Hi all,
First time poster in this forum as this is a realm of the pharmacopeia I am admittedly less savvy about. My overlaps with drugs related to improved performance physically has only really come from the research around nootropics that shared some characteristics that might be appealing to athletic enhancement in some way. My experience with things like peptides falls into the same venn diagram.
My background as a community member here and as a working professional is in recreational drug use and risk reduction approaches to mitigating the risk of harm as much as possible, through education, safer use techniques, testing, and reporting. I am fortunate to live in a state where we have street level access to drug checking through grant funded FTIR devices with harm reduction staff trained on how to use them. These services are backed up by a lab that drug samples can be then forwarded to for confirmation on the test.
In essence, you bring in some suspected heroin, the FTIR device is used to compare to a library of prior scans of diacetylmorphine as well as known contaminants or cuts. When your sample is compared, it is assigned a level of certainty as to how likely your sample is to be the thing you expect it to be. It is then sent into a lab where more advanced chemical confirmation is performed to confirm the results of the on-site FTIR scan. Given the prevalence of Fentanyl/fentalogues, xylazine, and even newer chemical cutting agents that are well documented both on here and in the news, these services have been a game changer in helping to provide drug users with near on-demand drug checking that is far far more accurate than a reagent test could ever have alleged to be.
All that being said - I have a patient I see in therapy who has opened up about his use of peptides, GLP-1 inhibitors, testosterone, and even more novel GLP-3 inhibitors (retatrutide) As I understand it, the newer drug combines 3 separate mechanisms of action in one compound. As this has yet to pass any FDA evaluation and remains very much in the domain of research and evaluation, access via legitimate channels does not exist outside of clinical trials. As we live in a global village where Chinese chemists who previously manufactured fentanyl have now pivoted to the rising peptide market in the US (axios link), experimental peptides and lifestyle drugs have become increasingly available to the american consumer via the internet. My patient has informed me that he has received a few orders of a GLP-1 and of purported retatrutide. As this is new, he is cautious about mixing it into bac-water and firing it into his body without some form of confirmation.
I immediately thought - why not go to the drug checking service in his city, they have FTIR and are backed by the lab confirmatory service! I educated him on what they actually offer and sent him information on how to engage in their services. After a week or so, he e-mailed me with a forwarded copy of an e-mail from the main lab which indicated that they do not have the capacity to perform confirmatory testing on peptides, but that he may be able to get some information by bringing in for FTIR testing anyway (and referred him to the street level drug checking service I had mentioned).
So the lab seems to lack the ability to perform confirmatory testing on his compounds (my guess is they simply do not have access to the necessary libraries to perform confirmation via GC/MS). As a consumer - how does one get confirmation that their Chinese synthed retatrutide is in fact legitimate and not some inert counterfeit, toxic knockoff, or contaminated sample?
The supplements industry has already been cited for putting consumers in jeopardy in as recently as the W. Bush presidency - dietary supplement including multivitamins have been found to be contaminated with steroids, amphetamines, and sympathomimetics:
What risk reduction services are out there that I can refer my patient to, or is there a need for such services during the time where grey market compounds have shifted from being part of the offerings of psychedelics, dissociative, sedative and stimulants vendors, and into the growing market of lifestyle supplements that appeal to a wider and potentially more vulnerable segment of the population?
First time poster in this forum as this is a realm of the pharmacopeia I am admittedly less savvy about. My overlaps with drugs related to improved performance physically has only really come from the research around nootropics that shared some characteristics that might be appealing to athletic enhancement in some way. My experience with things like peptides falls into the same venn diagram.
My background as a community member here and as a working professional is in recreational drug use and risk reduction approaches to mitigating the risk of harm as much as possible, through education, safer use techniques, testing, and reporting. I am fortunate to live in a state where we have street level access to drug checking through grant funded FTIR devices with harm reduction staff trained on how to use them. These services are backed up by a lab that drug samples can be then forwarded to for confirmation on the test.
In essence, you bring in some suspected heroin, the FTIR device is used to compare to a library of prior scans of diacetylmorphine as well as known contaminants or cuts. When your sample is compared, it is assigned a level of certainty as to how likely your sample is to be the thing you expect it to be. It is then sent into a lab where more advanced chemical confirmation is performed to confirm the results of the on-site FTIR scan. Given the prevalence of Fentanyl/fentalogues, xylazine, and even newer chemical cutting agents that are well documented both on here and in the news, these services have been a game changer in helping to provide drug users with near on-demand drug checking that is far far more accurate than a reagent test could ever have alleged to be.
All that being said - I have a patient I see in therapy who has opened up about his use of peptides, GLP-1 inhibitors, testosterone, and even more novel GLP-3 inhibitors (retatrutide) As I understand it, the newer drug combines 3 separate mechanisms of action in one compound. As this has yet to pass any FDA evaluation and remains very much in the domain of research and evaluation, access via legitimate channels does not exist outside of clinical trials. As we live in a global village where Chinese chemists who previously manufactured fentanyl have now pivoted to the rising peptide market in the US (axios link), experimental peptides and lifestyle drugs have become increasingly available to the american consumer via the internet. My patient has informed me that he has received a few orders of a GLP-1 and of purported retatrutide. As this is new, he is cautious about mixing it into bac-water and firing it into his body without some form of confirmation.
I immediately thought - why not go to the drug checking service in his city, they have FTIR and are backed by the lab confirmatory service! I educated him on what they actually offer and sent him information on how to engage in their services. After a week or so, he e-mailed me with a forwarded copy of an e-mail from the main lab which indicated that they do not have the capacity to perform confirmatory testing on peptides, but that he may be able to get some information by bringing in for FTIR testing anyway (and referred him to the street level drug checking service I had mentioned).
So the lab seems to lack the ability to perform confirmatory testing on his compounds (my guess is they simply do not have access to the necessary libraries to perform confirmation via GC/MS). As a consumer - how does one get confirmation that their Chinese synthed retatrutide is in fact legitimate and not some inert counterfeit, toxic knockoff, or contaminated sample?
The supplements industry has already been cited for putting consumers in jeopardy in as recently as the W. Bush presidency - dietary supplement including multivitamins have been found to be contaminated with steroids, amphetamines, and sympathomimetics:
What risk reduction services are out there that I can refer my patient to, or is there a need for such services during the time where grey market compounds have shifted from being part of the offerings of psychedelics, dissociative, sedative and stimulants vendors, and into the growing market of lifestyle supplements that appeal to a wider and potentially more vulnerable segment of the population?
