Any methods or claims are totally hypothetical and academic.
I do not condone the use of any illicit substances whatsoever.
This is a Harm Reduction/Purification Thread. Don't anyone mention AA![]()
sorry for hijacking that other thread [poppy pod question...]
Anyway... It seems we have an interesting, not much talked about, way of extracting pure morphine from dried pods (for flower arranging of course, they look lovely in a nice vase), which are legal in many countries. I have done a fair bit of research on the subject, although i have almost no lab skills, I do have common sense, basic chemistry knowledge, i do read a lot and have a strong desire to learn.
so far i have found a few articles which may be of interest...
Patent for extraction of alkaloids and purifying morphine from OPIUM, could be different for pods but likely similar
Another method/review of the aforementioned process
A patent for extracting alkaloids from dried poppies/pods
Method of producing Morphine Hydrochloride from base, also give some solubility details.
Morphine HCl identification/testing and some other info
Good old wikipedia, useful info there as well
Can anyone offer more information on the subject, give suggestions, advice etc?
Im always looking for more knowledge on this subject and practical chemistry in general.
Comments anyone? or PM if you like...
sorry i've been talking on for ages... Thats what benzos do to me.
Well, if one person finds this thread interesting then it's worthwhile.
best regards to all,
SWlM
Thread: Pure Morphine From Poppy Pods?
Results 1 to 24 of 24
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Bluelighter
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09-02-2008 19:11
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09-02-2008 19:53
on the first link, it said u need 5 grams of good opium to get 400-426mgs of around 85% purity morphine. Wow it takes alot of opium to get so little.
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09-02-2008 20:06
i read them all, many are really stupid articles and pointless extraction techs. BUt yeah thanks anyway for posting it, still an alright read
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Bluelighter
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09-02-2008 20:26
Originally Posted by drunken_etard
stupid articles? how can an extraction that yields morphine from dried pods be pointless?
maybe its cos my chem skills/knowledge are crap and im just not getting something???
thanks for replying, any more input from ppl would be great
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09-02-2008 21:16
hey man i appreciate your research and persistance in learning, i enjoy reading about extraction teks and the sort so props for the thread man.
keep em comin!
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Last edited by colors; 10-02-2008 at 09:03.
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Bluelighter
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09-02-2008 21:49^ colors, great addition to this thread...

Is methanol extraction more convenient due to less heat required?
Any advantages by using water solution?
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Bluelighter
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09-02-2008 22:22^ thanks for the input and link, but this thread is about PURE morphine, in crystal form, no codeine or other alkaloids.
The link you gave seemed more like concentrated poppy tea crudely acetylated, not quite what we're looking for but thanks for the link, i do like to read about these things...
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09-02-2008 22:24i'm no authority on the subject, but as i understand it, methanol would still require heating to 60C for several hours. if there's no heat, the soak will take up to a week.
Originally Posted by SWlM
water is advantageous when evaporation is not required, in terms of fumes and price.
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09-02-2008 22:26yeah sorry about that. i know these threads have been done to death, so i kind of just assumed you were talking about that..
Originally Posted by SWlM
but anyway.
yeah if it hasnt already been mentioned. check out the somniforum at poppies.org. and the mycotopia forums. mycotopia users are the most enterprising group of chemical/extraction hobbyists out there (outside of the hush hush clandestine synthesis groups). and i know somebody on somniforum has definitely posted a method.
http://www.poppies.org/forum/
http://www.mycotopia.net/
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Bluelighter
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09-02-2008 23:01
Originally Posted by colors
the only "problem" with "your" method is that the heating required (80°c) is close to the temperature that breaks down morphine (85°c), and anhydrous morphine HCl can be diluted with h20 if needed. I'll look into the volatility of methanol, thanks for your knowledge.
Newmoonrecord, thanks for those links, this is interesting stuff.
keep the ideas coming guys, I like this thread.
-SWlM
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10-02-2008 01:14
How do you propose to remove the codeine? Maybe I'm missing something, but they're so closely related, I don't see an easy way to seperate them.
That part seems difficult. But why do it? They don't do that when making herion, why do it for personal use?
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Bluelighter
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10-02-2008 02:38
Originally Posted by Ham-milton
Code:(removal) Foreign Alkaloids: Disolve 1 gram of Morphine HCl in 10cc of NaOH T.S. in a seperator, and shake the solution with successive portions of 15cc, 10cc, and 10cc of chloroform, passing the chloroform solutions through a small filter previously moistened with chloroform. Shake the combined chloroform solutions with 5cc of distilled water, seperate the chloroform, and evaporate it carefully to dryness on a water bath [uh, avoid the nasty carcinogenic fumes which will also knock you out while your at it too] Add to the RESIDUE thus obtained 10cc of .002 N sulfuric acid, heat gently until disolved, cool, add 2 drops methyl red T.S., and titrate the excess H2SO4 with .02 N NaOH: not less than 7.5cc of the latter should be required.
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10-02-2008 02:50
It seems like alot of trouble, I'd rather gravity bong some opium...
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Bluelighter
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10-02-2008 04:42^ seems pretty simple to my limited skills, I'd rather vaporise some morphine crystals
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10-02-2008 05:12
Yeah, there's a lot of factual errors in it, and it's certainly not simple.
It's quite difficult, actually.
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10-02-2008 08:49
just posted it for discussion! sry sry. i'm not a chemist and i did not write it. was just throwing in a tek that hadn't been posted yet for comparison.
tek seems to be backwards compared to this, which is the method you referenced. should it be KOH to 11 first (forming calcium morphenate which remains water soluble while the crap falls out), and then NH4Cl to 9.1 (to precipitate the morphine)?
you seem to be right about the acetylene. but what about these points...
not substantially afaik (1-2% with a raised ph8-9 from what i read). what's your source for this? anyways, in the tek the water solution is being heated. morphine is readily soluble in hot water with a neutral ph. the acid (while probably unnecessary) is added to stabilize the morphine at high temps i'm assuming. if you basify to ph12 and heat it, it would decompose, no?
Originally Posted by OverDriven
typo? should be 500g of straw i think, based on how little 50 would render.
Originally Posted by OverDriven
additional question: which would be preferable for smoking ... the salt or the base?Last edited by colors; 10-02-2008 at 09:05.
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Bluelighter
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10-02-2008 13:18^ i think base would be best for smoking... tried and tested in opium

For conversion to salt, am i correct that hydrochloride is superior to sulphate?
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10-02-2008 20:48
here's another one for discussion. i don't think it will render pure crystals, but it's intended to give you a clean base powder for smoking.
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Bogumil's Smokeable O Tek
1) Poppy straw extracted into ethanol (60 g in an Erlenmeyer, Ethanol added to make up to 1000ml) at about 70-80C, for 4 hours, then filtered and fresh ethanol added. Same amount of ethanol as before. The filtering and adding of ethanol repeated until the extract was almost clear. Make sure to filter as fine as possible.
2) Extracts are poured together in a pyrex. A fan placed in front of it. After 30 minutes precipitate forms. Filter - it will be green. Go on evaporating and filtering each time enough precipitate has formed. At a certain point the precipitate will become brownish. At this point stop filtering and let it dry completely. It is very important to do the filtering as the evaporation goes on. Filter through a bigger pore filter first and then through a finer one. (Use the same filters as often as possible to not waste solution that stays in the filters). If this filtering is not done, the solution will be too dirty and no precipitate will form. Just check, when the precipitates get brown, thats when you don't need to filter anymore.
3) 100ml of 1 - 2% acetic acid are made up: 1.5 ml of 99% acetic acid are added to 98.5 ml dH2O. This acid is poured in a vessel and put aside.
4) Dried putty is scratched off the pyrex and weighed. Its important to get the weight as correct as possible.
5) The dried putty is put in a small jar. 5x the amount of putty by weight dH2O is added (for 1.2 g putty this is 6 ml) and 2x the amount of putty by weight of the 2% acetic acid is added (for 1.2 g = 2.4 ml). Altogether in the jar there are: 1 part of dried putty and 7 parts of liquid (5 parts water, 2 parts diluted acetic acid) - and a stirbar. The jar is closed as air tight as possible and it is wrapped in aluminum foil to keep light from it. It is put on a magnetic stirrer. The temperature is set to 50C and the stirbar is turned on. It is stirred for 12 hours. It is very important to not use more than 7, max. 8 times the amount of liquid by weight of the putty. Even this way the solution will appear pretty dilute and it will not have a honey like consistency.
6) Not everything will dissolve. A good amount of the putty will be floating in the jar. After the 12 hours the putty and solution are poured into a test tube. The tube is closed and shaken as strong as possible for 5 minutes.
7) The liquid is filtered through a very fine filter paper. The putty that stays in the filter is discarded. The solution is put in a small jar, a stirbar is dropped in and the stirrer turned on. While it is stirred, a NaOH-solution is prepared:
9) NaOH-solution: 5 ml dH2O are put in a small vessel. NaOH is added until no more dissolves. The solution does not have to be heated for that. Room temperature is ok.
11) The NaOH solution is added dropwise to the extract in the glass until the pH is 7. When it is 7, the solution is filtered. The liquid is collected and put back in the jar and the stirbar is put in. In the filter there is now narcotine and some papaverine. It is light brown.
12) The solution doesn't need to be heated for this step. Room-temperature is fine. The pH has to be monitored closely. Although you will very easily see, when the precipitate forms and then know that your almost there, there is still a range, in which the precipitate will be visible, like between 6.7 and 7.2 or between maybe 8.5 and 9.5. The accurate pH makes sure that the desired alkaloids are precipitated in the hugest possible amount. The filtering will go medium slow, depending on the papers. It will be very easy, even with normal filter papers, to filter the precipitate out.
13) To the solution powdered Na2CO3 is added until the pH is 9.1. At about pH 8.5 a precipitate will start to form. As the sodium carbonate is added further, the precipitate gets more until the liquid is milky. The pH is checked. When it is 9.1, the solution is filtered through a fine filter paper. The solution is kept, put back in the glass and the pH is checked again. If it is not exactly 9.1 it is adjusted and the solution is filtered again. Here too, close monitoring of the pH is nessecary to get the desired alkaloids in the highest amount. The morphine precipitate is very easy to filter out. It forms immediately and the particles are big enough to stay in the filter-paper.
14) Dry the morphine precipitate. It is suitable for smoking.
In the above procedure the following things make a cleaner solution:
- The repeated filtering while the alcoholic extract is evaporated down.
- The dissolving of the dried putty in the water/acid mix. The water insoluble things stay out of the solution this way and only the really water soluble alkaloids are dissolved. What gets not dissolve in the 12 hours is unwanted dirt. Although we do the regular filtering, still about 1/4 - 1/3 of the putty don't get dissolved in this step. Thats another large amount of dirt, we keep out of our solution.
Once you get the method down, use bigger amounts of straw. From 60g you get only 1, max. 2 grams of the good powder. 500 to 1000 grams should be a good amount of straw to process.
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10-02-2008 22:32
and what about injecting the straw precipitate?
Also if one has acetic anhydride, simply add the powder to a spoon, add 1ml per gram of morphine, wrap in foil and bake for an hour. Voila Heroin.
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Bluelighter
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10-02-2008 23:24Chemethist.... no mention of AA please in this thread, it's a purification/no synth thread for harm reduction blah blah......
i don't want this thread getting closed.
anyway,
thank you colors for new information, although it seems a bit more difficult than some other methods that may yield purer extracts. This subject interests me a lot.
Keep up the good work...
-SWlM
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Bluelighter
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16-02-2008 08:30sry for bump, but i got a question.
which would contain more alkaloids?.......
1kg of big pods or 1kg of small pods?
this thread wants more input anyway,
post or pm, lets get some info...
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16-02-2008 10:23
Originally Posted by SWlM
it would be biased on the opium yield of the pod.
big pod with little yield = more trash than good
small pod with good yield = more good
and vice-vs I wold think
look up which poppies produce the best yield and from what region and go from there.
Bluelight



