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Ask Dr. Shulgin OnlineARCHIVE: March 5, 2003

Psilocybe Mushroom Extractions

Dear Dr. Shulgin:friend of mine performed a Soxhlet extraction of 12 grams of powdered Psiloc

ubensis, using 95% ethanol. When the 60 mL of extract cooled to roommperature, many small transparent, colorless crystals had formed on the bott

f the container and did not redissolve on agitation. Do you know what theserystals are? -- Journeyman

Dear Journeyman:here is a fascinating report in the literature that gives a quantitativeeasurement of the efficiency of extraction of both psilocybin and psilocin fromushroom Psilocybe bohemica. The citation to the article is Kysilka, R. and Wur., Planta Med. Vol. 56 pp. 327-328 (1990). These Czechoslovakian scientistsudied the efficiency of both methanol and ethanol as solvents, each containingarying amounts of water. The results were, to me, both unexpected and mostrovocative.

he isolation of psilocybin seemed to be quite reasonable. This alkaloid iseasonably soluble in boiling water from which it can be nicely crystallized. It is oluble in boiling methanol, and almost insoluble in boiling ethanol. And thextraction efficiency is optimum with methanol and almost as good with ethanoith both, the less water present, the better. The compound is, after all, a perf

xample of a zwitterion, the internal salt of a phosphoric acid and an amine bas

ut the numbers with psilocin are strange. With aqueous ethanol, the optimumxtraction was with a 70% ethanol concentration, and the extraction efficiency

ropped almost to zero when there was no water present. But methanol wasxtremely inefficient regardless of the amount of water present in it. Theseesearchers were apparently surprised by these findings, as they explored furthnd uncovered other clues. Time is a factor. Psilocin is extracted at a much slowte than is psilocybin because it is contained intracellularly in the plant, and thower to be gotten out. They conclude that many of the low psilocin assays of ushrooms are due to this difficulty of getting the alkaloid out of the plant and e extracting solvent. Using this information they determined that the levels of

silocybin and psilocin are substantially the same in Psilocybe bohemica, in conf

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ith the published literature values where very small amounts of psilocin werebserved.

fficient extraction apparently requires patience.

s to the identity of the crystals that were drifting around in the cooled Soxhleteceiver, from their being insoluble in ethanol, and white, and transparent, I wouess that you are seeing pure psilocybin.

Dr. Shulgin