What is the most successful extract anyone has done with kratom?
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Years ago I did a soxhlet extraction of kratom with methanol to get a mitragynine crude. Very crude but also very potent. But that method takes a long time.
But here’s a procedure:
Extraction and isolation of mitragynine
Fresh Mitragyna speciosa Korth leaves (1.0 kg) were washed with water to remove dirt and adhering material, oven dried at 45-50 °C for three days and milled into fine powder using a blender to get the dry powder (297.0 g). Soxhlet extraction was carried out using 297.0 g powdered leaves with 4 L petroleum ether (40-60 oC) for 8 hour, then petroleum ether solution was discarded and the defatted powdered leaves were dried and the extraction was repeated with 4 L chloroform for 8 hour. The chloroform solution obtained was filtered, concentrated, evaporated to dryness under the reduced pressure using rotary evaporator and was kept in a refrigerator (-200C). The dried crude chloroform extract was subjected for flash chromatography according to the method of Still et al.[10]. Crude fraction containing mitragynine was obtained by eluting with hexane and ethyl acetate (80:20 v/v) and this fraction (100 mL) was subjected to liquid-liquid fractionation using petroleum ether (100 mL X 3 times) for further purification. The petroleum ether layer was discarded and the remaining solution was concentrated under the reduced pressure using a Buchi R215 Rotavapor (Flawil, Switzerland) to obtain crude mitragynine.
Purification of mitragynine by crystallization
Approximately 0.80 g of the isolated crude mitragynine was dissolved in minimum quantity of methanol and this solution was added to a 5 mL saturated methanolic picric acid solution. Side of test tube was scratched and this solution was kept in refrigerator for 20 minutes to obtain orange colored mitragynine picrate crystals. These crystals were filtered, washed with methanol followed by acetone and the melting point of these crystals was determined. The mitragynine picrate crystals were converted to mitragynine free base by dissolving them in hot saturated acetone solution and by adding this solution to an excess of dilute ammonia solution lead to the liberation of free base which was extracted with diethyl ether. This solution was dried to obtain a pale brown, amorphous compound. This compound along with IMR pure standard was subjected for TLC for the comparison of hRf value
Full paper:
http://www.ukm.my/mjas/v15_n1/Goh.pdf
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I been wanting to try Kratom. Is it true that there’s strains that can give you a jolt of euphoria and energy? I’ve heard these claims but I figure I can ask you guys if that’s complete BS or real.
Who’s the plug??
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There are no strains of it. Effect is in the dose. Under 5g will give you mild stimulant effect. Go over and the effect will turn to something more opiate like.
Another thing is I don’t like to drink alcohol at all anymore. I can drink one or maybe two beers with my regular kratom, but more than that is unpleasant. Do others have similar experiences? If nothing else I’m saving money that I used to spend on beer and liquor. I can drink kratom all day for less than the price of 1 beer.
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I would just say be careful with Kratom. My friend was thinking of moving into the Kratom business so he hung out at a smoke shop for a couple hours just to talk to a few Kratom users. He spoke to five or six people who came in to buy Kratom (not a representative sample size, I know), but every one of them said they were addicted to Kratom and wish they had never heard of it or begun to use it.
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AND THATS when he knew that was the biz for him or what?
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Ha no he walked away from the opportunity.
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Non-polar solvents seem to work well for most alkaloid extractions, which is why clandestine labs in South America use kerosene or diesel fuel for coca extraction after the leaves are treated with lime. I know the lime makes the leaves give up more of their alkaloids, hence why locals chew coca leaves with lime or baking soda. I’ll bet you could apply the same concept to kratom, treating the plant matter with lime or ammonia, then extracting with heptane. Sounds much less tedious than a soxhlet extraction if you’re doing multiple kilograms at once.
Or, blasting with propane. But I’d assume treating the plant matter with a base would still produce better yields.
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Kratom is a tricky one. Some people find they can use it occasionally or even for extended periods and not develop any kind of dependence while others report developing a dependence. Even among those who do develop a dependence, I’ve heard some say the withdrawals are only about as bad as caffeine withdrawals while others have said it felt like a bad cold or mild opioid withdrawal. For helping to kick an opioid addiction I would recommend it in a heartbeat, as well as for acute and chronic pain that can’t be managed with cannabis. For something like social anxiety or focus however, I think the answer is a bit more nuanced and comes down to whether or not kratom could be used as a harm reduction alternative to other drugs and if the risk of dependence is worth it or not to the individual.
As far as we know, kratom itself seems to be extremely safe in the sense that it hasn’t killed anyone. It is a very effective tool against pain and anxiety, and has less negative side-effects than most other drugs that are commonly prescribed to treat those ailments. But dependence can be a real motherfucker, so people should definitely be aware of that risk before they start using it.
@CCCBD I had a similar response with alcohol and kratom. I have used it in place of alcohol in the past when I couldn’t drink because I was training or just because I felt like a month of abstinence from alcohol would do me some good. Alcohol actually acts on the opioid receptors in the brain along with all kinds of other systems, so it would make sense that kratom could reduce cravings and limit consumption of booze.
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I asked a kratom dealer the other day about extracts. He told me he uses lime juice, like the citrus tree fruit kind. Lol. Also said he gets 90% Mitra in his product. I’m glad you mentioned the other lime, calcium oxide, I was just starting to research how to do it. What would citric acid do anyway?
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Bro that’s how I isomerize my disty!!!
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When subjected to a base alkaloids can be extracted with nonpolar solvents. When subjected to an acid they can be extracted with polar solvents. Either route works for a 1st step of purification
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isomerize wich to what ??
I guess I assumed freebase was easier to extract from the plant matter than as a salt, but I guess a popular cactus extraction tek is to use vinegar and water along with freezing to break cell walls and a long boil.
@Ruwan Did you happen to treat your biomass with an acid before loading it in the soxhlet?
If anyone has extracted any and gotten purity results, I’d be interested to know what you were able to get on your initial extraction without any advanced purifying.
Nope just loaded her right into the thimble and let it cook overnight.
I filtered the methanol crude through a decent column of fine alumina and then had a nice dark waxy extract after rotovaping. Did some LLE workup to try to purify a bit. But it didn’t do much.
But I got the chromataograms i was looking and decent spectra data so I didn’t attempt to purify any further. This was for an IRP in college lol.
That was a fun independent research project that I got class credit for doing. I should find the write-up I did on it; In my paper extrapolated SAR for mitragynine analogues (focusing on conformationally unrestricted “non rigid” isomers), and identified an overlap in the structural moieties of fentanyl and mitragynine. Also used computational molecular docking software to extrapolate binding data on these analogues through their interactions with amino acid residues within the μ-opioid receptor.
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Starting purity in the plant is less than 0.5% Mitragynine, I’ve done several crude extractions using Methanol, Ethanol, Ethyl Acetate… but you still need to do an acid/base clean up and crystallization to get it in a pure extracted powder form. Once in powder form it’s roughly ~30% Mytraginine, not sure what the rest is, I found a small amount of 7-OH as well but not enough to make up for the remainder 70%.
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My 2 cents
I’ve used it irregularly, generally semi-recreationally, for about 7 years now. I’ve used it when my pain is unbearable or stress is unbearable, or when I’ve wanted to turn up without drinking. It helps with pain and anxiety immensely.
I would warn against using it long term for two reasons.
1st, in many cases chronic pain can be overcome by working on your anxiety (In fact opiates much of the effectiveness of opiates comes from reducing anxiety) and stress levels as well as physically bringing your body into balance. I recognize in some cases this not possible, but if it is, kratom can be used as a crutch to get there, or something you come to dependent on instead of facing the root of the issue. One can lead to better life, the other can lead to increased pain and increased dependence.
2nd, I have a close friend that used it daily for several years. She saw it as a benign way to deal with anxiety and depression. Eventually she became dependent on it and her anxiety and depression were many times worse then they had ever been, if she wasn’t dosed. She became concerned she was in a downward spiral. She tried to quit for awhile with no success. She ended up leaving the state and moving back home to her family, and I helped couch her through quitting. Took her about a year to get off it and she struggled with it much more than I did when I kicked Oxy.
So know yourself and don’t underestimate it. I know, I have an affinity for opiates so I am very careful with it.
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