Opioids Does the chromic CWE for codeine method work with paracetmol + codeine/caffeine OTC?

[pbuilder]

As seen on this erowid link, a fellow named chromic provides a procedure that removes both the NSAID drug(aspirin) from the codeine tablet, as well as the third additive, caffeine (approximately 90% according to chromatic is removed), which is added to prevent abuse, in order to provide a relatively pure, final codeine solution. Would this same procedure work for 8mg codeine, 15mg caffeine, 325mg paracetamol tablets? Also, I don't really understand which part of this particular procedure actually eliminated the caffeine from the AC&C procedure, never minding my question on whether or not it would work on a tylenol based codeine OTC tablet.

Erowid link :

http://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/codeine.chromic.html

 

[sekio]

He's concentrating the caffeine out of his raw CWE by boiling it down, cooling, & filtering ppt'd caffeine.

Roughly reworded:

1. Extract your pills 3x with hot water. Chromic runs 200 x 8mg codeines. These are "222"s with aspirin or Tylenol 1 with codeine if they're acetaminophen based. Add hot water, stir for a while, cool it, and then seperate off the water (Chromic pours it off the top, you could also filter it. Chromic repeats this extraction 3 times on his pill mush, giving a total of 750 ml of "good stuff" containing caffeine and codeine.

2. Boil the "good stuff" down to precipitate impurities present. Codeine phosphate is supposedly very soluble in cold & hot water - caffeine is not so soluble in cold water as it is hot. So he boils it down almost all the way to only 150ml of liquid, cools it, and filters off caffeine and other impurities. Then he repeats the boiling, cooking it down to 50ml (6.7% of the original volume) and cooling and filtering.

"After this treatment, less than 15% of the original amount of caffeine will remain in the solution.".

I'm not sure about boiling it down to a powder but it's something you could in theory do.

This would likely work just as well with APAP based pills. Just make sure to scale it appropriately for the number of pills you're using.

 

[pbuilder]

He's concentrating the caffeine out of his raw CWE by boiling it down, cooling, & filtering ppt'd caffeine.

Roughly reworded:

1. Extract your pills 3x with hot water. Chromic runs 200 x 8mg codeines. These are "222"s with aspirin or Tylenol 1 with codeine if they're acetaminophen based. Add hot water, stir for a while, cool it, and then seperate off the water (Chromic pours it off the top, you could also filter it. Chromic repeats this extraction 3 times on his pill mush, giving a total of 750 ml of "good stuff" containing caffeine and codeine.

2. Boil the "good stuff" down to precipitate impurities present. Codeine phosphate is supposedly very soluble in cold & hot water - caffeine is not so soluble in cold water as it is hot. So he boils it down almost all the way to only 150ml of liquid, cools it, and filters off caffeine and other impurities. Then he repeats the boiling, cooking it down to 50ml (6.7% of the original volume) and cooling and filtering.

"After this treatment, less than 15% of the original amount of caffeine will remain in the solution.".

I'm not sure about boiling it down to a powder but it's something you could in theory do.

This would likely work just as well with APAP based pills. Just make sure to scale it appropriately for the number of pills you're using.

Ahh okay, that makes sense. Do you know the real decomposing temperature for codeine, I'm not certain but I believe I've heard that it breaking down at 80 degrees Celsius is actually a myth, and codeine can be boiled lightly without losing much potency.

EDIT: Found this on an old archived BL thread... implying codeine will not break down from simply boiling lightly..

Generally when a substance decomposes readily upon heating before melting or boiling literature sources will replace the m.p. or b.p. with "decomposes upon heating to blah blah temperature" or something like that. The presence of a value for m.p. or b.p. generally indicates that the substances doesn't appreciably decompose before reaching that temperature/phase transition.
Here's the information I've found from Merck 11 Ed.:

Morphine:
dec 254, also a metastable phase, mp 197. High melting form sublimes at 190-200 (0.2 mm pressure at 2 mm distance).
Monohydrate: dec 254-256 with rapid heating.

Morphine HCl:
mp about 200 (dec).

Morphine Sulfate:
mp about 250 with decompn when anhydr.

Codeine:
m.p. 154-156 (after drying at 80).
Hydrobromide, dihydrate, crystals. Anhydr, mp 190-192.
Hydrochloride, mp at about 280 with some decomposition.

Thebaine:
sublimation at 170-180 under atmospheric pressure and a 1 mm distance. mp 193 (rapid heating).

Papaverine:
Sublimes at 135-140 at 11 mm pressure and 2 mm distance.
Hydrochloride:
mp 220 - 225.

Noscapine:
mp 176. Sublimes at 150-160 under 11 mm pressure at 2 mm distance.
Salts formed with acids are dextrorotatory and unstable in water.

None of the above information seems to indicate that these alkaloids, except for maybe noscapine, which I don't really care about, are unstable in boiling water. So is all this information about decomposition in boiling water that I hear just a bunch of junkie myths?

 

[sekio]

All the morphine alkaloids should be fairly stable in boiling water for moderate periods of time. Just try not to boil them to total dryness and don't cook it all day.

 

[pbuilder]

Since codeine is very soluble in cold water, 1g in only .7ml of water at 21 degrees celcius, with solubility increasing as the temperature of the water drops, would it be possible to remove the apap and caffeine by simply using minimal amounts of cold water per pill (such as say, .5ml) so that we wind up with a milky sludge solution, which can then be pressed by force through a filter. This in theory should remove the cold water, which should bring a majority of the codeine with it, whilst leaving behind the APAP and caffeine.

I have been trying to find the solubility of caffeine in chilled water for the past few minutes, but all I can find is it's solubility in higher temperatures and room temperature which are as follows:

2.17 g/100 mL (25 °C)
18.0 g/100 mL (80 °C)
67.0 g/100 mL (100 °C)

As you can see, it becomes less soluble as the temperature of the water decreases, so it would be interesting to know if perhaps at 5°C it only dissolved 650mg/100ml (a random guess), which would mean if I only used .5ml per pill, and did an extraction in say 30 pills (15ml total water used), which would contain 240mg codeine and 450mg caffeine, that only .15x650mg = 97.5mg's of caffeine could get through, so I'd wind up with 240mg's of codeine, and just under 100mg's of caffeine which wouldn't take away from the sedation of the codeine much.

But like I said, I can't find any information regarding caffeine's solubility in cold water.

Maybe even less water could be used per pill, as really only enough to just get a thick sludge is required. Their is no real need for a liquid if you press the solution with force through a filter. The solution still comes out clear in my experience, and with little water lost.

Edit: Upon testing, approximately .7ml per pill is needed to get the whole thing into a wet paste, and this needs to be performed on a flat, clean surface so that you can then just quickly scrape the paste into a coffer filter or two with a credit card or other object.