I realise this topic has been spoken about over and over for some years now but it is relevant to what I have been reading up on recently, as some of the high dose Dutch pills have started to reach Australia, a country which has for many years been a barren wasteland for any MDMA pills over about 60mg and a few years before that there was none.
This situation directly contributed to crystal methylamphetamine use skyrocketing all over the country, including amongst very young adults who 10 years ago would have only ever touched MDMA pills and today have not even experienced one properly.
The difference between the current crop of pills containing very large doses of MDMA and the pills of the 90s (as well as MDMA crystal currently) must be down to something or things which are identifiable, because the difference is widely reported and becoming consistent.
Firstly, there is no doubt some MDA in an MDMA pill would effect things, but it is clear that the majority of the earlier pills were not necessarily combo pills. Whilst MDA played a part, it does not provide the answer.
My suggestions:
(1) THE PURITY OF THE MDMA AND OTHER DRUGS BEING PRESSED INTO THE PILLS
The first reason is that perhaps the Superlabs putting out all these high dose and obviously related pills over recent years are generally not purifying the MDMA product as much as was done previously; perhaps the precursors being used at the outset are not particularly pure, having had to be obtained from alternative sources (whether synthetic or plant based).
- therefore, where a lab report has said that the pill contains 200mg of pure MDMA-HCL that is because it does, but the lab report says nothing about the purity of the MDMA powder which was actually used to make the pill.
- so in actual fact it might be that the pill contains 250mg of 80% pure "MDMA-HCl product" or worse still 300mg of 66.66% pure "MDMA-HCl product".
- in both examples there is a total of 200mg of pure MDMA but one pill also has 50 mg of who knows what - I.e. precursors, reactants, impurities generated by the chemical reactions required, solvents, and so on etc; the second example has 100mg of such a mixture!
Binder and inactive filler and possibly colouring is then generally added (if the pill also contained other known drugs/adulterants in addition to the MDMA, then the lab would report this; as we know for almost all of the pills under consideration MDMA is the only active ingredient). If the binder/filler/colouring actually did something, as some people quite strangely believe, then pharmaceutical companies would struggle to get approval to sell the thousands of drugs in pill form that they do in all sorts of shapes, compositions and colours. These considerations might be relevant for absorption and rate of onset issues but they are irrelevant to this discussion.
Unless thorough investigation is done into what other chemicals are found within these pills, aside from merely reporting the active drug, then we just cannot know how pure the MDMA is that goes into the pill being consumed. A forensic chemist can easily do this because when they analyse the pills (generally through a combination of HPLC/mass spectrometry), the machine will tell them the identity of every other chemical contained in the pill and its relative proportions. They do this all the time, for example when they want to determine the manufacturing method used in a particular case or if they want to prove that two separate samples were created during the same manufacturing process. Of course whether the impurities have any appreciable physiological effect is another thing entirely. I seriously doubt they would have a psychoactive effect.
Pure MDMA-HCl is white. It is interesting how darkly coloured some of these super pills are, which might be for novelty reasons, but it might also be to mask the colour of the original product which might be brown. Saying that, if left over precursors was a problem, you would expect these pills to smell fairly strong - do they? I am aware that those huge skull pills were bone white - did they have the desired effect or did they seem similar to the rest of these super pills?
It would also be interesting to see whether a group of the super pills which we can be confident come from the same manufacturer, all contained an impurity generated in the reaction that perhaps other pills do not. This would be a product of the manufacturing process being utilised by that manufacturer and might then indicate something specific in a group of related pills which is doing something physiologically that others are not; and perhaps the presence of an impurity unknown to the detailed studies previously undertaken into this area focusing on the common methods.
This is the reason in my opinion why some people claim that white MDMA crystal (which if it is brilliant may well have been purified to 95% feels different to these pills even when the same 100mg dose is taken:
- the crystal contains ~105mg of white 95% pure "MDMA-HCl product" whereas the pill might contain 150mg of brown, smelly 66.6% pure "MDMA-HCl product, which is then coloured into something much more appetising and made to look very cool indeed).
Perhaps the MDMA going into the 90s pills was purified to a greater extent, given that the market was much smaller and also included pure MDEA (legally obtained) from time to time. If indeed amphetamine was also in there then perhaps those complaining of being too ruined and not loved up enough on these new pills, need only a quick bump of amphet or a couple of dexies to be once again running around and hugging all and sundry.
Bluelighters above have continually said that the synthesis of MDMA was different back then. How and in what way?
I know of no viable synthesis that does not start with MD-P2P, which is the exact same chemical as PMK, just named differently. Whether the MD-P2P is sourced commercially, made from piperonal or made from safrole is surely neither here nor there. If it was of significance then it could only be from the different impurities produced and these should by now have been identified.
I cannot see anyone making MDMA from MDA.
Piperonal can be more easily used to manufacture MDA in addition to MDMA but this would not result in more MDA in my view as if MDA was desired it can easily be manufacture from MD-P2P as well.
So what are people going on about as I don't see one single difference in the synthesis method which could explain anything (the purity of the final product aside of course which I have already mentioned).
If indeed MDMA is able to be made from another precursor or the ketone manufactured from entirely different starting chemicals, then this might of course explain something.
(2) NEW MANUFACTURING PROCESSES NOT PRODUCING A RACEMIC MIX OF MDMA ENANTIOMERS
As stated, I have no doubt almost all MDMA is produced from MD-P2P. The piperonal route produces MD-phenyl-2-nitropropene as an intermediate, so who knows what this latter chemical might do if not removed from the final product. Further, some manufacturers might use methylamine and others nitromethane to make the MDMA. Again, these chemicals being left over in the product might effect things, and they are quite different indeed, although others have said above they shouldn't.
However, despite all of this, most chemists agree that any manufacture of MDMA from MD-P2P will produce racemic MDMA (give or take). But what if these superlabs are using new manufacturing processes which for some reason don't do this. A catalyst or other reactant of some kind (such as an Aluminium-Mercury amalgam or other chemicals I won't mention) must be used in the final step.
The chemicals which facilitate this final step or the catalysts which do the same thing can work in unusual ways and there is the possibility that if these superlabs are employing novel and new reactants/catalysts (especially given the tried and tested ones would be watched closely) which favour the production of a particular enantiomer over the other, then perhaps the MDMA going into the recent super pills isn't actually the desired 1:1 ratio of the two MDMA enantiomers at all. If this ratio is out then the subjective effects will be skewed in a particular direction and if there is more R then the dosage is going to go up and the effects will not be as wonderful.
No standard laboratory test is going to distinguish between the two types and so we just don't know. My understanding of inorganic chemistry and especially catalysts is fairly limited when compared to organic chemistry, so if anyone has more advanced knowledge in this area any contribution would be valuable. In 2012 people above said all the reactants and catalysts were not stereo selective and so that was the end of that; but two years have past and in that time these very high dose pills have flooded the market.
Whilst no sensible person wants these labs to cease production by being busted (trust me it just means more crystal meth addicts in my country at least), it would be very interesting to know whether they are manufacturing MDMA in the same way that Shulgin did, the same way as they did when it was legal and the same way as they plainly did in the 90s and early 2000s. If the methods have changed slightly (whether in respect to the chemicals used or the reaction conditions employed) then who knows whether the MDMA going into these pills is quite the same as the MDMA which went into the pills of yesteryear.
I also don't believe any manufacturer would deliberately try to separate out the enantiomers. If the racemate is produced, the racemate would stay.
(3) THE SALT ISSUE
I also believe almost all MDMA is in HCl form. I don't believe the sulphate can easily be created because sulphuric acid will destroy the MD bridge. If indeed there was phosphate, citrate or tartrate salts then perhaps absorption would be effected. However, what people should be more focused on is whether the drug in this form could seriously mislead the effective amount of MDMA in the pill.
All of the other three salts would have a much greater molecular weight and if the total weight of the MDMA salt in the pill was quoted in the lab result, this could be misleading. However, all of the recent Eve-Rave results specify MDMA-HCL, including some of the very big ones. Therefore, this is a red herring.
(4) THOSE LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE TAKEN MDMA IN THE 90s DON'T FEEL THE EFFECTS OF THE DRUG AS THEY ONCE DID
The final possibility and one that cannot be ignored ad beaten to death throughout 2012, is that those people in the 90s who likely consumed many MDMA pills when they were first starting out, now find the pills of today different because the experiences from one's early days are such that they cannot truly ever be replicated ever again; there is that undeniable loss of "magic" - perhaps for this drug, after sufficient use and moving on from whatever scene you were a part of and which made using the drug at that time so special, losing the real magic is truly permanent.
Maybe the brain is capable of reacting chemically as it once did, but the "out of the world" experience which we have all enjoyed in our younger years isn't the same because we are familiar with it, know what to expect, now see the world in a different light, and thus adjust our behaviour and response to the drug accordingly. People don't dance all sweaty and loved up to the end of these events anymore because now too many people are worried about their hair, showing their tattoos and updating their Facebook, despite being just as munted.
Perhaps if those same people could go forward in time and have the current crop of pills, they would feel exactly the same. Likewise, if those just starting out on the current pills went back in time and tried those of the early rave scene, they too would be just as happy, just as loved up and just as naïve and excited about the adventure that awaits.
I realise this is a long post but this is a particularly interesting area which I know has been debated a lot above, but at a time before the supply of these super pills really took off and spread worldwide. I have no doubt the answers are out there somewhere and a more detailed chemical analysis of these pills is required.
