Lately I've seen a disgusting theme where people are "making crack" using ammonia as the source of the base. This is knuckle-dragging stupid. If you had 2 ways to do something, and took the least effective parts of both, you would land smack dab in making crack with ammonia. There are already plenty of oppertunities to screw up some cocaine without mix-matching parts of several techniques, so here I'm going to show you how to make freebase cocaine in the method roughly described by Richard Pryor in his often retold story od almost burning his house down. He doesn't give an actual recipe, just a rough outline of what he was taugjht by a Dr. who was hired solely to cook freebase cocaine for Hollywoods elite druggies at exclusive parties occuring in the late 70's and ealy 80's.
Materials
1. Cocaine hcl. I suggest always using the best product you can procure but this method works on even the junkiest, most adulterated 10% cocaine hcl.
2. Household ammonia. Technically this is called ammonium hydroxide. Ammonia is a gas at atmosheric temperatures and pressures. this product is ammonia gas absorbed into water. It's used for cleaning generally and is available most commonly in 5% strength and 10% industrial strength. 5% is available at mont grocery stores in the cleaning section. The ingredients list should read "ammonium hydroxide" and nothing else. It needs to be clear, absolutely don't even think about lemon scented ammonia or the "Fabulous" Mexican pink ammonia. It won't end well if you do
3. A can of "engine starting fluid" avaulable at auto-parts stores department stores and some gas stations. Walmart carries a product that advertises "50% ether" and it's not very expensive. I think $2.89/can+tax. 50% ether is an added value because deiethyl ether is the product you are using. Other contents include heptane and propellant. The heptane is also a useful non-polar solvent but not suited for this particular synthesis. You can save it im a tightly closeable container. If nothing else you can burn it in a bunsun burner.
4. Water. As in all things chemistry, distilled water is ideal, reverse osmosis filtered drinking water is suitable as well. Tap water could even be used, with discretion. I wouldn't use New York city water, but Assuming your tap water isn't too chloronaated or your well water doesn't have a high level of dissolved minerals, it will probably be suitable.
5. several small glass containers with lids. In this demonstration, I am dong 1 gram and 10 ml test tubes are a good size. If you scaled this up, you need to scale your containers also, of course. It's not essential that you use glass, but if you are using plastic, you need to test it with the diethyl ether, because diethyl ether melts some plactic. Polycarbonate for sure. polypropylene or polytetrachloroethylene (aka PTFE or teflon) would probably be fine.
6. A pipette or small measuring container. Pipetteas are cheap and convienient and have the benefit of both measuring liquids and sperating them in place of a seperatory funnel, which comes in handy but can be subtitued by a pipette, syringe or even a ziplock baggie.
So let's start
Diethyl ether is widely available from chemical supply houses and is not a watched chemical, So if you just buy it outright, no one will blame you. It can also be synthesized by reacting ethanol (ethyl alcohol) sith sulfuric acid. There are several methods of purifying it, if you are making it yourself. For most of us, distilling it from engine starting fluid is the most convienient method because it is very stable in a metal can and will last for years in the can. If you are storing it in gass jars, it can create explosive peroxides and also degrade over time. Shelf life of diethyl ether in a glass jar is about 1 year, but like many things, the fresher it is the better, and distilling it as you need it is a good choice. Diethyl ether boils at 35C (95F) and heptane boils at 98.4C (209F) so fractional distillation and vacuum distillation are not necissary, just a basic distillation. I do recomment no skimping on the ice because ether evaporates quite fast at room temperatures. Pardon the mess, I've been busy lately all that shit on the table (the white stuff) is magnesium sulfate not something valuable
No chemistry set? Not a problem you can use a pot with a lid and a cup, and a bag of ice/ I have a write-up on that process here somewhere, but it's widerly known and the details can be found via almost any searh engine, just search for ""1-pot distillation method". Distillation is my recommended method because the process refines the ether and works to dry it (drying the ether is not necissary for this particular process).
For this tutorial, I am going to use just 1 gram of cocaine. There is a specific reason thaty we will discuss at the end, but the process can be scaled up linearly to any amount you can reasonably manage.
1. In a suitable container (which is glass or PP or some other material you have already tested with diethyl ether, ) add 1 gram finely crushed cocaine hcl
2. Add 2 ml of water. Distilled water is ideal. Reverse Osmosis drinking water is suitable and what I generally use. Tap water varies in it's composition and is best avoided unless you know what the analysis is. If you have nothing else, then you have nothing else (you could distill a bit of water using one of the methods mentioned above)
3. next goes in your diethyl ether. 4 ml of ether can solavate 1.14g of cocaine base at 25C. but I am going to use 5 ml just because I can. I like prime numbers, yeah, that's why.
4. finally, we add the ammonia water. You need clear ammonia, obvioulsy. I don't think lemon freebase will taste as good as it sounds. Its available at groceries, hardwares, and department sotores world wide. Commonly, 5% is considered "the standard strenth" ammonium hydroxide solution, although 120% "industrial strength can be has and even up to 30+% is available from chemical manufacturers. There is no benefit in using stronger ammonia here, 5% is just fine 2ml of 5% ammonium hydroxide is what you want. If you have 10% ammonia, I suggest diluting it to 50% strength (5% overall)
I somehow forgot to send that picture to myself, so I don't have it. Actually it is the picture above, The picture I don'r have is the 2ml water/5ml ether picture without the 2 ml ammonia)
5. Cap this bottle and shake it vigorously for 2 minutes. Don't skimp. If your ether was in the freezer or for any other reason the mixture is cold, warm it up in your hands . It doesn't need to be warm, it simply needs to be room temperature, 70-80f would be great.
6. After 2 minutes. Set the container down on a solid surface to seperaste into layers, or put it in a seperatory funnel. MAKE SURE THE PETCOCK IS CLOSED BEFORE YOU ADD IT. Don't say I didn't warn you. When you dump it through the funnel, directly onto the table, you'll learn, The ether will strip the finish right off of your table and it's now full of polyeurathane or laquor and it's ruined. Anyways, it'll seperate into layers in just a moment. Carefully release the bottom layer (water and ammonia) and capture the diethyl ether into a container suitable for evaporating. Ether boils at 36c or something like that. A low temperature. That is why we are using it. I use my stir plate set to 80c and blow a small usb fan at the top of it. It evaporates so fast, you can watch it dissapear. (you could distill it if you wanted to save the ether, but it's cheap and more work to recover than its worth for me, in the US where a can of engine starting fluid is $2.50 and has 6-8 oz of ether per can. I use only 1/4-1/4 can at a time and leave the rest in the can where it is protected from light and air. I distill it as I need it. Start with 10% more liquid thasn twice as much ether as you like, (ex. I want 50 ml of ether, I collect 110ml of starter fluid to start distilling. The product I use is 50% ether, but other brands are less, if in doubt just use more starting material)
Basse cocaine has a melting point of 98C at atmosperic pressure. I suggest you stay below that, at least. Extreme heat isnt necissary and 5ml of ether evaporates in less than 5 minutes at 70c with a breeze blowing on it
...And there you have it. high purity crystal cocaine. The exact pruity will depend on what adulterants and contaminants were in the initial poduct. This method does remove several "caine" local anesthetics like benzocaine. It won't remove levimisole/dextramisole, if you suspect your cocaine contains that, there is a modified process you can use to eliminate that. message me.
Some prerequisite Q&A
Does this make a better product than using baking soda to produce "crack"? Shit yes, you ever seen crystal crack? Me either, but accordingto the governments of the world, crack that has been confiscated and analysed can be as low as 40% purity.
Do I have to use diethyl ether or can I use some other non-polar solvent? You can surely use another solvent, but you'll have to figure it out for yourself. It's not hard, if you know how to do the math. Diethyl ether is the quintessential solvent for "freebase cocaine". Sometimes , you may wonder why somebody uses a certain product or a certain procedure over a similar one. What you'll find most often is there is a reason. It could be various things. Diethyl ether evaporates quickly and cleanly. it doesn't misce with water very well. Other solvents have other properties.
What do you think about the semi-infamous "La junk" method? It's not ideal. Le junk, the poor guy, he had good intentions but not good knowledge of materials science or chemistry. Using the method outlined above (2ml ammonia per gram) there will be very little precipitate. La junks method has you adding and stirring and adding and stirring until everything possible has precipitated and you are left with sticky residue all over everything that is a pain to wash off and it requires more effort and attention than this method. Cocaine doesn't magically deprotonate instantly at some ph level or amount of base, it is a spectrum. At 8.6 ph, (the pka) half of the cocaine in solution will be deprotonated and hald will be hcl still and dissolved in the water. at ph 10.6, all of the cocaine will be in base form and adding more base isn't a benefit, its a detriment because other chemicals in the cocaine will deprotonate and migrate into the ether, lowering the purity and when it collects on the side of the vessel, that slimy junk probably has a little bit of cocaine trapped in it, that you will never recover.
How did you come up with these measurements? I calculated them for the most part. A person doesn't REALLY need 2 ml of water to dissolve a gram of cocaine, 1 ml could dissolve 2 grams of cocaine in a perfect world. We don't live in a perfect world though and we want to be gentle on the dcocaine molecule. ZEvery one you break is one lost, so strong acids or bases directly into strong solutions tends to break more molecules. The water, since we are seperating it, is the vehicle for removing adulterants and we want to have enough to solvate as much adulterants as we can, within reason. The stoicheometric amount of ammonia to deprotonate pure cocaine is just slightl less than 2 ml, so this is a small excess, 5-7% as I recall. Cocaine is cocaine, but adulterants are usually unknown, with unknown solubilities and Ph measurements. If an adulterant was more acidic than cocaine, than the cocaine is more acidic and needs more OH- to completely react. This is the same reason why people use 30% sodium hydroxide when making crack, technically 25% SB is the stoichometric amount, we add a little extra, just in case. I've applied the same theory here.
What else can this reaction teach me or how else can I benefit from using it? There are several ways we can use this reaction in a process to elucidate various things. Cocaine base has a mole weight of 303.358g. Hydrogen chloride has a mole weight of 36.46g. one mole of cocaine base + 1 mole of hcl= 1 mole of cocaine hcl (339.8g/m) 339.8 / 303.358= 1.120,.. 303.358 / 339.8=0.89486 What does that mean? 1 gram of base cocaine would weigh 1.12g of cocaine hcl if you protonated it. 1 gram of cocaine hcl would weigh 0.89486g if you based it (lets call it 0.895 from now on) So if you did this procedure and weighhed your result and multilpled by 1.12. The answer is how much cocaine hcl you would have. This is why I used 1 gram to start. The base x 1.12= the amount of pure cocaine you started with. If you recovered 634mg of base, x 1.12=710.08, 71.08% purity
The other thing you could do is Dissolve the cocaine base back into ether orother suitable non-polar solvent and bubble hydrogen chloride gas through it to precipitate high 90's% cocaine. I'm going to suggest an error factor of 5% to be safe, so 95% pure cocaine is what I would expect. It could be a few % higher or lower, depending on what adulterants and dilutents were in the initial starting material. When you precipitate the Cocaine hcl, we're going to change the name of this procedure from "making freebase cocaine" to "a liquid / liquid A/B extraction". I suggest trying it out and buying yourself some "95% pure, straight off the brick" cocaine. What you'll learn? THERE IS NO 95% PURE COCAINE ON THE DARK NET. I've bought the most expensive and most recommended cocaine out here, money no object. Cocaine doesn't leave south America at 95% in most cases. If you start with the right cocaine, which is not about purity but about adulterants and how easy they are to remove. Something that is hard to know. If you follow this process and I'll buy it from YOU for $125/g without batting an eye. I'll consider $150
Materials
1. Cocaine hcl. I suggest always using the best product you can procure but this method works on even the junkiest, most adulterated 10% cocaine hcl.
2. Household ammonia. Technically this is called ammonium hydroxide. Ammonia is a gas at atmosheric temperatures and pressures. this product is ammonia gas absorbed into water. It's used for cleaning generally and is available most commonly in 5% strength and 10% industrial strength. 5% is available at mont grocery stores in the cleaning section. The ingredients list should read "ammonium hydroxide" and nothing else. It needs to be clear, absolutely don't even think about lemon scented ammonia or the "Fabulous" Mexican pink ammonia. It won't end well if you do
3. A can of "engine starting fluid" avaulable at auto-parts stores department stores and some gas stations. Walmart carries a product that advertises "50% ether" and it's not very expensive. I think $2.89/can+tax. 50% ether is an added value because deiethyl ether is the product you are using. Other contents include heptane and propellant. The heptane is also a useful non-polar solvent but not suited for this particular synthesis. You can save it im a tightly closeable container. If nothing else you can burn it in a bunsun burner.
4. Water. As in all things chemistry, distilled water is ideal, reverse osmosis filtered drinking water is suitable as well. Tap water could even be used, with discretion. I wouldn't use New York city water, but Assuming your tap water isn't too chloronaated or your well water doesn't have a high level of dissolved minerals, it will probably be suitable.
5. several small glass containers with lids. In this demonstration, I am dong 1 gram and 10 ml test tubes are a good size. If you scaled this up, you need to scale your containers also, of course. It's not essential that you use glass, but if you are using plastic, you need to test it with the diethyl ether, because diethyl ether melts some plactic. Polycarbonate for sure. polypropylene or polytetrachloroethylene (aka PTFE or teflon) would probably be fine.
6. A pipette or small measuring container. Pipetteas are cheap and convienient and have the benefit of both measuring liquids and sperating them in place of a seperatory funnel, which comes in handy but can be subtitued by a pipette, syringe or even a ziplock baggie.
So let's start
Diethyl ether is widely available from chemical supply houses and is not a watched chemical, So if you just buy it outright, no one will blame you. It can also be synthesized by reacting ethanol (ethyl alcohol) sith sulfuric acid. There are several methods of purifying it, if you are making it yourself. For most of us, distilling it from engine starting fluid is the most convienient method because it is very stable in a metal can and will last for years in the can. If you are storing it in gass jars, it can create explosive peroxides and also degrade over time. Shelf life of diethyl ether in a glass jar is about 1 year, but like many things, the fresher it is the better, and distilling it as you need it is a good choice. Diethyl ether boils at 35C (95F) and heptane boils at 98.4C (209F) so fractional distillation and vacuum distillation are not necissary, just a basic distillation. I do recomment no skimping on the ice because ether evaporates quite fast at room temperatures. Pardon the mess, I've been busy lately all that shit on the table (the white stuff) is magnesium sulfate not something valuable
No chemistry set? Not a problem you can use a pot with a lid and a cup, and a bag of ice/ I have a write-up on that process here somewhere, but it's widerly known and the details can be found via almost any searh engine, just search for ""1-pot distillation method". Distillation is my recommended method because the process refines the ether and works to dry it (drying the ether is not necissary for this particular process).
For this tutorial, I am going to use just 1 gram of cocaine. There is a specific reason thaty we will discuss at the end, but the process can be scaled up linearly to any amount you can reasonably manage.
1. In a suitable container (which is glass or PP or some other material you have already tested with diethyl ether, ) add 1 gram finely crushed cocaine hcl
2. Add 2 ml of water. Distilled water is ideal. Reverse Osmosis drinking water is suitable and what I generally use. Tap water varies in it's composition and is best avoided unless you know what the analysis is. If you have nothing else, then you have nothing else (you could distill a bit of water using one of the methods mentioned above)
3. next goes in your diethyl ether. 4 ml of ether can solavate 1.14g of cocaine base at 25C. but I am going to use 5 ml just because I can. I like prime numbers, yeah, that's why.
4. finally, we add the ammonia water. You need clear ammonia, obvioulsy. I don't think lemon freebase will taste as good as it sounds. Its available at groceries, hardwares, and department sotores world wide. Commonly, 5% is considered "the standard strenth" ammonium hydroxide solution, although 120% "industrial strength can be has and even up to 30+% is available from chemical manufacturers. There is no benefit in using stronger ammonia here, 5% is just fine 2ml of 5% ammonium hydroxide is what you want. If you have 10% ammonia, I suggest diluting it to 50% strength (5% overall)
I somehow forgot to send that picture to myself, so I don't have it. Actually it is the picture above, The picture I don'r have is the 2ml water/5ml ether picture without the 2 ml ammonia)
5. Cap this bottle and shake it vigorously for 2 minutes. Don't skimp. If your ether was in the freezer or for any other reason the mixture is cold, warm it up in your hands . It doesn't need to be warm, it simply needs to be room temperature, 70-80f would be great.
6. After 2 minutes. Set the container down on a solid surface to seperaste into layers, or put it in a seperatory funnel. MAKE SURE THE PETCOCK IS CLOSED BEFORE YOU ADD IT. Don't say I didn't warn you. When you dump it through the funnel, directly onto the table, you'll learn, The ether will strip the finish right off of your table and it's now full of polyeurathane or laquor and it's ruined. Anyways, it'll seperate into layers in just a moment. Carefully release the bottom layer (water and ammonia) and capture the diethyl ether into a container suitable for evaporating. Ether boils at 36c or something like that. A low temperature. That is why we are using it. I use my stir plate set to 80c and blow a small usb fan at the top of it. It evaporates so fast, you can watch it dissapear. (you could distill it if you wanted to save the ether, but it's cheap and more work to recover than its worth for me, in the US where a can of engine starting fluid is $2.50 and has 6-8 oz of ether per can. I use only 1/4-1/4 can at a time and leave the rest in the can where it is protected from light and air. I distill it as I need it. Start with 10% more liquid thasn twice as much ether as you like, (ex. I want 50 ml of ether, I collect 110ml of starter fluid to start distilling. The product I use is 50% ether, but other brands are less, if in doubt just use more starting material)
Basse cocaine has a melting point of 98C at atmosperic pressure. I suggest you stay below that, at least. Extreme heat isnt necissary and 5ml of ether evaporates in less than 5 minutes at 70c with a breeze blowing on it
...And there you have it. high purity crystal cocaine. The exact pruity will depend on what adulterants and contaminants were in the initial poduct. This method does remove several "caine" local anesthetics like benzocaine. It won't remove levimisole/dextramisole, if you suspect your cocaine contains that, there is a modified process you can use to eliminate that. message me.
Some prerequisite Q&A
Does this make a better product than using baking soda to produce "crack"? Shit yes, you ever seen crystal crack? Me either, but accordingto the governments of the world, crack that has been confiscated and analysed can be as low as 40% purity.
Do I have to use diethyl ether or can I use some other non-polar solvent? You can surely use another solvent, but you'll have to figure it out for yourself. It's not hard, if you know how to do the math. Diethyl ether is the quintessential solvent for "freebase cocaine". Sometimes , you may wonder why somebody uses a certain product or a certain procedure over a similar one. What you'll find most often is there is a reason. It could be various things. Diethyl ether evaporates quickly and cleanly. it doesn't misce with water very well. Other solvents have other properties.
What do you think about the semi-infamous "La junk" method? It's not ideal. Le junk, the poor guy, he had good intentions but not good knowledge of materials science or chemistry. Using the method outlined above (2ml ammonia per gram) there will be very little precipitate. La junks method has you adding and stirring and adding and stirring until everything possible has precipitated and you are left with sticky residue all over everything that is a pain to wash off and it requires more effort and attention than this method. Cocaine doesn't magically deprotonate instantly at some ph level or amount of base, it is a spectrum. At 8.6 ph, (the pka) half of the cocaine in solution will be deprotonated and hald will be hcl still and dissolved in the water. at ph 10.6, all of the cocaine will be in base form and adding more base isn't a benefit, its a detriment because other chemicals in the cocaine will deprotonate and migrate into the ether, lowering the purity and when it collects on the side of the vessel, that slimy junk probably has a little bit of cocaine trapped in it, that you will never recover.
How did you come up with these measurements? I calculated them for the most part. A person doesn't REALLY need 2 ml of water to dissolve a gram of cocaine, 1 ml could dissolve 2 grams of cocaine in a perfect world. We don't live in a perfect world though and we want to be gentle on the dcocaine molecule. ZEvery one you break is one lost, so strong acids or bases directly into strong solutions tends to break more molecules. The water, since we are seperating it, is the vehicle for removing adulterants and we want to have enough to solvate as much adulterants as we can, within reason. The stoicheometric amount of ammonia to deprotonate pure cocaine is just slightl less than 2 ml, so this is a small excess, 5-7% as I recall. Cocaine is cocaine, but adulterants are usually unknown, with unknown solubilities and Ph measurements. If an adulterant was more acidic than cocaine, than the cocaine is more acidic and needs more OH- to completely react. This is the same reason why people use 30% sodium hydroxide when making crack, technically 25% SB is the stoichometric amount, we add a little extra, just in case. I've applied the same theory here.
What else can this reaction teach me or how else can I benefit from using it? There are several ways we can use this reaction in a process to elucidate various things. Cocaine base has a mole weight of 303.358g. Hydrogen chloride has a mole weight of 36.46g. one mole of cocaine base + 1 mole of hcl= 1 mole of cocaine hcl (339.8g/m) 339.8 / 303.358= 1.120,.. 303.358 / 339.8=0.89486 What does that mean? 1 gram of base cocaine would weigh 1.12g of cocaine hcl if you protonated it. 1 gram of cocaine hcl would weigh 0.89486g if you based it (lets call it 0.895 from now on) So if you did this procedure and weighhed your result and multilpled by 1.12. The answer is how much cocaine hcl you would have. This is why I used 1 gram to start. The base x 1.12= the amount of pure cocaine you started with. If you recovered 634mg of base, x 1.12=710.08, 71.08% purity
The other thing you could do is Dissolve the cocaine base back into ether orother suitable non-polar solvent and bubble hydrogen chloride gas through it to precipitate high 90's% cocaine. I'm going to suggest an error factor of 5% to be safe, so 95% pure cocaine is what I would expect. It could be a few % higher or lower, depending on what adulterants and dilutents were in the initial starting material. When you precipitate the Cocaine hcl, we're going to change the name of this procedure from "making freebase cocaine" to "a liquid / liquid A/B extraction". I suggest trying it out and buying yourself some "95% pure, straight off the brick" cocaine. What you'll learn? THERE IS NO 95% PURE COCAINE ON THE DARK NET. I've bought the most expensive and most recommended cocaine out here, money no object. Cocaine doesn't leave south America at 95% in most cases. If you start with the right cocaine, which is not about purity but about adulterants and how easy they are to remove. Something that is hard to know. If you follow this process and I'll buy it from YOU for $125/g without batting an eye. I'll consider $150
crack melts at 98c and water boils at 100c. The hot water out of your tap is 135-140F (5/9-32=) 60c