I’ve read this whole thread, and like most of us here I’m very frustrated over that we’re not really getting to any real conclusion.
Yes and the real reason for the lack of progress is the law. If I could just publish my address and write "C'mon send me a 10mg crumb of your pre-tried Ectasy with an in-vivo experience report", we would have it solved a long time ago.
My guess is that the MehMDMA is one of the direct or indirect regioisomers of 3,4-MDMA which can’t be detected by usual GC/MC
Only cheap GC columns can have the same elution times for these substances.
maybe the MehMDMA even can be synthesized without PMK?
Of course it can be, but how does that help us solve this mystery ?
I’m thinking that some chemist must have started off thinking how s/he can make something that could be sold as MDMA and that will look like MDMA on GC/MC.
It is really easy to fool MS with isobaric substances, but a modern and diligently made analysis with a combination of GC and MS or HPLC/MS should be able to resolve these substances ...especially with derivatization of the sample.
On the other hand, most of these analysis techniques do
not determine the enantiomer ratio.
...and that ratio matters - take a look at the initial investigation of MDMA and pay attention to the section "QUALITATIVE COMMENTS", especially to the entries about the "S isomer" and "R isomer".
I don’t believe in the byproduct hypothesis as I imagine byproducts are too easy to get rid of – and I assume producers want to sell a good product if they can.
It does not have to be so if the solubility of the contaminant is very similar to the solubility of the product.
Also, if the precursor is contaminated with a very potent contaminant (think as potent as carfentanil) that has similar solubility and survives the synth, then it would be very hard to detect it.
Hypothetically, if I added a 100ng carfentanil to a 120mg recreational dose of 3,4-MDMA HCl, then even my best machine at work (HPLC with Raman detector) would not be able to detect it, because its tiny peak would be buried in the noise.
Now, I am not stating that the MehMDMA is contaminated with carfentanil - I am just using it as an example of a very potent contaminant. More likely, it would be something like a potent analogue of Citalopram.
To explore that, all the known active ingredients would have to be
removed via preparative HPLC and the remaining contaminants concentrated ...and then detected. A large sample would be needed for that.
So why wouldn’t they first clean their product?
Solvents cost money. Their procurement increases the chances of detection for the clandestine chemist. Recrystallization and fractional distillation cost time. Preparative column chromatography - even more.
Also, there have been people on this thread that have done the usually effective A/B extraction and purification of the MehMDMA but the improvement was not great.
I also think it is a clue that I don't get any synergy between MehMDMA and 2C-B (plenty of reports of failed Nexus-flips can be found), so the MehMDMA surely binds to different receptors.
That is a good clue. Investigate it further.
I really think it is in the interest of public health that we find out what it really is in the purported MDMA (the MehMDMA), but it seems some serious chemistry knowledge and high end lab equipment is required.
Yes, and many lives would be saved. These >200mg doses are dangerous with hypertermia in hot clubs and at summer festivals.
Also, look how many cases of bad LTC are in the "LTC thread" on this forum, lately.
Could anyone try to get David E. Nichols interested enough to come out of retirement in order to solve this? Or suggest to Hamilton Morris how uncovering the truth behind the MehMDMA would make a really great new episode of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia?
I suspect that these people get inundated with messages from crackpots (and "wacky people" in Hamilton's words) so you'd have to present pretty solid data that the problems exists at all, to get through the noise. Even people like F.U.B.A.R. obtain satisfactory MDMA from their sources nowadays, so the problem does not even exist from their point of view ...until they encounter it themselves.
Or does anyone have any better ideas how to get closer to the truth?
How about making a formal survey so a 4th line can be added to that
Swiss graph - a line that would illustrate the rating of psychoactive experiences evolution over time ...and maybe even a 5th line for physiological experiences, too.
I asked a related question
here but received only 2 replies.
If there are some dedicated people out there, they could have their blood tested for Oxytocin levels 1h before and 2h after ingestion of the the MehMDMA, to provide hard proof for people like Nichols and Hamilton, that there is indeed something wrong. In my area that blood test costs the equivalent of $40.