I was in the Seattle area then and I concur, sometimes (maybe often) we got pills that were probably some percentage MDMA, cut with what was sometimes a cheaper analogue, a cheaper and different drug altogether, but usually cut with amphetamine salts. I had to leave a party (for awhile only out of touch kids still called them raves) once to take my girlfriend to the hospital because she had taken a single Superman and went into hyperthermia in about 10 minutes. I took a pill once that I know was just speed and an unknown psychedelic hallucinogen. Most parties had a Dance Safe kiosk that would test your shit for free, and after that I always took them up to make sure I was taking genuine rolls.
MDMA itself may not change, but synthesis methods have changed, and street MDMA is a mix of MDMA and various synthesis byproducts/impurities. Those byproducts have changed due to the changes in synthesis, and that may be a factor in what people are experiencing today re: diminished effects.
Indeed. I was firmly in the camp of "MDMA doesn't change, I've changed" for years, until I ran into a specific batch of completely unknown pills a few years ago and the effects of when I first started taking MDMA were back exactly as I remembered them. All other parameters were the same, nothing was different in set, setting, dose, diet or any other factor and I haven't experienced it again since that night, still with all parameters the same. What further strengthened my suspicion something was up was when I rang up my dealer the next day and offered to buy his entire supply at once. He refused, said that these pills took him back to when he started using MDMA and that he wouldn't let them go for all the money in the world, he had been looking for years for that old-school effect. I can't talk about prices but let's just say I offered him more and more up to 10x (!!) the going rate for a pill even and he still refused. I couldn't believe it, he is a businessman first and foremost and could have made a killing selling these to me, and still he refused because he felt exactly the same about these pills as I did. I was gravely disappointed but understood completely, I would have done the same. He didn't sell a single one of them after he took them himself. I would have drained my bank account to be able to buy them all. That was the moment I realized something was up and the feeling I had been longing for and thought was lost to me was in fact lost due to something with the drugs themselves
Just because it's still possible to walk after a gunfight doesn't mean that gunfights don't have a massive chance of leaving you dead.
Just that.
