From Heroin HCl to it's freebase form

[Burn it up]

I have some Heroin HCl I wish to convert into its freebase form. The reason for this is that I have nasal problems which would worsen if I snorted the HCL, and I do not wish to inject it as I have never used this ROA and don't plan to for the time being. I would like to convert the H into the freebase form as to be able to vaporize it.

I believe this does not break Bluelight's rules, as it is not technically synthesis discussion (just a change from salt to freebase) and the purpose of this is nothing but harm reduction: I need to ingest this drug by vaporizing it, as some problems make it impossible to snort and I do not feel comfortable with other ROAs.

I would be very glad if someone could point me out in the correct direction for doing this. Should it by done by dissolving the heroin in water, then adding a base such a NaOH until I see the heroin freebase precipitate out of the solution and finally filter?

EDIT: I believe the pKa of heroin is of 9.9, so pH should be raised to 11,9 to make 99% of heroin convert into freebase and come out of the water solution. Would then using hexane to dissolve the freebase and evaporate work? (according to this: http://www.swgdrug.org/Monographs/HEROIN.pdf, heroin freebase is only slightly soluble in hexane).

Am I in the correct direction? Anything else to point out?

Thank you very much,

 

[Solipsis]

Adding a base like lye and waiting for it to float on top before skimming it is sort of similar to using a non-polar solvent to extract it, the difference being that the solvent collects your product neatly and shaking / swirling your basified water layer and non-polar layer will help attract any freebase present. Therefore doing an actual extraction is more efficient, although I personally hate doing them without a separatory funnel.
If hexane is not really suitable choose another non-polar solvent that is non-miscible with water and that does dissolve the H.

I think it is a misconception that everything HAS to be made into freebase before you can vaporize it. Some chemicals certainly are destroyed at temperatures that are otherwise necessary to have the salt such as HCl salt evaporate, DMT is an example that is widely considered to be vaped best as freebase. Crack cocaine is more effective to smoke but I think it is not impossible to just smoke coke, I think it is actually kind of common.

I wouldn't try to keep you from turning your H into a more ideal form, but have you first confirmed that just smoking the HCl won't cut it?

 

[Burn it up]

Thank you very much Solipsis, I followed your advice smoking the HCl and it worked out. It is not the most efficient method as a lot of it gets burnt and consequently you need to put a bigger quantity than usual, but I managed to get effects from it.

Thank you!

 

[whack-a-mole]

So, if I took some heroin hcl and dissolved it in hot water, then add Calcium hydroxide to raise the ph to 11. Could I then add ethanol to dissolve the base? Is base soluble in ethanol? Hexane is tougher to get and I've used it in making honey oil and it does not evaporate off easily.

 

[sekio]

Ethanol has a higher boiling point than hexane? Also it doesn't seperate from water. So you'll have a hard time using ethanol to dissolve the base from an aqueous solution.

You dont need a strong base like hydroxide, in fact strong bases are liable to convert heroin back to morphine via hydrolysis... try sodium carbonate and extract the base with dichloromethane?

 

[whack-a-mole]

Ethanol has a higher boiling point than hexane? Also it doesn't seperate from water. So you'll have a hard time using ethanol to dissolve the base from an aqueous solution.

You dont need a strong base like hydroxide, in fact strong bases are liable to convert heroin back to morphine via hydrolysis... try sodium carbonate and extract the base with dichloromethane?

Thanks very much. Yes, that makes sense that I don't need a strong base, I'm just trying to lower the melting point a bit.

So, dissolve the H4 in warm water (about 100F), then add the sodium a little at a time while stirring, monitoring the ph. I probably cannot get a high ph of like 10 or 11 without adding a shit-ton of sodium, so what do you think would be a good ph to shoot for?

The sodium is going to start to make the solution cloudy as it is not that water soluble. My question is (and this shows my lack of chemistry knowledge), will the H4 bind to the sodium at this point, or will it still be dissolved in the water? When I add the dichloromethane does that dissolve all of the base making the solution clear (this is my assumption). Then I stir for a bit, and then let the solution settle so that the water and the dichloromethane separate. So at this point all the good stuff is bound in the dichlo and the water can be decanted and thrown away?

Then I just evaporate off the dichlo in a dish, do a few more washes and I have a good smokable freebase?

Thanks again for your help.

 

[sekio]

You're not going to add "sodium". You'll add sodium carbonate. or sodium hydroxide. Adding metallic elemental sodium to water results in the production of large amounts of lye, heat, hydrogen gas, etc and is a common cause of laboratory fires. Also sodium metal reacts with dichloromethane to make a mess.

I probably cannot get a high ph of like 10 or 11 without adding a shit-ton of sodium,

Saturated solution of sodium carbonate is pH ~12.
1 molar (40 g/L) sodium hydroxide is pH 14.

So no, you can quite easily get a pH of 10-11...

The sodium is going to start to make the solution cloudy as it is not that water soluble.

Damn near every sodium salt is soluble in water?

 

[whack-a-mole]

You're not going to add "sodium".

I meant sodium carbonate per your suggestion, I was just shortening to "sodium" out of laziness.

Damn near every sodium salt is soluble in water?

OK, so here is the part I don't understand. If the sodium and H fully dissolve in the water, is the H bound to the sodium? If so why can I not just evaporate off the water leaving the product in a base form? Or, is it that the non-polar solvent produces the chemical change in the two (H and sodium) leaving a molecularly altered product that is now in a "base" form? How does it work?

 

[sekio]

Sodium carbonate is soluble in water, heroin hydrochloride is soluble in water, when you mix the two in solution a reaction occurs (the stronger base - Na carbonate - liberates the weaker base - heroin - from the acid) creating sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate & heroin free base. Dichloromethane is used to completely extract the insoluble heroin from the water without filtration and its resulting losses. Also, heroin won't degrade via hydrolysis in dichloromethane, whereas heating it in water is likely to hydrolyse it to morphine/MAM and acetic acid or its salts. Dichloromethane is more volatile than water too.

You could on paper do a crack-style sodium carbonate + heroin hcl + small amount of water synthesis of free base. But the resulting mixture would not be pure heroin, likely a mixture of heroin, morphine, salt, etc.

You may want to look up how acid/base extraction works, w.r.t. the lone pair on the basic nitrogen atom forming ammonium-type salts.

 

[whack-a-mole]

Awesome. Thanks, it is all becoming more clear. I google search and a good read on AB extraction will help get me the rest of the way.

Thanks again.

 

[P Schwangles]

I'm interested now in hearing more about these stability issues regarding the heroin turning back into morphine. I will say that I have done a conversion to base with sodium hydroxide a few times like this: dissolve tar in water, filter out whatever gunk you can by pulling through cotton or whatever, and then pour tar water and xylene together into sep funnel in about equal amounts (xylene works very well at dissolving H base). Not very much volume of either are necessary at all; you can do a gram with probably less than a tablespoon of each. Then I make a pretty concentrated solution of lye water separately, add several drops to the sep funnel and watch the base crash out (cloudiness forms), and then swirl it together to get the xylene to pull it out. Then I just keep repeating until I can't see any more cloudiness form when I add the lye water ~ that's when you know you are done and there is no reason to add any more lye, and doing it gradually that way keeps you from adding excessive amounts of lye, in case that would be bad.

I did a run with dichloromethane which is preferable because it sinks below the water layer, so you don't have to worry about filtering out the tar first to prevent clogging the sep funnel. I did get a lower yield from my first DCM pull, but I don't remember if that could have been due to human error. I thought that was odd, but I recovered the rest with another pull, no problem. You can experiment with other solvents and rest assured that you can finish the job with xylene if the other aren't working out - as long as your other solvents stay separate from water - NO LIQUID-LIQUID EXTRACTIONS WITH ALCOHOLS OR ACETONE!. That last pull was weird and laborious because I wound up combining xylene with DCM, and weird emulsions form when half of your solvent wants to go above the water and half wants to go below, but they also don't want to move away from each other! LOL!!!

A gram of standard quality tar seems to consistently yield 1/3 gram of this almost crystally base that usually comes out as a sort of light tan color; one batch turned out light purple, with no real noticeable difference in potency or effect. It has been a few days since this last time doing the extraction, and I'm wondering if I have just built a tolerance already, or if anything has changed with the substance. It initially it felt very strong (I overdosed myself on the second day from taking two big puffs in a row after taking 1/3 of a xanax bar, and woke up soaking wet from sweat and with my ears ringing for a half hour ~ I felt really bad and bad for doing that to myself!) The base is not only 3x more H by weight than the tar, but it also vaporizes 3x more efficiently, so anyone who prefers smoking H should really do this conversion! You can get a proper rush from a good hit or two, and get more mileage out of your stuff!

The vapor still has the shitty taste of tar, minus the vinegar taste. Idk, but I feel like maybe it tastes worse now, and when it melts, it turns dark and smokes instead of bubbling. I can't remember if that's exactly the same as it was in the first couple days. I just did a little experiment to see if I could get it to melt together by heating it in the toaster oven, but I was afraid to go above like 260 degrees and I aborted the experiment. The base stayed equally powdery but the vinegar smell was more noticeable.
Last piece of data: I mixed 40mg of the base with 20mg of citric acid and it came out as a very pretty yellow sparkly citrate salt, but I could only physically scrape a little over 40mg out of the dish....

LMK what you guys know about the stability issues.... Thanks!

 

[AlsoTapered]

Well until recently UK doctors could treat people in palliative care with something called a 'Brompton Cocktail' which was originally heroin hydrochloride, cocaine hydrochloride and cannabis oil dissolved in d2O/ethanol. I know it was prepared weekly so it would always contain >97.5% of the compounds it's supposed to contain and why it had such a short use by date.

So I'm supposing that if you use water to extract your heroin freebase, I don't think much of it will have been hydrolyzed back to morphine. I know some people are impressed by plugging opioids but if it wasn't designed to be used that way, it's not possible to say how much will be dissolved how quickly.

While I'm almost sure it's not quite as accurate (dose-wise) as IV, it does have the benefit of not using needles. I recall people discovering that MDMA could be plugged and the 'believers' almost acted like they were trying to convert you to a religion. When something like that happens, I look extra hard because who knows what is going on with that specific compound? Likely safe... but not so much that I can provide reference...

 

[sekio]

I would use a weaker base than sodium hydroxide to do the freebasing. Sodium hydtoxide can react with the esters on heroin to break them down back to morphine (and excess hydroxide can even form a soluble sodium morphenate salt too).

Ammonia water (ammonium hydroxide) is the classic choice but I think even sodium bicarbonate should work.