Meth My Experience W/ The “New Meth”

[trevrett]

Really appreciate the info. As I've said before, my experience can only be subjective and anecdotal; I have no training whatsoever in chemistry and appreciate all the information I can collect to further inform my understanding.

 

[negrogesic]

As for enantiometic purity, as I understand it, effectively all meth (at least where I live, Pacific Northwest) is dextrorotary. DL-meth (racemic) as I understand it, does not produce the usual shard like crystals.
Also, it is not very difficult to take racemic meth and separate the two isomers effectively totally using tartaric acid (very cheap). It is also easy enough to take the L-meth left over and racemize it back to 50/50 D/L. The separation and racemization can be repeated as many times as needed to yield D-meth from P2P
In addition, the common belief L-meth/L-amphetamine produce negative/tweaky effects.only holds true when you are dosing the pure L-isomer at much larger doses than the D- would be used at. When you look at the affinity for the monoamine transporters the L-isomer is only about 1/10 as effective as the D-isomer: meaning that even in racemic methamphetamine, the D-isomer will produce 95% of the activity and the L- only 5%.

From my understanding, the racemization process used by the Mexican cartels requires multiple runs to achieve something resembling an enantiomerically pure product:



So lets assume for arguments sake that the final result of this mass produced cartel stuff is 93% d-meth and 7% l-meth (note, similar proportions based on analytical reports has been found in crystalline form). That 7% of l-methamphetamine should have some influence on the subject effects of the drug given l-methamphetamine's potent action as a norepinephrine releasing agent (having an ec50 for NE release in the lowish double nanomolar range, something like 30-40nM if i recall correctly). Thus such a presence would be perceptible and play a role in shaping the effect profile (particularly when compared to truly enantiomerically pure d-meth).

On a side note though, good to see you back Sekio!

 

[G_Chem]

From my understanding, the racemization process used by the Mexican cartels requires multiple runs to achieve something resembling an enantiomerically pure product:



So lets assume for arguments sake that the final result of this mass produced cartel stuff is 93% d-meth and 7% l-meth (note, similar proportions based on analytical reports has been found in crystalline form). That 7% of l-methamphetamine should have some influence on the subject effects of the drug given l-methamphetamine's potent action as a norepinephrine releasing agent (having an ec50 for NE release in the lowish double nanomolar range, something like 30-40nM if i recall correctly). Thus such a presence would be perceptible and play a role in shaping the effect profile (particularly when compared to truly enantiomerically pure d-meth).

On a side note though, good to see you back Sekio!

That said, I truly don’t believe l-meth is the culprit. If it was, no one would gush about the racemic peanut butter meth keeping them going for 3 days.

I’m sure the residual l-meth does alter the effects but not to the extent seem with the New Mexican stuff.

-GC

 

[negrogesic]

That said, I truly don’t believe l-meth is the culprit. If it was, no one would gush about the racemic peanut butter meth keeping them going for 3 days.

I’m sure the residual l-meth does alter the effects but not to the extent seem with the New Mexican stuff.

-GC

Yeah I'm not sure if the l-methamphetamine presence is the full story, but its my best guess based on the data I've seen. Based on the available data what we do know objectively is:

1) there's nearly 1000 tested samples of methamphetamine on drugsdata.org, which gives a fairly representative sample (especially considering that samples come from all over the US).

2) the vast majority of those crystal meth samples test via GCMS as methamphetamine, no other active compounds, but also no isomer identified

3) pharmacologically active compounds like dimethylamphetamine in those samples were very rare (and in the cases of dimethylamphetamine, are also accompanied by amphetamine contamination since it was the precursor used -- ie, not the result of a cartel P2P operation).

4) it is known that cartels use the P2P route which requires a process of repeated racemization-resolution of waste l-methamphetamine and that some l-meth will be included to some degree in the final product

5) samples of illicit crystalline methamphetamine with ~20% l-methamphetamine have been recorded in some analyses, thus a crystalline form doesn't indicate enantiomeric purity (so its possible the average proportion of l-methamphetamine is not trivial)

6) l-methamphetamine is a potent norepinephrine releasing agent and vasocontrictor who's effects are so unpleasant at high dose that its sold freely over the counter in the form of vicks inhaler (and unlike propylhexedrine, is almost never abused)

7) there isn't data that suggests n-iso is common or even pharmacologically active

So, thats really all the objective data I'm aware of, which logically leads one to presume that perhaps there is a pharmacologically active amount of l-methamphetamine in this stuff. But that is just based on the data available. Seems quite logical though.

The new cartel stuff actually isn't half bad when taken orally as this ROA sort of smooths out the adrenergic qualities. It still doesn't feel smooth like d-meth though.

Yet when this new stuff is smoked the difference in effect is night and day, being far more adrenergic and uncomfortable feeling than pseudo based d-meth. Honestly not a big fan of even good d-meth, but this new stuff is quite harsh.

 

[G_Chem]

Yeah I'm not sure if the l-methamphetamine presence is the full story, but its my best guess based on the data I've seen. Based on the available data what we do know objectively is:

1) there's nearly 1000 tested samples of methamphetamine on drugsdata.org, which gives a fairly representative sample (especially considering that samples come from all over the US).

2) the vast majority of those crystal meth samples test via GCMS as methamphetamine, no other active compounds, but also no isomer identified

3) pharmacologically active compounds like dimethylamphetamine in those samples were very rare (and in the cases of dimethylamphetamine, are also accompanied by amphetamine contamination since it was the precursor used -- ie, not the result of a cartel P2P operation).

4) it is known that cartels use the P2P route which requires a process of repeated racemization-resolution of waste l-methamphetamine and that some l-meth will be included to some degree in the final product

5) samples of illicit crystalline methamphetamine with ~20% l-methamphetamine have been recorded in some analyses, thus a crystalline form doesn't indicate enantiomeric purity (so its possible the average proportion of l-methamphetamine is not trivial)

6) l-methamphetamine is a potent norepinephrine releasing agent and vasocontrictor who's effects are so unpleasant at high dose that its sold freely over the counter in the form of vicks inhaler (and unlike propylhexedrine, is almost never abused)

7) there isn't data that suggests n-iso is common or even pharmacologically active

So, thats really all the objective data I'm aware of, which logically leads one to presume that perhaps there is a pharmacologically active amount of l-methamphetamine in this stuff. But that is just based on the data available. Seems quite logical though.

The new cartel stuff actually isn't half bad when taken orally as this ROA sort of smooths out the adrenergic qualities. It still doesn't feel smooth like d-meth though.

Yet when this new stuff is smoked the difference in effect is night and day, being far more adrenergic and uncomfortable feeling than pseudo based d-meth. Honestly not a big fan of even good d-meth, but this new stuff is quite harsh.

I’ll respond more later, but I know through talking with them that DrugsData can’t test for butylamphetamine. So it’s very possible it’s in all those samples or many of them.

-GC

 

[negrogesic]

P

I’ll respond more later, but I know through talking with them that DrugsData can’t test for butylamphetamine. So it’s very possible it’s in all those samples or many of them.

-GC

Interesting information, that is definitely the flip side of the whole thing (i.e., the limitations of GCMS or perhaps drugsdata.org themselves to accurately characterize the chemical composition of the samples)

If they cant or wont report such details that of course changes everything.

A cursory search led me to these impurities (some hard to detect) one without regard to P2P however

[PDF] The Analytical and Pharmacological Characterization of alpha-Benzyl-N-Methylphenethylamine, an Impurity in Illicit Methamphetamine Synthesis. | Semantic Scholar

Abstract : Methamphetamine (METH) is a popular drug of abuse, readily synthesized in clandestine laboratories. Illicit synthesis results in various contaminants, one of which is a-benzyl-N-methylphenethylamine (BNMPA). This dissertation investigates the hypotheses that contaminants like BNMPA...

www.semanticscholar.org

GC-MS Analysis of Methamphetamine Impurities : Reactivity of ( + )-or (-)-Chloroephedrine and cis-or trans-1 , 2-Dimethyl-3-phenylazi ridine | Semantic Scholar

Thai the aziridine intermediates would not be detected in methamphetamine samples following HFBA derivatization, indicating that the Aziridine intermediate is responsible for the formation of the ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. S-(+)-Methamphetamine is frequently found as the only isomer in urine...

www.semanticscholar.org

 

[sekio]

but I know through talking with them that DrugsData can’t test for butylamphetamine

"can't test for" or "do not have a trusted reference material"?
I know DrugsData has access to GCMS, and butylamphetamine is both much heavier (later retention time and heavier ion peak) and also much less active (it is known that amphetamine activity is N-methyl > amphetamine > ethylamp >> propyl > heavier alkyl).
Also a different MS spectrum.

4) it is known that cartels use the P2P route which requires a process of repeated racemization-resolution of waste l-methamphetamine and that some l-meth will be included to some degree in the final product

Except if done correctly, one step of the separation yields D- and L- amphetamine of >95% optical purity.[ref] This is not a difficult process to check either, a polarimeter can be had for less than $100 and can tell the specific ratio of D- to L- with a 5 minute test on ~100mg material.

The only reason I would expect to see L-amphetamine present is simple greed. It's an easy "cut" that passes a lot of tests.

A cursory search led me to these impurities (some hard to detect) one without regard to P2P however

N-benzylmethamphetamine is so much heavier and different than methamphetamine that I'd bet colour change reagents would react differently.
And chloroephedrine... as far as I know nobody makes meth via that route, it requires pseudo/ephedrine, highly reactive chlorinating agents, and catalytic hydrogenation over platinum/palladium. Also more steps and less yield. Way harder than the other ways.

A properly set up GCMS should have zero problems indicating the presence of an impurity or cut in meth. Identification could be a little trickier but in this day and age we have libraries of hundreds of thousands of compounds and their mass spectra... true 'unknowns' are rare.

 

[G_Chem]

"can't test for" or "do not have a trusted reference material"?
I know DrugsData has access to GCMS, and butylamphetamine is both much heavier (later retention time and heavier ion peak) and also much less active (it is known that amphetamine activity is N-methyl > amphetamine > ethylamp >> propyl > heavier alkyl).
Also a different MS spectrum.



Except if done correctly, one step of the separation yields D- and L- amphetamine of >95% optical purity.[ref] This is not a difficult process to check either, a polarimeter can be had for less than $100 and can tell the specific ratio of D- to L- with a 5 minute test on ~100mg material.

The only reason I would expect to see L-amphetamine present is simple greed. It's an easy "cut" that passes a lot of tests.


N-benzylmethamphetamine is so much heavier and different than methamphetamine that I'd bet colour change reagents would react differently.
And chloroephedrine... as far as I know nobody makes meth via that route, it requires pseudo/ephedrine, highly reactive chlorinating agents, and catalytic hydrogenation over platinum/palladium. Also more steps and less yield. Way harder than the other ways.

A properly set up GCMS should have zero problems indicating the presence of an impurity or cut in meth. Identification could be a little trickier but in this day and age we have libraries of hundreds of thousands of compounds and their mass spectra... true 'unknowns' are rare.

Does not have reference material which means currently cannot not test for it.. You’re more than welcome to message them yourself on the matter. Reference samples aren’t cheap and for substances like this not super easy to find either.

Also I’m going to go ahead and assume you didn’t look at the thread I linked which has research showing butylamphetamine and other amphetamines present due to the nitrostyrene route used in recent samples. If butylamine is used to help form the nitrostyrene then ya.. This change of impurity profile occurred right as folks said the meth changed. We see this time and again with many drugs, synthetic route changes and people start complaining.

-GC

 

[sekio]

Does not have reference material which means currently cannot not test for it..

I beg to differ. While a certified reference material is certainly nice to have, it's not essential to make an identification.
Both use of a retention index (i.e. Kovats) and the MS "fingerprint" can, if matched closely to references, be adequate for ID.
Back when I used a GCMS for identification I found it perfectly acceptable to get a 95% quality DB match.
In fact the SWGDRUG MS library (I loved that) has a reference spectrum for both N-butyl and N-tert-butyl amphetamine.
And I've seen them make tentative IDs based on the spectra alone before.

If butylamine is used to help form the nitrostyrene then ya..

The Henry reaction is old as piss. And if the cooks are worth their salt, in the Nef reaction that follows, the reaction conditions should be both acidic and aqueous, meaning the butylamine should be present as a salt and not as the imine. And extraction with the correct solvents and/or distillation of the P2P will result in amine free material. (Probably the fuckup is laziness: the cook used dichloromethane and extracted the butylamine salt along with the P2P, never bothered to analyse it (even by smell) and went right on into adding methylamine and reducing).

Regardless I would treat N-butylamphetamine as basically inactive, and also not buy any more from whoever sold it to me... no SAR data shows it to be terribly active at all.

also from earlier

While researching MDMA batch variation I came to the conclusion hydrogenation reductions via platinum overall had a less euphoric/positive experience. Pt reductions correlated well with perceived differences in MDMA experience.

I'm sorry but this is absolute nonsense.
Chemically speaking the product produced by hydrogenation would be identical to that made by other reducing agents. The H₂ can come from anywhere, the result is the same. How did you tell how it was made?
As I understand it, nobody uses hydrogenation to make MDMA, because the much simpler and safer reduction with aluminum foil is both operationally simpler, cheaper, and also safer (no need for high pressure H₂ gas and the apparatus needed to handle it).
Besides, generally speaking, palladium is more often used because it is equally active and also much cheaper.

 

[tryptakid]

This is a great thread guys.

Somethings I've been thinking about recently

1) Dosing - as meth cost has plummeted (I've seen it priced at 20/30$/g on markets, and heard not too far off numbers from people buying on the street) it's a lot easier on the wallet to just do more. As @seiko mentioned earlier, Rx methamphetamine is orally dosed at 5-10mg with a MDD of what 20 or 25mg? When looking at dosage conversion charts (obviously not absolute) 5mg of oral dextromethamphetamine is considered equivalent to 20mg oral dextroamphetamine. With that back of the napkin math, you're talking about a maximum therapeutic dose of 25mg being somewhere around 100mg of dextroamphetamine equivalent. Obviously, we're talking different receptors being activated etc, but 100mg of dex would get you lifted AF.

I talk with patients who are doing shots of street meth in the ballpark of .2g/.3g injected. Due to much less significant NE agonism, you can dose so much higher than would be possible with regular old amphetamine, and not feel completely miserable. Imagine shooting a gram of dextroamphetamine? I don't want to.

Given all of that, we know that antipsychotic drugs are dopamine antagonists. Psychosis is linked to some degree with hyperactivation of dopamine systems. I was actually reading just a little while ago about how Deja Vu actually seems to be linked to hyperactivation of Dopamine in the temporal lobe, something that came out of a person taking Phenylpropylamine and Amantadine for a cold and experiencing recurrent significant experiences of deja vu, likely owing to the drugs interacting and rapidly increasing dopamine. Deja Vu isn't psychosis, but it's not too far off from the type of cognitive alteration present. All of this is not to mention that we already have working models of psychosis linked to dopamine.

I wonder if part of this is fueled by meth being less difficult to come by, cartels are making enough of it to reach the whole US, it's becoming incredibly inexpensive, and as a result people are much more reckless with their use. Widespread availability of syringes could also play into this as it's a lot harder to smoke .3grams than it is to shoot it.

2) Pharmacology, chemistry, toxicity - We know that the method of production has moved from predominantly small batch pseudoephedrine cooks to large volume p2p cooks. Whether or not they are taking the extra steps to further clean up their batch from l-meth to most or all d-meth, we also don't know what kinds of other contaminants are left over in the products being used from using industrial chemicals instead of food safe drugs as your starting point. Are there heavy metals in the resulting product that don't get picked up by GC/MS - I don't know a lot about this part of things, so I'm hoping one of y'all might have some insight, but I do wonder if there's some degree of toxicity that could be at play here.

3) Context and mindset of users - There was a thread on reddit recently where people were discussing how they felt MDMA effects had changed since the 90s/00s. People were speculating on why it seemed like oldschool pressed pills just 'hit harder'. Some of that is tolerance, some is nostalgia, and some is novelty wearing off, but I speculated in that thread that another component was linked to context of use, as well as downstream effects from other drug tolerances and mindset of use. MDMA use in the 90s/00s was often in the context of raves, settings particularly designed to enhance the effect of MDMA, in a crowd of people who you can feel free to be all loved up around, and in the context of the dawn of a new millenium. It was the future, and it was about to happen! The Internet was coming! The world was relatively stable. Most people hadn't been prescribed SSRIs or amphetamines, especially not the 16-35 year olds taking MDMA for the first time. Those receptor systems were pretty pure.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and our social context has changed drastically. The internet has come, and for all the good it promised, it brought a whole lot of instability that continues to be felt in many ways. The world has felt unsafe due to war and a media addicted to war, fear, violence, and trauma. We're a hypermedicated society, having multiple generations grow up exposed to prozac, adderall, and welbutrin, not to mention the widespread availability of so many types of drugs that would just be near impossible to source unless you were deep in the scene a few decades ago. All of that stuff has to effect user tolerance, even if it's not direct cross tolerance.

I tried MXE recently for the first time, it was good, I liked it. It was an older batch, but seemed well preserved and I'm reasonably confident that it's good to high quality stuff. I've also done a fuckton of ketamine over the years, these NDMA receptors been antagonized. I'm missing out on some of the subtle effects that MXE offered a whole bunch of people whose first disso exposure was taking it when it was pure cheap and plentiful in 2011. Don't get me wrong, I liked it a lot, and will do it again when I can, but it wasn't magical in the way that people describe it. I can sense where the magic was, but I just can't really get that same effect that leads people to gush about the drug as 'the truth'. Some of it may be batch related, but I'm quite certain that my own neurotransmission just can't be impacted by it the same way a novel user can AND it's not a new drug that is mysterious and unique, and exciting in the way that it was when it first came out. Read the old threads about it on here, the anticipation of taking it is palpable. People were jazzed up for it, and for good reason, it's great stuff. That context had some impact on the way people experienced it.

Meth use these days has gone from a rural issue to an urban one, left the gay discos and entered the homeless encampments. It's being used by a generation of people who have been exposed to all sorts of pharmaceuticals, who can afford to do absurdly high doses, who are living in a day and age that many people find scary. There are plenty of people who have kind of gone off the deep end due to politics and conspiracy theory run rampant without using drugs, so adding meth to that equation is only going to exacerbate it. We have a burnt out mental health system that can barely keep up with the crises that we face every day, let alone actually make meaningful progress in helping the vast majority of people improve, and so many people, and communities, have suffered the repetative trauma of violence, suicide, and overdose death that has escalated these past 20 years in the US. If that's not going to harsh your buzz, not much else will.

So, that's my late in the day on a Friday contribution to this really wonderful forum. I hope y'all are setting up to have a fine weekend

 

[sekio]

Are there heavy metals in the resulting product that don't get picked up by GC/MS

Heavy metals are not used in meth synthesis in general, but as they are not volatile they are not visible on GCMS.
But a crude test would be to place 100mg or so of the material on a glass slide or watch glass, heat it until it all vaporizes, and look for any notable amount of residue, which can be tested for various metals (a quick and dirty method would be to put some on the end of a paperclip and see if it changes the colour of a flame).

we also don't know what kinds of other contaminants are left over in the products

Usually, not many, most often meth is distilled as freebase and the crude HCl rinsed with acetone.

 

[G_Chem]

I beg to differ. While a certified reference material is certainly nice to have, it's not essential to make an identification.
Both use of a retention index (i.e. Kovats) and the MS "fingerprint" can, if matched closely to references, be adequate for ID.
Back when I used a GCMS for identification I found it perfectly acceptable to get a 95% quality DB match.
In fact the SWGDRUG MS library (I loved that) has a reference spectrum for both N-butyl and N-tert-butyl amphetamine.
And I've seen them make tentative IDs based on the spectra alone before.


The Henry reaction is old as piss. And if the cooks are worth their salt, in the Nef reaction that follows, the reaction conditions should be both acidic and aqueous, meaning the butylamine should be present as a salt and not as the imine. And extraction with the correct solvents and/or distillation of the P2P will result in amine free material. (Probably the fuckup is laziness: the cook used dichloromethane and extracted the butylamine salt along with the P2P, never bothered to analyse it (even by smell) and went right on into adding methylamine and reducing).

Regardless I would treat N-butylamphetamine as basically inactive, and also not buy any more from whoever sold it to me... no SAR data shows it to be terribly active at all.

also from earlier

I'm sorry but this is absolute nonsense.
Chemically speaking the product produced by hydrogenation would be identical to that made by other reducing agents. The H₂ can come from anywhere, the result is the same. How did you tell how it was made?
As I understand it, nobody uses hydrogenation to make MDMA, because the much simpler and safer reduction with aluminum foil is both operationally simpler, cheaper, and also safer (no need for high pressure H₂ gas and the apparatus needed to handle it).
Besides, generally speaking, palladium is more often used because it is equally active and also much cheaper.

Ok… Well once again DrugsData can’t.. They reached out to even ask about reference samples to help them potentially identify it. I’m not going to pretend to know GCMS, but are you DrugsData crew? Maybe you should head over there and help them out since you seem to know more than most everyone else.

Yes the Henry is “old as piss” but it’s new in terms of the major synthetic route. If you cared to actually read any the refs provided you’d see that.

Also I showed butylamphetamine to be a potent anorectic, and we’ve had this argument plenty before but a substance can be inactive and still alter the pharmacology of a known psychoactive substance. CBD majorly negates THC with little effects of its own, NMT as well.

And in regards to the last comment, i find it funny that a guy who can’t even use google scholar for two seconds is trying to call nonsense. Time to check yourself there sek’s. It’s like arguing with a wall when someone doesn’t even attempt to grow on what is obviously very outdated knowledge.

-GC

 

[sekio]

Also I showed butylamphetamine to be a potent anorectic,

Where?
this study says it is inactive as an anorectic, does not elevate blood pressure and 1/10 as potent at best
in general as N-alkyl chains get longer than ethyl they lose stimulant activity

And in regards to the last comment, i find it funny that a guy who can’t even use google scholar for two seconds is trying to call nonsense.

I post lots of studies but I don't see you posting any to prove me wrong here?

 

[G_Chem]

Where?
this study says it is inactive as an anorectic, does not elevate blood pressure and 1/10 as potent at best
in general as N-alkyl chains get longer than ethyl they lose stimulant activity


I post lots of studies but I don't see you posting any to prove me wrong here?

This is from my other thread that you didn’t care to take the time to read, as usual..

Structure-activity relationships among some d-N-alkylated amphetamines

d-N-Alkylated amphetamines were synthesized in a series up to and including d-N-butylamphetamine and potencies of these compounds were compared in (1)…

www.sciencedirect.com

To boil down what I’m reading in this article, n-butylamphetamine was the weakest of all the substituted Amphetamines tested. Of the bunch it was the only one that didn’t increase the rate of the guinea pig atria and wasn’t very reinforcing.

But despite it not increasing atria rate like all the other Amphetamines it was 16x more potent to reduce rats milk intake compared to Amphetamine or Meth.


Not sure how 16x more potent at disrupting the rats milk intake is “not an anorectic..” Um where is your research sek’s?

The fact you posted the N-iso thread when we as a community had been discussing that very Erowid article for weeks in depth if not longer, shows your finger has been off the pulse for a long time now.

-GC

 

[SpiralusSancti]

What I would like to know how different catalyst can result in qualitative difference in product. Proving and explaining that might earn a Nobel prize. Geo-location of producing something probably has more (if any) influence on product because of differences in local gravity. Cool next level quantum chemistry, purely theoretical but if true would have immense influence on a whole set of sciences.

 

[sekio]

Can you read, sir? And please show me what proves your conclusion, and explain why.

The paper itself reads: The compounds with N-alkyl groups of ethyl or smaller were approximately equipotent and were more potent than NPA. NBA was the least potent of the series. Less potent.

The milk intake chart says meth needs 11umol/kg to reduce milk to 40% and butylamphetamine needs over 8 times that to do the same? (more like 100 umol/kg) Less potent.

Rat ED50: meth is 1.9 mg/kg, butylamphetamine is 16mg/kg. Less potent.

Also Cayman and several other big name vendors sell butylamphetamine standards, it's not like its unavailable...

Don't you sink to insulting me.

What I would like to know how different catalyst can result in qualitative difference in product.

Pd, Pd/C, Pd/BaSO4, Pt, Pt/C, CuO, and Raney Nickel (Ni-Al) are all common catalysts used in hydrogenation. But there are also PtO₂, Pd(OH)₂, Pd/SiO₂, Pt/SiO₂, Pd/Al₂O₃, Pt/Al₂O₃, Pd/CaCO₃, Pd/SrCO₃, Ir (iridium), Ir/C, IrO₂, Rh (rhodium), Rh/C, Rh/Al₂O₃, Rh/SiO₂, Re (rhenium), Re/C, Re₂O₇, Ru (ruthenium), Ru/C, RuO₂, Au/Fe₂O₃, Cu₂Cr₂O₅ (doped with Ba), Cobalt boride, P-1 and P-2 nickel borides, Raney copper, Raney cobalt, and organic complexes like Crabtree's or Wilkinson's catalyst. And that is not an exhaustive list.

Don't even start on reducing agents in general...

 

[SpiralusSancti]

Pd, Pd/C, Pd/BaSO4, Pt, Pt/C, CuO, and Raney Nickel (Ni-Al) are all common catalysts used in hydrogenation. But there are also PtO₂, Pd(OH)₂, Pd/SiO₂, Pt/SiO₂, Pd/Al₂O₃, Pt/Al₂O₃, Pd/CaCO₃, Pd/SrCO₃, Ir (iridium), Ir/C, IrO₂, Rh (rhodium), Rh/C, Rh/Al₂O₃, Rh/SiO₂, Re (rhenium), Re/C, Re₂O₇, Ru (ruthenium), Ru/C, RuO₂, Au/Fe₂O₃, Cu₂Cr₂O₅ (doped with Ba), Cobalt boride, P-1 and P-2 nickel borides, Raney copper, Raney cobalt, and organic complexes like Crabtree's or Wilkinson's catalyst. And that is not an exhaustive list.

Don't even start on reducing agents in general...

Yeah but if you can use let’s say if you have choice between paladium black or rany nickel in otherwise same synth shouldn’t result be absolutely the same? Isn’t sole definition of catalyst such that they should have only effect on jump-starting reaction, speed of reaction and on temperature at which reaction can be accomplished.

 

[sekio]

There are some additional subtleties, like certain catalysts are more sensitive to certain compounds: sensitivity, raney nickel can be quite air-sensitive (catches fire) and needs to be kept wet even before exposing it to hydrogen, and some catalysts can be 'poisoned' by e.g. sulfur compounds, amines, chlorides etc (varies per catalyst); efficiency: RaNi is generally measured in teaspoons instead of grams (not very efficient); cost: exotic metals (rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium etc) costs more than, platinum, which costs more than palladium, which costs more than nickel etc, and palladium black costs approx 10x 10% Pd/C which costs 2x 5% Pd/C; utility: generally platinum black works as well as 5% Pt/C, and recovering the finely divided Pt black and keeping it active is a lot harder than the carbon based material (ProTip: 5 or 10% Pt/Pd on carbon will still work fine when mixed with Celite, hint hint), also certain hydrogenation reactions may require specific catalysts or different conditions with several catalysts, etc..

Also, don't get me started on hydrogen source... there is a reaction called transfer hydrogenation where you use other molecules that 'donate' hydrogen instead.

My favourite hydrogenation recipe? It's reasonably safe (no sparks, no gaseous H₂, simple cheap reagents) and easy: Dissolve your material in methanol (can be aqueous if you like, or even in ether). Add a pinch (5-100mg/g material) of e.g. 5%Pd/C (it's cheapest generally). Then add 5-7 mol eq of ammonium formate (mw 63 so 315-441g/mol).. less if you are stingy, but it's cheap as fuck. Stir at room temp and monitor, usually takes no more than an hour to hydrogenate an... uh, alkaloid. (A fun one). And the workup is as easy as filtering (removes excess NH₄HCO₂ and the catalyst... rinse with your reduction solvent and add to product, then rinse filter paper with water to simultaneously wash away ammonium formate + make the catalyst safe for storage, let dry to the point you can scrape it off and return it to a sealed jar, then flush the filter paper) then evaporating some of the methanol and partitioning the residue between i..e. sodium carbonate 10% solution and dichloromethane or ether, discarding the aqueous, washing with brine, then drying over e.g. MgSO₄ and evaporating the solvent for a 98%+ yield.

No pissing around with hydrogen gas or Parr shakers or any of that nonsense. Just an open flask on a stir plate.

 

[SpiralusSancti]

Hydromorphone can be made via transfer hydrogenation, right?