What is wrong with the MDMA available today? - v2

[unodelacosa]

OR MAYBE YOU ARE JUST OLD, AND/OR HAVE TAKEN TOO MANY DRUGS, AND/OR HAVE BAD NUTRITION

Idk if you're directing that at a general "you" or if that message was meant purely for me, but allow me to clarify: for years I've been saying there's no such thing as "mehDMA". There's only MDMA and then there are impurities, cuts, and imposters. There's also: competing medications (like SSRIs), the general increase of MAOs in the brain as we age, the lack of regulation and oversight in the black market, and on and on. I've detailed this stuff through this thread. In other words, you're preaching to the choir as far as I'm concerned.

And we're all like little Don Quixotes chasing this windmill phantom impurity. Because even if we identify some supposed MDMA-blocking impurity, we can't go back in time and retroactively test all the MDMA over the past few decades people claim was this or that. It doesn't matter; it's water under the methylenedioxy bridge now.

What I am proposing is that some people have an intermittent dampening of their response to MDMA that has nothing to do with what's in the pill and everything to do with mindset, nutritional status, and other Rx and non-prescription drugs consumed. These responses may only apply to individuals or a small percentage of people.

Sometimes this is the case, no doubt, but I think it's not impossible that sometimes someone gets a batch heavily riddled with an impurity like MDDMA and that's what does it. Most everything in this thread is entirely possible and probably has happened. I doubt there's just one cause, as convenient as that would be.

This is inconsistent with the Meh-MDMA report listed in this post and many others.

I think it's important to note that Energy Control Spain is not a reliable source for identifying impurities and calling out every compound in a matrix of compounds being tested.

 

[sadmachine]

Some beige rocks today fizzed and turned a dark blue-purple in the mandolin test, but then after 5-20 mins I had a look and it was very dark but when I swirled it had a dark brown/reddish hue to it, likely pmma or do mandolin tests just fade after awhile?

 

[vash445]

LSD crystal purity - The Psychedelic Experience - Shroomery Message Board

This has always stumped me...........we all know the pyramid of LSD neeedlepoint, fluff, silver, lavender etc... So my question(s) is how do you get different crystals and why are some cleaner than

www.shroomery.org

Has anyone else read this thread?

 

[unodelacosa]

LSD crystal purity - The Psychedelic Experience - Shroomery Message Board

This has always stumped me...........we all know the pyramid of LSD neeedlepoint, fluff, silver, lavender etc... So my question(s) is how do you get different crystals and why are some cleaner than

www.shroomery.org

Has anyone else read this thread?

I skimmed it a little just now, but I don't recall specifically seeing that thread. I am familiar with the LSD street nomenclature ubiquitous among Dead Heads and Phish Phans and frequently heard on The Lot Scene at these types of shows. Old school ravers know it, too.

It's five pages; something in particular you're trying to point out?

 

[unodelacosa]

Some beige rocks today fizzed and turned a dark blue-purple in the mandolin test, but then after 5-20 mins I had a look and it was very dark but when I swirled it had a dark brown/reddish hue to it, likely pmma or do mandolin tests just fade after awhile?

So what counts is the color it is at ~30 seconds after the reagent and substance initially react. By the time 5 minutes has gone by, the colors are no longer reliable. Keep in mind the Mandolin is made from combining ammonium metavanadate and sulfuric acid. Also PMA and PMMA are not common street drugs, though they still crop up from time to time here and there. My hunch is it's not PMMA and the dark reddish brown color was informed by the brown impurity in the MDMA you have. But this is just a guess, and if you really suspect PMMA, you should proceed with caution; start off with low doses, use a trip sitter, and monitor body thermoregulation issues closely. EDIT: that is assuming you want to take it. If you really suspect PMMA contamination, you should discard them altogether, but my question is: is there anything else that makes you suspect PMMA besides the Mandolin?

 

[sadmachine]

Yeah there was warning on the state government website (one in mid 2022 and mid 2023) about beige mdma rocks circulatings that were either adulterated with or straight up PMMA. I took around 100mg yesterday and had a pretty light roll, unusually short lived however. 2hr 30mins-ish after ingesting I was pretty much in the afterglow and I slept around 5 hours after ingesting. The euphoria/empathy just dropped all of a sudden. Temps/BP/HR was what you'd expect it to be. Government site says pma/pmma takes much much longer to kick in and this kicked in around 40 mins so I think I'm sweet. Might wait a week and try a higher dose.

 

[snmfmy]

Some beige rocks today fizzed and turned a dark blue-purple in the mandolin test, but then after 5-20 mins I had a look and it was very dark but when I swirled it had a dark brown/reddish hue to it, likely pmma or do mandolin tests just fade after awhile?

There are over a hundred substances that turn brown from mandelin reagent.

Except for Cialis and AB-001 there are NONE that start out purple/blue and go to brown

PMMA transitions from green>red brown>brown

If you're thinking it's a contaminant of your MDMA, well, just about every amphetamine, 5-APDB, and many of the substituted cathinones end up brown.

Lastly, there are no recent alerts or positive tests of PMMA

 

[vash445]

I skimmed it a little just now, but I don't recall specifically seeing that thread. I am familiar with the LSD street nomenclature ubiquitous among Dead Heads and Phish Phans and frequently heard on The Lot Scene at these types of shows. Old school ravers know it, too.

It's five pages; something in particular you're trying to point out?

Chemiker and proceeding comments page 1

 

[vash445]

Check out the old high times article "LSD PURITY - CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS" by Bruce Eisner. I think its on erowid.

Even though its 25 years old and not from the most respected "science" journal in the world

, it has some ideas about LSD purity that I haven't seen anywhere else.

Erowid LSD (Acid) Vault: "LSD Purity", by Bruce Eisner (1977)

LSD Purity: Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, by Bruce Eisner

erowid.org

Owsley's fellow alchemist, Tim Scully, admitted to me that the 1965 batchwas impure, but claims that Owsley and he perfected a purification processin 1966. Many who used both Sandoz and Owsley - the latter came in tabletsof purple (Purple Haze) and white (White Lightning) of 270 micrograms - saythat Owsley acid was less mystical and had more stimulant side reactionsthan the Sandoz product.

I got a batch and was told it was more stimmy. I 100% called it WHITE lightning XD

I knew I saw this shit before elsewhere or similar so it's def something

Anyways this batch was to replace a batch the was MEH MDMA equivalent. eating more didn't do shit, and was blocking this good acid so I had to let people know dont mix your acid or similar style of drugs if one is meh quality There's something to this that is for sure.

There was now (1968) little good acid around, and what there was - theso-called "street acid" - came mainly from California. There was somethingwrong with the synthesis; it was not pure. And you were never sure what itwas exactly that you were taking, so I only dropped it on those rareoccasions when someone gave me "Sandoz" or "crystal" acid...

My evaluation had nothing to do with the notion that a wholly syntheticdrug produced a wholly synthetic experience - the intellectual response -but was based on direct, first-hand experience (about 30 trips with streetacid in all). And in each session I felt that there was something it lacked- it was too "electric," too "speedy" and too "mind-shattering." Theearlier clarity of "insight" which I had obtained via the Sandoz acid wasreplaced by confusion, brokenness, words and worlds thrown into absolutedismemberment, or even absolute chaos, though, I must add, often coupledwith a feeling that I can only describe as "sublime inflation," a superabundance of emotive energy, but it could not signify more a passionateflame and less the life-giving sun.

At Woodstock, Hugh Romney (a/k/a "Wavy Gravy") of the Hog Farm announcedto the crowd, "There's no such thing as bad acid, just acid that's madewrong." In 1969, LSD began to appear in microdots, and in 1971, on gelatinsheets of various shapes - dubbed "windowpane." The strength of individualdoses swiftly decreased, and so did the purity of the average street dose.

In a correspondence with City magazine in July 1975, Timothy Leary wrote:"After 1966, my lectures and writings were mainly concerned with a generaltheory of psychological and political relativity and made little mention oflysergic acid, which in truth, had been driven completely off the scene byOwsley speed, orange amphetamine, and the more commercially and sociallyacceptable cocaine-heroin trade."

In Timothy Leary at Folsom Prison, a filmed dialog made for television but never broadcast, he amplifies: "I don't particularly recommend you take LSD. First of all, 99 percent of what they say about it isn't true." KenKesey also had occasion to reflect back on the acid scene in his recent book Garage Sale: "I can't really recommend acid, because acid has become an almost meaningless chemical. I mean, the first acid I took was Sandoz,given me by the federal government in a series of experiments (what now,Uncle? Don't give me that anti-American drug field bullshit: you turned meon ...!) and it was beautiful.

"With perhaps the exception of Owsley's work, every bootleg batch I'vetried from then on down has been interesting, enlightening, agonizing,bizarre, etc., but never anything as pure."

Many other early trippers, including Alan Harrington (author ofPsychopaths), Dr. Stanley Krippner (former head of Brooklyn's MaimonidesHospital Dream Lab) and Adam Smith (author of Powers of Mind in addition tohis Wall Street best sellers), have also noted the decline in psychedelicuse and linked it with the purity crisis.

 

[vash445]

Originally all LSD was made by Sandoz Pharmaceutical company, which had developed the chemical and hoped to market it commercially. It came in glass ampules filled with blue liquid, or small tablets in bottles with pharmaceutical labels specifying strength.

With underground LSD use came underground manufacture. The first recorded underground laboratory was set up by Bernard Roseman in 1962. Roseman, who now lives in seclusion in Oregon, was later arrested for allegedly attempting to smuggle 62,000 doses of LSD. In his LSD and the Age of the Mind, he has this account of the first manufacture of LSD of less than pharmaceutical quality:

"I have already invested a year - on and off - and all the money I could save on this project, and I was at the point of admitting defeat. At this time, I was naturally reading everything I could lay my hands upon about ergot alkaloids. I stumbled upon a few articles that at first seemed quite unrelated to LSD, but they were logical and worth a try; because by comparison the process was exceedingly simple, compared to Hofmann's monumental preparation.

I obtained new starting material and worked it up to the point I was sure was correct, where I had d-lysergic acid monohydrate, quite useless by itself but the prerequisite for making LSD-25 by any system. The rest of my ordered materials arrived and I was ready to proceed. After so many repeated failures, I couldn't accept the possibility that this few-day procedure would work.

I went ahead nevertheless, though pessimistically, so that my seemingly apparent failure would not bother me too much. I worked with extreme care, protecting anything from heat and light. At the last step, when I was recrystallizing the few grams I had obtained, I was filtering the crystals off by vacuum and using ether. When all the ether evaporated , the substance started to absorb moisture from the atmosphere and was turning black before my eyes. All my work was gone: I stood there shocked unable to move for a moment. My hands instinctively grabbed an alcohol bottle and I pored it over the black decomposed material hoping to salvage something. I separated it with water and disheartedly took the black mess home. All night I tossed and turned and dreamt horrible, unrelated
dreams.

 

[snmfmy]

Originally all LSD was made by Sandoz Pharmaceutical company, which had developed the chemical and hoped to market it commercially. It came in glass ampules filled with blue liquid, or small tablets in bottles with pharmaceutical labels specifying strength.

With underground LSD use came underground manufacture. The first recorded underground laboratory was set up by Bernard Roseman in 1962. Roseman, who now lives in seclusion in Oregon, was later arrested for allegedly attempting to smuggle 62,000 doses of LSD. In his LSD and the Age of the Mind, he has this account of the first manufacture of LSD of less than pharmaceutical quality:

I wouldn't actually call it underground use.

Until 1968 there was no legislation that criminalized the manufacture, possession, or use of LSD in the US.

 

[snmfmy]

Many other early trippers, including Alan Harrington (author ofPsychopaths), Dr. Stanley Krippner (former head of Brooklyn's MaimonidesHospital Dream Lab) and Adam Smith (author of Powers of Mind in addition tohis Wall Street best sellers), have also noted the decline in psychedelicuse and linked it with the purity crisis.

So what synthesis byproducts do you propose caused non-optimal responses to supposed impure LSD in the 1960s?

According to your other post, you either end up with LSD or you don't.

Don't you think it may be more likely that suboptimal trips were more likely caused by down regulation of serotonin receptor response due to poly psychedelic drug use and or use of other drugs that prevented optimal binding of LSD at the serotonin receptor?

LSD binds extremely strongly for 12 to 24 hours at the serotonin receptor which is what causes the optimal LSD trip. When all the other LSD is out of the body It's still bound to your receptors in your brain.

Or perhaps it wasn't LSD at all.

 

[unodelacosa]

I wouldn't actually call it underground use.

Until 1968 there was no legislation that criminalized the manufacture, possession, or use of LSD in the US.

Underground ≠ Illegal. LSD was a part of the underground counterculture movement even before it was scheduled. Granted: it was not impossible to find acid, but it pretty quickly became an underground, counterculture movement prior to 1968. Consider Timothy Leary. Consider Ken Kesey, the Further Bus, and the Merry Pranksters of La Honda, California… plus The Grateful Dead, and the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco in the middle 60s. And the acid tests.

Don't you think it may be more likely that suboptimal trips were more likely caused by down regulation of serotonin receptor response due to poly psychedelic drug use and or use of other drugs that prevented optimal binding of LSD at the serotonin receptor?

Sounds much more likely. LSD synthesis is not beyond the purview of any chemical engineering grad student, perhaps even some undergrads, provided they have the proper equipment like a rotovap and a light-sealed lab lit only by gentle red light to avoid forming the 'lumi-LSD' impurity, plus adequate glassware and the necessary reagents and of course the right precursor. Also, separating the four isomers to isolate the desired one is necessary and requires chromatography. Oh plus they would need an inert environment, so a Nitrogen tank is a must. It's a little tedious, but far from being a super difficult synthesis, all things considered, and as any trained chemist will tell you if they're familiar with the latest syntheses.

Check out the old high times article "LSD PURITY - CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS" by Bruce Eisner.

I strongly suspect the late Bruce Eisner – though a good journalist who wrote fine material – was not qualified to make such claims on every underground LSD chemist. Much of his beliefs seem to mirror the conspiratorial tones held by ~half the people who've chimed in on this thread, that the drug in question has seemingly 'lost the magic' on account of the ineptitude of every clandestine MDMA and/or LSD chemist all of whom possess the exact same level of skill, knowledge, and experience, lol. (Pls do note the sarcasm.)

Either way, thanks for sharing the link; it was an interesting read and I must admit: crystallography fascinates me.

 

[vash445]

Sounds much more likely. LSD synthesis is not beyond the purview of any chemical engineering grad student, perhaps even some undergrads, provided they have the proper equipment like a rotovap and a light-sealed lab lit only by gentle red light to avoid forming the 'lumi-LSD' impurity, plus adequate glassware and the necessary reagents and of course the right precursor. Also, separating the four isomers to isolate the desired one is necessary and requires chromatography. Oh plus they would need an inert environment, so a Nitrogen tank is a must. It's a little tedious, but far from being a super difficult synthesis, all things considered, and as any trained chemist will tell you if they're familiar with the latest syntheses.

EH dsmz.de has anything the aspiring grower making cultures ... https://www.dsmz.de/ the Leibniz Institute DSMZ German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures GmbH

Also the methyl ester of the Lysergic amide i've seen is 80 for 1 gram from established chemical companies in canada ive seen as low as 5-6k.kilo. Also heard other more common API ergoloid are in Israel and the Czech republic .

Similar to how the glycidate from MDP2P base hydrolysis yield precursor to LA

When dealing with a chiral calboxyl function things are less straight forward, even more so when substrate has two nitrogens as heteroatoms (indole nitrogen is more stable but the quinoline one may be tricky). This is why I make all the fuss until someone claims experimental work, the old-school method with KOH is a classic and I'm hoping for a stereoselective hydrolysis procedure (just because someone claims it doesn't make it experimentally accurate but I'm counting on the fact that those able to write a plausible method flawlessly won't fake the claim). But lots can go wrong inbetween no doubt

I also believe it's DIhydro compounds are floating around along with the more classic routes. If someone is dedicated they will make it. But how pure is the question and how much does it really effect it from poly morphs to impurities

 

[indigoaura]

Found a few things I found interesting. My apologies if any of this has already been shared, as I do not have time to get fully caught up in the thread right now.

#1. MDMA is expected to be reviewed by the FDA in the USA on August 11, 2024. MAPS has branched off into Lykos therapeutics for this phase of development. I found it interesting that they have re-named MDMA in their application to the FDA. Perhaps an attempt to re-brand? In any case, it is being called "midomafetamine" now, and you can read the press release here:
Lykos Therapeutics

#2. Other clinical trials are now underway to test MDMA for other purposes. One that I found is specifically about enantiomers:
Acute Effects of R- and S-MDMA in Healthy Subjects (R-S-MDMA)

Preclinical research indicates that S-MDMA mainly releases dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and oxytocin while R-MDMA may act more directly on 5-HT2A receptors and release prolactin. Animal studies also indicate that the two enantiomers act synergistically to produce the subjective effects of MDMA and that S-MDMA is mainly responsible for psychostimulation while R-MDMA may have fewer adverse effects and have greater prosocial effects.

Due to the impending re-classification and re-scheduling of MDMA, all types of studies are occurring now, from everything from marriage counseling to adjustment disorders. They are looking at how genetics impact the drug's absorption and all types of things. Once it is approved, we are going to see more and more research. I HOPE this means more research into "losing the magic" and why that occurs as well as nuances and differences in street vs. prescription MDMA. Also, I suspect once the legality shifts that the quality of available product will improve significantly as well. Should be an interesting time to be alive. I have been waiting for this for 24 years. So exciting!

 

[snmfmy]

Found a few things I found interesting. My apologies if any of this has already been shared, as I do not have time to get fully caught up in the thread right now.

#1. MDMA is expected to be reviewed by the FDA in the USA on August 11, 2024. MAPS has branched off into Lykos therapeutics for this phase of development. I found it interesting that they have re-named MDMA in their application to the FDA. Perhaps an attempt to re-brand? In any case, it is being called "midomafetamine" now, and you can read the press release here:

Midomafetamine was approved in 2016 by USAN by MAPS sponsorship. Interestingly, the 2 chemical names used to reference MDMA stay as far away from methylene-dioxy and amphetamine as possible

#1) 1,3-Benzodioxole-5-ethanamine, N,α-dimethyl

Here they decide to use the naming convention of the actual dioxole configuration which is the number one carbon and number three carbon are replaced by oxygen. Then they hang the alpha dimethyl designation at the end of the ethanamine, which is another word for ethylamine. They completely sidestep anything that has to do with phenyl by using benzo.

#2) - rac-1-(1,3-benzodioxol-5-yl)-N-methylpropan-2-amine

And here they just say a Racemic benzodioxole is attached (with a substitution of a carbon for 1 hydrogen) to the propane group at the five position of the benzene ring, the amine is at the two position of the propan carbon chain and the nitrogen is connected to a methyl group

I think I got that right but I might not be right.

 

[indigoaura]

Midomafetamine was approved in 2016 by USAN by MAPS sponsorship. Interestingly, the 2 chemical names used to reference MDMA stay as far away from methylene-dioxy and amphetamine as possible

#1) 1,3-Benzodioxole-5-ethanamine, N,α-dimethyl

Here they decide to use the naming convention of the actual dioxole configuration which is the number one carbon and number three carbon are replaced by oxygen. Then they hang the alpha dimethyl designation at the end of the ethanamine, which is another word for ethylamine. They completely sidestep anything that has to do with phenyl by using benzo.

#2) - rac-1-(1,3-benzodioxol-5-yl)-N-methylpropan-2-amine

And here they just say a Racemic benzodioxole is attached (with a substitution of a carbon for 1 hydrogen) to the propane group at the five position of the benzene ring, the amine is at the two position of the propan carbon chain and the nitrogen is connected to a methyl group

I think I got that right but I might not be right.

It seems like they are trying to distance themselves from any negative connotations associated with the drug, and also make it so that future research can utilize a new name and thus separate itself. I can't say I blame them, but I do find it interesting. I have been following their news updates for a long time, but this was the first time I saw the word Midomafetamine used instead of MDMA, as a lot of the news has been focused on "MDMA for PTSD."

 

[snmfmy]

It seems like they are trying to distance themselves from any negative connotations associated with the drug, and also make it so that future research can utilize a new name and thus separate itself. I can't say I blame them, but I do find it interesting. I have been following their news updates for a long time, but this was the first time I saw the word Midomafetamine used instead of MDMA, as a lot of the news has been focused on "MDMA for PTSD."

It's literally been the USAN name since 2016.

 

[indigoaura]

It's literally been the USAN name since 2016.

Ok. I am not arguing with that. I am just saying that they have not been regularly using it on their news releases or promotional materials. I receive their newsletter and they have not been regularly using it. If you do not believe me, you can go to their website and read their past newsletters.

 

[snmfmy]

Ok. I am not arguing with that. I am just saying that they have not been regularly using it on their news releases or promotional materials. I receive their newsletter and they have not been regularly using it. If you do not believe me, you can go to their website and read their past newsletters.

Oh no! I believe you.

I thought it was hilarious that they used 1,3-benzodioxole-5-ethanamine, N,α-dimethyl to completely and utterly avoid anything having to do with methamphetamine or methylene-dioxy