What is wrong with the MDMA available today? - v2

[4DQSAR]

Don't waste time for calculations. I assure you that a chlorine cation is lighter than the succinate tail.

Yes, but it's the relative masses of the WHOLE molecule, not just the addition salt that one needs to consider when adjusting the dose and succinic acid is a dicarboxylic acid so one mole of succinic acid salts two moles of 6-APB i.e. it was in the form of 2:1 succinate.

Which is why I concluded that the two would be similar in terms of freebase.

The important bit is that it was too impure to form a neat microcrystalline hydrochloride salt and positional isomers were the issue. That is why we got so many queries and why we had to find out what had changed. The synthesis obviously went from benzofuran and I'm sure you can work out how they synthesized the benzaldehyde intermediate thus why positional isomers ended up being a significant proportion of the product.

Why the 2:1 salt? I can't say for sure but knowing it was made in China, I can only guess that cost was one factor and likely keeping down the mass and volume another as although legal at the time, it still had to be smuggled into the EU so the smaller the better. That said, I never had anything to do with that side of things. I was just asked to work out what was wrong with the new batches. I don't know but suspect it was people who discovered the succinate was incredibly painful to snort, but I've never touched 6-APB of any of the derivatives BECAUSE I saw the instrumental analyses and knew it was badly made.

 

[Pastel]

I see.
But snorting brown 6-APB? It was incredibly stinky. I am not sure if it were succinate or the solvents that gave it the heavy odor when it made its first rounds in 2011-12. The scent would penetrate double sealed foil packages. Plus, it was much better absorbed with food. I would have it with a dinner and go dancing. That's a striking difference between APBs and Methylone / MDMXs. You would actually get hungry on benzofurans. For some reason I also thought that succinate salt was not soluble, but I could be wrong. The only benzofuran which was interesting intranasally was 6-APDB from a german seller Fox Chemicals (They closed doors11 years ago, so I assume that it's ok to mention them). At 5mg, somewhat like MXE, it increased verbal fluency. The discourse became became automatic, intricately nuanced while staying completely coherent. I remember thinking that were it not for the increased pupil size, it would make an excellent pep for passing a professional interview.

 

[4DQSAR]

But snorting brown 6-APB? It was incredible stinky.

As I said, it can only be a guess as I didn't touch the stuff. But if people HAD been snorting the hydrochloride salt, I assume they would think the succinate would behave the same. I'm constantly amazed at end-users willing to play the 'mystery powder game'.

I don't know about the odour as I took one look and flushed the sample BUT noted that it did not dissolve in the toilet bowl which was the first clue. Then I just asked for a GC-MS/NMR set which meant I could work out that there were three compounds with the same MW but with peaks in the NMR where no peaks should be. You know how it's done.

I think halogenation products were also present. Not in quantities sufficient to use the NMR peaks but there was a clear GC-MS peak with a mass exactly 1 Cl heavier.

Packaging, no idea. I had absolutely nothing to do with any distribution. Purely QC.

 

[Esperighanto]

They Don't Want People Being Gay Is Why You Can't Get It Anymore.

If this were true there wouldn't be a speck of ice on the streets either hahaha, for real though it's fascinating how certain drugs can elucidate one's identity to themselves.

I thought that even theoretical synthesis discussions about the drugs of abuse (outside of "Design a molecule) were off-limits here. Are they allowed now that the RC scene is dead?

We still really try to avoid it, the RC scene is never quite dead because there are always people conjuring these esoteric substances into existence, whether you notice it or not.

If that were true, they'd outlaw American football (what with its exaggerated masculine shoulder pads, tight tights, giant gay dogpiles, and the fact that each play begins with the center linesman snapping a ball to his crotch where the quarterback has his hands against the center's taint to receive the payload…)

I thought you meant the band American Football (I love math rock) and I just thought "Yeah, unodelacosa's onto something here". I say this as somebody who really enjoys that band.

The right analogy is not a deterministic finite automaton. It is closer to a probabilistic state machine operating on an energy landscape

As a chemist with a background in computing, I've often pondered how close we can get chemical calculations to being not just reasonably tractable (as so many are genuinely garbage) but probabilistic. Molecular dynamics modeling is possible to implement, but as humans we simply lack understanding of physics to such a granular degree and that's such a difficult thing to convey to people, I'm glad you did it better than I could here.

 

[spypilot]

im not exactly a chronic MDMA user as I like to use it only for the special occasions
though when I started getting into drugs I had a plug who only sold Adderall, MDMA and weed so I was rolling every day for a few weeks
now I only use it at concerts and shit like that
I've never had the old MDMA so I cant really say if it is sub par now but the MDMA ive had wasn't the worst
I've had bad MDMA and I've had good MDMA and I've only experienced the bad a few times which was when I got it from people who weren't my main connection

 

[unodelacosa]

im not exactly a chronic MDMA user as I like to use it only for the special occasions

That's the best way, for sure. Burning out on MDMA misuse/over-use is the worst…

though when I started getting into drugs I had a plug who only sold Adderall, MDMA and weed

You expect more?

I've never had the old MDMA so I cant really say if it is sub par now but the MDMA ive had wasn't the worst
I've had bad MDMA and I've had good MDMA and I've only experienced the bad a few times which was when I got it from people who weren't my main connection

Yep, sounds like you have it all lined up right. Bravo. Back in the day (I'm talking mid-to-late 90s here), it was the same thing… initially it was all pressed tablets, and there were good pills that were mind-blowing, and there was fake-ass bunk shit on the market, too. Then circa 2001, came a big wave of MDMA / Molly ("Mandy" in the UK/EU) that was excellent, but as always, there were some scammers out there stepping on it and/or selling stims with similar-ish profiles to MDMA. Around 2008 there was an international crackdown on sassafras oil, and supplies ran short in late 2009.

The next year saw a rise in RC imposter MDMA, powder and pills, but mostly powder. This persisted until about 2013 - 2014 when the real deal MDMA began to appear again. This was the era of good "root beer"-colored and -scented MDMA that many 30-somethings remember so fondly now. The root beer smell and color was supposedly due to chemists who splashed a tiny bit of sassafras oil into their finished product as a way of assuring distributors that what they had was real MDMA made from the most common precursor/essential oil for MDx drugs.

There was following this a moon rock phase, and were nearing a phase where pharmaceutical-grade MDMA is setting the new bar. However, as always, there are still scammers out there willing to substitute imposter RCs and/or selling bunk pills… Without true regulation, conditions are set for a dangerous bootleg market. And this, among many reasons, is why it would be wiser and more humane if we legalized and controlled drugs rather than stick our heads in the sand and allow bad, overreactive legislation wreak havoc on communities and stoke the flames of racism and societal strife.

Btw, I like your username @spypilot and I dig the artwork for your profile. Spypilot would be a cool name for an electronic music artist or a psychedelic revival neo-rave-rock act… or a cool artist name, like that could be a sick tag for a graffiti artist…

 

[Esperighanto]

I had a plug who only sold Adderall, MDMA and weed

I've had plugs who only sell blue B707 bars and they're all broken perfectly in half hahaha, a plug with three whole things in stock that aren't complete garbage isn't bad, but also the concept of buying through a plug is something I haven't been up to in a very long time.

I've had bad MDMA and I've had good MDMA and I've only experienced the bad a few times which was when I got it from people who weren't my main connection

Did you reagent test these crystals? How did they vary according to the reagents?

Burning out on MDMA misuse/over-use is the worst…

Not gonna lie man, I've often tried to find where a line lies by crossing over it, and about 9 months ago I decided to see if I could even possibly experience an MDMA comedown or hangover. Hundreds of rolls didn't lead to one, but I was using pretty responsible amounts and the sort, so over 6 days I put down 2 grams of MDMA that tested clean and was of solid purity. Only crystal, I've never been a "mystery pressie" type of guy, that seems like a thing old people had to deal with back in the day but I've luckily never lived in that world. The result of that 6 day bender was just an insane lack of even slight signs of depression for 2.5-3 full months.

Any idea what causes people to vary in this way?

 

[spypilot]

Did you reagent test these crystals? How did they vary according to the reagents?

You expect more?

they weren't crystals they were pills, now that you mention it I think I have a few left, I'll test one of them

at the time I was expecting this guy to have everything
I was just getting into drugs so I didn't know much about how connections worked
I thought this man was gonna show me the inside of his coat and have everything imaginable

 

[unodelacosa]

they weren't crystals they were pills, now that you mention it I think I have a few left, I'll test one of them

at the time I was expecting this guy to have everything
I was just getting into drugs so I didn't know much about how connections worked
I thought this man was gonna show me the inside of his coat and have everything imaginable

Gotcha. There are services like that in NYC and Los Angeles, probably elsewhere, too, but it's more like a briefcase than a trenchcoat…

 

[Didgital]

Gotcha. There are services like that in NYC and Los Angeles, probably elsewhere, too, but it's more like a briefcase than a trenchcoat…

I literally did see a guy selling meth pipes out of a trenchcoat in chinatown on Oahu when I was a teenager lol.

 

[spypilot]

I literally did see a guy selling meth pipes out of a trenchcoat in chinatown on Oahu when I was a teenager lol.

sounds fun