MDMA crystal, Melbourne

Hi all,
Seems MDMA powder is not so novel these days, but the other week, for the first time in 16 years of sampling MDMA, I have come across crystal. The following was deleted from Pillreports, for, you guessed it, not being a report on a pill:
The capsules contained 100 mg of a beige, semi-transparent, crystalline substance, the crystals approximately the size, shape and color of brown sugar crystals.
A barely visible spec of a crushed-up crystal produced a violent, smoking reaction with the E-2 reagent, within 2 seconds coloring the entire drop of solution black - without transitory blue or purple - indicating the presence of an MDxx compound.
Following Shulgin’s prescription of 2 mg/kg, 150 mg of the substance were measured into a capsule, taken on an empty stomach. The thick vegicapsules originally containing 5-HTP were slow to dissolve as there was no noticeable onset within the first 75 minutes.
The presence of clean MDMA was first evidenced by mounting feelings of acute euphoria spreading from the myocardial region to the extremities, a heightening of visual and auditory acuity, strong empathogenic effects and a building of an overall good disposition and positive irations towards individuals who may or may not have been deserving of such.
The smooth 2 hour peak was followed by a wash of clean, amphetamine-free energy, a 50 mg supplement at T+2.5 extended the peak another 2 hours, causing entertaining synaesthetic effects, yet accompanied by severe disruptions in short term memory. There was no was no body load except for mild jaw clenching at T+5-6, no muscle spasms, only mild nystagmus after the booster dose, no noticeable comedown, sleep at T+7 achieved with the aid of .25 mg alprazolam.
Conclusion – top shelf MDMA (8/10)
Interested to see whether you’ve come across this crystal and what you know of it – whether it synthesized as crystal, or whether it could be repressed from powder or ground up pills, local/import and what your subjective impressions were.

This sounds like a textbook MDMA experience. My only question (related to the pillreports rating scheme I guess, so perhaps not relevant) is why would this kind of MDMA feeling not be awarded the coveted 10/10 rating? If a pill gave that kind of a clean "trip report" it would be nothing short of a miracle
I saw crystal exactly fitting the description you gave, around the new year (Dec00-Jan01); appearance of raw-sugar crystals, Marquis test like boiling black ink, cleanliness of MDMA experience unparalleled by anything pressed into a pill.
BigTrancer
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Load universe into cannon. Aim at brain. Shoot.

It could be an alternative form of an MDMA salt, although unlikely.
(Hydrochloride would be almost exclusive for MDMA; although some people have made MDXX phosphate salts)
What u had is actually probably due to increased purification, namely recrystallisation.
When chemists make virtually any solid (in this case gassing/acidifying MDMA freebase in a solvent) and filter off the liquids, the product is always very powdery or clumpy.
Recrystallising the product (involving adding just enough hot solvent, probably methanol, to dissolve it; filtering and cooling slowly) causes the product to "fall out" of solution as a crystalline mass.
When it is collected this time its appearance will be significantly "prettier" and obviously has increased purity.
If the chemist had done the original synth a bit better, (perhaps distilling the freebase if he/she didnt) you would get the most stunning pure white crystals and a trip to heaven on top of that
[This message has been edited by Biscuit (edited 13 June 2001).]

thankyou for a most eloquent report frqnt flyr.
i've read a few similar reviews and descriptions i think in trip reports.
haven't had the pleasure of crystal md, brown or white in quite some time.

The reason it went from pillreports is that there is nothing to stop anyone from buying a g or 2 or 28 of powder and making their own homemade caps. The quality and consistancy of these home jobs are too all over the place to be reported with any value on pillreports.com. To help keep the signal/noise ratio up the report was deleted (as per posting guidelines) with an email sent to frqntflyr to say why. This is not the first report to be given the flick, and it won't be the last.
The really isn't any reason for every man and his dog to report that the 120mg MDMA caps they made were excellent.
Of course they were.
If the report was to say, for example, that the caps were made with crystal sold of as MDMA but turned out to be something dangerous, then that is a different issue.
Cheers,
Soma.

Thanks for your input, comrades. I consider myself very fortunate to encounter this crystal, and the reason I didn’t rate it 10/10 is that the short term memory disruptions were rather severe. Discounting set and setting, I have had powder - white - that at 120 mg was as euphoric but without the IQ loss and did not require a booster.
Now as to the color – white vs brownish - I seem to remember an obsure, if not entirely fictionalized reference in Douglas Ruskoff’s “The Ecstasy Club” to brown crystal that was the residue left in the reactor after removal of the MDMA, supposedly stronger than the white stuff. Any truth to that one or is the color entirely a matter of quality synthesis / purification?
Happy trails…

I dont know the truth aobut that or not but: MDMA should be white in its purest form.
If it was crystalline it may even begin to look clear.
The point is u cannot really have "stronger" MDMA. If u have 100mg of uncut, white, pure MDMA u have 100mg of MDMA. Simple hey!
So white is always better than brown provided it is "pure" and the weight is there.

just a footnote to biscuits comment;
white is better than brown if your talking about the purity of MDMA.
if you're buying a white powder off the street then it's possible that it's been cut. pretty much everything that i can think of that might be used to step on a substance would be a white powder(epsom salts, chalk, casting sugar, glucogin(?)).
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Winston Smith has been brainwashed.
"He loved Big Brother."
As, now, do we.
We are the Winstons now.
-Salman Rushdie

Well, Biscuit, I agree up to a point – the issue becomes “is all MDMA MDMA”
On the face of it, the obvious answer is “duh!” But does this necessarily hold axiomatic?
To clarify, even pharmaceutical-grade chems – same CAS number, MSDS, organoleptic parameters etc, but supplied by different manufacturers (different brands) will have different properties.
This becomes most apparent when dealing with unstable formulations such as tricky emulsions – many a time my R&D guys come to me groaning when someone in the supply chain switches reagent/ingredient providers and the formulation falls apart. I believe this line of reasoning holds for street chemicals as well – different precursors / methods yield a final product with different properties.
Also, current purification methods, even chromatography based – likely beyond the reach of most chemically inclined entrepreneurs – rarely allow for obtaining an entirely pure compound. Even to id some of the traces, you are getting into GCMS-AA-NMR domains.
So allowing for the above two points – different precursors/methods and purification (I believe some of the traces could be pharmacologically active at that level), I think two batches of “pure” MDMA could have markedly different overall effects, not to mention strength...

You r absolutely right; i didnt even think about that!
Lets not forget the whole enantiomer situation.
The S is meant to be the one will all the empathy.
Aldrich sells pure (S)N-methyl-3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine.
Listed on their website.
Can u imagine having access to that.
Now most MDMA, esp illegally made MDMA would be racemic; but whose to say there is not the odd batch which for a variety of factors isnt
thanks for pointing that out.

how many "legitimate" (ie for research) MDMA manufacturers are there around? and how do i get a job testing the effects of their work?
qualitatively of course

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None. Thanks to the western world's (US) War on Drugs, it is scheduled high enough to prohibit its manufacture even for research purposes.

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not so! there are plenty (well, at least several) chemicals houses that would be more than happy so sell you any psychedelic compound you could possibbly dream of, and any isomer thereof (provided it has been synthesized), regardless of its schedule status.
Conditional, of course, on you having the clearance to obtain contolled subtances.
In fact, i am currently loking through a Sigma catalogue - everything under the stars!
Legitimate and legal uses exist - for example, forensic medicine, reference standards for ID, etc.
To test the legally manufactured products - well, the easiest way is to get a job as a chromatographer...