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Laboratory Synthesis
DMT
by Devchem

Citation: Devchem. "Laboratory Synthesis: An Experience with DMT (exp61171)". Erowid.org. Mar 26, 2007.
erowid.org/exp/61171

DOSE:
smoked DMT (powder / crystals)
T+ 0:00
T+ 1:00 smoked Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT: 76 kg

I've always been interested in psychedelics, and in my life I had the chance to experience
quite extensively with mushrooms, amanitas, san pedro and a small dose of LSD once.

I work as a medicinal chemist at a major pharma company, and lately I got interested in the
synthesis of the reatively simple (structurally) N,N-dimethyltryptamine. I was checking the
company's chemical database when I noticed that tryptamine (a close precursor of DMT) was
readily available on the shelf. The reaction leading to the N,N-dimethylated analogue (DMT)
is a simple reductive amination, where the two hydrogen atoms on a nitrogen of tryptamine
are replaced by two methyl groups (CH3). Having attempted the synthesis twice now, I can
say that most of the recipes found on the internet are incomplete or in some cases complete
bollocks.

First of all, tryptamine oxidises quite easily on the shelf, turning to a deep orange/brown
colour. If this is the case it needs recrystallizing from boiling heptane or hexane (heptane
slightly better). The yield for each recryst is quite shit and it might be necessary to repeat the
process on the leftover orange crap. Once recrystallised, tryptamine looks like soft, flat, large,
waxy white crystals.

Now for the solvent used. I saw many reports saying that methanol is a good solvent for the
dimethylation. I tried it, and about 30 mins into the reaction a precipitate forms and the overall
time of reaction and yields are greatly reduced because of this. Best solvent I used is THF.
This is the key to high yields and purity of final product. As for the reducing agent, sodium
cyanoborohydride works just as well as the milder sodiumtriacetoxyborohydride (STAB) and I
generally use 2.5 equivalents for the first one and about 4 equivalents for the latter (based on
moles of tryptamine). Addition of acid (say 2 eq max) is necessary as this cuts on reaction
time greatly. I used glacial acetic acid for this and it works great.

Any formaldehyde/water solution will do. I used 5 equivalents based on tryptamine.

Now for the order of addition of reagents. I saw reports were ppl were strongly advising to
cool the reaction mixture prior to the addition of formaldehyde to the mixture of solvent,
tryptamine, acid and reducing agent. This is true only for very large scale reactions, but is
nothing to be worried about when working with a few grams of starting material.

In THF my reaction took less than 2 hours to go to completion by LC-MS. Work up was as
following: removed THF by evaporation (or rotavap), added 1M HCl solution to the crude
mixture and placed whitish solution in a separatory funnel. Washed the aqueous phase with
Ethyl acetate (do not use DCM! Even tho it evaporates easily it forms big emulsions during
the separation which complicates things) and the organic layer discarded. Now the water
phase was made basic by the addition of 2M KOH (white precipitate starts forming) and
washed again (twice) with Ethyl acetate. Now the water phase was discarded, the ethyl
acetate dried on sodium sulfate and the solvent removed by evaporation, leaving a clear
slightly yellow oil which foamed under high vacuum pump. Now the choice is yours. You can
either smoke this as it is (contains impurities) or try and recrystallise it from boiling hexane or
heptane (not so easy as described on the net) or even column it (5-10% Methanol in DCM
with a few drops of ammonia/methanol added should do the job). And voila! You have your
own DMT.

General procedure:

To a stirring solution of tryptamine free base (1.0g, 6.24mmol, 1eq) in THF (30ml) at room
temperature were added sodium triacetoxyborohydride (5.29g ,24.96mmol, 4eq) and glacial
(17M) acetic acid (0.71ml, 0.75g, 12.48mmol, 2eq). After most of the borohydride was
dissolved, 37% formaldehyde aqueous solution (2.5ml ,2.53g, 31.20 mmol) was added
dropwise via a syringe. Stirring was continued for 2h and LC-MS (3min) showed complete
conversion of starting material (peak @ 0.94min, M+=161) to product (peak @1.01 min,
M+=189). Work up proceded as described above. Column (DCM with MeOH gradient of 5 to
10% with a few drops of 5M ammonia in methanol) gave 1.05g (89%) of a white crystalline
solid (DMT).

Now for my experiences. First time I tried 30mg smoked. I felt a general light headiness like
10 seconds after inhaling and the light in the room started to become more intense. I felt
 giggly and active and was getting slight cold shivers on my body. After max 15 minutes the
effects vanished completely.

Second time I decide to try it properly, a 70mg trip. However at the moment I haven’t got the
right equipment for smoking it so I made a spoon out of some aluminium foil and inhaled the
fumes generated by heating the bottom of the spoon with a lighter. The smoke tastes exactly
as the crystals smell, a typical indole scent. I didnt mind it. Because of my shitty apparatus, I
didn’t inhale all of the smoke, however 10 seconds later my mind was racing at incredible
speeds and I got a bit freaked out.

I lied down, worried that this was gonna last for an entire hour, but I managed to snap out of it
in no time! I was then tripping real hard, with visuals both with my eyes opened and closed. It
was great, much better than mushrooms as it feels more linear, synthetic, less introspective
and with much wilder visuals. The best thing was that after 20mins I was already coming
down with very little side effects. After one hour I was feeling calm and relaxed and I smoked
a big joint. Nice experience, although I don’t think it would suit the weak hearted!

ExpID:
Exp Year: 2007
61171

Gender: Male

Age at time of experience: Not Given

Views:
Published: Mar 26, 2007
45,191

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DMT (18) : Alone (16), Cultivation / Synthesis (31), Preparation / Recipes (30)

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