Please do not buy anymore of that. Get CRYSTAL!
A crystal product does not guarantee purity as other benign or worse substances can be mixed with meth, and crystals grown from that. Or, as it was once found, similar looking crystals can be flogged off as meth. Many years ago, while testing with Marquis reagent, it was found one crystal gave a characteristic reaction colour indicating meth, while the next identical looking piece from the same batch gave
no colour whatsoever. In other words, one was meth, and one wasn't, yet they were indistinguishable from each other.
So, unless you personally know the cook, and also know him/her to be suitably qualified and totally honest, how do you know what their product contains?
On the topic of Phenylephrine;
Meth from phenylephrine? Chemically it would almost be easier to start with phenol or toluene than to try to manipulate this molecule
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
Even if the hydroxy groups were reduced, the side chain skeleton does not resemble the amphetamine "backbone" i.e. phenylephrine is a phenethylamine with 2 carbons in the chain. If you read PiHKAL you will find that compared to their phenethylamine homologs, amphetamines are much more psychoactive (potency, duration etc). The terminal CH3 group on phenylephrine is an N-methyl group, and unlike meth, it reduces activity even further on a phenethylamine (and with most amphetamines other than meth and MDMA).
With phenylephrine there is no alpha-CH3 (as with all amphetamines), so even if the beta and ring substituted OH groups were reduced, there is nothing to stop MAO from breaking it down as it would be a excellent substrate for the enzyme.
However, phenylephrine aka halostachine has been reported to have
some minor sympathomimetic properties - well in sheep anyway
Alkaloids as a possible cause of ryegrass staggers in grazing livestock
So by itself the reduced product (both OH groups) of phenylephrine (N-methyl-phenethylamine) would be less active than the parent compound phenethylamine (PEA), which is itself regarded as inactive (
PiHKAL#142-PEA) unless perhaps it was injected straight into the brain 8(
If a MAO inhibitor such as harmaline was taken concurrently, both phenylephrine and it's hydroxy reduced form would be active, although the OH groups of phenylephrine would tend to limit it from crossing the BBB in much the same way as ephedrine is much less psychoactive than meth. It should be noted however, that great and serious risks accompany such practices.
MAOIs and PEAs should never be taken together!!
So, what else could phenylephrine be used for? Well, if a chemist used a protecting group on the amine, the molecule could then be manipulated to produce various ring substituted phenethylamines
**, which of course vary widely in their actions and potencies (see PiHKAL). However, protecting groups aren't commonly used in clandestine environments and anyway, none of these PEAs would be suitable substitutes for the meth market.
kudos to Vitus Verdegast
**Correction: the amine would also need to be demethylated; p_d
