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  • Trip Reports Moderator: Xorkoth

Radula marginata - Inexperienced - Leapin' Liverworts

Hammilton

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 2, 2008
Messages
3,435
I'm posting this a few weeks after my first tries with Radula marginata. I am currently awaiting a large quantity of R. marginata and will be doing far more exhaustive research with it, but as I'm excited about it, I thought I'd re-write my original experience report and post it here.

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material before extraction

First, contrary to some reports, I do not believe this plant contains a high enough level of actives to make its unextracted form worth smoking. You do not need to go through complex extractions in order to produce an active extract, though. The original study by Toyota extracted the perrottetinene with diethyl ether, in which the material was soaked for two weeks. My first attempt at an extract used acetone, in which I boiled the R. marginata for about 30 minutes, followed by a full 24 hours soaking before straining, filtering and then boiling off the acetone.

scaled.php


To quote my original write up:
I really want to get every last bit of active material out, so I placed the jar in a water bath, ie, a pot with water boiling in it. You can't see it in this photo, but there are small holes in the top of the tin foil and a cold wet rag is placed atop that. This was done to condense the acetone vapor back down to acetone so I wouldn't have to breath it in. This was extremely effective, there was virtually no hint of acetone in the air. The water was kept boiling for five minutes. At that point I moved the whole thing off the heat and to my work table downstairs. The hot water continued to boil the acetone for almost 25 minutes longer, making for about 30 minutes of boiling.

A pea-sized chunk of R. marginata extract was collected, placed on foil and smoked. As soon as heat hits it, the material liquefies. Perhaps an experienced heroin smoker would be better at 'chasing the dragon'- I don't know. I'm not very adept at it, and as such I held it in such a way that the bubbling bead of liquid remained in on spot. I do believe that this was an inefficient way to smoke this, but I'm not convinced that putting it on plant matter and putting the flame right to it would have been better.

Within about 5 minutes the effects hit. They take hold slowly, far slowly than THC. I feel that sort of removed from the body feeling, as if I'm watching a movie from the back of my head. With high quality THC this effect can be extreme, to the point that I barely feel connected to by body at all. This is no where near that level, but it's enjoyable. I feel quite calm, relaxed. Not a hint of paranoia, but along with that, there's none of the psychedelic head-space that makes just sitting around and doing nothing enjoyable with cannabis. I turned on some live recordings of Jason Mraz to listen for music enhancement. I always choose live music for this purpose because I find that the other sounds- people clapping, people yelling, becomes so much more clearly separated under the influence of cannabinoids. These are sounds that are just incidental and usually quite quiet, and with the cannabinoid-enhanced music, they become clearly intelligible.

The music is enhanced, but again, not in the incredible way you can get with high dose THC.

I have also noticed, as many probably have, that under the influence of cannabinoids, iTunes visualizers become amazing- instead of appearing as 2D projections on a flat screen, they're amazingly 3D. iTunes wasn't working, so I used Windows Media Player, which is not nearly as good, but the effect was still present.

These are just random things I look for when assessing a compound for cannabimimetic activity, and while this extract was clearly active, above threshold, it was more comparable to low grade schwag than quality nug (I've only smoked schwag on a few occasions, admittedly).

The duration of effects was about 45-60 minutes with another 30-45 minutes of slow comedown. In all I felt more or less sober by the 2 hour mark, by 2:30 there was no longer even a hint of activity.



After this first experience I re-extracted the same material I did the first time, this time instead using 99% isopropanol that was further dried with anhydrous MgSO4. What water was left was insignificant. Anyway, I crushed the material from the first extraction very finely. This was easy to do, the acetone extraction had made it quite brittle. This time I allowed for a 16 day soak. I then filtered it, first passing it through a fine screen, then a proper filter so it would not clog. Once this was completed, I boiled off the isopropanol and allowed it to cool. I smoked it in the same manner as before.

Within 5 minutes the effects are obvious and notably stronger than my last attempt. The effects are more or less identical but much stronger than last time. My first response is to blame the longer extract, but I may have smoked it more rapidly. My first attempt there was more time between inhalations for safety's sake. This time I dove head first on it and smoked it much more rapidly.

Effects were comparable to a mild cannabis intoxication. When I read people say something like this a lot of times I assume it was really so weak people are imagining the effects. This was certainly not placebo. Effects were obvious and quite apparent, but I was kind of hoping to reach a strong intoxication. That didn't happen this time.


In my experiments and research with Radula marginata, I have learned the following:

1. Raw plant material is not strong enough. This contradicts what at least one person (with more experience than I) tells me, but I haven't had any success smoking dried material.

2. It is nearly impossible to grow the plant. While it apparently thrives in the wild, it is virtually impossible to transplant it. If you want a living sample, you will need to remove the bark of whatever it's attached to with it. This will merely prolong it's life. It will almost surely still die as a result. It MAY be possible to get spores to grow with M&S culture media if you used very, very carefully controlled conditions.

3. Extractions with acetone and isopropanol are fine for casual attempts. If you really want to experience perrottetinene, however, you will need to butane extract. I will be butane extracting 1lb of R. marginata next. Based on Toyota's work I can expect about 1.7 grams of perrottetinene and perrottetinenic acid. So far perrottetinene appears to be about 1/2 to 1/4 the potency of THC.

4. Perrottetinene is (cis)-6,6,9-trimethyl-3-phenethyl-6a,7,8,10a-tetrahydro-6H-benzo[c]chromen-1-ol. THC, of course, is (trans)-6,6,9-trimethyl-3-propyl-6a,7,8,10a-tetrahydro-6H-benzo[c]chromen-1-ol. So, perrottetinene is basically (cis)-3-phenethyl-THC. The 3-phenethyl substitution is less of an issue than the cis bit. Cis-THC's are about 1/4 to 1/2 the potency of their trans forms. As a result, it looks like (trans)-Perrottetinene will be more or less equal in potency to THC. Unlike most drugs, it may be possible to convert this from cis- to trans- form by using aluminum chloride as a catalyst. It's commonly used for isomerising hydrocarbons.

5. It will be a shame if R. marginata becomes a staple of the RC/herbals trade. Given the impracticability of growing this plant, it must be harvested from the wild. Unlike other products of the herbals trade that can't be grown- namely Amanita muscaria- this can be harvested constantly. I'd hate to see this plant threatened because of overuse. Amanitas will never be threatened because of overuse. You can't exactly over-harvest Amanita's. The kind of tell you when you can harvest them!

6. There are other Radula species that seem to have activity. After extensive work, I've found Radula complanata in Wisconsin, and there are a number of other Radula's that are found in the US (there are at least two more just in Wisconsin). Most of these have been found to contain the bibenzyl compounds that are the direct precursors for perrottetinene. Unfortunately, most of these haven't been looked at again since perrottetinene was discovered, and based on bioassays, it looks like they may indeed contain perrottetinene, or a related cannabinoid, too.

7. Perrottetinene will cause a positive on a THC screen. I'm not a cannabis smoker, haven't for a long time, and my before screen was clean. My after-smoking screen, however, was not. Something to keep in mind and hopefully persuade anyone from concluding that this is an alternative to it's illegal brother.

8. It should be noted that perrottetinene is probably an analogue of controlled cannabinoids. However, because it is significantly weaker than the scheduled cannabinoids, it doesn't exactly fit the definition. If one were to isomerise it to yield trans-perrottetinene, it's far more likely that it would fit the definition.

-

I will add to this thread a detailed overview of the butane extraction process and the extract produced, along with- of course- a more detailed experience report resulting from the far more purified extract it will produce. Hopefully, if the isomerisation works, a detailed experience report with trans-Perrottetinene will be included.

Stay Tuned.
 
So someone's finally doing something with this stuff after all the talk about it, eh? Interesting. I look forward to hearing how your further efforts go.
 
So I'm confused. This is similar to smoking mj? And it causes a + on a drug screen? Why go through all that trouble to have a similar high to mj when you are going to fail a test? Why not just smoke the real stuff? Just my opinion, maybe someone can explain a little more so I can understand more?
 
Yeah, I would ask why would anybody avoid researching this plant because cannabis is supposed to be better? Research on this plant and related species may yield analogs that are more potent than cannabis, or even just finding out more about this plant and the actives inside so that we know, it can be cataloged and somebody else sometime in the future can utilize this knowledge to make other discoveries.
 
Awesome report Hamilton, thank you. And bravo for sharing it here. Long have had questions about this one. Still do, but now have a little more encouragement that they are worth doing the work to answer them.

Cheers
 
thanks for the report Hammilton.

if I may a few suggestions,

once you get the resin you can try infusing it to substrate like Damiana for example, rather than vaping.

this will help to take hits that can be held in longer as well as allow regulation of specific mg dosages.

to the poster that doesn't understand why someone would want to try this instead of mj, when both show positive urine test for metabolites here are a few benefits:

1. it is readily available in the environment, can be grown in areas of little to no direct sunlight, and is a renewable resource.
2. it cost nothing when harvested from the wild
3. using it does not support drug cartels or killing of Mexicans like buying imported mj does.

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