Making my first post here, I've been following this story a long time across many threads and forums. Recently, I've finally had the time to dig into this and do some work of my own, which I'll share in this post.
First, there's been significant discussion and speculation on the potential chemistry responsible for the observed effects. My opinion is that this is premature and unproductive. As far as I know, the observation has been made by only one person so far, on ~12 occasions. So we have repeatability, but not yet reproducibility. Until more people either fail or succeed in replicating the results, all these theories are just distraction.
The adduct theory which is the namesake of this thread does not really hold up in my opinion, and I’ve failed to find any evidence of adduct formation with ergine or isoergine when mixed with this young barley powder in the conditions described (I can share details and TLC pictures later). For now though, I’d like to share my own experiences with this procedure, which I conducted in the last few months.
3/7/2026
Preparation:
Selected 5 seeds (470 mg), hand ground with a manual coffee grinder on finest setting. Powder added to a 20 mL glass vial. Added 30 mg DL-tartaric acid followed by 10 mL of Everclear 190. Vial closed and mixed for 15 minutes. Placed in fridge for 30 minutes to allow dispersed particles to sediment. Carefully decanted the supernatant into a large pyrex glass dish. Did not have time to allow full evaporation and did not have a hair dryer or heat gun available at the time, so left the dish overnight to dry. Following morning, used a razor blade to scrape off the dried residue from the dish (66 mg recovered). Appearance was exactly as described in Stahl’s book, a dark paste that looks like “slimy dark banana peel”. Dissolved 10 mg of DL-tartaric acid in 15 mL distilled water, then added this residue. The dried alcohol extract was insoluble in water (pH measured ~ 4), and slightly less dense, having the tendency to float on the surface after being manually broken up with a stirring rod. After an unsuccessful attempt to dissolve this in water, additional distilled water was added to bring the volume to 60 mL followed by addition of an entire 3 g packet of Aojiru young barley powder. Mixing was continued for 20 minutes, followed by ingestion.
Results:
Taste was pleasant, and small volume required only a few swallows. With no major plans, I just relaxed and sat around waiting for anything notable. At approximately 30 minutes after ingestion, the faintest feeling of nausea occurred to me; I wouldn’t describe this as nausea, but more like someone whispering “nausea” in your ear. Very mild feeling that lasted approximately 30 minutes. An hour after ingestion, no notable feelings out of the ordinary. The remainder of the day was unremarkable, with nothing else to report. Something I noticed in the following week or two was an uncharacteristically optimistic attitude; much less work anxiety, depressed moods, and temper (I noticed this in traffic when my usual expletives were replaced by a “that’s alright”). With no other changes in my daily routines, I was left wondering if this was somehow related to this experiment.
4/26/2026
Preparation:
Decided to follow the book examples more precisely, especially since I deviated in some ways in my first attempt. As in the book example, I weighed out 25 seeds (2.034 g), ground these with my manual coffee grinder on finest setting, and then used a mortar and pestle to further grind these down into the finest powder (unlike the book procedure, I did not use mortar and pestle in my first attempt). I recovered 2.030 g of powder from the coffee grinder, but only 1.812 g after mortar and pestle, due to losses in the grooves of the mortar. This fine powder was added to 30 mL of Everclear 190 together with 30 mg of DL-tartaric acid (pH was measured at 3.5 – 4). This was mixed for 20 minutes before placing in a fridge for an additional 20 minutes. After removal from the fridge, the supernatant was a slightly turbid golden yellow color, while the sediment was mud-like in appearance. The supernatant was decanted into the same large pyrex tray and left to evaporate with mild air flow. As in the book, I used a small heat gun to evaporate the remaining liquid after about 20 minutes, heating from a distance and never too long in one spot, until after 10 minutes the residue appeared dry. Using a razor blade, I scraped the residue from the tray, recovering 167 mg. The appearance was similar to before, perhaps a bit less slimy with a “milk chocolate brown” color. The residue was once again placed in a larger glass jar with 10 mg DL-tartaric acid and 60 mL of distilled water. The pH measured at ~ 4, and the residue remained insoluble as it was mixed. I used a stir rod to break up the residue, leaving some smaller pieces floating on the surface. After about 5 minutes of attempting to dissolve the residue, I added the 3 g of Aojiru young barley powder and mixed for another 20 minutes. After this mixing period, I could still see the alcohol extract residue floating on the surface. At this point, I contemplated aborting the experiment (basically I was thinking: “those insoluble resins are probably emetic”), but given the almost complete absence of effects in my first trial with about 25% the mass of seeds in this experiment, I decided to ingest it.
Results:
The timing here was very similar to my first attempt, with an initial feeling of nausea appearing approximately 30-45 minutes after ingestion. However, unlike my first attempt, this was not a whisper. This feeling continued to build into a strong nausea that quickly brought me to a decision point. Rather than suffering and waiting for the unpleasant inevitable purge, I decided to take some ondansetron which eliminated the nausea completely after about 30 minutes. Unlike my first attempt, I noticed that the remainder of the day (about 10 hours) I was in a really good mood and very talkative (I’m not generally this talkative). There was a slight fogginess to everything, not visually, but more like a mental fog. I still felt sharp, but almost like I had the buzz of a couple beers going on. Unlike a typical buzz though, this was unrelenting (in a nice way), in that it lasted the entire day and I could still feel it very slightly upon waking. Other than that though, this “trip” was pretty uneventful. None of the more interesting effects reported by Stahl. I can’t say for certain whether the really great mood was a result of what I ingested, or just gratefulness for avoiding a really bad time on the bathroom floor. Although I may be biasing myself now, I do feel that the last few days I’ve had that general good mood going again, less bothered by things that normally get to me. Overall, I believe the only real physical effects I experienced were the nausea (which seemed proportional to the number of seeds used), and the mental fog. The mood and after effects could be a placebo effect.
TLC Screening for Adduct
As mentioned earlier, I've done some preliminary work to look for any obvious chemical reactions in the mixtures. I found this specific paper to be quite useful in getting up to speed in extraction and TLC for this system:
Chao JM, Der Marderosian AH. “Ergoline alkaloidal constituents of Hawaiian baby wood rose, Argyreia nervosa (Burmf) Bojer”. J Pharm Sci. 1973 Apr 21;62(4):588-91. DOI: 10.1002/jps.2600620409
I compared the extraction pre- and post- mixture with the Aojiru barley powder, with the 20 minute mixing time. I started with the extract of 1.5 g of HBWR seeds and split this in half, mixing one half with 1.5 g of the Aojiru powder. The pH of both were ~3.5-4. I then ran TLC with a DCM:MeOH:TEA (90:9:1) eluent with a standard silica plate (I've used this system previously to look at ergine/isoergine). I spotted the plate with 4 lanes, alternating between the control (no Aojiru) and the mixture (with Aojiru). Using my airbrush, I sprayed each lane with IHR using a mask. The IHR I'm using was prepared by dissolving 1 g DMAB in 15 mL methanol, then slowly adding 5 mL of H3PO4 (85%). I chose this specific recipe as it's reportedly more shelf-stable and ~ 10x more sensitive than other Ehrlich recipes (~ 10 ng).
After spraying with IHR, the ergine spot appears quite quickly (~ 1-2 min), while the higher Rf isoergine took longer to develop (~5-10 minutes). After 30 minutes, some minor indoles appeared at low Rf, but nothing above isoergine appeared. Images are below for reference, and I apologize for the quality (TLC at home with cheap plates is not beautiful, and I'm still working on my technique).
TLC Images (Columns are A-B-A-B, where A = control, B = mixture)
Ambient lighting
Longwave (366 nm), note the chlorophyll fluorescence (I suspect my spotting picked up some finely dispersed barley particles, which were then readily dissolved in the eluent)
Shortwave (254 nm)
IHR Spray (strongest chevron shaped spot appear first, assumed as ergine based on literature, better technique needed in future)
One final comment: I’ve done my best to use identical suppliers for my key materials (DL-tartaric, HBWR seeds, Aojiru powder) as Stahl has indicated across several threads/forums and his book. If there is something amiss here, I'd have to imagine it's the seeds. I do have seeds from multiple other suppliers, and noticed that the supplier used by myself and Stahl (where you can get packs of 400) is not very fresh (at least my batch wasn't). When you do a sink/float test, about 25% were floaters, and germination rates were far worse, maybe 5% to be generous. I have to imagine this could impact the outcome, and I have so far treated all seeds equal, although as you work with them, you notice they are far from equal (even in their weights).
@tregar I'm very curious what your thoughts on the seeds are, and if you've tried seeds of different suppliers.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Maybe it will be me if I get bored enough.