Harm Reduction Extracting of Codeine from Acetaminophen aka Paracetamol aka APAP, Ibuprofen aka IBP, Acetylsalicylic acid aka ASA aka Aspirin - The Sciencey view

[empeebee]

Hi all,

Abstract
There are a truck-load of methods and process on the 'net about performing Cold Water Extraction (CWE) to get codeine out of Over-The-Counter (OTC) pills as bought from the local pharmacy/chemist. Many methods are slightly different causing the expected questions. "How much water should I use per pill?", "Should I use boiling water/luke-warm water/tap water/chilled water to dissolve the pills ?", "Can I use a t-shirt/muslin cloth/chamois/coffee filter/a sock/my underpants as a filter", "How clear should the final product be - is it OK if it is a little cloudy?" etc. etc.

The point of this post is to apply a little science to CWE. I would like to try and keep this as simple as possible and not use a whole bunch of sciencey words so, for the chemistry pro's reading this, I may be over-simplifying in some/many cases (please forgive me).

Also, in the interests of harm reduction, hopefully bringing an end to the ongoing debate of whose method is better, reducing the flame-wars and preventing more people from ruining their socks, t-shirts and boxer shorts, I thought there might be one or two folk who like to wrap a little science around the theories and debates.

This post IS NOT going to tell you how you should perform a CWE, so if you're looking for yet another method please move on, or go straight to the academic study links at the end of this post, otherwise nothing to see here.

The below contains a bit of background to the principles behind a CWE as well as a harm reduction bit. Feel free to ignore that part and scroll straight on down to the sciencey bit.

**Disclaimer - I am neither a medical professional, chemist, pharmacist nor do I work in a lab. Just your average Joe who has spent quite a while researching this topic and would like to pass on what I have learnt**

TL;DR/WR?

• Use as little water as possible. 200 mL is too much, 100 mL per filtration is plenty, 50 mL is better & 30 mL is even better (especially for APAP)
• Keep your water as cold as possible. Putting your tap water in a fridge set at 41°F (5°C) for 30 minutes will cool it down plenty. 100 mL water at 100°C cools to 29°C in 1 hour in an ambient temperature of 23°C (http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMAT6680Fa2014/Gieseking/Exploration 12/Newton's Law of Cooling.htm)
• Use a good filter (your t-shirt is not a good filter...)

Background Bit
Codeine is an opiate. Take enough of the stuff and you may feel all chilled out, relaxed, perhaps a little euphoric and have a lovely nod but, unless you have been prescribed unblended codeine pills by your doctor or getting them from your source, you may be buying your codeine mixed in with APAP, ASA or IBP from your local chemist/pharmacy. There are numerous methods, postulations & theories on the processes of extracting codeine from OTC pain relievers using CWE. This very forum has megathreads on the methods used by various individuals with reports of varying success and final yields, as does Erowid, PsychonautWiki, and many others (I have even seen a method on Quora...)

OK, the basic principles of a codeine CWE are that you drop a bunch of pills in a glass of water. You could leave them to dissolve, you could stir or shake of them until dissolved (not a great idea unless you are monitoring the rise in temperature caused by the stirring or shaking, but it does speed up the process) or you could crush them up and then dissolve the powder (the finer the powder the better apparently). Filter the mix and drink the filtered fluid. Do not eat the gunk (the APAP/IBP/ASA, fillers, binders, etc.) left in the filter !

The reason a CWE is suggested to be safer is that the amount of APAP/IBP/ASA you would otherwise take alongside your daily fix of codeine could be highly toxic in significant quantities resulting in either immediate or long-term poisoning leading to major internal organ issues. You can do your own research on the toxic effects of APAP, ASA & IBP.

The Harm Reduction Bit
The current thinking is that the maximum "safe" daily dose over 24 hours of:-
APAP is 4 grams (4,000mg) - https://www.medscape.com/answers/82...sages-of-acetaminophen-in-adults-and-children
ASA is 4 grams (4,000mg) - https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/aspirin.html
IBP is 2.4 grams (2,400mg) - https://www.fda.gov/media/112979/download
Codeine is 360 mg in 24 hours - https://www.drugs.com/dosage/codeine.html

So, if you're planning on getting your codeine fix where the the total amount of APAP/IBP/ASA taken with the codeine over a 24 hour period is less that the "safe" doses above, you don't really need to do a CWE (though it is still safer than taking the pills unextracted).

I do not intend to be a scare-monger or try and frighten you away from codeine or CWE but you gotta know what could happen so that the rewards justify the risk. You're gonna do what you're gonna do, at least understand the possible consequences...

Codeine is a central nervous system (CNS) depressant. Nervous system depression has the affect that your breathing rate slows down and that your breaths become shallower. Carbon dioxide builds up in your blood, known as hypercapnia or hypercarbia, because not enough oxygen is processed by your lungs and not enough carbon dioxide is being removed. Low levels of oxygen in blood (hypoxemia) and abnormally low oxygen content in tissues/organs (hypoxia) also happens. This starts getting serious as it could lead to your heart starting to beat erratically (arrythmia) where your heart doesn't beat to a regular rhythm possibly ending in a full blown heart attack. Unless you receive urgent medical attention, result = Dead.

Also, without enough oxygen and too much carbon dioxide going into your brain you may fall into a coma or become unconscious. Should this happen without you getting urgent medical attention while still not being able to breathe properly, there is a high chance that you may suffer irreversible, permanent brain damage leaving you a drooling, wheel-chair bound invalid living in a residential nursing home for the rest of your life. In severe cases, too much codeine, or even a modest amount of codeine mixed with other CNS substances could lead to you to completely stop breathing/heart attack/brain death. Result = Dead.

There are less serious side effects such as, but not limited to, nausea, vomiting, being itchy as all hell, headaches or migraines, being unable to have a piss, constipation, diarrhea and all those lovely things that come with substance abuse but there are counter-measures to make these lesser side-effects not quite so bad (do your own research).

So, you should not take any other drugs that affect the central nervous system (alcohol is a drug that affects the CNS as are many OTC anti-histamines & sleeping pills) with your codeine extract unless you have a someone with you, sometimes called a trip sitter, armed with Naloxone and who knows how to use it. Basically if the patient information leaflet contains the word 'drowsy' do not mix it with codeine. You may have a good idea of what your doing but even users with years of experience get caught out occasionally (have a scroll through some of the OD threads).

The Sciencey Bit
Why you should use a good filter. The smaller the microns (μm) -i.e. the pore size- of the filter the more particles it can hold back, i.e. a 5 μm filter will filter out more of the unwanted material than a 10 μm filter but may also filter out more of the desired product. A coffee filter is roughly 10-20 μm. Lab grade filters go down to fractions of a micron. Your Nike socks are not a good filter, neither are your Calvin Klein underpants.

• APAP particles range from 150 μm to 25 μm (https://echa.europa.eu/registration-dossier/-/registered-dossier/12532/4/6)*
• ASA particles range from 300 μm to 10 μm with most being ~100 μm to 200 μm (https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=11651)*
• IBP particles range from 100 μm to 1 μm averaging 28 μm to 50 μm (https://www.ijpsonline.com/articles...l-tablets-using-biopharmaceutical-classi.html)*
• Codeine Phosphate not found except for a BP powder where "not less than 90% w/w passes 250 micron, not less than 50% w/w passes 106 micron, not greater than 70% w/w passes 38 micron" (https://www.amphray.com/uploads/product/specs/27_specs.pdf). w/w means weight for weight or weight by weight. So 90%+ will go through a 250 μm filter, 50%+ will go through a 160 μm filter, 70% or less will go through a 38 μm filter. This seems contradictory to the academic studies linked at the end of the post but this article does not refer to the codeine being dissolved in liquid.

* Be grateful if someone more intelligent than me could verify that I interpreted these analyses correctly.

Why does a CWE work? Codeine dissolves more easily in water than APAP, ASA or IBP, in other words it is more 'soluble'. This means that with a given number of pills dissolved in a given amount of water, more codeine will dissolve than the other gunk the codeine has been bound with.

Acetaminophen aka Paracetamol aka APAP	Acetylsalicylic acid a.k.a ASA a.k.a Aspirin	Ibuprofen aka IBP	Codeine (Phosphate unless otherwise specified)
1.4g/100ml at 20 °C: 1 to 5 mg/mL at 22 °C 14 mg/mL at 25 °C https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Acetaminophen#section=Solubility	10 mg/mL at 37 °C https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/a5376?lang=en&region=GB	0.021 mg/mL (20 °C) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibuprofen	1 in 120 of water (water temperature not given) http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/pharm/codeine.htm
14.7 mg/ml-1 at 20°C 14.3 mg/ml-1 at 25°C 23.7 mg/ml-1 at 37°C https://www.ukessays.com/essays/bio...cal-and-chemical-properties-biology-essay.php	less than 1 mg/mL at 73° F (22.7 °C) https://cameochemicals.noaa.gov/chemical/19712	0.06 mg/mL (water temperature not given) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16109624	≥ 100 mg/mL at 16° C https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Codeine phosphate#section=Physical-Description
11.3 mg/mL at 20 °C 13.8 mg/mL at 25 °C 20 mg/mL at 37 °C 52 mg/mL at 100 °C https://www.japha.org/article/S0003-0465(16)34428-7/pdf	1 g sol in: 300 mL water at 25 °C, 100 mL water at 37 °C https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/source/hsdb/652	21 mg/l @ 25 °C https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Ibuprofen	< 1 mg/mL at 70° F (21° C) https://cameochemicals.noaa.gov/chemical/20046
20.3 mg/mL (water temperature not given) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16109624	0.25g/100ml at 15°C http://www.ilo.org/dyn/icsc/showcard.display?p_version=2&p_card_id=0822	<1 mg/ml (water temperature not given) https://zenodo.org/record/845719/files/24.Ibuprofen Solubility Paper.pdf	0.577 mg/mL (predicted by ALOGPS) (water temperature not given) https://www.drugbank.ca/drugs/DB00318
7.21 mg/g (0 °C) 8.21 mg/g (5 °C) 9.44 mg/g (10 °C) 10.97 mg/g (15 °C) 12.78 mg/g (20 °C) ~14 mg/ml (20 °C) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol	(Salicylic acid) 1.24 g/L (0 °C) 2.48 g/L (25 °C) 4.14 g/L (40 °C) 17.41 g/L (75 °C) 77.79 g/L (100 °C) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicylic_acid	21 mg/ L at 25C https://www.jpharmsci.org/article/S0022-3549(17)30435-5/pdf	codeine phosphate 1 g/2.5 mL codeine sulfate 1 g/30 mL (water temperature not given) https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/590261_4
			1g in 4 ml (water temperature not given) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0099542808606401

So, four things to note. 1) The scientific community seem to borrow each other's findings. 2) The cooler the water the less gunk dissolves - that's why it is called COLD Water Extraction. 3) Halving the temperature of the liquid does not halve the amount that dissolves. 4) The more water you use per filtration the more gunk will dissolve.
It is a guess that the above results differ from each other due to differing testing methods.

You can do your own math to figure out how much APAP/ASA/IBP will be in your final product along with the desired amount of codeine. Please try stay below the maximum "safe" daily recommended dose unless you enjoy being pumped full of activated charcoal and having breathing tubes pushed down your throat.

You may then ask "OK, this is great but have these methods and science actually been tested properly? Like in a lab with Gas chromatography n beakers n vials n pipettes n Bunsen burners n stuff ?". Glad you asked because yes they have, although the yields did not exactly match what would be expected from the above solubility table. The important part of the below-linked study:

"LC–MS/MS showed recoveries of the total amounts of codeine in tampering products of 81–84% from Product 1 (codeine/acetylsalicylic acid); 61–67% from Product 2 (codeine/ibuprofen); and 42–71% from Product 3 (codeine/paracetamol). Recoveries of non-opioid analgesics ranged between: 57–73% acetylsalicylic acid; 5.5–8.5% ibuprofen, and 5.0–9.2% paracetamol". LC-MS means Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry.

I recommend you read, and I mean actually read the whole thing, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5130903/, also available as a PDF https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/53205356/art_3A10.1007_2Fs40122_016_0053_2.pdf. Agree this was a once-off test though it does refer to another test (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12908809/) but I cannot access the referred report.

Thanks for reading.

./empeebee

P.S. Comments welcome, please be nice though, I said above that I am not a scientist, chemist or pharmacist
P.P.S. More than happy to edit this post if I have misinterpreted any of the linked articles
P.P.P.S. Please add any academic studies you have come across or you have conducted using the scientific method (weighing how much gunk you have left in your filter against a starting quantity is not considered a "scientific method")
P.P.P.P.S. Please take this post as a work-in-progress and open to correction

 

[negrogesic]

Wow that was quite a write up! Thanks for sharing...

(You must use alot of codeine.)

I once did a cold water extraction of caffeinated/apap compounded codeine pills on a plane from Australia to the US. I had run out of methadone and those were the only codeine pills i could find in the airport.

I kept asking the flight attendant for more coffee filters, and was openly doing the extraction on my tray table. People were looking at me but no one said anything as i was filtering the yellow sludge, hoping the cold water wasnt bringing too much caffeine into the solution. It wasn't enough codeine in the end but i was desperate. I later walked to the back of the plane and found the emergency medical oxygen tank and layed down and tried to relax. The plane was half empty so you could sit anywhere, which was nice as it's one of the longest flights in the world.

 

[empeebee]

Yeah, I detest travelling too. Like being where I am, like being where I'm going to, all the pieces in between are a p.i.t.a.

Don't do that much codeine. Strictly only as needed, one has responsibilities. But I like to know that the OTC stuff is pharma grade. False sense of security perhaps...

Perhaps best to get stuff without the caffeine if it is available where you are. Caffeine OD not good.

./empeebee

 

[copium7777]

What do u use to measure the temp. Like what kind of thermometer ? Meat thermometer? Regular people thermoteter?

 

[copium7777]

CWEs probably don't filter out caffeine right ? I am fine with up to 600 mg caffeine but would have to reduce my coffee consumption ...

 

[negrogesic]

CWEs probably don't filter out caffeine right ? I am fine with up to 600 mg caffeine but would have to reduce my coffee consumption ...

Caffeine is about 5 times less soluble in cold water than codeine (2g per 100ml versus 10g per 100ml for codeine), and i used rather cold water, so i shouldnt have gotten much caffeine in it.

 

[sekio]

Any sort of thermometer is fine.

CWE does not remove caffeine either. There is no way to remove the caffeine with typical household chemicals, but consider these 3 ideas:
It was my understanding that caffeine is harder to remove than you'd think. The precipitate from cooling the CWE was effectively pure acetaminophen which meant all the caffeine remained in solution, and I always saw humongous amounts of caffeine present.

1. If you take your mixture of codeine phosphate and caffeine in water and adjust it to strong alkaline pH, repeated extractions with small portions of diethyl ether will slowly but surely isolate the freebase codeine. There is a small amount of caffeine carried over but I had typical results of 10-20% caffeine, maximum, so was not worth worrying over.

2. Taking the same mixture you started with in step 1, except this time do not touch the pH (or adjust to slightly acid) and use dihcloromethane or chloroform to extract the caffeine from the solution, leaving the codeine phosphate in the water. However, DCM/chloroform remain dissolved in the water phase, meaning it would be unsafe to consume and disgusting in taste. I suspect you could remedy this by gradually bringing the mixture to a boil at 100C - well above the point DCM would have been removed as a volatile gas.

3. (untested) Starting with the same mixture as usual, remove all the water by some means (lyophilize?) and then use acetone to dissolve the caffeine, leaving pure codeine phosphate as residue.

 

[negrogesic]

Well the pills were 325mg/8mg/15mg (apap, codeine, caffeine). I used as little water as possible, and made sure it was ice cold. I think it was 72 pills total, and the water was ice cold, so if it had been say 50ml of water, id be looking at likely the full 576mg codeine (in perfect conditions) and likely something like 400-600mg max of caffeine given the 40°F water temperature (50ml room temp water could hold a gram of caffeine in theory).

Don't recall even feeling the caffeine much, and the codeine did little because what use is half a gram of codeine for someone on methadone anyhow (i was desperate).

 

[copium7777]

Any sort of thermometer is fine.

CWE does not remove caffeine either. There is no way to remove the caffeine with typical household chemicals, but consider these 3 ideas:
It was my understanding that caffeine is harder to remove than you'd think. The precipitate from cooling the CWE was effectively pure acetaminophen which meant all the caffeine remained in solution, and I always saw humongous amounts of caffeine present.

1. If you take your mixture of codeine phosphate and caffeine in water and adjust it to strong alkaline pH, repeated extractions with small portions of diethyl ether will slowly but surely isolate the freebase codeine. There is a small amount of caffeine carried over but I had typical results of 10-20% caffeine, maximum, so was not worth worrying over.

2. Taking the same mixture you started with in step 1, except this time do not touch the pH (or adjust to slightly acid) and use dihcloromethane or chloroform to extract the caffeine from the solution, leaving the codeine phosphate in the water. However, DCM/chloroform remain dissolved in the water phase, meaning it would be unsafe to consume and disgusting in taste. I suspect you could remedy this by gradually bringing the mixture to a boil at 100C - well above the point DCM would have been removed as a volatile gas.

3. (untested) Starting with the same mixture as usual, remove all the water by some means (lyophilize?) and then use acetone to dissolve the caffeine, leaving pure codeine phosphate as residue.

It was sort of an idle question bc when I look at studies on apap extraction it seems like I have to account for a worst case scenario of 60 percent being left in, and that allows for way less pills, the caffeine won't even be an issue at that point

 

[copium7777]

The current thinking is that the maximum "safe" daily dose over 24 hours of:-
APAP is 4 grams (4,000mg) - https://www.medscape.com/answers/82...sages-of-acetaminophen-in-adults-and-children
ASA is 4 grams (4,000mg) - https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/aspirin.html
IBP is 2.4 grams (2,400mg) - https://www.fda.gov/media/112979/download
Codeine is 360 mg in 24 hours - https://www.drugs.com/dosage/codeine.html

Okay but what's the safe dosage for one dose of apap, not in 24hours? Is it 1 g? Is that overly cautious for those who don't have liver disease. Could I push it to 1.5 g and be well out of ld50 territory ?

5.0–9.2% paracetamol".

These numbers are great but way different than what I've seen from the study I posted in my other thread. In that study 60 percent of the apap was left, which if you consider how much of the opiate is bound to be lost, is pretty bad.

 

[copium7777]

This study shows 60 percent left of apap. Would love to see a review of more than a couple studies but don't know if it exists https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29455092/

 

[sekio]

Okay but what's the safe dosage for one dose of apap, not in 24hours?

The problem with APAP is that ir's hard to say for certain. It only becomes toxic after its metabolism depletes a cofactor called glutathione, which is linked onto the APAP molecule to simultaneously deactivate it, avoiding formation of the reactive toxic species NAPQI, and forming a very water soluble adduct that you can excrete easily. And everyone has different amounts of glutathione availiable, with supply varying due to factors like genetics, age, stress, fitness level, body wreight, diet/nutrition, etc.

I remember reading that most young, healthy people could generally be expected to survive 10 grams of APAP in a single bolus. There will obviously be exceptions, I'm sure some could tolerate more, some will tolerate less. I regard this as the very extreme top limit though, which is to say if you are a young, healthy, fit person below ~40 years of age, and with no other APAP being present.

Because it's more prudent to err on the side of caution, the much more conservative figure is about 4 or 5 grams in a dose. This is the dose at which pretty much everyone could survive, e,g, as 4 doses of 1000mg APAP, every 6-8 hours.

It makes sense to me that efforts should be made to try to reduce the amount of APAP taken, in general. One common problem source is the prevalence of combination medications containing acetaminophen plus something else. Say you have he flu, you take a Tylenol Extra Strength, a generic Cold and Flu remedy, a Robaxacet muscle relaxant, and a Percocet... that's 500 + 500 + 325 + 325 mg APAP, even though you "only took one Tylenol".

 

[copium7777]

Thanks, @sekio. So I suppose being nervous about the 3000 mg apap that would be the max (assuming the cwe doesn't even work at all, and there's lots of gunk filtered out) is dumb?

Context, I have quite a few chronic illnesses but they largely don't have to do with my liver. I've had elevated bilirubin show up in labs sometimes, but no other liver enzymes off , and only slightly elevated. I rarely ever use acetaminophen (when getting otc painkillers I opt for aspirin) , I haven't had a single drink of alcohol for over two years, and I am young, if unhealthy. (but my unhealthiness is more due to spinal/neurological issues, probably not liver related ).

I could get a dose of 80 mg codeine with 3000 mg apap from these pills, without cweing them. I guess that would be safe for me to do once or twice? I just wish there was more solid knowledge around methodology in these studies bc some say cwe gets most of the apap and some say it gets less than half. That's a huge range.
I guess it's not a high priority of study for obvious reasons.

Do you think if you dried the powder that you filter out after doing a CWE and weighed it, it could give a rough estimate of how much apap you got ? Of course pills have fillers but with these ones that have lots of apap I don't think most of the size is fillers

Since these are all I have now id like to do some kinda study to figure out how effective CWEs are.

Anyway for tonight, bottoms up. Filtered twice, used small amount of water and very cold, slightly cloudy but got a LOT of gunk out. I'm guessing my liver will be absolutely fine but also that all of the opiates won't get through and I'll have a very underwhelming high...

 

[copium7777]

Also my doctor used to prescribed intranasal glutathione. I wonder if any form of glutathione would be protective against liver damage from apap. I've read one study showing coffee enemas increase liver glutathione

 

[sekio]

I could get a dose of 80 mg codeine with 3000 mg apap from these pills, without cweing them. I guess that would be safe for me to do once or twice?

It probably won't kill you, but all that extra APAP is strictly not needed. It might even cause some mild upset stomach.

. I wonder if any form of glutathione would be protective against liver damage from apap.

The generally used antidote for APAP toxicity is the glutathione precursor N-acetylcysteine. Given alongside acetaminophen it will prevent liver toxicity from developing, acting as a supply for extra glutathione.

The downside is that apparently it tastes amazingly rank, has a fairly low oral BA necessitating big doses, and can be hard to keep down given orally as ir can cause nausea, so usually is given via IV drip. It has its own side effects but they are uniformly much better than experiencing the agony of liver failure.

Since these are all I have now id like to do some kinda study to figure out how effective CWEs are.

When i was doing codeine extraction it was typical to recover 80% or more of the codeine from the initial pills. However, my CWE was done initially with boiling water to dissolve as much of everything as possible. Additionally the 80% figure is for isolated codeine freebase, not some guesswork about what's in solution.

 

[copium7777]

probably won't kill you, but all that extra APAP is strictly not needed. It might even cause some mild upset stomach.

What I meant really was I would cwe this based on 3000 mg as a worst case scenario. I think I got over 70 percent of apap out but just based on the variance in studies , I'd like to cwe a dose that probably wouldn't kill me if the cwe fails.

 

[copium7777]

When i was doing codeine extraction it was typical to recover 80% or more of the codeine from the initial pills. However, my CWE was done initially with boiling water to dissolve as much of everything as possible. Additionally the 80% figure is for isolated codeine freebase, not some guesswork about what's in solution.

If the 60 percent of apap remaining numbers from that one study are true, it would be hard to see it as worthwhile to only get 80 percent of the codeine. And I don't think my caregiver, who did this cwe, used boiling water, there are many different instructions

 

[copium7777]

generally used antidote for APAP toxicity is the glutathione precursor N-acetylcysteine. Given alongside acetaminophen it will prevent liver toxicity from developing, acting as a supply for extra glutathione.

The downside is that apparently it tastes amazingly rank, has a fairly low oral BA necessitating big doses, and can be hard to keep down given orally as ir can cause nausea, so usually is given via IV drip. It has its own side effects but they are uniformly much better than experiencing the agony of liver failure.

Yeah I remember being excited initially it could help protect the liver and then reading up on them basically using doses 100 x higher than the average pill from whole foods supplements aisle, in some kind of oral sludge that seemed disgusting. Of course a disgusting taste has never put me off doing something for my health or enjoyment before but I'm guessing to get to the doses that they use in hospital in apap overdoses , you'd have to take an amount of nac pills that would be harmful just with the fillers alone ... I wonder if tberes NAC powder from any bulk suppliers that are fairly well vetted

 

[empeebee]

@debored13, thanks for the link above referring to a 60% yield of APAP? There are many influencing factors that could have caused such a large APAP yield. As per my initial post, water temperature is a factor, so is the amount of stirring/shaking. But there are also other contributors such as the PH of the water. I would like to read the full study to see what process was used to get the results referred to in the article. If you (or anybody else) has access to the full study on https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29455092/ please let me know.

The maximum 'safe' dose for APAP over 24 hours is 4000mg. So you would/should be OK with 1 x 4000mg dose in 24 hours, 2 x 2000mg doses in 24 hours, 4 x 1000mg doses in 24 hours etc.

Any kind of thermometer would be fine.

I am fine with up to 600 mg caffeine but would have to reduce my coffee consumption ..

600mg of caffeine wouldn't/shouldn't hurt you. I can't find any LD50 values for humans, only rats in which "LD50 Males and Females: 367.7 mg/kg [of body weight]"- https://echa.europa.eu/registration-dossier/-/registered-dossier/10085/7/3/1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6011436/ refers to a woman who had ingested 5000mg of anhydrous caffeine anhydrous caffeine (89 mg/kg of body weight) and was OK enough to take herself to ER, but everybody is different.

@sekio

most young, healthy people could generally be expected to survive 10 grams of APAP in a single bolus

could you supply a link to that study please? Completely agreeing that different people are affected differently...
Medscape refers to 7.5g-10g (https://www.medscape.com/answers/820200-27181/what-are-minimum-toxic-doses-of-acetaminophen)
patient.info refers to "Less than 150 mg/kg [of body weight] - unlikely. More than 250 mg/kg - likely. More than 12 g total - potentially fatal" (https://patient.info/doctor/paracetamol-poisoning)

my CWE was done initially with boiling water to dissolve as much of everything as possible

What method did you use to recrystallize the APAP? I'm assuming you placed your solution in fridge or freezer for a while but assumption is the mother of all fu**ups

do you have a link to the article this table comes from please? Are these vales in mg? If so then the value for caffeine ties in with "Solubility in water, g/100ml: 2.17" from http://www.inchem.org/documents/icsc/icsc/eics0405.htm

./empeebee

 

[copium7777]

Okay guys I'm feeling pretty good off the 80 mgs cwed. Not insane euphoria but I definitely got rid of all my pain and feel nice. Its way smaller than my usual dose of oxy equivalent so I think my tolerance reduction methods have been helping and /or there's less cross tolerance btwn different opioids than I thought. This could end up being practical but I would like to measure the powder next time I do this and also take agmatine to potentiate , and get my liver enzymes tested next week.