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Measuring drugs using the dissolving method may be very dangerous!

tourette

tourette

Bluelighter
Joined
Oct 21, 1999
Messages
593
Location
San Francisco
I recently purchased some research chemicals and proceeded to weigh them out with my lab scale (accurate to 1 milligram increments). I ordered 500 milligrams of a chemical. I poured all the powder onto the scale to see how much was there. There was exactly 1000 milligrams of powder! Now, while this was great news for me, it could have been very dangerous if I had used the water/alcohol dissolving method to measure doses. Imagine if I had disolved it in water without measuring it first, then each dose would have been 2 times as potent as I would have expected.
Now, a week later I received another chemical from another company. I poured the entire contents on the scale and found I had received about 550 milligrams instead of 500. Now this may not be as dangerous, but you can see my point. You don't always get what you pay for. Companies make mistakes, or perhaps some of them are just really nice and hook people up sometimes. Either way, I wanted to caution everyone putting their faith in the dissolving method.
If you can't afford a lab scale accurate to 1 milligram, then there are alternatives. My recommendation is to find a cheap scale that can at least measure 10ths of grams. That way you know that you received about how much you paid for before you dissolve it in water.
peace,
tourette
 
The dissolving method is still very useful, here's why. For $20 you can buy a cheap balance accurate to like 20mg, certainly not NEARLY accurate enough to weigh something like 5-MeO-DIPT effectively per dose. But if you weigh your whole shipment, you have an accurate enough figure to dissolve it in a solvent and have a good idea of the dose, much more accurate than the scale could have given you. This is where the dissolving method comes in handy.
Also, you can trust certain suppliers more than others for accuracy.
 
Good post!
A few months ago I ordered 250 mg of something from the company that just went out of business. I have been weighing out capsules and already have removed 250 mg...but there is still powder left in the vial! Be careful....
[By the way, my balance is accurate to 0.1 mg.]
[This message has been edited by Catch-22 (edited 20 June 2001).]
 
it's *possible* that you're not paying for the acid salt.. they may have calculated the mass they gave you like that (it seems to be done with real pharmaceuticals, but i'm not sure), so that if you buy 500 mg of X hydrochloride you get 500 mg of X, plus some unknown amount of hydrochloride.
im actually not sure how it's done but it seems like a logical explanation for why they'd give you what seems like a fairly large excess.
so.. to calculate the expected excess...
add the molecular weight of your compound (which should be easy to find) to the molecular weight of the salt (e.g. 36.5 for HCl), then divide this by the molecular weight of just the compound and multiply by the weight you asked for.
example:
for 5-MeODMT (MW = ~274) HCl (MW ~ 36.5)
mass of molecule + salt / mass of molecule
= 274 + 36.5 / 274
= 1.13
1.13 x 500 mg
= 566.6 mg
so that's something to be considered. i wouldn't *trust* it since it may not be correct, and some companies may do something different, but if you consistently get more than you think you paid for, that's probably why.
 
No, that's not possible. They could do that but no one ever does. You buy a salt or you buy a freebase, period.
If you are measuring somethign the density of the salt can give you a rough idea. Somebody should fill a 1cc rig with pre-weighed 500mg of finely crushed up powder and tap it until it doesn't settle anymore thne compress it with the plunger. It will likely end up close to the halfway mark, but it will at least give others a good way to get a rough idea of the weight of the powder, and then they can just draw in water and use the syringe method. Do this for each research chemical to get a rough idea of their densities.
 
Speaking about research chem's, I got a question for you guys. Can you dissolve a freebase checmical in grain alcohol just as you can dissolve a powder like t7? Or is the freebase form undissolvable?
------------------
We haven't been tapping into new areas of the brain...
We have just been awakening the most ancient.
 
xylo: i agree, it is still very useful. many people have been doing it blindly though, instead of weighing it first. a scale that will tell you if have roughly 500 milligrams (as opposed to 400 or 600) is not very expensive. Something everyone should invest in if they are purchasing research chemicals.
catch-22: the company that sent me roughly 550 milligrams was the one that just went out of business. i wonder if they didn't use some other way of measuring, such as what roche is saying? who knows, but odd that we both got a little more than we paid for from them.
-tourette
 
Some weight differences may be due to water of hydration (if those chemicals forms hydrates, as for example MDMA and mescaline do).
 
Roches: i don't understand your explanation...are you trying to say that the company takes the ammount advertised for the hcl salt and measures out that ammount in freebase and then proceeds to react that ammount of freebase (for every individual customer) with hydrochloric acid to yield an ammount of hcl salt greater than what was advertised...so basically they're cooking up a batch of hcl salt for each individual customer...i always thought those research chemical suppliers just ordered bulk ammounts of the hcl salt and keep it in storage till some one places an order...then they measure out that persons order and ship it to them...
 
Some weight differences may be due to water of hydration (if those chemicals forms hydrates, as for example MDMA and mescaline do).
Click to expand...
So the water gets absorbed through the glass of the container?? What's with the silly explanations for the weight differences? There's a very easy explanation. The guys selling this stuff aren't exactly large profesional organizations. They simply make mistakes. It's not like they're selling something for human consumption now is it? So why would they have to measure exactly? They don't need to so they don't bother. So long as it is at least what it's labeled as they are doing legal trade.
 
Lots of good discussion on this thread, but I think Quirks has the right answer. The only way companies selling research chemicals can get in trouble is for not selling what they advertize. That means the right chemical and at least the right quantity of product. If you order other chemicals, such as 1 kg of sodium chloride, etc., it will always (in my experience) be a little more than the amount you purchased. Basically, as Quirks said, weighing stuff down to the milligram is tough to do.
[Also, for what it is worth, I was overly compulsive my first time measuring research chemicals so I put the powder in with some anhydrous calcium sulfate (DRIERITE) to take away excess water. I found no measurable difference in weight. Yes, I know it was overkill...but I had a desiccation setup nearby so it was no extra work. LOL]
 
well, i only went with that explanation because it seemed to logically explain the amount of excess. they could just calculate how much salt is equivalent to 500 mg of freebase and give you that much. if you're supposed to get 566 and you get 550, that makes a lot more sense business-wise than giving you 550 when you paid for 500. since this means losing 10% of your profit i can't see a fringe business like a research chem company making that much of a mistake. weighing out exactly 500 mg every time might be difficult, but i'd think their scale could at least show 0.50 grams.
yes, it also makes no sense to me why they'd be extra careful and give you 566 mg of a hydrochloride salt equivalent to 500 mg of free base, but oh well.
water of hydration: hydrates form really easily. although water of hydration could easily explain excess weight, i really can't see them weighing out 500 mg of anhydrous powder from a bulk container and then that powder hydrating on the way to the customer. it would be a hydrate when they weighed it.
so i don't know.. yes the salt thing makes no sense, but i can't see it being error either.
 
xylo,
Where did you find a scale accurate to 0.02 grams for $20?
------------------
"the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple" Oscar Wilde
 
so your telling me that when my 50mg order of foxy comes, even if i use the water method. i mite drop dead? i cant afford a scale thats that accurate. i do have one thats accurate to 1/10th of a gram. also how much water would i have to use to make a corect dosage.
------------------
peace and beatz,
-e JaY
 
so your telling me that when my 50mg order of foxy comes, even if i use the water method. i mite drop dead? i cant afford a scale thats that accurate. i do have one thats accurate to 1/10th of a gram. also how much water would i have to use to make a corect dosage.
Click to expand...
You aren't going to drop dead even if you accidently measure twice what you wanted. It'd be a strong trip... but that's it.
 
good point.
but i like making people be EXTREMELY CAREFUL
to make up for the fact that i'd probably just think.. it's supposed to be 500 mg, right? well, i'll do half.
 
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