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Misc How do I go about testing a drug through GC/MS?

avogradoheisenberg

Greenlighter
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
20
My recent posts were closed because I was asking for pill identification and was causing speculations. A MOD/Administrator (NeighborhoodThreat) suggested that I sent it to a lab for testing. How do I do this? Is it expensive? Let's say that it contains an illegal substance can I get arrested? Investigated?
 
Yes. And a numerous amount of others. I've been researching that for days already and I got nothing. And wow.... 120$ for one test? And what's this all about? "The city and state where the pill was obtained; Approximate date of acquisition; What it was sold as and what you suspect it to be" That gets me scared that I may get in trouble for the possibility of possessing an illegal substance.
 
You won't get in trouble. Read the FAQ and information sections of that site (ecstasydata). They're not interested in getting you in legal trouble or providing any information about you to the authorities. They're a non-profit organization that publishes information about unknown pills for harm reduction purposes.
 
There may be other labs willing to test your pill for cheaper but I am unaware of how to contact them or what their policies on illegal (or possibly illegal) substances are.
 
Thank you. I may pass by my professor's office and ask if she knows of any lab that tests pills. I doubt I'll receive any better assistance than you have provided me though.
 
Unless you have access to sample preparation tools, and a GC, there's very few commercial services that analyse drugs for you. EData is the biggest name in the game.

The DEA actually does not allow quantitative drug results to be published. All they allow to be reported is the names of identified substances and their relative amounts. This means you'll only get results saying "100% MDMA" or whatever, never "200mg MDMA"
 
If you have anywhere from 10 to 100 thousand US dollars hanging around, sure. If you just buy a GC/FID, GC/TCD et cetera ("simple" analog detectors) it will be on the "lower" end of 40 thou, but will also require pure "standards" of drugs to compare with for 100% certainty. GC/MS will be "starting at" 40k for a used unit. New units are easily 100k.

You'll also need tanks of compressed gases for the GC (high purity H2 or He are the norm), a dual stage vacuum pump for the mass spectrometer, a column suitable for your analysis, area and reagents for sample preparation, and a setup for integrating chromaograms and doing library searches for your MS data. And all the manpower and effort to install and familiarize yourself with the system, troubleshoot it when it breaks or fucks up, and maintain the column, inlets, injectors etc. to provide relaible results.

It is easy to see why there are few non-gov't labs who analyse illicit street drugs. With such a high capital cost, having the premise of the DEA taking all your shit for non-compliance if you ever fuck up has rather chilling effects. Much easier to start a reputable analytical chemistry division, or go into flavours and fragrances or petroleum chemistry or some shit instead, where you can do your analyses without the Feds breathing down your neck.

If you are in a large enough university with a chemistry program, you could see about using a shared GC, some universities have one that people can take turns on. Not too sure that profs would like you testing pills on it though - but you could always frame it as an academic excercise and write a lab paper on it or something?
 
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Thank you sekio. And lmao 10-100 thousand! Yea right, I don't even have a hundred hanging around. My university has a chemistry program. All the way to Phd. I was a chem major at first :p So you think they wont allow me to test the pill? And ahh frame it? I don't like lying :(
 
Thanks pontifex. Can you expand on your idea of testing kits? How accurate is it? If they are accurate, which one do you recommend?
 
Testing kits are usually color-changing reagents like Marquis, Mecke, Mandelin, Simons and Robadope tests. They are sold by DanceSafe and related companies. You take a little bit of your pill and drip somedrops on it, and the liquid changes color depending on what drugs are present.

The problem with testing kits is that while they are much more accessible to the lay-man, all they can tell you is that your pill likely contains predominantly MDMA or some other compound. That is, they're useful for determining the identity of a pure substance, but they are very poor for discriminating mixtures. For instance a pill with large quantities of caffeine and some MDMA will probably test positive for caffeine rather than MDMA. (The way this works for most people is - they don't take any pill that doesn't test as pure MDMA)

Test kits are pretty much the best testing methodology availiable to someone who is unintested in shelling out 10 grand for a lab, but still, you get what you pay for. You'll never be able to determine (in a reasonable amount of time) the exact contents of a pill with only some colorchange reagents. But it will help prevent you from ingesting other drugs as MDMA.

Most universities I know "officially" will have nothing to do with drug analysis, without a DEA license. Even though it seems unrelated to synthesis and supply, the feds don't like people touching the banned chemicals. And the DEA doesn't exactly license university labs, so really your only option is to find a professor who would supervise you and keep quiet that you're handling Schedule I substances. I know that the trope of the chem professor who is an ex-acid burnout and jokes about making mescaline in the school can't be all fiction.

(ps yes I know I'm mean mr mustard the dream-crusher)
 
Thank you very much. Let's say I'm testing a percocet. Percocet contains oxycodone and APAP. If the Mecke Reagent displays an olive color then that would mean there's oxycodone. However, does the presence of tylenol distort the results? No right? Since the color will just indicate the presence of a certain drug and the tylenol shouldn't matter? Would performing a cold water extraction, then waiting for the water to evaporate, and then test the resulting crystals be more accurate?
 
Thank you very much. Let's say I'm testing a percocet. Percocet contains oxycodone and APAP. If the Mecke Reagent displays an olive color then that would mean there's oxycodone. However, does the presence of tylenol distort the results? No right? Since the color will just indicate the presence of a certain drug and the tylenol shouldn't matter? Would performing a cold water extraction, then waiting for the water to evaporate, and then test the resulting crystals be more accurate?

Percocet contains a lot more than APAP and oxycodone, I would imagine the GC/MS would pick up all the inactives as well.
 
You'd have to test a sample of acetaminophen with Mecke reagent to be 100% sure it did not react as well

The best way to isolate alkaloids from acetaminophen is by extracting the pill into cold water, adding some alkali (sodium carbonate) and extracting the alkaline liquid phase with e.g. chloroform or dichloromethane. Evaporate to recover freebase alkaloid - presumably pure(r)

GC/MS can generally only pick out things that are volatile, and dissolve in solvents. So they are "blind" to some compounds like nonvolatile salts and polymers that simply carmelize in the very hot injector inlet.
 
Dam sekio... You sound like a chemistry beast. Keep in mind that if I do any sort of extraction it will be at home. I'm not a chemist or anything so my lab skills are poor. I've only taken labs in general chem I and II. Currently in orgo like I've mentioned before. If I were to do this I'll need like specific procedures. Regardless, I don't think I will be able to get my hands on chloroform or dichloromethane. They are illegal right? I think I read that chloroform is a common solvent in school labs but I'm not attempting to steal some lol... I had a question regarding the amount of volume needed per pill. Every thread I read on CWE displays a different required volume. Do you have any suggestions? There was this youtube video that said it was supposed to be 1mL of water per pill. I felt like that was too small. Oh and one more question. Why can't you boil the water? How does that destroy the alkaloid of the boiling point of water is way lower than the melting point for the alkaloid. Thanks you so much.
 
In general, boiling water does not destroy alkaloids - but acetaminophen is much more soluble in hot water than it is in cold, so cold water extractions use cold water. Morphine and codeine and such are fairly stable, and can be boiled down without destruction, but I wouldn't make morphine soup and keep it at 100 degress for ever, you know?

The volume of water you use for a CWE will depend on how many you are doing at once. Realistically this means enough to ensure all the opioid has dissolved - anywhere from 2 to 5ml per typical Percocet/Norco is good. For the typical home user, more water will make it easier to filter the muck out of your coldwater extract, but less water will contain less acetaminophen.

A Buchner filter funnel will also be a major time saver, get one on amazon


To be brutally honest the two best assays you can do for a "pill test" of known pharmaceutical pills (not E tabs) are the visual inspection (should be hard, non crumbly, clearly defined edges, correct imprint exact to the millimetre with a FDA ref photo, correct weight if you have a known mass of good pill). These characteristics shouldn't vary between pills.

The bioassay is easy, see if they produce the expected effects upon ingestion. If someone is going to spend all that time to fake a percocet to look exactly like a "real" one, lets just say it would be wierd if it was a total placebo.
 
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Yea yea, I meant evaporating the water after the CWE. And wait, Buchner filter funnel "a major time saver"? You mean if I were to use it with a vacuum correct? Thank you very much for clarifying the mL/pill ratio. "If someone is going to spend all that time to fake a percocet to look exactly like a "real" one, lets just say it would be wierd if it was a total placebo." True that.
 
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