I agree with all of this minus the hostility and putdowns - although I totally understand and sympathise with the frustration and anger Le Junk must be experiencing from these types of comments.
Look, as unodelacosa says above, the answer to this is in the science. And believe me, popping back every now and again, it’s frustrating we haven’t been able to move this in the direction we need to - through no fault of the tireless work of the most significant and regular contributors to this and the earlier thread.
I have been a member of this incredible site for just over 22 years now, and I consider this thread and it’s previous incarnation the most important I’ve come across (the RIP member threads aside, which are in a different and altogether other category).
The real problem we are up against here is that until a government forensic laboratory or university laboratory equipped to identify every last contaminant in a batch of submitted MDMA together with the proportions of S and R isomer in each batch takes the time to investigate this issue, we aren’t going to move forward. This is essential if we are ever going to answer this question and regrettably the labs that us minions have access to via the voluntary submitting of supposed MDMA samples, simply are not able to provide these answers.
I pause at this point to invite everyone to read this article:
Isomers make a difference peoples! (my play on the title)
Near the beginning of this saga, I floated the idea that the new production methods might produce different isomer ratios, which if true, will, not may, but WILL, change the effect of the MDMA without changing the BASIC laboratory test result of any such sample. I was shot down for such a wild hypothesis, but unless someone can update me, I don’t believe we have had a scientific answer to this entirely plausible theory.
Let’s take a step back for a moment:
Pre-2010 - threads like this one didn’t exist because they didn’t need to; as provided you found a pill or powder that actually had any MDMA in it at all, then it’s effect was predictable, expected and consistent (dose and purity willing).
In or about 2010 - following the DEA’s and AFP’s “great sassafras oil (= safrole) containing plant eradication in Cambodia and beyond” of June 2008, the entire world’s supply of MDMA had seemingly dried up. For the next two years, certainly in Australia at least, all we had were piperazines, meth bombs, k bombs and sugar bombs.
Post 2012: then suddenly MDMA was back, and back in a big way; MDMA powder and crystal were everywhere and the mega dosed MDMA pills, three times as strong as pills on the market before 2010, were now commonplace.
That should have set off alarm bells there and then. But it didn’t. However, it certainly did when those 300mg dosed pills were consumed and found to be nothing like the 100mg dosed “life changing and life affirming” pills which populated the market five years and earlier before that.
So what changed.
Well an analysis of the government forensic laboratory reports of seized MDMA the world over since 2012, provides a stark and undeniable answer. The precursor was no longer safrole or isosafrole; the precursor or pre-precursor as it technically is, is now PMK-glycidate or similar.
However, just as important but forever overlooked (and putting the even earlier Leuckhart reaction to one side for the moment), was that the method of reductive amination, that is the conversion of the achiral MD-P2P or PMK to chiral MDMA through an achiral imine intermediate, changed completely as well; from predominately the reducing agent Sodium Borohydride to the vast majority of MDMA samples the world over, now being created through reductive amination via platinum or palladium catalytic hydrogenation.
These two changes, that is to the glycidate pre-precursor and to the catalytic hydrogenation reductive amination method, occurred at the EXACTLY THE SAME TIME.
And low and behold, at around EXACTLY THE SAME TIME as the ‘subjective effects change’ that Le Junk and so many other long term MDMA users have identified. This is a fact.
Whether you believe Le Junk or not, the above is a scientific fact. Personally, I believe and agree with Le Junk 100%; and I bet my chemistry degree, my law degree, my 15 years of involvement in law enforcement, my 22 years membership of this site, and my 24 years as a drug user, on it.
Believe me the answer is in the above fundamental change to the way this drug is largely and illicitly produced. In my opinion it is surely because this new method of manufacture either results in:
(i) the isomer ratio of the MDMA produced being changed - specifically the proportion of S isomer relative to the R isomer in the MDMA produced is substantially reduced; or
(ii) the creation of a potent impurity that was not produced by the earlier methods and which is not being purified out (i.e. removed) from the illicitly manufactured MDMA - an impurity that largely blocks the relevant neurotransmitter transporters (thus acting like how SSRIs and the like act for those who take such medications and then try to get a decent effect from MDMA); or
(iii) both.
People should also remember that the final step of the MDMA reaction converts an achiral planar molecule (MD-P2P) to the chiral MDMA, in supposedly racemic proportions. Well what if this change to a different method of reductive animation has skewed this ratio completely - surprise, surprise at the same time this meh-MDMA has first popped up? Where is the scientific proof the isomer issue isn’t the problem? It’s a massive problem for meth (albeit for different reasons), why isn’t it the answer here? I want to be proved wrong, someone tell me we have the answer for this already.
If we have and these post-2012 methods of manufacture still produce racemic MDMA, then the answer must be the presence of a dimer type impurity that blocks some of the most important aspects of the MDMA experience, including the long forgotten oxytocin effect (who knows what the neurochemical mechanism for this is).
The only way these matters will be resolved is via state of the art forensic laboratory analysis of the impurity and isomeric profiles of MDMA knowingly manufactured via the current main method of manufacture, as compared with the impurity and isomeric profiles of MDMA knowingly manufactured via the methods utilised in the years gone by.
One way or the other, therein we will find the answers that we all seek. And, personally I have no doubt, therein you will also find that Le Junk and all those who have supported him or her, will be vindicated.
Melbourne Australia late late 200s nom nom nom nom
