PMMA aka "dr death" - beware of fake MDMA

[Themailman]

Honestly.. would a hospital typically check for PMA/PMMA when doing blood tests? It's kind of an obscure compound..

I specifically asked for it to be checked. I asked for specific testing because the symptoms of overdose and the pharmacological effect (I wouldn't even describe it as a high, it is minimally psychoactive but powerfully peripherally active) it had on me was identical to how it is described in literature. It is also an incredibly unique feeling and easy to identify. It took several days for doctors to agree with my assessment. So maybe there is no direct test but just contextual educated guesses.

Is it really that obscure? There are dozens of case reports and medical literature describing its toxicity and incredibly high lethality relative to MDMA. It is also incredibly easy to produce and is easy to scam people with. I'll link you the vendor if you want to try some (half and darkly joking...).

The effect was incredibly unique for a drug. Incredibly uniquely bad. Easy to identify, and I am not a fan of guessing drugs retroactively.

 

[Themailman]

no. not even dedicated drug testing labs (for human biological samples) test for this compound. nobody in medical clinical settings would identify this compound

it would react with amphetamine reagents in immunoassay and that’s about it….a false positive for amphetamine or methamp in a testing methods that can’t discriminate well between amphetamines.

drug testing labs look for a whole suit of specific drugs via mass spectrometry to be absolutely sure of what compound is there….but they only confirm a compound if it’s looked for. they don’t identify random esoteric compounds - this is a job for a forensic toxicology lab or a drug sample testing lab that is very specifically told loook for this compound l.

If they cant test for it how are they so certain so many people died from it? Im confused... why are there so many case reports and med literature if they can't even be sure its what the person took?

...and yes, I specifically told them to look for this compound after reluctantly going to the hospital after 4 days. I had determined it was what I took with as high of a degree of certainty possible after studying for days while sick.

 

[Didgital]

but they only confirm a compound if it’s looked for.

Ummm this is not 100% true. I worked at a lab with a GC/MS and a database of spectral data for 800,000 compounds which I'm sure real drug testing labs probably have even more, but it would match the spectral data of different compounds to the closest match in the database and give a probability. I'm sure it could have detected PMA/PMMA, but yeah at a hospital I don't think they have the same kind of equipment. Shoot, I'm not even sure how you'd extract blood to make a sample, unless you can inject blood directly into the unit. We definitely did it with beer several times just to identify terpene profiles for a local brewery.

Definitely saw some weird things my time there.
And it even could identify obscurer 2C-x drugs (D, T2, i etc)

 

[ions]

I don't think the argument is specific to being a clean sample. Whether specific to PMMA, there are adulterated samples in the suture. allergy test. reagent test. nothing short of losing a testicle over.

 

[Didgital]

Is it really that obscure?

I imagine it shows it's ugly head only very very very rarely. I also like to think that most PMMA that actually gets made is to practice making MDMA and hopefully they dump the PMMA.

I tend to think that any large lab cranking out PMA/PMMA isn't going to be in business long if their clients are dying. Even the most dedicated psychonaughts don't want to try it either. Also it seems PMA/PMMA have outbreaks. The latest one I can find is 2013 in israel where over 30 people died.

At drugsdata.org, there have been less than 10 positive PMMA id's and only 3 PMA id's since 2000. And the latest positive PMMA was 2020 in austria. last PMA was 2013.

So yes it is EXTREMELY rare. Unless you had analytics or even a positive reagent test, I am inclined to believe it is something else.

After you're dead of a suspected overdose? A coroner will certainly try to identify the cause of death (it's true they don't aways see substances especially new ones that might not be in the databases) but the standards for PMA/PMMA have been available for years. I just don't see a hospital being able to do it in real time.

Again I'm not really sure how they put blood sample thru a GC/MS, I imagine they extract it and then centrifuge it to get rid of most of the actual blood itself. I could be wrong.

DrugsData.org: Test Results

DrugsData.org lab analysis and drug checking results

www.drugsdata.org

DrugsData.org: Test Results

DrugsData.org lab analysis and drug checking results

www.drugsdata.org

 

[ions]

or should I say. it was not unadulterated.

 

[Didgital]

I imagine it shows it's ugly head only very very very rarely. I also like to think that most PMMA that actually gets made is to practice making MDMA and hopefully they dump the PMMA.

I tend to think that any large lab cranking out PMA/PMMA isn't going to be in business long if their clients are dying. Even the most dedicated psychonaughts don't want to try it either. Also it seems PMA/PMMA have outbreaks. The latest one I can find is 2013 in israel where over 30 people died.

At drugsdata.org, there have been less than 10 positive PMMA id's and only 3 PMA id's since 2000 and the latest positive id was 2020 in austria, a single case.
So yes it is EXTREMELY rare. Unless you had analytics or even a positive reagent test, I am inclined to believe it is something else.

After you're dead of a suspected overdose? A coroner will certainly try to identify the cause of death (it's true they don't aways see substances especially new ones that might not be in the databases) but the standards for PMA/PMMA have been available for years. I just don't see a hospital being able to do it in real time.

Again I'm not really sure how they put blood sample thru a GC/MS, I imagine they extract it and then centrifuge it to get rid of most of the actual blood itself. I could be wrong.

DrugsData.org: Test Results

DrugsData.org lab analysis and drug checking results

www.drugsdata.org

DrugsData.org: Test Results

DrugsData.org lab analysis and drug checking results

www.drugsdata.org

 

[Dr. John Thackery]

Ummm this is not 100% true. I worked at a lab with a GC/MS and a database of spectral data for 800,000 compounds which I'm sure real drug testing labs probably have even more, but it would match the spectral data of different compounds to the closest match in the database and give a probability. I'm sure it could have detected PMA/PMMA, but yeah at a hospital I don't think they have the same kind of equipment. Shoot, I'm not even sure how you'd extract blood to make a sample, unless you can inject blood directly into the unit. We definitely did it with beer several times just to identify terpene profiles for a local brewery.

Definitely saw some weird things my time there.
And it even could identify obscurer 2C-x drugs (D, T2, i etc)

it sounds like you were scanning all masses along a certain range then to not miss anything. it sounds like you worked in some sort of toxicology lab not a clinical drug testing lab. is that correct?

no commercial drug testing labs scam all mass as the resolution simply isn’t there to do so. they use MRM (multiple reaction monitoring) to look for specific masses of compounds and fragments masses (the fragment need to be scanned in a triple quad to really be sure it’s not some other compound of the same mass as X drug - in the clinic it’s better to not know than be wrong, in terms of liability). if you scan all masses 0 to 1000 the data will be to poor and fail QC or the method would take so long or require so much sample to run on the instrument that it would not be commercially feasible for these labs that are basically running samples 24/7 in a high throughput manner.

 

[Didgital]

no commercial drug testing labs scam all mass as the resolution simply isn’t there to do so. they use MRM (multiple reaction monitoring) to look for specific masses of compounds and fragments masses. if you scan all masses 0 to 1000 the data will be to poor and fail QC or the method would take so long to run on the instrument that it would not be commercially feasible for these labs that are basically running samples 24/7.

it sounds like you worked in some sort of toxicology lab not a clinical drug testing lab. is that correct?

Well, it was actually a licensed cannabis testing lab that homie rebuilt an Agilent GC for like 5k. Kid is a genius. And I basically had a whole crew of people wanting non cannabis samples on a regular basis. Homie would charge me to use the GC, but I would basically tax the crew, and I'd get to keep the samples too lol. I actually made quite a bit of money there, but I ended up getting that kid a 6 figure job doing kratom analytics for a big company and now he's never got the time or he takes too long for the test to be super relevant. Majority of the clients were drug dealers who were either buying or selling product. So it was all kind of under the table.

I think the only common substance I never saw there was fentanyl.

We also had HPLC for different analyses and polarimeter so we could check K isomers etc.
I'm currently rebuilding a UHPLC-Q/TOF-MS but I may end up having to leave the project.