• 💊 OTHER DRUGS 💊 Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Notable Threads 1 Notable Threads 2
    Dangerous Combos Addiction Support
    Emergency Services Benzo Guide v.1
    Addiction Stories Scary Case Studies
    Biology, Pharmacology & Drugs 101
  • Select Your Topic Then Scroll Down
    Alcohol Bupe Benzos
    Cocaine Heroin Opioids
    RCs Stimulants Misc
    Harm Reduction All Topics Gabapentinoids
    Tired of your habit? Struggling to cope?
    Want to regain control or get sober?
    Visit our Recovery Support Forums

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

Done a few CWE's recently using co-codamol, 30mg codeine with 500mg paracetamol, put 8 or so in a glass with a couple of fingers of water and 2 ice cubes, open the capsules (8 to 10 at a time) and give it a quick stir, capsules are great as the contents are already a very fine powder, take a t-shirt and wet it, double it up over another glass and pour the milky solution into the well I've made out of the material over the empty glass, it filters through in about 20 seconds, I bunch up the used bit of the t-shirt n give it a squeeze, throw the ice down the sink, rinse the left overs off the material and am left with a completely clear, cold, codeine laced drink. Whole process takes 2 minutes tops. I've never done it to get high - only to keep the sickness away as I'm using H again and have been doing it daily for the last month or so, I'm slowly working my way down to not using and a CWE is quick n easy...
 
Assuming even dispersion of codeine throughout the pills, wouldn't one need to ensure they are completely dissolved in order to do an accurate extraction? Using say 2ml of water per pill might not be sufficient if all the codeine cannot be moved from the tablets to the water.

For maximum effeciency, wouldn't one want to use the solubility charts to find the amount of water needed to completely dissolve the pills, and than evaporate down to a workable volume?

Thoughts?
 
^You are correct. Ideally you would fully dissolve the pills and then recrystallize after reducing through evaporation followed by filtering. Most people don't have the patience though so just using a small amount of water initially gets you instant product. Codeine salt is very soluble (like a gram per milliliter or something) so there is never a worry about not using enough to dissolve all the codeine, merely a worry about not getting to the codeine caught up in the crystallized APAP.
 
Doing first CWE...girl and I have questions!!!

We have hydrocodone pills (5/500). Moderate tolerance as we used to do 5 5mg percs (25mg oxycodone) with no problem but didn't go over due to APAP.

We are concerned because how do we "know" what is being extracted and what is staying?! Here is what he have done...

1. Took a hammer to 7 pills (each; 14 total) of hydro (35mg) to crush. Therefore we have two batches
2. Lukewarm water and added the powder and shook it for 5 minutes.
3. It is sitting in the fridge right now.

We can start to see separation at the bottom but some people say "stir every few minutes" and others don't.

How long should we keep in fridge?
How much APAP is usually left after? (we plan to run through a coffee filter)
Do we NEED to refilter?

Please help us out here! Thanks.
 
Welcome to Bluelight! We have a fantastic mega thread covering the CWE process in the Other Drugs forum. I'm going to merge your post in there as it covers everything you need to know!
 
How "clear" should hydrocodone (Vicodin) 5/500 look? It isn't completely clear. It is diluted but not nearly as "milky" as the stuff at the bottom of the glass when dumped through the coffee filter. It starts off very clear but ends up looking kinda like "salt water" if that makes sense.
 
Ideally it should be completely clear. When completely clear you can assume you have 1g of APAP for every 100ml of water. The cloudier it is the more suspended APAP there is in addition to the dissolved material.
 
amapola said:
Ideally it should be completely clear. When completely clear you can assume you have 1g of APAP for every 100ml of water. The cloudier it is the more suspended APAP there is in addition to the dissolved material.
Click to expand...

How can it be completely clear with opiates/hydrocodone in the water? (Just trying to understand this better).

Also the vicodin I am using is M357 and it leaves a white residue on anything it touches. Could that be another type of ingredient for making the pill easier to swallow? Could that make the solution cloudier? I guess I am just trying to see if anyone has used this specific pill and had completely clear water?
 
How can it be completely clear with opiates/hydrocodone in the water? (Just trying to understand this better).
Click to expand...
It's completely clear because the molecules dissolve into the solution. Think of if you put a teaspoon of sugar into hot tea. It completely dissolves and the tea is still clear (you can't see little bits of sugar floating in it). For APAP you can fit ~1,000mg into 100ml of water and it will still be completely clear. After that the solution is "saturated" and any more APAP will not dissolve and remain as a solid suspended in the fluid which can then be filtered out.

Matter_Chart.PNG
 
Thanks a lot Amapola. Last question. We did each 7 pills 4 hours ago (5/500) and filtered but the water was cloudy. We used a half cup of solution which I am now thinking was too much. We saw a fair amount of "gunk" at the bottom but obviously it wasn't as clear as it should be. Therefore we don't know how much APAP we ended up taking. We are about to go round 2. Worse case scenario, if we end up consuming 5k APAP due to human error on our first two extractions, is this something really bad for one night? I think MLD of APAP is 12k but we are more worried about damage to our livers!

Does this CWE look solid for the second round:
1. Crushed the pills with a hammer
2. Shake the pills in COLD water instead of warm
3. Fridge for 20 minutes
4. Filter through coffee filter
5. Drink up!
 
Well if you each did 7 pills (5/500) then the absolutely most you each could have consumed was 3.5g which is fine for a day. You definitely want to use at most 100ml and the less the better. Presoaking the filter helps let you use as little as possible.

edit: Ah I see you are dosing again which is where you got 5g from. It's higher than I like and you'll almost assuredly be fine for one time but obviously no one can say for certain. Just by looking at the amount of gunk in the filter you should be able to judge how well it worked.
 
Thanks. I think we are going to just judge by the clarity and if it looks bad; we will call it a night and err on the side of caution. Why do some people say to use warm water and others cold? Isn't the point to use cold water as it makes the apap less soluable; which should be better? I think when we used warm water it could have maybe started to go through the filter?
 
Using warm water and then cooling it allows more of the APAP to dissolve before it precipitates back out. This helps get any of the active ingredient that is caught up in the APAP crystal structure into solution but takes longer.
 
to check if your filtered CWE solutions does not contain too much of
the ingredient you are extracting, for example APAP (paracetamol) - dissolve a standard dose
of plain paracetamol in the same amount of CWE solution you have in a different cup
and compare the clarity of the two.

does this make sense? you are comparing one glass of your CWE solution to a seperate glass
contained the same amount of liquid with a standard dose of whatever you are trying to extract.
 
^An interesting idea. I would use a standard dose of the exact same pills though as the binders could be contributing to the clarity.
 
Awesome guys! We just did our second extraction and it was crystal clear. The problem with the first was the water we used was way too warm and too much for the amount of pills we were using. How much APAP should be left with a successful extraction? This site has been extremely helpful. Harm Reduction FTW:)
 
I have 4 tabs that are effecvescent codeine 30 mg dose along with 500 freakin mg of freakin paracetamol...Why so much adulterant its crazy no ? liver danger and all...
This topic needs an how extract codeine from paracetamol effervescent Receipe for harm reduction as people like me who are ex heroine addict for 4 years and very intensive i find it hard to resist...But i changed town and i 've been not doing horse for 6 month in few days ! But i remember how i felt on codeine with only 120 mg and it was real warm...Is 120 mg ok ? i mean i take 40 mg methadone every day...and my dosage should be 60 mg but its like that...Do u think u guys that if you explain me how to do a good exctract of 120 mg codeine, i want to feel the little warm, without destroying my liver...more...Thanks:) PLEASE ?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Awesome guys! We just did our second extraction and it was crystal clear. The problem with the first was the water we used was way too warm and too much for the amount of pills we were using. How much APAP should be left with a successful extraction? This site has been extremely helpful. Harm Reduction FTW
Click to expand...
1g of APAP per 100ml of water used.

Re: effervescent tablets
A cold water extraction will not work on effervescent tablets. You would need to do a chemical extraction which, although not that complicated, requires enough effort in collecting and working with materials that you would be better off just finding another source for your drugs.
edit: here's a link from over in AusDD Codeine 30mg + 500mg APAP in Dissolvable form
 
after8mink said:
It's also worth avoiding tablets with povidone in if you can, as my research indicates it increases the solubility of paracetamol in water.
Click to expand...

dokomo said:
That's interesting about the povidone, I'm going to look in to that...
Click to expand...

povidone=PVP=polyvinylpyrrolidone

Actual figures given in this abstract:

It was shown that the aqueous solubility of acetaminophen in the presence of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) increased. The solubility at 25 degrees C increased from 14.3 m mL(-1) in the absence of PVP, to 19.7 mg m(-1) in the presence of 4% w/v PVP, and to 26.7mg mL(-1) in the presence of 8% w/v PVP.

Increasing the aqueous solubility of acetaminophen in the presence of polyvinylpyrrolidone and investigation of the mechanisms involved.

Garekani HA, Sadeghi F, Ghazi A.

School of Pharmacy, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.

An 87% increase of dissolved paracetamol with 8% w/v PVP! Anyone know how much povidone they put in these tablets? It seems worth trying to keep the volume of water down even lower if it's present.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top