May 1, 2009 - 7:09pm
I suspect you can substitute chloroform with methylene chloride or other highly volatile chlorinated solvents that are easier to obtain.
As for centrifuge, I think you can get creative with some spinny things like your washer, power tool, etc, or you might even get away without it if you're willing to let it settle down for a day or so.
concentrated sulfuric acid is not that hard to find.
Step 1, extraction:
Grind up pill(s) (supposedly)containing 2mg of alprazolam. Add 10ml of distilled water and shake vigorously.
Add 10ml of chloroform to the solution and vigoriously agigate again. Centrifuge the mixture(use some creativity)
Transfer the majority of chloroform layer to a new container, then vaporize the chlorform under reduced pressure (I suspect you can use those cheapo faucet mounted vacuum or use a pan of boiling water instead)
Split the solution into two containers in the unlikely chance you're able to peform step 3
Step 2, identification:
Add 3ml of conc. sulfuric acid to the residue. The solution should give a light blue-green fluorescence under ultraviolet light (spectrum not given, but I suspect blacklight will work). This step is not very reliable, since there are other benzodiazepines with fluorescence characteristics and the conuterfeit maybe spiked with a fluorescent dye to circumvent this test.
Step 3, add 20ml of 95% ethanol to the residue, then perform a ultraviolet spectroscopy and verify a strong absorption between 220-224nm
The absoprtion should look like this: 
Step 3 should give a fairly confident outcome that it is indeed alprazolam and it's easy to do if you have access to a UV absorption spectrometer.
Testing the amount contained is not easily done and it requires the use of potentiometric titration with perchloric acid or gas chromatography+access to pure alprazolam to use as a reference.
Source: foreign Pfizer documents on alprazolam tablets and others.
