The ephedrine (or pseudoephedrine) synthesis is a one step using phosphorus/iodine reduction directly to methamphetamine. It’s simple and clean in that only an acid base extraction is required, and only one set of NP solvents. All these others syntheses with multiple steps up the chances of weird toxic solvents or contaminants creeping in. I think it’s a contaminant issue that’s exacerbated by the drug use. The gover…
>The government should just regulate it, control purity and production and let people access small amounts for recreation/performance Famously, the US spent about 15-20 years attempting this with opioids. They were widely available to people via a pseudo-medical process, or via secondhand dealing. Opioids were/are manufactured by regulated, publicly traded companies with inspectors who controlled purity and productio…
The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
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Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your opioid comparison is wildly apples to oranges. They were marketed and sold to consumers as safe, much more effective, and dramatically less addictive than it actually was. An industrial addiction machine ignored regulatory safeguards, built a 'pay for play' rewards structure to incentivize prescriptions, and a zillion other cartoonishly evil things . There is a world of difference between something like that and…
>Those are exactly the people you want to have access to it Yes but that's different from 'every random person can buy some meth at 7-11 or the government store' though. I'm fine with a controlled program for registered, hardcore addicts- the 2% who do 50% of the drugs or what have you. >The problem was not in fact opioids. It was the profit structure behind the distribution network. Remove that and the bulk of the p…
It is disingenuous to claim that something doesn't work if it doesn't eliminate it completely. It is pretty well recognized that tight regulation of alcohol sales and marketing together with taxation helps reduce overall consumption. Alcohol consumption was also not eliminated during the prohibition in the US.
It's also important to recognize that making a drug legal is not the same as regulating it properly, and just making it legal can very well bring more harms than keeping it prohibited if no regulation of its sale and marketing is introduced.
Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
My view of a lot of the opioid crisis stuff aside from physical pain is psychological trauma - people self medicating as an alternative to doing the work. That’s why I think the psychoactive legislation that’s introduced recently about psychedelics is so important because those things can rapidly accelerate processing and healing psychological trauma. My view, is if this was done 20 - 30 years ago there wouldn’t be s…
Sorry what? What does ego death have to do with healing a back injury?
Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
#74The article was doing so well until the conclusion. > Does this rule out the idea of contaminants? No. Even if it’s 97% pure d-meth, there could be something very nasty lurking in that last 3%. But I don’t see the need for such an explanation. We know there are many more heavy users, so there’s no need to go beyond the idea that quantity has a quality all its own. It's fine if the author finds it an uninteresting pro…
Heavy disclaimer: I am neither a chemist nor a doctor, so this is speculation on my part.
Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry what? What does ego death have to do with healing a back injury?
Chronic Back pain is correlated with emotional trauma. The physical body is a mere projection of the energetic and spiritual being. This is wahy meditative spiritual practices such as yoga and taiji are good for chronic pain, as the physical pain is a mere projection of a deeper trauma that needs released.
Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A shattering drug addiction crisis that at its height killed more people annually than the entire Vietnam War. Except that you're wrong. The war-on-drugs kept drugs under control. It did not _eliminate_ them, but they also were not available on every street corner. Once we stopped the war-on-drugs, the abuse rates skyrocketed. Not just opiods, but also meth. You can see it on the graphs in this article, the general…
I personally consider the war on drugs to be a colossal failure and there tends to be widespread agreement that the War on Drugs was somewhat effective at enabling enforcement, but ineffective or counterproductive at eliminating drugs or reducing long-term harm. What America continues to ignore, intentionally or not, is the root cause of drug addiction which tends to be a more complicated and nuanced
Surrendering to the drugs was a mistake.
Yeah, we should have changed tactics. Zero-tolerance policies were terrible nonsense, long prison terms were not helpful, and we should have clamped on prescription pills way sooner.
> but ineffective or counterproductive at eliminating drugs
It was effective in _controlling_ their level. And alternative approaches are just not working.
Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
#77The insane thing for me is seeing how tightly meth purity correlated with the airing of Breaking Bad.
Pseudoephedrine restrictions drove the search for new chemistry and the new chemistry brought in the large scale labs.
Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry what? What does ego death have to do with healing a back injury?
Chronic Back pain is correlated with emotional trauma. The physical body is a mere projection of the energetic and spiritual being. This is wahy meditative spiritual practices such as yoga and taiji are good for chronic pain, as the physical pain is a mere projection of a deeper trauma that needs released.
Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
#79P2P stands for Peer-to-Peer. Now I can't say that I led a P2P network anymore.
Re: The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
#80The article was doing so well until the conclusion. > Does this rule out the idea of contaminants? No. Even if it’s 97% pure d-meth, there could be something very nasty lurking in that last 3%. But I don’t see the need for such an explanation. We know there are many more heavy users, so there’s no need to go beyond the idea that quantity has a quality all its own. It's fine if the author finds it an uninteresting pro…
The author points out a synthesis route that includes lead in a reducing agent, and I think that other routes also depend on reducing agents that contain mercury (aluminum amalgam). Heavy metal exposure is cumulative, so even small amounts over a long time could be significant. They also disrupt the same dopaminergic system that heavy doses of stimulants disrupt, so the effects could be hard to find if we only look a…