Pill Testing does it really work?

yO

heard a rumour that now days there are agents inside pills to give favourable test results. Ie there is something already put in pills to make it test purple to black quickly etc to indicate MDMA.


Anyone else heard this.
??


8(

Hmmm. Never heard about this before. I'd be interested if anyone knew anything about it?

Shal..

I've heard of it, but it's very rare to date. I've only ever eaten one pill that tested characteristically purple/black but turned out not to contain a threshold dose of MDxx-like chemicals. I've heard of one batch of lab results from some speedbombs which had some kind of saffrole product added to them to 'fool' a tester. I don't know how effectively the trick worked though compared to normal MDMA reaction.

I think it's good to remember that the actual test is only part (admittedly it's a big part) of your harm reduction strategy, which additionally includes all the reading you do on BL and pillreports. Word should travel fast about any bunk batches of purple/black testing pills, particularly here, so if you keep your eyes/ears open you might hear of such pills before you even test them.

BigTrancer

yeah, unfortunately I don't really use pill reports anymore, as I find the reports are in accuarate often over exagerated , the tests are often just made up , im under the strong impression that a lot of dealers use this site to promote their products. Certainly not in the interest of harm reduction or public safety.

I am in agreement with BT that the tester is only one part of the information that you should use to decide if a pill contains MDMA. I used to rely on the tester as gospel, these days I tend to evaluate all the information I receive on a pill, (be it a test, a pill report post, or someones experience) before formulating an opinion.

I think I said this once before in a post but I find the more you use pillreports and the testers, the more subtleties you tend to pick up on.

With the testers I tend to rely more on the speed of the reaction, rather than if it turns purple/black or just plain black. In addition if I get a reaction that smokes and bubbles, to me that is a sure sign of a larger proportion of MDMA.

One evaluation criteria that I still find reasonably reliable is price, Market forces are the same anywhere, the better the product the bigger the price.

Pillreport posts are a more interesting, if not more difficult information source but again I think the more you view the posts the more you tend to read between the lines. In comparing your experiences while partaking you soon tend to pick up on the odd comment or experience in a post that doesn't seem quite right.

But I am damned sometimes, if I can find any bloody similarities in comparing my experience and test, to someone elses experience and test of what appears to be an identical pill. Their reports however seem just as valid as mine, in the end we are all individuals.

to me that is a sure sign of a larger proportion of MDMA.

Click to expand...

Actually, it's only a sure sign that the tiny sample of powder you tested contains any MDMA at all. The speed of the reaction varies with the ambient temperature, the strength of the binders as well.

BigTrancer

BT is correct: an extremely well made/dense/hard pill will often take a longer time to react as the active ingredient is significantly bound up amongst the binder. A soft, crumbly pill will less binder and whose scrapings are often powdery can react much faster. No prizes however for guessing which pill actually has more mg content of MDMA.

As Johnboy has said many times it is the purple-black colour change of the reagent not the scraping that you look for.
A good example I have is once during chemistry lab i mixed up my pipettes and accidentally placed one DROP of a safrole like liquid in a 300ml bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid. In a matter of a few hours the ENTIRE bottle was dark purple, almost black.
Just one drop of this chemical with a methylenedioxy functional group was enough to make this massive colour change in 300ml of "reagent"!

Obviously if they are able to get their hands on these sort of chemicals and add them to K and speed bombs it is problematic. But in reality they will be in the overwhelming minority and with better testers like the Xtreme (no good for a meth pill with added safrole i know) and Bluelight on hand, i doubt you will get shafted by such a practice.

I wonder if someone who was able to get their hands on known MDMA precursors would be financially better off paying/blackmailing a chemist to synthesise MDMA for their pill press, instead of trying to 'fool' testers making saffrole spiked speedbombs.

BigTrancer

Aye it pays to remember that the information you get from a tester is a guide only and a part of your harm reduction strategy (ie don't mix pills, don't double dump ones you haven't had before etc etc)

Still, I would never swallow something unless its tested up correctly. More effort than its worth to be putting something in to make the substance test up the way it does.

TranceNation>

yeah, unfortunately I don't really use pill reports anymore, as I find the reports are in accuarate often over exagerated , the tests are often just made up , im under the strong impression that a lot of dealers use this site to promote their products. Certainly not in the interest of harm reduction or public safety.

Click to expand...

Remember that the reports on Pillreports are subject to peer review, it is not the fault of the site that people would post up dodgy reports. I certainly wouldn't base a lone report with no comments as being 100% correct. If someone posts up a poor report then it usually doesn't take long before they are shot down in flames by the flame zealots just itching to criticise someones report.

Interesting BT, didn't know that, there goes one of my assessment criteria

BigTrancer said:

I've heard of it, but it's very rare to date. I've only ever eaten one pill that tested characteristically purple/black but turned out not to contain a threshold dose of MDxx-like chemicals. I've heard of one batch of lab results from some speedbombs which had some kind of saffrole product added to them to 'fool' a tester. I don't know how effectively the trick worked though compared to normal MDMA reaction.

Click to expand...

BT, is it your personal opinion that the possible adding of agents to testers is a rare practice or do you have some facts to demonstrate that this is indeed a rare practice?

Also have you really only had one pill that tested characteristically purple/black but turned out not to contain a decent amount of MDXX? Shit BT.....either you've haven't done a pill in the last couple of years or you must have incredibly good connections all of the time.

I'll admit that over the years i've had good pills, bad pills and just ok pills from many varied sources and i can confirm that very low dose mdxx pills that test up as purple/black are very common in australia....especially in the last few years. Anecdotal evidence from people i know from different social groups and pilling experience in other states of australia is starting to show a similar pattern leading me to believe that pills like this are widespread.


Originally posted by TranceNation

heard a rumour that now days there are agents inside pills to give favourable test results. Is there something already put in pills to make it test purple/black quickly etc to indicate MDMA

Click to expand...

TranceNation there are many rumours/conspiracy theories about the contents of pills and we all have our own theories based on our own experiences and those of the people we meet. The truth is nobody apart from those directly involved in the manufacture of pills knows for sure.

My own theory is that although i dont think its entirely impossible that there are reagent-sensitive additives thrown in to make pills look good, it isnt really necessary to do when just the mere presence of a very small amount of mdxx (as as low as 4% in a pill) will turn the tester black anyway.

So when someone asks me if pill testing really works, i have to say that the only time your tester is showing you anything useful that you can rely on, is when its showing you a clear result. If you use it for that reason only....you can't go wrong.

Auntiedote; Although I generally disagree with you on several points, I'm not putting shit on you with the following comments. You do raise many valid arguments, although I feel on some issues you may not have the experience necessary to draw such generalisations. Sorry if that comes across as patronising, its not intended to be.

I am speaking from experience unless otherwise stated, and although I cannot speak for BT, I will say that I too have seen very few pills which give an uncharacteristic MDXX reaction with either fresh Marquis or Mandelin reagents. Over the past year I've found less than 5% of pills/powder I've seen tested have indicated things other than MDXX. On two occasions I have seen what I have believed to be an unusual reaction and advised the owners not to take the tablets. On one occasion this advice was heeded, on the other not so. User reported the pill to be a very weak dose of an MDMA like substance.

First of all, many things can fool the testers, but experience with the testers often reveals such a reaction to be "out of the ordinary".

As to whether there are things substituted/added, IMHO of course there are. As too how often, on what scale etc., depends on many variables, not least product availability at that time. Safrole is definitely a product that can fool the test (see this post for pictures) but the permanganate test (still in development) should detect safrole. Any pills which smell have safrole/isosafrole in them - intentional or not - as pure MDMA has next to no smell.


As for the effectiveness of testing reagents; no one is saying there are not serious limitations with the kits. But I believe that in a typical test if Simons is used with Marquis and Mandelin, and additives like safrole can be checked for, the procedure can be a good indication of what combination is likely to be there. It says nothing about small quantities of unusual additives or impurities, but in the hands of someone experienced, it is generally a good indication of likely compounds present.

Of course there's nothing to stop people adding poison to a pill, although any such move would not go unnoticed for very long IMO. In reality, even owning a GC/MS wouldn't guarantee someone would know every compound in a sample. If you don't have the appropriate "signature" the result is meaningless, as would be any result in the hands of someone who didn't know the art and workings of the technique. Of course we can turn to techniques such as 3DNMR, IR spec and x-ray crystallography to determine such things, but if you didn't understand the principles of operation...

What I'm saying is that while pill testers are limited in both their selectivity and limits of detection, in the hands of someone experienced, anomalies are noticed. One thing pill testers should be - up there with GC in a way- is that results should be repeatable between bottles of the same reagent. Many techniques such as HPLC can tend to produce variations between machines, requiring the need for standards calibration. When all this is considered, in the hands of the average informed user, simplicity and ease use makes the kits quite an advantage over the nearest alternative, at this stage anyway.

To paraphrase what Johnboy has said many times; sure kits have limitations, but at present they're all we have.

phase_dancer said:

I am speaking from experience unless otherwise stated, and although I cannot speak for BT, I will say that I too have seen very few pills which give an uncharacteristic MDXX reaction with either fresh Marquis or Mandelin reagents. Over the past year I've found less than 5% of pills/powder I've seen tested have indicated things other than MDXX.

Click to expand...

I agree! Your stats roughly match mine if you're talking about uncharacteristic reactions. However...you've totally missed the point of my post and TranceNation's. We're talking about the characteristic purple/black reaction on a tester designed for you to use at home. So, with respect, your discussion of professional lab-testing techniques and the adding of poisons to pills are not relevant to this thread.

In simple terms what i am saying is there seem to be (and again i stress this is anecdotal evidence) a lot of pills that with an ez-test, show a purple/black reaction, but when you eat it, it proves NOT to be mdxx or a dose so low, it is negligable.

This means.....

1) either the faintest hint of mdxx in a pill will give you a favourable purple/black reaction (i.e as low as 4% as can quite often be seen on some mdxx data sites).

2) dealers are adding shit to pills to give favourable reactions

3) loss of magic


Personally speaking, i am still having full blown E-experiences when i do get good pills which cancels out the loss of magic theory. So that leaves me with either theory 1 or 2.

As for Safrole being a factor (which i think is a possibility), I've had pills that stink of Safrole that contained mdxx....and i've had pills that also smelt of Safrole but did NOT contain any mdxx that i could subjectively detect. If safrole is really capable of fooling a tester in this way as you say, and is perhaps in a lot of pills whether they be mdxx or not......then what bloody good is a tester other than detecting the odd CLEAR reaction as i mentioned before?

I think many people are still under the impression that getting a purple/black reaction means you DEFINATELY have 'E'. It absolutely does not. I've been using a tester for 3 & 1/2 years now and its basically unusable for what it is marketed for (which is to 'indicate the presence of mdxx').

It may be all we've got at this stage but if it's showing users favourable results regardless of pill quality, it's still useless and unreliable.....EVEN IN THE HANDS OF EXPERIENCED users like myself.

Interesting BT, didn't know that, there goes one of my assessment criteria

Click to expand...

We've always warned people that the speed of the reaction is no measure of the strength of the pill...

BT, is it your personal opinion that the possible adding of agents to testers is a rare practice or do you have some facts to demonstrate that this is indeed a rare practice?

Click to expand...

The only evidence I can back this up with is that having spent the last 4 years reading labtest reports on pills with reagent test results attached, I conclude that in general pills which test purple/black contain some MDxx active ingredients. Occasionally pills do turn up which give a purple, or dark purple, or even purple to black reaction which contain only a tiny percentage of MDxx-like chemicals, but if this is compared with the number of pills reported on pillreports.com that DO test purple/black and contain a huge dose of MDMA, it's statistically insignificant.

Also have you really only had one pill that tested characteristically purple/black but turned out not to contain a decent amount of MDXX? Shit BT.....either you've haven't done a pill in the last couple of years or you must have incredibly good connections all of the time.

Click to expand...

Well, in part this could be due to a few well placed gifts to people... if you have a regular dealer buying them a tester might be the best $40 investment you ever made For the record the pill that I ate, tested purple black with a usual reaction, it was insanely hard pressed, when I bit it, it tasted faintly like MDMA, but had little to no effect. Due to some mild bodyload and shortness of breath, at the time I concluded that it must've been a small dose of MDEA, but there's nothing to back that up - since I didn't feel any real MDxx effects and it tested purple black, I conclude that it must've been a lower-than-threshold dose. With the exception of that one occasion, every pill I've tested purple black has floored me on a half - that's why I espouse their virtues so often, because they really do work.

1) either the faintest hint of mdxx in a pill will give you a favourable purple/black reaction (i.e as low as 4% as can quite often be seen on some mdxx data sites).

Click to expand...

That's possible - it's occasionally seen on lab testing sites.

2) dealers are adding shit to pills to give favourable reactions

Click to expand...

Highly unlikely, IMO that the average dealer could do much to a pill that would change the test result from a scraping taken from inside the pill. Adding adulterants to fool the tester would need to be done by the chemist IMO.

3) loss of magic

Click to expand...

Maybe not - what about set and setting... You can have an average peak from a great pill if you're tired, or in the wrong frame of mind. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with tolerance or loss of magic, though these contribute greatly.

I suppose if anything, there is one thing you can count on with pill testers. If it doesn't give a purple/black reaction, the pill contains NO MDMA. That fact alone should stop a VAST MAJORITY of shit pills entering your mouth. If you only ever eat purple/black testing pills at least you're giving yourself the best chance. If, on the other hand, you find yourself regularly getting purple/black testing pills that don't ring your bells, particularly if lots of other people are raving about them, then it's probably tolerance related. If you're getting purple/black testing pills that nobody's ever heard of, and they all suck, then maybe finding a new dealer who won't disappoint so consistently would be a good plan.

BigTrancer

Just a post to say thanks, you guys have been very helpful, it was more just a rumour more than anything else, seeing if it was possible, seeing what you guys had to say about the whole thing, if it was made apparent that there were agents inside pills to make favourable test results then it would be a warning to conduct more research before consuming/purchasing your pills. Thanks for the info you guys are great!

BigTrancer said:

If, you find yourself regularly getting purple/black testing pills that don't ring your bells, particularly if lots of other people are raving about them, then it's probably tolerance related. If you're getting purple/black testing pills that nobody's ever heard of, and they all suck, then maybe finding a new dealer who won't disappoint so consistently would be a good plan.BigTrancer

Click to expand...

maybe im being too subtle or you just didnt read my post properly.

I didnt say i was getting bad pills ALL the time Sometimes i get good pills, sometimes average and sometimes bad/weak. Not all from the same source either.

I didn't say i was getting pills no-one has ever heard of You just assumed that because you dont seem to have come across the problem im talking about. Maybe it's been a while since you did a pill, but the bad or low dose pills im talking about are versions of very well known brands over the recent past .....3's, hearts, safe sex, versache etc. As a mod of Aus DD, surely you've heard of there being bad versions of these pills? It's a reasonably common occurance throughout the various states. And more to the point if you haven't heard of it...where the fuck have you been mate?!

Im not the only one getting these crap versions of pills. Friends and aquaintances both in my state and interstate are also complaining about pills that test ok, but are shit when eaten. They also turn up on Pillreports and occassionally get a mention in Aus DD....and it's not always being said by some uninformed user who doesn't realise that they have a tolerance. So no, im not the only one complaing about pills that others are raving about. And just for the record, good versions of well known brands do come into my hands which is where i get my frame of reference from and allows me to make comparisons.

occasionally pills do turn up which give a dark purple or even purple/black reaction which contain only a tiny percentage of mdxx-like chemicals, but if this is compared with the number of pills reported on pillreports.com that DO test purple/black and contain a huge dose of MDMA, it's statistically insignificant

Click to expand...

Jeez BT, if you had your way you'd try to have everyone believing that every pill is chock-full of E goodness...its just not true!

Low-dose pills may only turn up in labtests occassionally but that doesnt mean they're not turning up in peoples hands more often. And lab tests dont reflect the contents of all the pills australia-wide.

And if you only go by whats on pillreports then maybe it is insignificant. But the truth is thousands of people do pills every weekend in australia, and only a few of those experiences end up on pillreports. IMO pills that end up on pillreports that actually contain a huge amount of MDMA are not that common. In all probability, most pills thesedays dont have a huge amount of mdxx let alone actual mdma.

Wasn't the average content of a pill in the last couple of years reported to be roughly 70mg? A 'huge' dose of mdma is more in the region of 140-150mg. (unfortunately i dont remember where i read those stats originally but i know that Deep also mentions them in his excellent FAQ-type post from a while back.) Amounts like that haven't been seen in pills, even in UK and Europe, since 1995. And they've apparently been steadily declining since. And you say you're getting 'floored' thesedays on half a pill?....that'd be approx 35mg...thats sounds like a bit of an exageration to me

Highly unlikely IMO that the average dealer could do much to a pill that would change the test result from a scraping from the inside of a pill. Adding adulterants to fool the tester would need to be done by the chemist IMO

Click to expand...

Yeah i agree. When i mentioned dealers though, i didnt mean the kind that you can see in Maccas car park on a Saturday night. Im talking about much higher up the chain than that, the kind that own/operate labs.

In all honesty though i dont think adulterants are added just to fool the tester. But i do think there's a reasonably widespread practice of greedy and desperate dealers adding adulterants like K, caffeine, ephedrine, speed, benzos etc to mdxx, simply to make pills go further. To think like a dealer does for a minute, why be satisfied with the profits of say 50,000 pills when you can throw in some other shit and end up with 3 times that many pills....all of which still turn a tester black cause they contain a little mdxx. The user also has to double drop to get off which means more money for them also.

This is all a bit of a big conspiracy theory you might say...but you cant say for sure that it's not happening. We desperately need a pill testing lab in Australia so that the public can get educated about what exactly is in their pills....cause i think some people might be pretty surprised.

As far as the validity on pillreports, try to suss out the user names, you will find that after a while you can tell who knows their shit as far as the regular posters go, and just ignore any reports by people that you aren't sure about.
There are a hell of lot of shit talkers on it, but they usually aren't hard too sort out from those who know a good pill when they pop it.