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What is wrong with the MDMA available today?

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Nope. That's the chemistry I don't know much about. You guys are way ahead of me on all this stuff. If someone has two pills he says are very different, and they test in a lab as chemically identical, then we are never going to figure this out. I don't know if the technology falls short of being sensitive to differences like anhydrous or polymorphous whatever that guy was talking about. The pills are different and the machines are not sophisticated enough to say why. Unfortunately, this could support the racemic theory, but I'm not biting. I'm loving the idea that somehow the original compound safrole makes the difference. There is a romance to it, but I don't have the education to explain it. If a real chemist looked up the paper the polish guy published, where he described exactly how he made his MDMA, I think that would be the recipe. Assuming the guy from Dole followed that paper in HIS production of MDMA.
 
Safrole makes sense due to the subjective user reports of a strong safrole smell associated with old, high quality MDMA. I think part of the issue is that safrole became very tightly regulated and hard to obtain, so labs had to look for other methods. I wonder if the Polish paper mirrors Shulgin's synthesis method from Pihkal. Due to Pihkal's popularity, I think that would have been a common synthesis method early on.
 
I have a question for all the old geezers out there. I remember when ecstasy transitioned to being fairly legal and out on the tables at bars into something that you had to find a dealer to buy. I'd swear that sometime in the late 80s, they started making a "designer drug" version of MDMA that was chemically off by one tiny -OH group (I'm making the actual hydroxy part up).
There was a different name for this drug. Does anyone know what it was? I hate to admit this, but I used to think that X was the name for MDMA. We didn't call it ecstasy. I assumed it was X, and I swear to god the "designer drug" that managed to be legal was called E. Or something else.
Am I going insane? And does anyone know what the drug I'm calling E really was from a chemical perspective? Whatever it was, it was also pretty good.
 
You might be remembering 2CB. From the drug history I read, 2CB was passed out at bars in Dallas as well, and the added hallucinogenic quality of 2CB is what caused some of the unwanted attention towards MDMA. I know it briefly was called "Bees," and was also referred to as a designer drug.
 
Then you also had MDA (Eve). I am not as familiar with the history of MDA though.
 
Thanks! That would have kept me up all night. If memory serves then, MDA is nice. But I was very young and not discerning.
 
I actually got the street name wrong, according to Erowid, MDE/MDEA was named Eve, but I swear I recall reading that MDA was called Eve too.

I have done MDA quite a few times. Longer effect than MDMA, more speedy and dopamine driven, more psychedelic.

I don't think I have ever encountered MDE or MDEA. If I did, I was not aware of it. It was already illegal by the time I started experimenting and not readily available.
 
I think maybe you need to write a thesis about all this stuff.

I forgot about how the old "X" hit me, so your old posts were nice reminder. That is actually a defining feature of the stuff I took in the late 80s. I don't remember how long it took to hit me, but it must have been fairly short because the group would take it and then stare at each other asking who felt it first. We didn't walk around and have a drink and forget we had taken it. And then when it started, it was almost too much to take. I'd have to curl up in a ball with every muscle tight, holding somebody's hand while they swore I would be ok. And then poof! like a fart, my entire body would relax and love absolutely everything it came in contact with.
It was seriously an intense transition. And I always got what felt like a very real crush on someone I had hung out with on the drug. And the crush lasted for weeks. So I was in full support of therapists using it for couples. I can imagine it keeping a couple together for years (perhaps that is artificial and drug-dependent, but at least you are loving the one your with instating of yelling at them for stupid shit)
 
SympatheticMD said:
Nope. That's the chemistry I don't know much about. You guys are way ahead of me on all this stuff. If someone has two pills he says are very different, and they test in a lab as chemically identical, then we are never going to figure this out. I don't know if the technology falls short of being sensitive to differences like anhydrous or polymorphous whatever that guy was talking about. The pills are different and the machines are not sophisticated enough to say why. Unfortunately, this could support the racemic theory, but I'm not biting. I'm loving the idea that somehow the original compound safrole makes the difference. There is a romance to it, but I don't have the education to explain it. If a real chemist looked up the paper the polish guy published, where he described exactly how he made his MDMA, I think that would be the recipe. Assuming the guy from Dole followed that paper in HIS production of MDMA.
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the technology exists to figure this out easily, chiral LCMS, x-ray diffraction, NMR.

the labs ppl send to aren't at that level though and are mainly just staffed with technicians not scientists.
 
And then when it started, it was almost too much to take. I'd have to curl up in a ball with every muscle tight, holding somebody's hand while they swore I would be ok. And then poof! like a fart, my entire body would relax and love absolutely everything it came in contact with.
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Exactly. Like a freight train. Sit down. Lay down. Vomit. Say, "Holy fuck." Then, all of a sudden, like you crossed some threshold, you were THERE.
 
SympatheticMD said:
I think maybe you need to write a thesis about all this stuff.

I forgot about how the old "X" hit me, so your old posts were nice reminder. That is actually a defining feature of the stuff I took in the late 80s. I don't remember how long it took to hit me, but it must have been fairly short because the group would take it and then stare at each other asking who felt it first. We didn't walk around and have a drink and forget we had taken it. And then when it started, it was almost too much to take. I'd have to curl up in a ball with every muscle tight, holding somebody's hand while they swore I would be ok. And then poof! like a fart, my entire body would relax and love absolutely everything it came in contact with.
It was seriously an intense transition. And I always got what felt like a very real crush on someone I had hung out with on the drug. And the crush lasted for weeks. So I was in full support of therapists using it for couples. I can imagine it keeping a couple together for years (perhaps that is artificial and drug-dependent, but at least you are loving the one your with instating of yelling at them for stupid shit)
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Exactly. Interesting how you don't see modern day users describing their experiences that way. Just more evidence.
 
^ I have gotten the same thing in terms of the freight train/intense rush come up from MDMA available today several times. from both all types of powders and pressed pills. While I've had other mdma with more of the "mongy, visual distorion" smoother come up. the both result in strong empathetic peaks for me. So do the analogues like 6-apb.

There may be a genetic component to this where only certain people feel the bad part of "bad mdma"

I did read something on this board about a scientific journal article someone posted where people with different genetic variants of certain proteins with either metabolized the different enenatiomers of mdma differently or at different rates or they bound differently to target receptors...I don't remember exactly what it was.
 
I was just reading this one yesterday, LucidSDreamr, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29348651

Genetic factors could certainly be at play. But, the impression I am getting the more I read is that there is still old-fashioned MDMA out there, it is just in the minority. So, some people are going to access it, and perhaps there are regional factors at play there. Also possible that the "mongy" MDMA has varying levels of impurities per batch. So, perhaps the effects are variable.
 
That makes a lot of sense. There is a company that does genetic testing and they run a specific set of tests that psychiatrists use to help them choose the right antidepressants or other psych meds. They test for how quickly you metabolize medications in addition to what kinds of seratonin reuptake receptors you have and what types of serotonin receptors you have.

So, yes people will metabolize all kinds of drugs differently in addition to responding to them to different degrees in their brain neurotransmission. However, I have taken this test (I love genetics), and I was shown to be a person who both metabolizes serotonin drugs quickly in addition to not responding well to them. Yet I still had a good time with the old MDMA.

Thanks for posting that article. I'll check it out tomorrow.
 
And, I have the double mutation for MAO A R297R (rs6323), the so called "warrior gene." Based on my limited understanding, this means that I break down neurotransmitters more slowly due to having less MAO-A circulating. So, you would think that I would be more susceptible to the effects of MDMA due to more circulating serotonin.
 
indigoaura said:
I was just reading this one yesterday, LucidSDreamr, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29348651

Genetic factors could certainly be at play. But, the impression I am getting the more I read is that there is still old-fashioned MDMA out there, it is just in the minority. So, some people are going to access it, and perhaps there are regional factors at play there. Also possible that the "mongy" MDMA has varying levels of impurities per batch. So, perhaps the effects are variable.
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You are 100% correct. I wish i could go into it more but it will be breaking BL guidelines. Summed up, Superlabs these days are synthing via alternate presecures too saffarole. However if your lucky, or know the right people, there is still good old saff MDMA pills being pressed in moderate quantities. - I assume.
 
thanks for everyone's input. You guys know a lot, and it has been super fun to research all this stuff and get my brain thinking again. I appreciate everyone's opinions and academic references - this is a great site! I wish I could somehow move this to the more legal world where it could do some good from a medical perspective (and quite honestly, a personal enjoyment level),...but you never know what knowledge can bring.

No matter how many people might discourage me from discussions like this due to its professional "liabilities", I think these are the kinds of forums in which valuable information is shared that can lead to all kinds of great things - both recreationally and more importantly for medical treatment, recovery, and prevention of harm from toxic street drugs. So cheers to all of you!
 
It's all to do with synthesis. The original precurser was saffrole, then around 1998ish it switched to pmk, then around 2010 it switched again to pmk glycidate. Unfortunately mdma suffered from the new synth.
 
SympatheticMD read my other thread to get a better perspective on why MDMA batches vary from one to the next because it's a complicated matter (more so than just safrole produced VS non safrole produced product). I see this thread has grown much since I've been gone :)

As lucid said we have the technology to figure this problem out we just don't have the financial or legal backing to do so, or anyone in the position willing to take the risk for the betterment of the MDMA taking community..

You guys do make good points on the eyes too. I see it in my area plenty still but when I look at pictures from elsewhere or travel I don't see the same dilated pupils to the max. Eye twitches are like almost unheard of these days..

Pothole, my research seems to indicate different and this also depends on where you live. Safrole is still used to this day, and PMK was often produced from safrole up until the mid to late 00's since then things have changed a bit. Piperanol was starting to get used in the early to mid 00's and based on what we know from indigo it seems the product from that synthesis (piperanol to nitropropene) is definitely not ideal and mongy.

We can't really make any conclusive statements on what precursors were used when because it really has varied. Maybe in the old days the late 80's and 90's but since then there have become too many chemists and too many synthetic routes produced in too many different locations. You guys say MDMA that smells of safrole is rare but around here in my neck of the woods it isn't.

One small change in the synthetic route can change the effect profile. So again I ask we stop making this so black and white. It's not that all MDMA is made the exact same way, for those that keep thinking that. And I'm sure even back in the 90's and early 00's there was MDMA that just didn't feel right due to synthetic route chosen and purity of end product.

I like your guys ideas of comparing experience reports though. I've done this before when examining the differences between MDA of the olden days and MDA today. Which firvthose that aren't aware has changed as well. There's a reason people used to think MDA lasted 12+ hours and it's cuz there was a time when it did. Nowadays there's batches that will last 3hours tops! Looking at the isomers of MDA this seems to match perfectly with their different profiles and it's possible the MDA back then was lab ordered legal R-MDA. Long tangent but yes I think this could be good in adding to our monster pile of evidence.

If you guys have noticed the naysayers have pretty much left the building. The evidence has gotten to a point where arguing is pointless, drug chemistry itself may be changed by this discussion as it blows away the idea that "said drug is said drug."

And one more thing. I think we can assume that safrole to MDP2P via a benzoquinone wacker or oxone, then al/hg reduction. Is probably our best bet in terms of labeling a synthetic route that will most likely give us the desired MDMA product with all the empathy and love.

-GC
 
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