saucy2040
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2006
- Messages
- 1,289
TheDEA.org said:<inhale>
Grapefruit juice is not an effective potentiator of MDMA
Now, for the 0.0001% of humanity that's actually interested in how such things work:
1. The enzyme (actually a group of functionally similar enzymes called an isozyme) that is inhibited by a chemical found in some grapefruit juice is called CYP 3A4.
2. CYP 3A4 turns slowly turns a small amount of MDMA into MDA, a more potent drug. It may also eventually convert MDA into a less inert metabolite, but I'm not aware of any research exploring that possibility.
Since the conversion process is slow, the amount converted is small (perhaps 10% over the 8-9 hour half-life of the drug), and at least the immediate conversion product is actually more potent than the original MDMA molecule, inhibiting 3A4 will at absolute best only have a trivial potentiating effect, and may even (again, trivially) reduce the strength of the experience by interfering with the production of the more potent MDA.
To top it all off, declining levels of MDMA in your body aren't the sole reason you 'come down'. That ~9 hour half-life means that if you take 2 pills, you'll still have 1.5 pills worth of MDMA in your system 4.5 hours later. But it sure doesn't feel like it, does it? There are at least two reasons for this. First, levels of serotonin (and perhaps other neurotransmitters) have probably been depleted; your brain is in a manner of speaking 'running out of gas'. Another important factor is tolerance; if there's a lot of (for instance) serotonin floating around your synapses (caused by MDMA releasing it), your brain cells will actually hide/deactivate serotonin receptors in order to try to 'tune out' the unusually strong signal.
That's why you can't stay high on MDMA indefinitely, why if you just keep taking more pills you still can't maintain that warm happy high.
well fuckin said buddy