• 💊 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 Innacuracies Lead to Misjudged Codeine Tolerance

amapola

amapola

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Mar 23, 2010
Messages
4,796
Location
The Great White North
Being the most opiate knowledgeable person of the circles I run in (very tame preppy circles), people often come to me for advice. Anyways one time a friend of a friend came into some T3's, no big deal here in Canada where we get T1's over the counter, and I was recommended to him as the contact to get the down-low from. Basically I outlined how to preform a cold water extraction (CWE), the physical principles behind it, and how it saves your liver. The dude went on his way and I have never seen him since.

Fast forward a few months though and the girl who introduced me to the guy I helped out tells me a very interesting story. Basically he had been really worried about his liver even doing the CWEs so he had been using minuscule amounts (like less than 30mls) of water, would never ever squeeze the filter, and if any whiteness got into the solution he would re-filter it till crystal clear. It is safe to say he was not getting much acetaminophen (which he realized) but he was also not getting a very good yield of codeine (which he didn't realize).

A T3 contains 30mg of Codeine and due to the small amounts he was getting through his wimpy extraction, he was using 15 of them and thought he had a high tolerance of about 450mg. One day he got his hands on pure codeine pills (not sure the brand) which were I believe 50mg each. Regardless he proceeded to pop 450mg worth, his usual dose, and within 15min was nodded in/out and puking like it was his job. Luckily friends were with him and managed to keep him from choking and monitored his breathing until he sobered up.

The point of this story is obvious.
 
it varies between people.. for me the most my liver will metabolise into the good stuff is about 550

It's true though.. CWEs don't preserve 100% of the dose! I've gotten pretty good at getting the most out of them as far as I'm aware.

-relating to the OP - dont forget the liquid that gets trapped in the filter if you use cloth/something similar! (and never use something like a bath towel designed to hold lots of water)
I always thought it was insignificant compared to the amount of liquid put through the cloth (I used ~100-150ml), but after a while I figured out that in order to get the most out of a CWE you want to wash water through it 3 times. the 3rd time probably only gains about 5-10mg more, but every bit counts!
remember not to use too much water in total though and keep it cold.. or you risk getting too much ibuprofen/apap/etc..

- using water that is too hot may (?) destroy some codeine (I dont have the actual stats on when codeine breaks down but I remember reading this somewhere.. you dont need it very hot to dissolve the pills anyway, so no point risking it.)

- the acid level inside your stomach has quite an effect... I take an antacid 10 mins before I take codeine now everytime and it has had a noticeable effect.

- things that inhibit cyp2d6.. be aware of them! if you're unknowingly taking/eating them daily then stop, codeine will have a stronger effect..
 
isent 450mg the max amount your liver can can break down at 1 time?
Click to expand...
Not really. Codeine (inactive) breaks down into 2 active metabolites: morphine (%10) and codeine-6-glucinoride (other). Both give you a buzz but morphine is stronger. Some people break down more into morphine and some people break down none into morphine. The 450mg ceiling dose is when people who can metabolize morphine, no longer can, and it all turns into C6G. Still has an effect just not as much.

I always thought it was insignificant compared to the amount of liquid put through the cloth (I used ~100-150ml), but after a while I figured out that in order to get the most out of a CWE you want to wash water through it 3 times. the 3rd time probably only gains about 5-10mg more, but every bit counts!
remember not to use too much water in total though and keep it cold.. or you risk getting too much ibuprofen/apap/etc..
Click to expand...
I'd be careful using 150ml plus 3 washes! With acetaminophen that means you would be getting like two and half grams plus.

the acid level inside your stomach has quite an effect... I take an antacid 10 mins before I take codeine now everytime and it has had a noticeable effect.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't you want to increase the acid in your stomach to increase adsorption?


Thanks all for the concern for the friend of a friend. If you'd like to make donation PM me :D
 
^ I meant 150ml water TOTAL.. and oops i meant 2 'after' washes - so 3 times thru the fabric total. more would probably be good but like you said - gotta keep the water volume down.

so usually it will be something like 90, 30, 30.


Personally I only use ibuprofen/codeine pills (Us australians are lucky.. I dunno if you can get them in the US? I know UK can too).. I notice that for some reason it tastes 100 times less nasty than paracetamol/codeine.


Apparently the acid causes some of the codeine phosphate to become something else either not effective or not as effective... I dont know where I originally heard that or if it's in any way correct, but I do know that antacids definitely, definitely! help. They also give me really stinky farts :lol:
 
You said 450mg was the usual dose. If the yield was 100%, it means he used 450/30 = 15 pills. His water to pill ratio was 5 pills per 10mL. You can congratulate him from my part, I don't know where he learned to do that but that's how it's done.

You are asking about the yield, CWE yields are low especially if you use the right amount of water, like he did. I never do CWE, I use recrystallization. It works a lot better with low volumes of water. His yield is between 40% and 70%.

The reason for that is:

yCodPh(s) + xAPAP(s) + H2O(l) --------> yCodPh(aq) + APAP(aq) + (1-x)APAP(s)

The equation describes amorph mixed compounds that are mixed with water. Because there is nothing binding the codeine to the APAP, the APAP dissolution rate doesn't affect codeine's dissolution rate so the codeine fully disolves.

However, in tylenol 3 pills, and any other pills, the binder attaches the codeine to the APAP content, so the APAP dissolution rate will affect codeine's dissolution rate to a certain degree. That degree depends on the powder surface area but mostly on the temperature of the solution. Temperature is a kinetic factor. In other words, if your APAP doesn't fully dissolve = your codeine doesn't fully dissolve.

binder[yCodPh(s)xAPAP(s)] + H2O(l) --------> zCodPh(aq) + APAP(aq) + (1-x)APAP(s) where z different from y

This observation is the basis of recrystallization theory saying that if we have an impure compound, the contaminant is removed by fully dissolving the whole in a solvent at high temperature. Once it is dissolved, the impurities are no longer trapped inside the lattice of the chemical, where water cannot reach, and are therefore in solution. A cooling process will precipitate pure crystals and leave the contaminant in solution.

In our case the contaminant is the codeine. It is trapped in a slightly soluble lattice that's held together by the builder in the pill and other solvent effects. A simple raise in temperature to 70 degrees celsius would increase the APAP solubility by a factor of 5 and therefore release much more codeine. The following cooling process will precipitate pure APAP crystals and the codeine will remain in solution.

A yield form 95%-99% can be obtained by repeating the heating-cooling process many times, such as 4 or 5 times. The reason for that is clean crystals will be created so in the next heating process more of the ''dirty'' crystals will dissolve, etc. It has an exponential decrease because after a while you will mostly have clean crystals and very few dirty ones.

Codeine is sensitive to high temperatures and can degrade. However that effect is negligible if it takes place in a short period of time such as a few minutes. A good way would be to run the hot water tap on the container until it's hot, shake it well and then put it in an ice bath. Cool temperatures also degrade codeine especially when it's in solution so it's important not to leave it in the fridge for days.

People underestimate the decent heat transfer coefficient of glass, 1.05 W/mK. If you run hot water on your glass container, after a few minutes the temperature of the solution inside will be close to the tap water temperature.
Also, waiting for the precipitate to settle and using a pipette to remove the liquid phase is cleaner and more efficient way.

Not many people understand this so if you don't that's ok, just know that the yield will be way below 100% with a CWE. I have erowid to back me up and not many people can prove erowid wrong.
 
Last edited:
Personally I only use ibuprofen/codeine pills (Us australians are lucky.. I dunno if you can get them in the US? I know UK can too).. I notice that for some reason it tastes 100 times less nasty than paracetamol/codeine.
Click to expand...
I'm in Canada actually and use aspirin based codeine for my own extractions.



@Ksa
I understand the process (a engineering degree under the belt not chemical but close enough). A quick question though, do you manage a straight recrystallization to codeine phosphate with products containing caffeine? If I want pure codeine base I've always done a quick cwe to remove most of the aspirin and filler then acidify and use a chloroform wash to leave behind the caffeine and then basify to collect the codeine?
 
I dissolve 200tabs (375mg ASA, 15mg Caf, 8mg CodeinePh) into 100ml of warm water with 5g of phosphoric acid. Then filter and wash the crystals twice more with 50ml (2.5g acid) each time. Reduce solution to 50ml in the dark through evaporation and gentle heating. Wash 3 times with chloroform to extract caffeine (under acidic conditions). Basify to high pH with NaOH and wash 3 times with 15ml chloroform to extract pure codeine base (leaving remaining ASA behind here as well).

With this I've gotten %80 return accounting for the different activity per mass of base vs salt. It's also pure enough to continue on with some fun hydrogen stuff though I won't mention any more here.

-------
When I just do a "quick" CWE without any acid though I understand what you are saying. Perhaps I'll try some dissolve recrystallize cycles next time or just use a large volume of water which can dissolve most of the ASA as well and then evaporate.
 
Cartesia said:
- using water that is too hot may (?) destroy some codeine (I dont have the actual stats on when codeine breaks down but I remember reading this somewhere.. you dont need it very hot to dissolve the pills anyway, so no point risking it.)
Click to expand...
yup, keep the temperature well below 40C, as somewhere around this point it begins to break down into inactive compounds.
I use room temperature water in amount twice exeeciding the height of crushed pills in normal glass, than filter it through tissue (I squeeze the tissue than)
 
@Ksa

You are correct that it does not totally dissolve, hence I can filter it and recover some of the rocks to wash again. I add the acid to acidify the solution so that caffeine will dissolve into chloroform but the codeine won't. I do it before the ASA is extracted by the filter because it helps the pills dissolve and I see no reason to not do it right off.

I don't have a source but I definitely didn't come up with it all by myself. It's a combination of things I've read online and from my own trial and error.
 
@Captain Heroin
I would guess this is a combination of a very weak opiate effect from pure codeine (prodrugs don't by definition have to be completely inactive) combined with a histamine rush that simulated a stronger opiate rush. Then just because the codeine skips primary pass through liver dose not mean it isn't still metabolized. Very interesting though thank you.

You do that once you've cold water extracted the codeine+caffeine, not before...once you have your clear liquid containing caffeine and codeine you do the acid thing and throw out the organic phase.
Click to expand...
Why wait to add the acid when it helps it to dissolve? The excess aspirin will be lost anyway in the final chloroform wash (although I don't think APAP would).
 
With regards to loss due to CWE,

I can give some rough estimates as over the past ~9 months I did not CWE at all and I had been CWEing for over 3 years..

Like I said before I've done alot of CWEing and taken all the steps I know of to reduce wastage.. I'm sure someone could improve on it further, I don't use scientific tools for CWEs, but for a standard home-CWE (or ghetto carpark/drivethru CWE).. there is significant loss.

Anyhow, I would say when I stopped CWEing and started just eating the pills I felt approximately 15% higher.. this was using ibuprofen + codeine pills. I find it hard to believe the ibuprofen had any impact on my feeling of codeine high because I was so familiar with codeine already, and did at one point take a quite high dose of plain ibuprofen to test.

So for a relatively casual CWE'er, I would treat taking pure codeine pills for the first time by taking HALF as much as I *thought* I were taking from a CWE. that's probably not gonna get you as high as usual, but should keep you safe too.
 
i've been confused with the amount of h2o to use also. i'm not too good with basic science at all, so when i was looking at the chart somewhere on this forum about how much h2o per pill i was confused. just for an example. let's say i have 10 perc 10s. how much h2o should i use?
 
mymindisgoo said:
i've been confused with the amount of h2o to use also. i'm not too good with basic science at all, so when i was looking at the chart somewhere on this forum about how much h2o per pill i was confused. just for an example. let's say i have 10 perc 10s. how much h2o should i use?
Click to expand...

20ml should work for 10 pills. you can do another run with 15 ml to get what remains or save it for your next cwe if you're doing them often.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top