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What is wrong with the MDMA available today?

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So just found an article that may further prove the R-isomer could be the culprit. As much as I still am unsure of all of that.. I like to play devils advocate :)

To go over quick. The R-isomer could fit as it has nearly no dopamine release, little to no mydriasis and would require a larger dosage.

This study... "R(?)-3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine has prosocial and therapeutic-like effects without signs of neurotoxicity in mice."

Shows that indeed R-MDMA is the "sedating and mongy" one of the two isomers. I wasn't sure on this until this study.

They tested a variety of doses of both isomers. What they found was the R isomer had actually LESS locomotor activity than Saline. This would imply it is sedating. RS-MDMA was almost double saline and S-MDMA almost triple.

Also it appears the bulk of the duration for S-MDMA was "general investigation" meaning they were stimulated and walking around curious. R-MDMA, the bulk duration was used "adjacent lying" aka cuddle puddle.

This could all be explained by isomers if we could get proof but beyond your few tests Glubra we don't have much. The few tests did show variation but also no discernible difference based on the anecdotes of said users. This shits confusing :/

Whatever the case just thought I'd share that. I was always under the impression R-MDMA was still stimulating just weaker and the reason for the "afterglow." I now see it's actually sedating compared to a sober neutral state.

Also this study shows that there is lasting changes to "fear conditioning" that R-MDMA possesses but S-MDMA does not. This is huge implications for PTSD and since R-MDMA is non-neurotoxic it's possible there would be a future medication with either heavy on the R isomer or just R-MDMA by itself.

It's this last statement that gets me wondering.. The MehDMA doesn't seem to possess this ability, and makes me question the isomer theory. In fact looking at the graphs it appears R-MDMA actually causes a long lasting positive effect on dopamine. This is that afterglow people speak of and seems to be solely from the R.

-GC
 
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Found another study from 2003 which analyzed 400 something samples of ecstasy for enatiometric ratios. These samples were taken from Taiwan in 2001. They found them to be generally racemic. A few samples contained DMMDA but not many.

This is interesting because it's the first study I've seen analyzing enatiometric excess even if it's old. It's also interesting because it further solidifies my theory that the Leuckart reaction was almost completely fizzled out by this point.

-GC
 
Some more R vs S: Characterization of 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) Enantiomers In Vitro and in the MPTP-Lesioned Primate: R-MDMA Reduces Severity of Dyskinesia, Whereas S-MDMA Extends Duration of ON-Time

Interesting but I do feel sorry for the monkeys
 
G_Chem said:
This could all be explained by isomers if we could get proof but beyond your few tests Glubra we don't have much. The few tests did show variation but also no discernible difference based on the anecdotes of said users. This shits confusing :/
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The enantiomer deviations were small enough in the samples, I've tested, to not make much difference in subjective effect of users.

So we seem to have three major working theories:
1) Non-racemicity
2) Positional isomers
3) Potent contaminants

No.1 is the easiest one to test, either by buying a polarimeter on eBay or improvising one out of polarizing glass/film like in these videos I have posted recently in Post# 14398931.

The argument against non-racemicity was always that the stereoselective synths were not economical nor easy. (salting by chiral tartaric acid being the exception to "not easy").
However, the advent of non-racemic t-BOC MDMA might render that argument, moot.
 
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ThreePointCircle said:
Is there any practical way for testing out contamination or isomer theories using purification techniques at home?
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Not easily, because the positional isomers are likely to have the same solubility as MDMA. The same goes for the enantiomers.

The No.3 theory of potent contaminants has a chance of being confirmed at home half-way, by doing the 1&2 washings with anhydrous solvents to REMOVE the MDMA (the opposite of what one would normally do) and sending the remaining residue for GC/MS or NMR or Raman analysis to a professional lab.
 
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As with everything it's all in who you know and who they know. I'd wager any given person is at all times just one person removed from a major source of most drugs. It's your part to do your due diligence and Network to see who and what you can get to squirm out of the bushes.

Networking is the secret to most things in life that are pleasurable.
 
The non-racemicity one seems so ambiguous to me. When I first started looking into all this, and read up on the characteristics of R and S isomer MDMA, my own personal conclusion, based off the subjective effects I felt from the MehDMA versus the MagicDMA, was that the crappy stuff was s-MDMA and the good stuff was racemic or leaning towards r MDMA. Obviously a vast oversimplification, but the descriptions I read were that s-MDMA is less lovey, more speedy, less psychedelic, and more potent by weight (which explain the incredibly difficult come up I had that never paid off) which is totally what I felt crappy stuff (and when I brought it to the testing tent the next day, my prediction was that it was cut with amphetamine or similar).

Obviously MDMA isn't all that psychedelic, but on that first night in combination with LSD, the MehDMA didn't really "bring out" the visuals the way the MagicDMA did on the last night. The MagicDMA straight doubled the visual effects of the LSD.

But then I came here, and not only had it seemed like that theory was thrown out early in the thread, but everyone thought the bad stuff was likely r-MDMA! Opposite of what I would have guessed.

My money is on contaminants or positional isomers. Both analyzed samples of crappy stuff had left over precursor, and thats really all the data we got.
 
I think this all happened when Safrole stopped being the precursor due to bans.
For one reason or another it changed it, whether that be less or more contaminants or something to do with the PMK.

The chemists wouldn't change it to one isomer over the other, wouldn't be worth the time nor money however if it was changed in the precursor for whatever reason before they received it they would likely never know that it wasn't racemic and they would cook up a batch as normal but it would be one isomer over the other ? Is that accurate or wouldn't happen for whatever reason.

Maybe the safrole synth created another chemical impurity or something when converting it to PMK etc.
 
NewTopic said:
The chemists wouldn't change it to one isomer over the other, wouldn't be worth the time nor money however if it was changed in the precursor for whatever reason before they received it they would likely never know that it wasn't racemic and they would cook up a batch as normal but it would be one isomer over the other ?
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Yes, the chemists would inadvertently synthesize non-racemic MDMA if they received a non racemic precursor such as t-BOC MDMA.

The same would be true if they received non-racemic PMK Glycidate and used a one-step method to synthesize MDMA out of it, without going through the naked PMK step. Such one-step method has not been documented but it was alleged to exist on multiple occasions.

The reason for this is that naked PMK is always racemic (it cannot be chiral), so going through it renders the end product racemic, too.
The classical synth with using Safrole as the primary precursor goes through the naked PMK step, so the end product is racemic.

NewTopic said:
Maybe the Safrole synth created another chemical impurity or something when converting it to PMK etc.
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That is possible when Safrole is converted to MDP2Pol before being converted to MDP2P (PMK) - a common technique.
MDP2Pol can decay to MDP1P upon oxidation in elevated temperatures and MDP1P reductively aminates to e.g. N,β-Me-MDPEA which is a positional isomer of MDMA and very hard to differentiate from the real McCoy.

Some chemists claim that MDP2P degrades to MDP1P when stored for a long time, resulting in the same skewed end product.
The same is claimed for the Glycidates, although it was never confirmed.

The takeaway from this is that with the old Safrole synths nobody was keeping the MDP2Pol or MDMP2P around for a long time before it was converted to MDMA.
The MDP2P (PMK) was used as soon as it was derived from Safrole.
 
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Back in the 90s the electronic music scene (and related to it, the MDMA scene) was a lot more underground and intimate, and while of course chemists were making money of MDMA, I would think that it was a lot more about "sharing the love" than whatever the dutch or others are mass producing now. So the question I think is in many ways related to greedy sellers stuffing the markets with cheapest stuff they can mass produce.
 
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Andon said:
So the question I think is in many ways related to greedy sellers stuffing the markets with cheapest stuff they can mass produce.
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Yes, and this will continue until we identify the culprit and make a cheap field-test to reliably detect it.
Only voting with your wallet will change sellers like that...
 
This whole debacle only serves to illustrate how prohibition causes health problems. Fuckin legalise it you cunts!!


Properly controlled and regulated, the government could churn out MagicDMA on an industrial scale with minimal side effects, no LTC and pure bliss. They know how to do it that's for sure...
 
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There is no doubt the introduction of chiral pmk glycidate, which is then supposedly made into PMK (and what exactly, what is the other molecule left alongside the PMK after hydrolysis?!). And does anyone think these manufacturers are purifying the PMK before making MDMA; I doubt it, especially when there is talk of one pot reactions to MDMA from glycidate.

Now earlier in the thread I posted a link to the Australian Crime and Intelligence Commission illicit drug report. Now the way these things go, they tend to lag behind whats actually happening currently, especially as this is for Australia which means further lag.

Anyway, this report discusses the type of REDUCTIVE AMINATION being employed to manufacture MDMA, something which might be just as important as the precursor used (especially if they are trying something novel).

Now in the previous years report the table was all about the massive shift from using borohydrides for this last step to using platinum metal catalysts instead, the former being the predominate method pre the safrole drought and the latter after things had to be done differently.

So now into the report for this year which is here:
https://www.acic.gov.au/sites/g/files/net3726/f/iddr_2016-17_050718.pdf

Now check out PAGE 30...for the most recent year they have data to report, which is only as at 2016, almost half of the seizures across the whole
Country used an UNCLASSIFIED reductive amination step; as in the steps being used from batch to batch are either variable (unlikely) or so novel and new, the data collection process at the various labs across the country did not make provision for these methods.

Does this not scream some new and previously unused reductive amination process/reagent becoming the method of choice, as it has the ability to somehow reduce your crappy chiral glycidate into actual MDMA; in who knows what isomeric ratio and who knows what else might be reduced to some type of primary amine from the other smaller side of the hydrolysis glycidate molecule.

2016 is when things started to get really shit. This massive shift in one year from recognised reductive amination processes being used across the board (across all of the seizures in this country) to then suddenly this critical process becoming something new that no forensic chemist has previously needed to classify or provide a category for, is irrefutable proof that things have changed and this change must surely be the cause of the mess we are all now slowly navigating our way through.

I also think that all mdma testing needs to report the mdma salt type as a matter of course and confirm whether the MG content in any particular pill is being reproted as the total salt or just the mdma on its own (which plenty of government laboratories do, believe me).
 
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I personally think that all the testing in the world will not return a conclusive answer to this problem. Chemistry is not an exact science. Clandestine chemists are mainly charlatans only interesting in making as much product as possible, as quickly as possible for as much profit as possible. Without the conditions of a pharmaceutical laboratory and carefully controlled procedures, the confounding variables are neigh on infinite. Even given ideal conditions, it still takes a craftsman to turn out a quality product. It's a bit like getting some cowboy builder to plaster your wall. Yeh, maybe he can mix a load of shit in a bucket and chuck it at your wall, but it'll still look like fuckin shit...
 
Biscuit said:
Does this not scream some new and previously unused reductive amination process/reagent becoming the method of choice, as it has the ability to somehow reduce your crappy chiral glycidate into actual MDMA; in who knows what isomeric ratio and who knows what else might be reduced to some type of primary amine from the other smaller side of the hydrolysis glycidate molecule.

2016 is when things started to get really shit. This massive shift in one year from recognised reductive amination processes being used across the board (across all of the seizures in this country) to then suddenly this critical process becoming something new that no forensic chemist has previously needed to classify or provide a category for, is irrefutable proof that things have changed and this change must surely be the cause of the mess we are all now slowly navigating our way through.

I also think that all mdma testing needs to report the mdma salt type as a matter of course and confirm whether the MG content in any particular pill is being reproted as the total salt or just the mdma on its own (which plenty of government laboratories do, believe me).
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Right on Biscuit! I was hoping you were still following the issue. :)

This paper is really relevant to the topic at hand, not sure if it's been mentioned previously:

"Methyl 3-[3',4'-(methylenedioxy)phenyl]-2-methyl glycidate: An Ecstasy Precursor Seized in Sydney, Australia"
Michael Collins Ph.D. Aaron Heagney B.Sc. Frank Cordaro Ph.D. David Odgers Gregory Tarrant Ph.D. Samantha Stewart B.Sc.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.669.819&rep=rep1&type=pdf

It discusses the cis and trans isomer of the glycidate ester of MDP2P. If these labs are getting the MDP2P glycidate in varying isomeric ratios from the suppliers (which is perfectly possible as they come across as seperate fractions when distilling) this would surely also have an effect on the yields and purity of the MDP2P and in turn the MDMA? Not to mention whatever creative ways they're utilising for possible one-pot reactions as mentioned.

A. <3
 
Hell ya Biscuit,

So last time you stopped in with the previous report we were talking about platinum hydrogenation as the possible new reduction. But with this new data and relooking at the old data, it was likely not as popular as we thought. It appears those numbers were skewed by a few large seizures for 2014 and 2016.

But back to this "unclassified" reduction, this is huge... This correlates with, I think Hilo, saying a vendor or chemist was claiming someone had discovered a new easy way to churn out product. We find this out and we will be one step closer to having our answer.

-GC
 
G_Chem said:
We find this out and we will be one step closer to having our answer.

-GC
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As I see it, our answer will not be singular, but multiple. This seems like an amazing lead and, there's been shitty stuff in different regions at different times that almost undoubtedly was produced differently. I think an important piece of this puzzle is remembering that we're likely dealing with multiple factors.
 
Beenhead said:
Hilo, Been a way a while but is it possible to ask them if they can do any 2d NMR analysis on those samples you looked at?

Like NOSY or similar?
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I asked them for info and they won't even reply to my emails:( really disappointing.
 
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