A while ago I had a dream in which, while railing my way through a couple of grams of bolivias finest I got an urge for a couple of hits of the hard stuff, and being an "infrequent flyer", I did not have soda or ammonia handy, never mind ether. What I did have was some caustic soda from a soapmaking kit, and after slapping down the little voice that warns me of dumb ideas with potentially disasterous results I threw a couple matchheads of the lye into a test tube and dissolved it, the mixture was slightly warm and quite slipprery indicating high ph. I dumped in a few rails worth of blow and swirled the mix in some hot tapwater. At first I thought nothing was happening, as no visible reaction was occuring, the tube held just a few tiny white dots, and something that distorted the water a little. I cooled the mix and swirled it around a few times and lo and behold a few small white balls appeared, looking for all the world like styrofoam nuggets. I rinsed them well, and dumped them out onto a coffee filter to dry them. I hesitated before smoking any, going so far as to crush a tiny piece in my mouth to see if I could could taste anything nasty.

The first hit was great, it dissolved into the ash instantly and I exhaled a cloud of very tasty smoke much larger than I anticipated. After a second larger hit is when things got a little wierd, I felt very flushed and when I looked in the mirror I was indeed quite red. I cant say if any of the further symptoms were because of the drug or the abject paranoia I felt, but things got unpleasant fast, causing a rare event, I
put away the rest of the blow and after several cigarettes, whiskies,and hot showers I went to sleep.

So my questions are;
a; has anyone tried this?
b; do you think there was residual lye in what I smoked,and could it have caused the flushing?
c; could the lye have changed the structure of the cocaine a little?, it did react off the hcl ion without causing any release of gas which I found strange.
thanks and cheers
co

Lye doesn't boil easily at all. In fact, I think you'd have to thermally reduce it to metal to boil it... which doesn't happen very easily at all.

You realize that the core nucleus of cocaine is hydromethyleniacin methyl ester?

Not, mind you, that anyone really knows what that does...

Yes, there's a risk that it lysed the pseudopeptide bond, creating sodium benzoate, and leaving you smoking ecogonovine.

This risk is slightly lower since I believe it's an organic-base-alcohol/acid ester, which is really fucking wierd, and also slightly lower since you heated briefly rather than in prolonged fashion... but, anything is possible.

If your coke was pharmeceutical, I'd say "evap the water"... but, well... hard to find shit in cut, even in good coke.

NaOH + HCl -> NaCl + H2O.

Fairly normal.

Thanks for the articulate answers, I noticed that "niacin" was one of the core elements of the molecule you mentioned , niacin causes flushing in some people, could the vitamin nestled at the center of the molecule have caused the flushing? hmm, better go dream up a couple more grams for research purposes.
Cheers

A weak base is used, I vaguely remember that over pH 12 causes degradation of the coke but will have to research that a little to be sure of what the deal is...

..however, people do make it, on odd occasions, with NaOH and if worried about any NaOH caught up with the rock - wash it in water - the crack isn't water soluble.

Maybe, it was the shithot rock one made and coupled with the potential paranoia that crack causes you have 1 + 1 =3

I am not to sure what your on about but this video should/will be of great help:

http://www.archive.org/details/HarmReductionFreeBase

That was the one I posted a couple of months back, wasn't it?? - it's not a a bad video, although, he spends a lot of time f'ing around with it - the bicarb one can be heated until all is dissolved and left to cool, the rocks will be solid when cool and usually float to the top. No teasing needed. The ammonia one needs 'teasing' out from the spoon and can be done so almost immediately after heating. Drag it to the edge of the spoon until one has a nice pile and then pull it off onto a filter paper or kitchen towel (toilet paper dissolves and gets all over the place).

Crush and wash in water (ammonia made product - if u wish - most people don't bother though)

Yeah, the dudes tens to go around the point but i think its pretty nice to watch and interesting

Yep, all in all it's a good video, one of the better ones around.

There are moar? I request links!