Identifying chemicals in solution

[otb01]

I can readily make a solution of extract from a plant which I think is slightly psychoactive and I would like to identify the chemical composition of its constituents. How would I go about doing this?

 

[Ham-milton]

without sensitive, espensive equipment? You don't.

 

[Black]

depends on the chemical. what about GC/MS?
but i think you won't have access to the equipment you need to identify the chemicals if you have to ask how you do it. what you want to do sounds like a task for a small research lab.

 

[otb01]

Well, that's what I mean. How do I go about paying for a GC/MS test? How expensive? Also there's HPLC..... There's no way I can afford any of the machines I'm just asking where I can go to get an id of what's in this stuff thats making me high.

 

[fallingup]

What is the plant?

 

[otb01]

Bay leaf. There has been some minimal analysis into the contents of the oil but I'm not satisfied with that. There is definitely something in it. I have even given it to people who went in thinking it wasnt going to do shit and in the words of one of them "That's beautiful"

 

[Ham-milton]

Active Ingredients Essential oil in the leaves (Up to 1% of dry weight) has 1,8 cineole, eugenol, linalool, costunolide, and deacetyllaurennobiolide as main ingredientjs[sic]. In addition, leaves contain isoquinoline alkaloids (reticuline), aporphine alkaloids (boldin and others; similar to those in Peumus boldus), flavinoids, lignan glycosides and sesquiterpene lactones (costunolide).

From Medicinal Plants of the World: An Illustrated Scientific Guide to Important.... (something?) by Ben-Erik van Wyk and Michael Wink.

It's available thanks to Google Books, and from what I can tell damn near everything is available for online viewing. It's really interesting, actually.

 

[otb01]

Ok, so I guess the reticuline is what gets me high.... Boldin also looks like a bit of an opiate itself, actually an analogue of reticuline

What always puzzled me about bayleaf is that after smoking the experience is easily over in 15 minutes or less. It could be from the presence of minute levels. By searching google, I found that reticuline can increase endogenous morphine levels.... Anyone wanna throw a word in on this?

This encourages me even more to get a test done to see how much reticuline, boldin and related alkaloids are present! So, who has a GC/MS or HPLC setup that they wouldn't mind running a sample through?

I find that the best effects from bay leaf come from smoking a small ball of an extract (home made) in a vaporizer. It was so much more intense than smoking joints of the raw leaf.

 

[dorothyperkins]

The stuff you put in rice when making curry? Cool, does it feel like an opiate? Looks kinda similar to morphine, does morphine occur naturally in the brain though?

As for finding out what is active you could acid/base out the alkaloids fairly easily. To refine it further would need chromatography, which is pretty difficult with amines at the best of times. You could possibly improvise by stuffing a long glass column with ground up cat litter or something and washing the alkaloids through with mixtures of DCM/methanol/ammonia. You also need tlc plates to visualise contents of the fractions, probably also possible to improvise with cat litter, look up preparative tlc for how to do it. Lastly you need something to develop the plate, like a solution of KMnO4 in dilute acid, hopefully without just washing all the stationary phase off the tlc plate! Though i suppose you could spray it on rather than dip the plate.

 

[otb01]

Yep. I found that you need to smoke a decent ammount of it though for a short ride that seems to be kind of like a stimulant and a sedative at the same time. Sort of how I've heard people describe kratom. I don't have experience with opiates outside of a low dose of codeine so I wouldn't quite know. With bayleaf you want to kick back and just feel good. Not really like a euphoria but just feeling ok where you are and liking it.... I don't know exactly how to describe it. Well, for anyone that wants to try resin instead of just leaves in a joint, here is my procedure:

1. Using a blender (yes, I don't have a lab or anything) grind the bay leaves as much as possible. Throwing a bit of cloves helps with the harsh resin smoke.
2. Measure the volume of the resulting mass
3. Add approx twice that volume of a strong (I think I used 70%) alcohol or whichever solvent
4. Allow to sit in a container in a dark environment (I heard that light may damage alkaloids in an extraction) shaking vigorously daily for at least 3 days (the longer the better)
5. Pour resulting extraction through a coffee filter or alike filter
6. Dry the resulting solution until a thick dark green-black resin appears

I found that smoking a 5 mm diameter ball gives decent effects with effects increasing by the dose. Joints usually take 1-3 joints, mixing in a bit of tobacco seems to potentiate it with a ratio of 1:3 or 1:2.


I've been weary about doing an A/B due to my current living accomidations.

 

[dorothyperkins]

Have you tried eating them, 1-3 joints sounds like a lot of smoke for a 15 min high! Can you estimate how many leaves it takes for an effect?

 

[otb01]

I've never tried eating them because I know the dose would be bigger and I don't want to subject my bowel to shredded hard leaves. I would consider eating the resin though.

Well, 3 joints is on the far side. One 100 mm joint smoked through is a good high. Two 80 mm cigs with filters and some tobacco mixed in is also a good high. It varies on the method. Tell me what kind of joint you make and I can tell you how much you'd need. Unfiltered is usually 1-2 joints usually on the 1 or 1+1/2 side. Blunts work good too when with a friend or two! It is hard tho to work with a crushed dry leaf which is in 1 mm - 3 mm pieces..... That's why the cig method or a rolling machine works well. Btw, it should be in small pieces because if not it might burn as well and need to be relit.

 

[Ham-milton]

I kind of doubt any activity for smoking these compounds. I kind of doubt it's the reticuline. I don't think it's present in large enough quantities.

 

[otb01]

Well, whatever it is it has worked before and continues to work. I also doubt the placebo effect because I have tested it on two people who literally thought I was fucking with them and had some really nice reactions to it.