When I say that you are wrong about something, I'm not trying to say that you don't have a brain or aren't intelligent. The simple fact of the matter is that much of what goes on in chemistry is NOT intuitive, and assessing things based mainly on what "makes sense" intuitively is going to lead to a lot of wrong conclusions. The point I was getting at with all of those "It could also be..." statements was that there are an infinite number of possible hypotheses for this, and without doing any testing whatsoever, all hypotheses are equally plausible or implausible. In such a case, the only thing that can be deferred to is the currently accepted scientific models of how similar systems work. Similar systems (all available data, in fact) indicate that changing the salt does not change the activity of the drug, only the absorption rate.
Add impurities, synth methods, adulterants,
Adulterants absolutely do play a role, but that would not be a case of "MDMA is not just MDMA", that would be a case of "this adulterant is not MDMA". Of course it isn't.
Synth methods play absolutely no role, apart from that fact that a different route will leave behind different impurities. There are multiple papers that have been written in which they have rigorously investigated (by way of DOING the syntheses and analyzing their products at each stage) the identities of the impurities produced by each route. I have one such paper on my desk right now - I'd be happy to share a link to it. It indicates that all of these impurities are in trace amounts, detectable only by sensitive spectroscopic methods. The majority of the by-products are not psychoactive compounds. Of the ones that are, the amounts are so far below threshold amounts that it is laughable to think that they would cause a noticeable effect.
As simple as you make this sound many disagree particularly those in the 'Hive' World.
The posters of the Hive did a lot to collect and disseminate drug synthesis information, and some of them were definitely expert chemists as well. However, a great deal of them were people with little to no chemistry background. On the lowest end, you had people with absolutely no knowledge of chemistry simply following recipes posted by others, in the middle, there were those with just enough chemistry background to produce writings that sound convincing but are not based on sound theory, and then a few who were experts in synthesis who wrote some stuff that was of high enough quality to be publishable. That group in the middle did a LOT of wild speculation that has no business being passed on.
Here is an example of such speculation and incorrect conclusion, from the thread you pasted:
the neutral tartrate contains no less than TWICE the MDMA per mole!!!!! the hydrogen citrate too!!! it's like freaking SUPERDRUGS!!!
Yes, if tartaric acid was used to produce the salt, the resulting salt could have two MDMA-H+ molecules per one mole of tartrate. This has no more of an effect on what you would end up taking than changing to an HBr or any other salt. The resulting salt will be 72% MDMA. (This was obtained by dividing the mass contributed by the 2 MDMA molecules, 386.5, by the total molar mass of the salt, 537.37). If you take a 100mg dose of this salt, you end up with 72mg of MDMA. So, if anything, mass-for-mass, this salt would be LESS potent than the HCl salt. Perhaps it absorbs faster or slower and gives a more or less intense come-up, but that is the limit of the effect that the salt can have.
i dont know about the tartrate, but its a fact that the citrate is.
What makes this a fact?
I may be way off, but maybe it has to do with the chirality? With the citrate and tartrate forming the more powerful isomer
The acids themselves have no effect on which isomer is produced - the identity of the stereoisomer is determined solely at the time of the creation of the stereocenter. In MDMA's case, during the reductive amination. All of the common (and economically viable) methods of reductively aminating MDMA are not stereospecific, i.e. they produce a 50/50 mix of each enantiomer. Using a chiral acid like tartaric acid for making the salt will produce a 50/50 mixture of two salts: one with the R-MDMA and one with the S-MDMA and they will no longer be enantiomers. Thus they may then have different solubilities and be separable by crystallization methods. To get high purity in this way will likely take repeated crystallization cycles. More importantly, though, if the final product is delivered as a single enantiomer, it means that the other enantiomer, 50% of the mass or product produced, is being thrown away. Anyone who believes that is or was ever happening on a large scale is insane. Furthermore, Shulgin's reports of dosing with pure enantiomers do not indicate that there is any benefit to separating the enantiomers.
Before the post I made earlier, I went to read 3 journal articles investigating the efficacy and safety of Adderall XR, since that is a well-known example of a drug sold as mixed salts, to see what was said about the salts. The salts were not mentioned whatsoever in any of the studies, except in referring to the drug as MAS (mixed amphetamine salts). The only things that they measured were plasma concentrations of d-amphetamine and l-amphetamine, because those are the only things that mattered. The only reference whatsoever to the salts were from the manufacturer, who claimed that the mixture of salts made the effects smoother (with softer highs and lows), which would be a result of absorption rate.
Then, there is also this, from the Wikipedia entries on generic drugs and on bioequivalence:
Most nations require generic drug manufacturers to prove their formulation exhibits bioequivalence to the innovator product. In the U.S., the FDA must approve generic drugs just as innovator drugs must be approved. The FDA requires the bioequivalence of the generic product to be between 80% and 125% of that of the innovator product.
...
Bioequivalence, however, does not mean generic drugs must be exactly the same (“pharmaceutical equivalent”) as their innovator product counterparts, as chemical differences may exist (different salt or ester – a “pharmaceutical alternative”).
...
Birkett (2003) defined bioequivalence by stating that, "two pharmaceutical products are bioequivalent if they are pharmaceutically equivalent and their bioavailabilities (rate and extent of availability) after administration in the same molar dose are similar to such a degree that their effects, with respect to both efficacy and safety, can be expected to be essentially the same.
This clearly states that while generic drugs must have bioequivalence with their brand name counterparts, they are not necessarily required to be comprised of the same salts. From this you can infer that salts can be interchanged while still maintaining the same pharmaceutical action from a drug. Find me one example of a pharmaceutical drug that has one effect as one salt, and a distinctly different effect as another salt, and I'll get off your back.
The simplest and most reasonable explanation for all of the differences in subjective experience, the one which doesn't violate numerous other experimental results and models, the one that adheres to Occam's Razor, to use Folley's effective phrasing, is that subjective experiences are, indeed, subjective. Going into an experience after reading someone else's account of it being different and special and thus expecting something different and special may very well lead to an experience that seems different and special to you. Set, setting, expectations, and the individual partaking all play very dramatic roles in the subjective experience of any psychoactive drug. To paraphrase Shulgin, a psychadelic experience does not come just from the drug, it comes from the synergy of the user's mind and the effects of the drug. Two people can take the same drug and have very different experiences. One person can take the same drug on two different occasions and have very different experiences. That's all this is, that and a healthy dose of the confirmation bias.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")