ice to cool the hot water more quickly which melts and adds a small amount of water and 2. Two cups of water is a semi-dangerous 2g of APAP. And I do this shit twice a day. Everyday.**


4. Put the lid back on the bottle and shake vigorously to ensure the chunks compete dissolve. Additionally this ensures the breakdown of the crystallization between the hydro, APAP, and binders (the hot water does most of the work, but the mechanical breakdown from the friction between water and solids from shaking finishes the job) (I need LSD to understand this...)

5 . Add a small amount of ice to the bottleare you trolling us? to quickly cool the solution, but not enough to add significant amounts of water to the solution after it melts. Place the bottle in a freezer for a couple of minutes (how about for 20-30 minutes?)(don't let it freeze but the colder, the safer)

Now the rest of the steps are the parts that make my method so much faster than other methods.

6. Unscrew the bottle top a small amount. Squeeze the bottle to make sure a moderate amount if air leaks through the bottle top.

7. Using string, securely tie 4 coffee filters to the bottle top with the string wrapped around the neck of the bottle (place the string below the threaded part of the bottle where the "flange" is. You could also just use one filter folded twice to make 4 layers if it fits over the opening and goes down past the flange... Just be sure that the filter is 4 layers thick). Oh yeah... The flange is the ring the bottle cap tightens against when it's screwed on the bottle (for those who don't know what I mean by "flange") Also.... make sure this string is REALLY tight.

8. Turn the bottle upside down and squeeze over a cup. The liquid should come out fairly clear (depending on the bindings used in your DOC). It will be more of a trickle than a drip. After a minute the flow will slow to a trickle. This is the filter getting clogged

9. Shake vigorously to remove the APAP gunk away from the filter and repeat number 8 till it's all gone. At some point the water will only drip no matter how hard you shake it. At this point remove the filter and start at number 7 again by replacing the filter with a new one. (you'll see the massive amount of gunk on the filter and on the bottom of the bottle top. Set the old filter aside for later use.

Your solution should be as clear as the pills will allow. Some pills leave a milky solution even though the APAP is removed(I've never seen any, I doubt they exist, what I've seen is poor extraction methods that lead to cloudy solutions). Some pills leave a clear solution. To test if there is any solid APAP left in the solution, simply put it in the fridge for an hour or so. (no one has time, we have a life) If nothing settles to the bottom then your solution is as APAP free as it can get (you forgot to shake it to remove supersaturation before measuring sedimentation). And remember that the colder the water is, the less APAP saturated the water can become. So if you need to re-refrigerate between filter changes, then do so for safety's sake.

Added correction. Not carrying on past point 5, waste of my time. The method is unsafe, due to unsafe amounts of water suggested for use.

The filtration at the end is a decent concept however.

 

[Ksa]

This is a typical case where having an incorrect solubility figure of the active ingredient can lead to procedural errors.

The solubility figure given by the author for Hydrocodone was:

Hydrocodone: 70mg/100mL.
Acetaminophen: 1,000mg/100mL

Even with an incorrect figure, the author of the method should have realized that these compounds could never be separated with water, because APAP is much more soluble than his incorrect solubility figure for hydrocodone. In the rare event when hydrocodone is in base form, therefore insoluble in water, an acid base extraction is performed, or directly via methanol (if fully evaporated after the extraction), ethanol, ether or chloroform, but never water.

In fact, hydrocodone tartrate/phosphate/hydrochloride have a solubilities well over 60mg/mL and can easily be extracted using water volumes of 1mL/pill.

This type of error can lead to an intake of high amounts of acetaminophen for many years, which could have been easily avoided by a more thorough research.

 

[Snake_Eyes]

Probably a stupid question but last night I let 3 hydrocodone 7.5/750 dissolve (in the fridge) in 20ml of water in a one ounce cup. When I got off work I used a oral syringe and sucked up 90% of the water without disturbing the powder in the bottom. I put this in to a different cup then did the wet coffee filter to filter whatever was left in the powder. Am I safe to assume that the clear water that I first sucked up is basically apap free?

 

[Ksa]

Probably a stupid question but last night I let 3 hydrocodone 7.5/750 dissolve (in the fridge) in 20ml of water in a one ounce cup. When I got off work I used a oral syringe and sucked up 90% of the water without disturbing the powder in the bottom. I put this in to a different cup then did the wet coffee filter to filter whatever was left in the powder. Am I safe to assume that the clear water that I first sucked up is basically apap free?

Yep 100% safe, the apap sediments at the bottom. Your apap intake is 200mg or so.

 

[Snake_Eyes]

Sounds good thanks.

 

[wildcardlv]

Yo!

Wow, I remember writing this out of my enthusiasm to share my new way of fast filtering using a bottle like I do with pst (I mean, who doesn't want to completely filter a CWE in just a couple of minutes?)... I don't, however, remember trying to do all this math. I'm well aware of the true safe amounts of water needed for a proper CWE and don't know where these numbers came from (well, I'm sure they came from a dude high on 20 hydros and Valium). Thanks, KSA for taking the time to catch all that. The only thing I disagree with you about is starting with warm water... I do daily CWE's and can definitely tell that if you start with cold water, while it does work, it doesn't work quite as well. Oh and I wasn't trolling about the ice. This methods filters so quickly that the ice doesn't melt before you're done, but keeps the solution at temperature while your hands on the bottle are simultaneously attempting to warm the solution through contact, which would thus add to the solubility of APAP... Otherwise by the time you're done the solution is back at room temperature.

Anywho, I do keep my CWE APAP level at around 1.5g so that the hydro is more diluted and less is retained in damp filters. But that's a risk I take and wouldn't recommend to anyone else. I get liver function tests every 90 days to ensure I'm not harming myself, but know that most people are afraid, unwilling, or ignorant of this important checkup and should keep the 1ml/pill rule in mind for their own CWE methods.

Cheers! And thanks again!

 

[Ksa]

Yo!

Wow, I remember writing this out of my enthusiasm to share my new way of fast filtering using a bottle like I do with pst (I mean, who doesn't want to completely filter a CWE in just a couple of minutes?)... I don't, however, remember trying to do all this math. I'm well aware of the true safe amounts of water needed for a proper CWE and don't know where these numbers came from (well, I'm sure they came from a dude high on 20 hydros and Valium). Thanks, KSA for taking the time to catch all that. The only thing I disagree with you about is starting with warm water... I do daily CWE's and can definitely tell that if you start with cold water, while it does work, it doesn't work quite as well.

Glad to help, I never said warm water was a problem, it actually is a good idea as long as it's cooled once the pills are dissolved. I said the water volumes were too big.

Oh and I wasn't trolling about the ice. This methods filters so quickly that the ice doesn't melt before you're done, but keeps the solution at temperature while your hands on the bottle are simultaneously attempting to warm the solution through contact, which would thus add to the solubility of APAP... Otherwise by the time you're done the solution is back at room temperature.

Than ice should be added once the solution is close to 0C. If you add the ice to warm water before the freezer cools it it will just melt and add to the already big water volume. What I'm saying is, ice should be used to maintain a temperature near freezing point, not to do the bruteforce cooling, the freezer does that. So the issue is just how the step 5 is ordered. If you say:

5 . Add a small amount of ice to the bottle to quickly cool the solution, but not enough to add significant amounts of water to the solution after it melts. Place the bottle in a freezer for a couple of minutes (don't let it freeze but the colder, the safer)

Wrong order, should be:

5 . Place the bottle in a freezer until it almost reaches freezing point (don't let it freeze but the colder, the safer). Add a small amount of ice to the bottle to maintain near freezing point temperatures during filtration.

In order to avoid problems of ordering, it's recommended to split separate steps into 5. and 6.:

5 . Place the bottle in a freezer until it almost reaches freezing point (don't let it freeze but the colder, the safer).

6. Add a small amount of ice to the bottle to maintain near freezing point temperatures during filtration.

That way the order in which you do the steps is clear and concise.

 

[wildcardlv]

Exactly! And that's what I do. As a matter of fact I sometimes leave it in the freezer too long and a layer of ice forms (which I haven't noticed any negative effects from) before I add the ice to maintain temp.

What I was refereing too (quickly cooling the water) is that when the water is warm I use less than 1ml/pill warm water to dilute, shake, and then add the difference (in water amount) of ice to get the proper amount of water (1ml/pill or whatever your preferred amount... Like I said I use slightly more) after melting. This way it sits in the freezer for a much shorter time.

I'll start writing these posts sober... I'm very very bad at it otherwise. I'm tempted to delete everything and re-write it all correctly.

Actually I think that the reason I write this type of thing while stoned is because when I'm sober I don't care about the subject in general. While stoned I LOVE the subject and must feel the need to share the love.

Stay Happy. Stay Safe, my fiends. If someone writes something that you "need to be on LSD understand", as Ksa put it. I'd be seriously cautious of the authors state of mind while authoring it.