Quote:

By Searcher (Novice) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 07:46 am: Edit
Almost any liquid will extract something from the shrooms themselves or the mycelium. Even water will work, producing a brown syrup that can be dried into a sticky tar. Only the acetone was a bust in extracting the magic - but it does extract some other crud that might make it a good pre-wash for more serious extractions. Recapping the results of the tests using other spirits, 99% isopropyl, 151 proof ethyl alcohol, and 99.9% methanol - methanol was the hands down winner for getting the crystals. Once the pretty white crystals have dried, they can be re-dissolved in grain alcohol for a potent elixer. The crystals tend to absorb water from the air unless they are kept in a heavily dessicated chamber. ( Source )

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I assume this is the source (edit: yeah, it is - I was working on this while you answered). Interestingly this suggests using the acetone to clean before the methanol extraction. I wonder how well that would work. Since acetone and naptha are both nonpolar solvents, wouldn't mean that psilocybin is insoluble in naptha as well? I wonder which would be better to use.

According to this the rapid oxidization of psilocin is due to its lack of the phosphate ester present in psilocybin. Some where in this slurry of information, it was noted that methanol was great for extracting psilocybin, while aqueous alcohol solutions produced higher levels of psilocin due to the destruction of psilocybin. Obviously, in the terms of yields, methanol would be a much better solvent.

chem questions:
3 forms of psilocybin: freebase, acid, base?
Since nonpolar solvents cannot dissolve psilocybin, psilocybin must be polar?
Adding NaOH makes psilocybin basic and nonpolar?
Adding HCl makes psilocybin acid and more polar?
What makes the freebase polar? I would think its in the middle.
Are all basic chemicals nonpolar and acids polar? or is that just how it works in this case?

About Chemical Structure:

The nitrogen bonded to 2(CH3) is the amine correct? What happens to it when we introduce HCl? what about NaOH?
Is the OPO3 the phosphate ester? Is there anything we can do to strenthen this structure to prevent oxidation while leaving it destructable by the human body?

-jssmthrfcknchrst