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The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

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Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#351

Post by xyzzyz »

krageon wrote: post #337
filoeleven wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. I looked at the data, and reported it accurately. You were asked for sources. Instead, you pointed to the article someone else linked, and asserted that it’s biased reporting so the data that they didn’t show backs up what you say. You still haven’t provided any sources for your ongoing assertions.

They don't provide solid sources because they don't exist. Their claims are untrue in the spirit in which they were posted: That the results of the policy were uniformly harmful.

Will you apologize to me for implying that I’m lying here about the ground data facts on drug use in Portugal, if I do provide the sources? Or are you just performatively asking me for sources, refusing to extend even a modicum of charity, just to disappear after I spend half an hour digging back up the government documents I remember seeing a few years ago, when I looked into this?

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#352

Post by hilbert42 »

mhh__ wrote: post #173
debacle wrote: post #78

I've looked into the logistics of "cooking" meth and it is a complex process that, were I not an expert, wouldn't create something I would be comfortable putting into my body. How is meth "industrially" produced? Is it Walter White-esque clandestine factories? Is it clever people in their garages? Is it done over the border?

LSD is probably even more naughty. As far as I'm aware it's not a trivial synthesis by any means, so exactly where the supply comes from is probably a fascinating story never to be fully told. Buddhist Walter White's around the world, perhaps.

"exactly where the supply comes from is probably a fascinating story never to be fully told."

Where it's made is one matter but I'd imagine its only significant precursor would be ergotamine tartrate (a la Hoffman), as ergotamine is a commonly available drug for migraine (although somewhat less so than some years back, as it's been largely superceded by sumatriptan).

The next alternative I'd imagine would be to get 'raw' ergot and process it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot although I'd guess that gathering and refining the fungus would be no mean feat for any backyard manufacturer.

It's hard to imagine there being any other major human-manufactured precursor due to the complexity of the molecule. Moreover, refined ergotamine for medical use is a mixture of various ergot alkaloids. Presumably, this would complicate the synthesis but I've never bothered to think about how it would or to what extent.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#353

Post by hilbert42 »

caymanjim wrote: post #290

So the meth is cheaper, more abundant, more physically dangerous, and more socially destructive than it was before they banned ephedrine. Can we get our good decongestants back now please?

You probably don't have to (unless you live in the US), as xylometazoline HCl works exceptionality well and is readily available OTC sans script: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylometazoline

P.S.: If you live in the US, then it's readily available from Canada.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#354

Post by __blockcipher__ »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #289
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is off the top of my head, so no citations, but d-methamphetamine is something like 30% more potent than d-amphetamine. The fact you're taking Adderall makes the comparison more complicated though because you're not taking d-amp. In general d-amp is 3-4x more cognitively powerful than l-amp. So we can consider l-amp to be about 25% the potency of d-amp, except IIRC the 75:25 d-amp:l-amp ratio of adderall synergi…

Thank you! I hadn't expected anyone would answer my comment, much less that anyone would provide a concrete reference point that was actually within my experience. I have used MDMA and experienced the high you're describing. For reference, I was high enough that I felt it certainly would not have been a good idea to try driving my car anywhere, but not so high that I felt taking my dog for a walk around the block wou…

> but I don't think it's anything I'd go for if i were only 10% as intense and came with all the twitchy/tweaker effects. The jaw clenching I got from MDMA was more than enough of that.

While we don't know the exact MoA of the jaw clenching, it's likely a form of excitoxicity, presumably a result of excess glutamate firing. This is why high-bioavailability magnesium, such as a chelated magnesium glycinate, helps a lot with the jaw clenching while rolling.

In other words, it's not the serotonin itself that causes the jaw clenching, AFAIK. The "10% of rolling" was me describing just the serotonin dimension of the mdma vs meth experience, not that it would be 10% of the rolly feeling with 100% of the clenching etc :P

> When I said "never," I meant "never." I didn't experience it the first time I took amphetamine, the second time, or this morning.

Very interesting! I definitely have experienced the euphoric high before, but only when starting prescription amphetamines. Yeah, it may have been that you started with a low enough dose, or just that your neurochemistry is pretty resistant to it.

The reason I mentioned the tolerance thing is because there's a common ADHD myth that if someone has ADHD that amps won't get them a euphoric high, and rather will just "calm them down". But in truth anyone can get the euphoria, and most of the "difference in how ADHD people respond to stims" is just an artifact of them having tolerance. It is of course true that ADHD medication can and often does make ADHD people feel more "calm" due to the greater cognitive control etc, but it's not necessarily true that they/we can't actually get "high" off it.

> Again, thank you for helping me understand a bit of the appeal of smoking meth, without actually smoking meth. :-)

Any time :P I've never smoked it myself but having taken it orally for years, as well as having vaporized DMT many a time, I think I have a pretty good imagination for what it would feel like :P

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#355

Post by __blockcipher__ »

hilbert42 wrote: post #344
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the confusing terminology. "Peripheral stimulation" means unwanted stimulation of the body itself, such as suppressed appetite, general jitteriness, and the like. Whereas the cerebral effects are the actual cognitive effects of improved attention/focus/alertness/scanning behavior, euphoria, and that kind of thing. In general when taking amphetamines for ADHD-type symptoms, you want to maximize the cerebral…

If some of the illicit processing has reached a level of sufficient sophistication to enable removal of the l-enantiomer then I wonder how they go about it. Anyone know? As this article shows, there's any number of ways of making MA but separating out it's racemic mixtures has always been considered hard for backyard-ers. If this is now commonplace then it does seem to represent a somewhat of a seismic shift in the i…

I don't know precisely but I remember it's something like bubbling d-tartaric acid through the racemic methamphetamine mixture to separate out the d-methamphetamine.

The overwhelming majority of US meth is cartel-sourced. They have massive superlabs and then transport kilos upon kilos across the border. That's how they have the sophistication to synthesize their own p2p, separate out the enantiomer, etc.

It's the inevitable result of the war on drugs. You make it near impossible to be a small time cook - due to the difficulty in acquiring precursors, acquiring space to work in where you won't get asked questions, etc - and soon the whole market is ran by mega cartels that operate as de-facto states.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#356

Post by __blockcipher__ »

stainforth wrote: post #240
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #10

Oh wow. I saw the title and was ready to explain how the cartels had perfected p2p synths such that they yield almost exclusively pure d-methamphetamine, but before explaining that I was going to need to explain the general concept of chirality and enantiomers, and the fact that for amphetamines (especially meth) the d-entantiomer is always the "one you want" and the l-entantiomer is always the less desirable, less p…

Is down regulation a form of protection? Or what is the driver behind the down regulation mechanism?

The short answer is "yes". The long answer is "that's a philosophical question".

Downregulation is a natural homeostatic mechanism that happens with almost everything. Any time a certain receptor gets stimulated above baseline, over the long-term it's going to get downregulated. The actual neurobiology of how this works is enormously complicated and beyond my (and probably almost anyone's) understanding. I do recall that NMDA receptors have a critical role to play, given that NMDA receptor antagonists can attenuate some (presumably not all) of the down or up regulation

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#357

Post by stcredzero »

MikeBVaughn wrote: post #123
stcredzero wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's cheaper than a tent? 1/2 or 1/3rd of a tent. That's enough if shelter is the only issue. If there is a need for the poorest to have solitude, there's going to be a proliferation in the number of tents.

Anecdata: I'm not on meth and I strongly prefer an entire tent to a partial tent.

But, are you so poor, that it would constitute a significant expense?

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#358

Post by chucksta »

xyzzyz wrote: post #260
chucksta wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meth was legal until the 70s, society functioned. The current problem is another side effect of the war on drugs https://www.history.com/topics/crime/history-of-meth

This is very much false, and completely contrary to the actual history. War on drugs only happened because of greatly increased social dysfunction due to drugs, not the other way around. It enjoyed wide social support at the time it was started, precisely because people saw how damaging the drugs are to their communities. The idea that drug-related social dysfunction is an effect of war on drugs is yet another of tho…

How do you explain this quote then, surely the war would cause a decrease no? Odd usage spiked decades _after_ they banned it

>Use of crystal meth in the United States exploded in the early 1990s. Between 1994 and 2004, methamphetamine use rose from just under two percent of the U.S. adult population to approximately five percent.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#359

Post by chucksta »

xyzzyz wrote: post #283
cleansingfire wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The war on drugs was an acknowledged political act to disenfranchise black people and the anti (Vietnam) war movement. Lopez, German (March 22, 2016). "Nixon official: real reason for the drug war was to criminalize black people and hippies". Vox. Archived from the original on May 30, 2017. Retrieved June 13, 2017.

Which is why when the War on Drugs started, the Congressional Black Caucus met with Nixon to urge him to stop it. …no, they didnt, in fact they urged him to do the opposite: to ramp it up as fast as possible, precisely to stop the damage the drugs were causing to black communities. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/16/212620886... The linked material came out on NPR in 2013, before it was decided that t…

Did you finish reading it? >The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a longtime pastor in New York, once was addicted to heroin and served time. He's convinced that black leaders who embraced the drug war did serious harm to the community, but says a lot of African-Americans were desperate for ways to make their neighborhoods safe again. "If you're the victim, then you don't want to hear anything about treatment, just, 'Get this guy off the street.' "

Makes sense to me

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#360

Post by xyzzyz »

chucksta wrote: post #359
xyzzyz wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why when the War on Drugs started, the Congressional Black Caucus met with Nixon to urge him to stop it. …no, they didnt, in fact they urged him to do the opposite: to ramp it up as fast as possible, precisely to stop the damage the drugs were causing to black communities. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/16/212620886... The linked material came out on NPR in 2013, before it was decided that t…

Did you finish reading it? >The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a longtime pastor in New York, once was addicted to heroin and served time. He's convinced that black leaders who embraced the drug war did serious harm to the community, but says a lot of African-Americans were desperate for ways to make their neighborhoods safe again. "If you're the victim, then you don't want to hear anything about treatment, just, 'Get this g…

Yes, I did. The quote you gave supports what I said: that the black leaders pushed for War on Drugs, precisely to counteract the destructive effects of drugs on their communities. Rev. Herbert Daughtry might believe today that they were wrong to do so, and he might well be correct. This is not what I’m arguing against. I’m arguing against a blatant falsehood, that War on Drugs was purely a mean to disenfranchise black Americans, and that social decay related to drug use was an effect, not a cause of the War on Drugs. These claims are very much false, and this is obvious to anyone who lived through these times, or who spends even minimal amount of effort to look at primary sources.
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