UK Ketamine Shortage

[AcidTrippin]

Had been laying off the k lately but was talking to a friend who had been taking lately and he said (off one of the most reliable dealers) the stuff was damp, almost like it was cooked up/recooked then took off early. Also normally like to buy a few grams (no more than q really) and was planning to get some last week there, but ended up being single g rates the whole way up and the stuff isn't normally anything special that powdery stuff that was everywhere.

 

[Dapparob]

West Mids nothing

 

[Cepheus]

Gotta admit I'm enjoying this glorious drought. It's starting to seep back through the cracks though, or at least some bashed-to-fuck k like rc...

 

[hexagram]

ketamine is meant to be hard to synethesise isn't it? I thought it was too complicated to make in clandestine labs like MDMA, etc are.

 

[Swarm]

ketamine is meant to be hard to synethesise isn't it? I thought it was too complicated to make in clandestine labs like MDMA, etc are.

Yeah it's real hard. The erowid archives gave it a difficulty rating of 9/10. i can't remember off the top of my head too much but I know you have to make something called a grignard reagent which is a pain in the backside on its own. I study chemistry but I'm really more of a physics guy - since i studied my chem as a postal degree with the OU i had to go on these week long intense evaluations during the summer time when the uni's are closed to regular folk. I've synthesised some stuff on courses before and found it an interesting experience but for a "chemist" I'm about as far away from the stereotypical organic synthesis guy that you can get.

Back to the point though, I've read though the synthesis and it does look tough. A lot of drug production comes down to how readily accessible certain precursor drugs / molecules are. Take crystal meth and ephedrine. For stereochemical reason's (e.g S vs R) it turned out that pseudoephedrine is the superior precursor to crystal meth production than ephedrine is. This is why there are now too types of pseudofed. There's one you pick up of the shelf that contains phenylephrine and is a bunch of crap IMO (for clearing up a cold) and then there's the OTC pseudofed, which is just pure 60 mg pseudoehedrine (and a bunch of bulking agents). At the same time they took the real pseudofed and made it OTC only they also reduced the pack sizes from 24 -12. I think this was about 10 years ago when they did this in the U.K but could be more like 6 or 7.

Incidently a big problem with drug synthesis is not necessarily whether you successfully manage to knock up your chosen chemical or not, its all the other crap that build up along the way. We call these side reactions and for a reaction with 10 steps you could end up with 10 different compounds. So much of quality synthesis involved finding ways to weed out all the unintended crap along the way.

p.s Just had a look online and k synth is definitely a bitch!

 

[growit&smokeit]

That's interesting. Most of the ket I have had in the last few years has felt very close but not quite ket. I guess this could be all the residues made in the process. Can you do wash's and recryatalisations to clean it up?

 

[Swarm]

That's interesting. Most of the ket I have had in the last few years has felt very close but not quite ket. I guess this could be all the residues made in the process. Can you do wash's and recryatalisations to clean it up?

Once again this is not my area of expertise, but washes / clean work ups are more to do with cleaning up residual solvents and such. No, what you want to do to get the highest yields possible is to take advantage of little tricks along the way. For a chemical reaction to proceed you must hit a certain temperature, called the activation energy. However, what a lot of people don't realise is that temperature has a distribution to it. When we say a room is 25 degrees, what that means is that the average air particles have a kinetic energy corresponding to 25 degrees. There are however, a good proportion that have the kinetic energy of equivalent to 15 degrees and 35 degrees (in your room right now there are actually a miniscule number of molecules that have energies correspending to over 1000 degrees!) The point of this ramble is that chemistry is also statistical. Often, a single reaction step will yield 70 per cent of one chemical and 30 percent of another (this is actually the direct result of the way temperature actually works, as just described). A careful chemist will not blast the hell out of reagents just to save a bit of time hear and there, as this will result in you giving lots of other similar and statistically unlikely chemical products the chance to form. No, a carfeful chemist will practise damage limitation and bring the temperature up as slowly as possible, without ever tipping over say 70 degrees (if thats the activation energy for your desrired product).


Now, there are also other things one can do. A reaction that produces two products, only one of which you desire, may present you with a lucky situation in which one product is bigger and heavier than the other. Here, a centrifuge can be used to separate out the two products.


Thirdly, your problem may be that you're stuck with a reaction that only goes half way. You got 50 % reagent and 50% product. As the reaction proceeds, you can begin to remove the desired product that is forming from the reaction mixture as soon as the product is formed. This is known as Le Chatelier's principle and takes a bit of getting your head around. Agina its all statistical. Since the reactant and product seem to favour a 50 50 ratio, if you can filter off say 10 percent of the product, the reactant will know feel outnumbered and will seek to even the score by turning more of itself into the product molecule. There's some nifty tricks of the trade that chemists have come up with over the years.

 

[growit&smokeit]

Another good post.! I always regretted not taking chemistry further.Although I'm fairly sure I would have probably got busted trying to synth some obscure psychedelic if I had. So if ketamine is 9 out of 10 for difficulty is stuff like MDMA fairly easy? What about methoxetamine? I always wonder what sort of chemists in China or wherever are making all these rcs.

 

[Swarm]

Thanks. With mdma, a lot comes down to precursor molecules. if you can get hold of a nice supply of safrole / sasasfras oil then I believe its not too difficult from their on ( although I think you generally need to make use of high temperatures and pressures). I'd need to go look that one up as well.

Staying with precursors for a minute, it was a shortage in safrole that lead to all those dogy pills around a year ago. I forget their name right now but they were the ones that gave the prefix "para" a bad name.

Its interesting you talk about shying away from chemistry for fear of being busted. This is one of the reasons I only have loose knowledge of drug synthesis pathways at best. I don't wanna know cos I don't want that temptation.

 

[ferrett1979]

Had been laying off the k lately but was talking to a friend who had been taking lately and he said (off one of the most reliable dealers) the stuff was damp, almost like it was cooked up/recooked then took off early. Also normally like to buy a few grams (no more than q really) and was planning to get some last week there, but ended up being single g rates the whole way up and the stuff isn't normally anything special that powdery stuff that was everywhere.

Had this stuff a few weeks ago. Really clumpy when cooked up and impossible to get into a fine powder. Was sold as 'not very good' but still managed to get pretty twatted off it. The crystal just looked normal though.

 

[Swarm]

I've come across some god awful k in the past few months. The last stuff i had lasted about 45 mins and was probably some weird mixture of nek and K mex. This other stuff i got definitately had k in it, bu it also had a bloody awful sized dose of what could only be mdpv or something of that nature. you would do a line, feel the K for like 20 mins and then start shakng like a smack fiend on a moster rattle (i mean no disresefect with that term as am pretty close to one myself).

 

[Dom58]

Same I have come across some terrible stuff over the past 6 wees before this drought. Taking 1/2 big lines and not even feeling it. I have friends trying everywhere but nothing. Crazy times

 

[HouseFever]

Mate, got a litre of K, he just had massive complaints of everyone saying all it done was slightly dissociate em and cut their nose to shreds. He was also telling me there is fuck all about. He is having to travel distance to get anything. All other people I know are clean out.

 

[DS_]

I've heard of stuff arriving in Bristol tonight. I've heard it's supposed to be good but it's impossible to tell during these dark, dark times.

 

[Shambles]

if its original use or invention was as a horse tranquilzer...

Myth. It's not used for horses or other large animals as it "makes them go a bit funny". Related drugs are used for horses but not ketamine. Ketamine is used for small animals, small children and old people mainly. That and trauma victims (car crash - shin sticking out yer elbow kinda stuff) cos it not only greatly reduces pain (or perhaps simply reduces the concept of what pain is :D) but also keeps the patient quiet going a bit gaga at the holeyness of it all. Apparently. Medicinally, t's used at far, far higher dose than you'd ever use recreationally though. The idea is to overshoot the hole and go straight to complete KO stage to cut down on that pesky "emergence phenomena" (ie tripping).

 

[GodSpeedK]

Yeah, I'm hearing UK customs are being extremely strict and properly cracking down on shipments.

 

[Shambles]

^ Perhaps related to the news that it's apparently to be upgraded to a Class B drug soon? So they've got lotsa pics to show off their sterling work in defeating those naughty drug dealers to the media when it's announced. As with all "big pushes" in the pathetic WoD, they'll soon give up and move on to the next media hot potato. Hopefully.

If you get a dependency on it I presume it's psychological?... where would it rate addictive wise compared to good coke or crystal meth?..

Yeah, mainly a psychological addiction although it can be just as destructive and all-consuming as any other addiction. Crack is also "only" psychologically addictive but that doesn't mean it's somehow a "lesser" addiction. There is a minor physical element as it is, after all, an anaesthetic so the body does adapt to an anaesthetised state which can lead to some physical w/d symptoms. They are fairly minor though and it is predominantly the psychological aspect that's the real problem.

As to comparing it to coke or meth (again, both psychological dependencies) how long is a piece of string? Totally depends on the individual. It's pretty damn addictive though. Or at least it certainly has potential to be. I know I've lost more than one friend to ketamine addiction and all that goes with it.

 

[ScotchMist]

^ Perhaps related to the news that it's apparently to be upgraded to a Class B drug soon? So they've got lotsa pics to show off their sterling work in defeating those naughty drug dealers to the media when it's announced. As with all "big pushes" in the pathetic WoD, they'll soon give up and move on to the next media hot potato. Hopefully.



Yeah, mainly a psychological addiction although it can be just as destructive and all-consuming as any other addiction. Crack is also "only" psychologically addictive but that doesn't mean it's somehow a "lesser" addiction. There is a minor physical element as it is, after all, an anaesthetic so the body does adapt to an anaesthetised state which can lead to some physical w/d symptoms. They are fairly minor though and it is predominantly the psychological aspect that's the real problem.

As to comparing it to coke or meth (again, both psychological dependencies) how long is a piece of string? Totally depends on the individual. It's pretty damn addictive though. Or at least it certainly has potential to be. I know I've lost more than one friend to ketamine addiction and all that goes with it.

12.657mm. Precisely.

 

[HouseFever]

At first with K, I thought how can anyone even enjoy this stuff. Then that went to experiencing my first K holes naked in bed, orbiting the universe on a jet pack. I wanted a lot more of that, then it turned into a time when there is never not a good time to do K.

 

[Swarm]

In my experience crack and crystal are more addictive than K. Howver K addiction follows a different path. While crack and crystal hook you in from the word go, K tends to sneak up on you, a little like heroin.

As for the myth of K as a horse tranquilizer, this always made my knees buckle. Don't people use their brains at any point in their lives? In order to believe that you would have to think that horse's have big horse neurons, and that us with our normal sized neurons are taking some crazy kind of medincine. In fairness, its not the neuron that matters so much as the receptor, but the same rule applies. Sure the whole "horse tranquilizer" thing makes for a good tabloid headline but it pisses me off that are people uneducated enough to fucking buy into that shit in the first place.