TEK - CEW of Codeine help

[killerfromsky]

Hey,

SWIM has done the codeine extraction on some pills.
It were effervescent tablets with only codeine (30) and paracetamol(500)

He dissolved 2,5 of the pills in hot watter.
Cooled the water to 4°C.
Filtered it trough 2 coffee filters. He even used some ice cubes in the filters to keep the water cold.

But there isn't anything left in the coffee filters!
Is this normal?
Nothing is left, should he still drink the codeine?

Thanks!

[JarvyJarvison]

Hmmmmm. I'd say no, its not safe to drink. There should be more than a gram of powder left in the filter(s). Something went wrong. It could be the size of the pores in the filter. They might be too large.

[0utrider]

no, def. not normal!
let it freeze, or rather close to freeze.. when the first ice crystals appear on the surface, thats a good temperature..
also look at the CWE faq in my signature

[drguildo]

If the paracetamol in the tablets is soluble then, ipso facto, CWE will not work. Having said that if SWIM is only taking 2 and a half of them I really wouldn't bother with CWE unless SWIM is planning on doing that more than, say, once a day.

[killerfromsky]

Originally Posted by drguildo

If the paracetamol in the tablets is soluble then, ipso facto, CWE will not work. Having said that if SWIM is only taking 2 and a half of them I really wouldn't bother with CWE unless SWIM is planning on doing that more than, say, once a day.

How do you know if the paracetamol is soluble?

And it was just a tester, that is why SWIM only used 2,5

And it was close to freezing, because SWIM also added ice cubes to the solution.

[Routemaster Flash]

Originally Posted by killerfromsky

How do you know if the paracetamol is soluble?

It will say so on the label, i.e. would be specifically marketed as soluble. If SWIY wants to use the rest of the packet for future CWEs, he could just add some lemon juice to the solution until it goes cloudy, and then re-filter to get rid of the precipitated paracetamol.

Originally Posted by killerfromsky

And it was just a tester, that is why SWIM only used 2,5

And it was close to freezing, because SWIM also added ice cubes to the solution.

1 gram of paracetamol (i.e. 2x500mg pills) is the standard therapeutic dose, so it's not as if 1.25g is going to do you any harm.

[drguildo]

Originally Posted by killerfromsky

How do you know if the paracetamol is soluble?

You said:

Originally Posted by killerfromsky

It were effervescent tablets with only codeine (30) and paracetamol(500)

[killerfromsky]

Ok, so SWIM learned:

1) effervescent tablet are soluble, so they are harder to use
2) adding lemon juice to the solution wil precipitate the paracetamol


But when does SWIY add the lemon juice?
And is there anything elso to use?

[0utrider]

would be nice if you could add that fact to the FAQ will give you some nice reps for that

[killerfromsky]

Originally Posted by outriderx

would be nice if you could add that fact to the FAQ will give you some nice reps for that

And how do you do that?

SWIM is still new to this forum..

Reputation Comments on this post:

thanks for your good contribution to the CWE faq!

[0utrider]

go the link in my signature, where the faq is and post it as a small article
i.e.
Brandname xy/substance xy doesnt work by normal CWE
-> solution

i will then include it in the main faq and give you reputation points (you will become a silver member)

btw. did SWIY acquire these pills in BE ?


look in the faq now

outriderx added 15 Minutes and 41 Seconds later...

http://www.drugs-forum.co.uk/forum/s...ets_in_General

Reputation Comments on this post:

thx for the help and great work on the CWE thread!

[RoboCodeine7610]

You shouldn't be messing around with lemon juice since not all of the APAP might precipitate and you might end up having acetaminophen poisoning.
Swim would recommend that you just use regular tablets...
Robo.

[killerfromsky]

Originally Posted by RoboCodeine7610

You shouldn't be messing around with lemon juice since not all of the APAP might precipitate and you might end up having acetaminophen poisoning.
Swim would recommend that you just use regular tablets...
Robo.

Are there any other solutions to precipitate the paracetamol?

[Routemaster Flash]

But you don't have to get rid of ALL the paracetamol, do you? This is a commonplace painkiller we're talking about here, not prussic acid. Let's say you're doing a CWE on 32 8/500 tablets: that's a total of 16g of paracetamol. Even if you only extracted 3/4 of it, which would be a VERY poor CWE, you're still only taking 4g of paracetamol, which isn't going to kill you unless you have a seriously sick liver in the first place.

Soluble paracetamol and aspirin formulae rely on the drug in question being present as a salt, with the aspirin/paracetamol as the acid and a sodium or calcium ion as the base. By raising (Edit: or lowering, even! ) the pH with another acid, this 'robs' the salt of its base (forming sodium citrate if lemon juice is used with sodium salicylate, for example, since aspirin is salycilic acid) and the freebase, being insoluble, precipitates out. The codeine salt is unaffected, since in this case the desired alkaloid is actually the base itself and is unaffected by the higher pH.

The only thing you've got to watch out for here is the large amount of sodium that may be left behind in the solution, which you should bear in mind if doing this procedure regularly. But as someone has already said, it's much easier just to use normal tablets in the first place.

[0utrider]

i think thats a bad advise as habits form fast and tehre is not APAP tolerance. the liver will take irreparable damage, this 4-5g is a ONCE in a week thing!

[killerfromsky]

SWIM sees it this way:
He'll try the CWE with the lemon juice.

Since the tablets are completely soluble, SWIM couldn't see any parts nor precipitation.
So if adding the lemon juice would work, he'll clearly see precipitation once added.
Then SWIM just needs to add enough lemon juice until he sees no further precipitation. And he might add a little more just to be safe.

Then just filter again and weigh how much is left in the filter once dry. Then he'll do the mats how much he might have still in the solution. And the max paracetamol SWIM will ever use is 1,5 gr.
While just keeping the filtered codeine substract in the fridge @ 4°C.

After calculations are correct and give good results he'll try the codeine drink.

[Routemaster Flash]

Originally Posted by outriderx

i think thats a bad advise as habits form fast and tehre is not APAP tolerance. the liver will take irreparable damage, this 4-5g is a ONCE in a week thing!

Well SWIM doesn't do CWEs more than once a week so as to avoid building up a tolerance. In fact he tries to limit it to once a fortnight.

SWIM's point was, even a 'newbie' CWE is unlikely to contain more than a couple of grams of APAP, especially since a newbie is probably going to be using a low-ish dose of codeine and a correspondingly smaller amount of APAP.

[RoboCodeine7610]

By raising the pH with another acid

That doesn't make any sense...

[Routemaster Flash]

Originally Posted by RoboCodeine7610

That doesn't make any sense...

Sorry, you're quite right, I meant lowering the pH/raising the acidity level.