Cocaine The “LeJunk” Process - Updates and Clarifications

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I see this specific information pop up very frequently, and there’s just so much partial or missing information that I thought it would be wise to make a few comments.

GENERAL DISCLAMER. This is meant for harm reduction purposes, and is not intended to be an instructional guide. The intent of this post is to point out safety issues, lack of proper technique, and missing information that could make the referenced process dangerous.

I am not a professional chemist. Please take this with a grain of salt. Pun intended.

I’m not attempting to bash this guy’s effort and I think it genuinely started a larger conversation that was helpful.

I wish I could write out a workup with steps and variations, but this is probably sadly illegal.

That being said, let’s start with a few safety tips. Don’t skip this part.

Test your sample. If you do nothing, do this. There are kits you can order for $10 or maybe free. Is highly likely that you have something cut with a veterinary medication that cause immune system or organ failure if used daily. Testing kits are pretty cheap and absolutely are the place to start. Best bang by miles. You want to know about levamisole, fentanyl and xylazine.

DO NOT: work with neurotoxic chemicals, work in spaces that are not ventilated (preferably always outside or under a fume hood), add water to a concentrated acid (acid go BOOM), work with containers that are too small, or use containers that are not properly sealed. Please don’t pull a vacuum or apply pressure to equipment that isn’t rated for that use. When putting together your setup, make sure that it’s properly secured - meaning that it doesn’t wobble and can remain stable if you bump into it or need to make fast jerky adjustments without everything falling.

At the very least wear a shirt, shoes, and pants that cover your body that you can remove quickly if needed. Better to have protective eye wear, nitrile gloves, and a mask.

Treat your space as if it were a professional setting. Have everything prepared before you start. Don’t have kids or pets around. Don’t work high, tired, or alone.

Some basic items to have for safety are a big trashcan filled with water, a lot of baking soda, a lot of vinegar, a fire extinguisher that won’t suffocate you, quick access to running water and a reliable way to call emergency services.

Don’t store solvents, especially in a normal fridge or freezer or put them near any heat source. Don’t do chemistry in your living room, or bedroom, or kitchen. Take it outside. If you can’t, make sure you’re in a well ventilated area that you can abandon if something bad happens.

Reactions can generate pressure, even just shaking something volatile. This can cause explosions. Heating or cooling something sealed can cause explosions. Heating or cooling a vessel quickly can cause explosions. Equipment can just randomly fail at bad moments. Please have a plan to deal with that.

I really can’t stress enough the inevitability that the volume a reaction will take will be miscalculated and boil over, or a vessel will crack or be dropped, or you miss a transfer and you quickly have a reactive mess. Plan ahead, have the items you need to neutralize the reaction, disconnect something, or just flat out evacuate until things settle down.

Respect concentrated acids and strong bases. Read all the safety warnings on products and safety data sheets and believe the warnings.

OK! Let’s move to general principles.

Adulterants are highly variable by region, especially internationally, so this is just one source. However, I like the article and it’s easy to read. Assume you have adulterated product. Better to test, but this would at least give you some idea of what your targets are for removal.
https://drogriporter.hu/en/bruseus_cocaine/

There are lots of ways to do various things. For instance, choosing a base. Look up your reaction, what the expected products are, and their solubility. Try to figure out what risk exists for side reactions or interactions. Generally, please try to understand the basic chemistry you’re using - don’t just follow some dudes instructions.

You will inevitably need to deal with the fact that you’re working with a mystery powder to some degree. Doing less is often more if you’re not an expert. Keep things simple.

If you can avoid them - don’t use hardware store products. If you can buy it at a store you can probably source it lab certified or reagent grade. Definitely know whether a chemical you are using is watched. If it’s hard to source it’s probably dangerous either legally or for your health.

Water is enemy number one throughout most of this process. Understand hydrolysis. Understand how water can oil out, steal, degrade, and prevent crystallization of your product. If you can’t avoid water, have a plan to deal with it later. You can’t avoid dealing with it.

Understand that most of the data you have easy access to is probably from pure lab grade product - and your sample is not that. So many things depend on concentration, the absence of other chemicals, and laboratory conditions that you’re unlikely to replicate.

Almost all the issues you’ll face are due to a a lack of proper equipment, technique, purity, WATER, or the process you chose. Almost all of this can be fixed, but the hardest is water. Always fight it all the time.

 

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Washing. Remember those tests? Well, if you don’t have certain adulterants this might really be all you need. I’d even go further and say that for most people this is as far as you should go. Going beyond this requires that you use dangerous chemicals and develop technical skills, so avoid that if you can.

Anhydrous chemicals. The universe hates being lonely, so do people, so do chemicals. Anhydrous chemicals will try to grab water and will do so aggressively and quickly. Glove boxes aren’t difficult to improvise and can provide some safety against fumes. Look these up, and how to add some drying agents to make a dry contained safe space. Don’t skip the gloves.

Solvents. Don’t store them unless you are very meticulous and know how to do so safely (like actually trained). Don’t have a workspace where a solvent is near a heat source.

Solubility. This is so critical to understand. Washes are exploiting this property. “Like dissolves like” is a good starting point - polar compounds are generally soluble in polar solvents, non-polar in non-polar. But this is oversimplified. Solvents can fall on a scale or behave in special ways depending on the compounds involved. They also have other properties that can allow them to interact with the spread of charge across a compounds structure, or interact with how a compound packs, just so many fascinating and magical and confusing and frustrating variables.

Drying agents/process. These things can and do react with solvents to cause unwanted toxic byproducts. MgSO4 (Epsom salts) can react with acetone and lead to toxic adole condensation. Desiccants with indicators (color change) can contain toxic chemicals that might complicate your reactions. Molecular seives are difficult to activate and can cause more issues than they solve.

MgSO4, if properly dried out, pulverized and used to treat small volumes of a solvent is probably the best course. No, it won’t make things perfectly dry, but you don’t need perfect. Added bit by bit, it can go from looking sticky at the bottom to floating around and cloudy (if it isn’t finely ground, it’ll just sink and bubble). The “snow globe” look isn’t like large particles falling quickly, it’s fine particles floating and swirling and slowllllyyy settling to the bottom.
Don’t leave your MgSO4 overnight. Achieve that fine snow drift, allow to settle, and decant. Throw what is unused away. If you must wait, wait no longer than an hour.

Acetone. Pure anhydrous acetone is probably the safest solvent in this process, so understanding that it is dangerous is very important. Fumes sink, and can accumulate on the floor and you may not realize your cat is suffocating, or the concentration is high enough to explode. It can strip nails, so it can cause property damage. It loves water, so if it gets in your eyes or mouth or lungs that won’t be fun. Prolonged exposure to any fumes can mess with your health in the short and long term. If you can smell it, you’re at risk. If you can’t smell it, you’re still at risk.

Alcohols. They’re bad for you. Some more than others. Don’t mess with methanol, it’s just too toxic. Don’t store isopropyl alcohol, it can create chemicals along seals that can spark and cause explosions. You can, with good research, use ethanol (even not anhydrous if you use it at the right stage in your process) as a safe alternative to any suggested approach. One might wonder why I mentioned water potentially being ok here and not before. Water isn’t ok if you’re stopping here. I highly suggest that you do not go further unless you really really need to remove levamisole and have the setup to handle some really nasty and dangerous acids, and are ready to throw a lot of stuff out as the technical skill starts to jump very quickly.

Oh and on water, hydrolysis requires water but you should assume water has entered the chat at all stages. It can degrade things fast, so don’t underestimate it, but it depends on pH and temperature and time. Low is good for all of these. So, keep things dry (desiccants and glove box), cool or the lowest heat possible (cold things will cause water to condense quickly), and if a basic environment is created move as quickly as your process allows to get things dry or to the next step.

Hmm, is water always at neutral pH? I don’t think you can always assume that. I wonder why.

 

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A/B Extractions -

Ok, so if you start this you’ve decided that you’re willing to deal with hazardous chemicals. If you are not, do not proceed.

In any event, having a basic understanding of AB extractions and back extractions is really helpful.

pKa is the next topic that needs to be understood. To work with that information, you need accurate and realtime pH monitoring. pKa is generally a theoretical value, and it can change with numerous factors to skew in both directions.

After understanding kPa of the compounds, you’ll begin to understand why the “swish and discard” method described just doesn’t make sense within certain pH ranges and why you can’t use it to purify things here.

Doing a test run can give you information about generally where the pH lingers, which should be close to the actual kPa of your mystery solution. Note the volume needed to get there, and the volume where things start moving again. Generally, exceeding 10 pH is unnecessary and will cause problems. This is still probably a little high depending on your mix and the data you noted above.

Also, you might begin to see that there are different values for different compounds under different conditions, including the presence of other compounds, pressure, temperature and concentration. You might also read conflicting information about levamisole. Some sources place it at a specific value, some say that it skews closer to 8, while others place it much higher.

Hydrolysis is real, and works fast. Keep that in mind.

**Note for below. This isn’t a process for making crack. Or freebase. Basically, if you’re smoking it, don’t use this guide. There are better more detailed explanations of that process using safer methods.

If one chooses to precipitate the free base in water and filter, generally the process is much safer at the expense of increasing the risk of hydrolysis. Some people perform the reaction completely in a dry solvent, but this is one of the steps where involving water can be relatively safe without destroying yield if properly controlled and may help to wash away some unintended byproducts or known adulterants.

Carefully consider your choice of base for the reaction, look at potential common adulterants and figure out the properties of the resulting products. Most free bases of interest will be water insoluble. However, some bases that you can chose to add to your reaction will probably be safer than others, more easily used, and generate fewer dangerous byproducts than others.

For example, baking soda would be a poor choice if one was hoping to remove boric acid. As a weak base, it might not fully react unless heated, and heat can cause unwanted degradation especially under basic conditions. It might also form sodium borate which may not fully dissolve into a particular volume of water, which is a concern if you are using filtration to isolate the end products. Ammonia might be better as its reaction products are both very soluble in water and does not require heat. However it is a stronger base and therefore monitoring of pH is more important. Be prepared to filter and wash, as ammonia is toxic.

What volume of water are you using? How quickly are you adding your base? How quickly can you filter it? What happens to your target in the presence of water and your base at the pH it precipitates? What is happening to the other compounds simultaneously?

For example, adding a base quickly to a highly concentrated solution is likely to result in a slurry and may push your reaction beyond acceptable pH ranges (these things tend to spike) or leave unreacted product or base trapped in the matrix. Adding it slowly to a more dilute solution might solve these problems, but could expose your chemicals to a higher risk of hydrolysis. Heating your reaction could also fix some things, but again risk degradation and heat itself can be dangerous. There’s a trade off between yield and purity that can’t really be avoided to my knowledge without resort to some pretty advanced work ups using some horrifying chemicals.

These considerations will dictate the process you chose, the setup you need, your advance preparation, and troubleshooting should anything go wrong - so think carefully before starting anything. Please be sure to have safety measures in place to address spills, etc. Chemistry is fun until things end up where they shouldn’t, especially your skin, eyes, or lungs.

Remember that A/B and back extraction process? Consider this highly oversimplified process.

In a theoretical organic solvent, you have the following in solution: an unreactive compound (alkane, ketone, ester, ether, etc.), a basic amine (free base), a weakly acidic phenol, and an acid like carboxylic acid. You have your organic solvent over water. Adding a strong base will cause the acids to enter the aqueous solution. Wash, and discard aqueous solutions. Adding an acid will cause the base to enter the aqueous solution as a soluble salt. Wash, and reserve aqueous solutions. Discard organic solvent.

Better stated, when you cause an amine to come out of solution in this way, the preceding aqueous solutions can be discarded as well as the remaining organic solution. The amine in aqueous solution can then be converted back to a free base and returned to fresh organic solvent without the other compounds.

Chemistry is cool.

 

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Ok - so here is where I will start to heavily deviate from the listed “tech.”

There is a paper that uses hexane to perform a liquid/liquid extraction of levamisole, however in the same paper a relatively less complicated method of using chloroform is explored. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read it carefully.

You’ll note some things are missing in that paper that would be of particular importance, like the pH of the water used in extractions, yields and losses, and other things. You’ll also not see safety data on that chemical.

You’ll also note that chloroform gets to a great result in regard to reduction of levamisole HCl, albeit not entirely eliminated.

Imagine a different approach to the one listed. Perhaps acetone, an alcohol, and chloroform all under strictly dry conditions as evaporation to dryness of a larger volume of solvent would likely be required for the alcohol (or a vacuum). Perhaps consider a final acetone wash. Compare the relative difficulty and risk of this procedure to the generation of HCl or use of aqueous HCl. Compare the relative difficulty and risk of obtaining or synthesizing and drying chloroform. What would be left over of concern?

From a harm reduction perspective, my comments are generally focused primarily on the use of veterinary chemicals (phenacetin, levamisole), harmful inorganic compounds (talc, boric acid), binding agents (hairspray), unintended exposure to other psychoactives (methamphetamine, amphetamine, xylazine, hydroxazine, fentanyl, etc.), and poorly executed manufacturing (solvents, degraded, unstable, byproducts, etc.).

I am being vague here as I am not trying to introduce an entirely new approach, but I am asking the reader to think about alternative pathways to reduction in harm, specifically targeting the most dangerous adulterants, rather than a rush to purity. My understanding is that conversion to and from a free base is not necessary if harm reduction is the main goal here. I’m also confused about why this was not discussed and why instead an A/B extraction was pursued.

I’d really like the community to fact check me here, as this harm-reduction approach, in my opinion, is both more reliable and less dangerous than proceeding to a conversion that may or may not be out of reach due to general difficulties surrounding the techinal demands of handling amines, particularly hydroscopic ones. Here are a few of those issues: resolving or avoiding excess HCl, oiling out or stickiness, resolving water if aqueous acids are used, and the difficulty controlling a wash with a solvent as dangerous as hexane.

Furthermore, done in sufficiently dry conditions, especially in the alcohol phase, and controlling for water the target remains largely in the same form it started in without the use of heat, strong acids, or reliance on technical skill or advanced setups.

If one is considering synthesis of chloroform, they must make sure that bleach is well and truly freezer cold and that no more than a standard volume is used. This is a highly, highly exothermic reaction. And should be practiced with small volumes. One might correctly assume that synthesized product may not be dry or pure. Also understand that you may need to neutralize with NaOH to safely dispose of the remainder of the reaction.

 

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I will not go into detail on the generation of dry HCl gas, as I consider that approach far too dangerous to really seriously consider here. If an eyebrow is raised here, I just don’t think anyone can safely do this without really risking their health outside of lab controlled settings. It also has to be considered as a contaminant in the final steps, and a potentially more dangerous one in my opinion than the original adulterants.

If this is truly needed, there’s plenty of other places to find how to do that.

Alternatives could include aqueous HCl, commonly found in pool products, or a more straightforward use of a citrate that’s commonly used in food.

I haven’t put together all of the considerations here yet, except to say that if HCl is used in any form it must be assumed to be in excess at the end of the reaction unless proven otherwise.

 

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Reserved for questions and notations.