13 ms·

Around a week ago, I came across this link here on HN that suggested that there's a new form of meth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28938888 https://new

• seattle_spring 5y ago
  Really interesting read. Thank you for sharing. For some reason this sort of information about street drugs and science/culture surround it fascinates me.
  • rolph 5y ago
    you might enjoy this then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%27s_Pharmacopeia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%27s_Pharmacopeia
    • realce 5y ago
      Xylene episode shook me to my core
      • philg_jr 5y ago
        You must mean the Xenon episode.
        • realce 5y ago
          si
• 55555 5y ago
  Extremely good analysis. I was also skeptical of the original podcast.
• edgyquant 5y ago
  I saw a similar post that claimed the new meth caused psychosis and hallucinations, etc. I don’t know much about meth itself but I do know about Adderall. When you take the normal dose (10-30mg) it can cause some euphoria but for the most part it helps you focus, gives energy (makes you more happy, talkative.) But when it is abused (60+mg) it can cause serious psychosis with all kinds of mental side effects. I image than the new meth is just extremely strong and so for people who are used to doing (or seeing others do) a weaker type it would seem to be a completely different drug. At least this is my theory, since as you said there isn’t any evidence there is a new type of meth, just a stronger type.
  • __blockcipher__ 5y ago
    Yeah it's all very straightforward when you look at usage patterns. Often meth abusers will smoke multiple points across a day (a point = 100mg). As a result they stay awake for days straight, don't eat, and often will engage in enormously risky sexual behavior (this is the dirty secret of AIDS btw...it arose in the context of the "party and play" gay subculture where people would smoke meth or other drugs and have sex for hours and hours and hours straight with many, many different partners...but I digress) The infamous "meth mouth"? That's caused by not sleeping and by just overall letting one's life go to shit. Amphetamines do suppress saliva production, so they aren't great for teeth, but it's 95% the lack of sleep and other associated behavior patterns. I've taken pharmaceutical adderall (which is 75% d-amp and 25% l-amp btw), and pharmaceutical dextroamphetamine (100% d-amp), and illicit, presumably cartel-sourced, and presumably very pure d-methamphetamine. When taken orally, d-meth is, in my opinion, simply a superior ADHD drug (it is much more dopaminergic than amphetamine, yet causes less peripheral stimulation, so you get a much more favorable ratio of positive cognitive effects to negative peripheral effects). However, the moment someone starts taking (especially smoking, since the RoA of any drug makes a massive difference in addiction, doubly so for meth) hundreds of milligrams, it becomes a completely different drug. It becomes super deleterious to health through the sleep deprivation and risky behaviors alone. Furthermore meth has a unique property that amphetamine apparently doesn't, which is that it can become directly neurotoxic in large doses (meth has some serotonin release, like a much, much weaker form of MDMA, whereas amphetamine has virtually none, so it's possible that that's the mechanism). This is why in the research literature there's a lot about methamphetamine "neurotoxicity", but the papers conveniently omit that if taking oral doses comparable to what's given for ADHD, it's not neurotoxic whatsoever (and frankly may be neuroprotective, especially against traumatic brain injury). So yeah, your analogy to Adderall is spot on. I've often seen people derisively refer to Adderall or other amphetamines by saying "we're basically giving kids meth!". Which is true in a sense, except it's really the other way around: meth is really not very different from Adderall. If someone were to smoke 100mg+ of amphetamine, their body would break down the same way it does in a meth user, except possibly for the direct neurotoxicity effect I mentioned.
• rkk3 5y ago
  > There are claims that this new form of meth is chemically different in some what that started creating schizophrenia around 2017. You are off by 8+ years ... P2P made meth became mainstream after 2008 because that is when Ephedrine was banned in Mexico [1]. [1.]https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs31/31379/meth.htm#:~:text=In%202007%20the%20GOM%20announced,chemicals%20in%20Mexico%20by%202009 https://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs31/31379/meth.htm#:....
  • loeg 5y ago
    OP is debunking the same claim you are.
• Enginerrrd 5y ago
  It's even more silly a claim because P2P based syntheses have been in common use for many decades. They were especially popular amongst the Hells Angels' chemists. I'm not sure what their final reductive amination step was, but I'd guess Al-Hg amalgam & methylamine.
• curryst 5y ago
  The author does bring up l-meth. I'm taking them at their word that l-meth is an isomer of d-meth and is created in P2P synthesis, but that seems at least plausible. It doesn't seem to be common in the legal markets, and especially not at the kind of doses addicts would be exposed to. From Wikipedia on Levomethamphetamine: > In larger doses (more than 20 mg/day), it loses its specificity for MAO-B and also inhibits MAO-A, which increases serotonin and norepinephrine levels in the brain. So there is a difference in response at higher doses. I would expect that addicts could be exposed to much more than 20mg/day, which begs the question of whether we even know what several hundred milligrams a day could do. That's without getting into method of consumption. I'm not a chemist, but would we expect both isomers to break down under heat the same way? Or is the l-meth potentially being converted to something different than d-meth when smoked? If the issue is the quantity, I would have expected schizophrenia to be constantly present. There's a fixed upper limit on how much people can do in a day, and overdoses have always existed, so there have always been people teetering on the edge. The amount heavy users use hasn't changed, there's just more heavy users and more users in general. There doesn't seem to be debate that P2P processes create l-meth and d-meth, and that l-meth was less common in earlier versions. I also don't think there's a debate that l-meth and d-meth have different effects. They're both used in prescription drugs, and those drugs are not interchangeable. You can't treat ADHD with l-meth, and you can't use d-meth in segiline. None of that is conclusive. It could still be the quantity, or even something we haven't though of like an interaction between meth and fentanyl (which started its rise around 2015). I just don't think the evidence is so weak that we can discard the potential that l-meth is involved.
  • __blockcipher__ 5y ago
    > I'm not a chemist, but would we expect both isomers to break down under heat the same way? Or is the l-meth potentially being converted to something different than d-meth when smoked? Methamphetamine is very, very stable. It stays as methamphetamine when it's vaporized, regardless of whether we're talking d-meth or l-meth. > There doesn't seem to be debate that P2P processes create l-meth and d-meth, and that l-meth was less common in earlier versions. Not quite. p2p done naively creates racemic meth, yes, but the modern methods, which have been used for years, purify that to enantiopure d-methamphetamine. They do this by bubbling d-tartaric acid through the racemic mixture, which separates the two enantiomers thus yielding the desired pure d-meth. Furthermore, historically racemic meth was much more common. AFAIK the infamous "shake and bake" technique creates racemic meth. I do know that there is a pseudofed route that yields d-meth, but I think it's different than shake and bake. So don't quote me on this paragraph, but at a minimum we know that in the last several years, almost all meth seized in the US is highly pure/potent d-methamphetamine. There is less l-meth than ever. > I just don't think the evidence is so weak that we can discard the potential that l-meth is involved. On the contrary, the evidence is so weak that we literally can discard that l-meth is involved. First of all l-meth is better studied than you say. I would bet to approve the l-methamphetamine-based vics vapo inhaler they had to at least do animal models with large amounts of pure l-meth. Second of all, and this is what blows the giant hole in your argument, there is no surge of l-meth. There is less l-meth than there has ever been in the history of methamphetamine. Thirdly - this ties into the second point - you seem to thikn that getting racemic methamphetamine is something particular to the p2p method. It's not. As a general rule, synthesis of any compound yields the racemic version (if we're talking a compound with two enantiomers). This is definitely true for meth, where almost every method yields racemic meth. AFAIK there's a pseudoephedrine route that yields straight d-meth, but like I mentioned above the current state of the art is just to do a big p2p synth route and then separate out the d enantiomer specifically.
• kayodelycaon 5y ago
  From what I've read of schizophrenia[1] it is highly inherited and unlikely that any drug would cause it. A sufficient amount of stress is known to trigger or quicken the emergence of schizophrenia in people already predisposed to it. When it comes to studying this, you have to separate out: * The high rates of drug abuse by people with mental illness. * The correlation drug use with other sources of stress. Drug use may not be the source, but a result of the source. (But I think we can all agree drugs probably aren't happening matters.) * Misdiagnosis of temporary drug-induced psychosis as a permanent, incurable mental health illness. * Race, sex, age, and location, since this all affect the normal rates of schizophrenia for each population group. OR: * Show a significant increases in rates that can't be explained by the above. (If this rate tripled, it's pretty clear something bad is happening.) Very few studies do this, because it is very difficult and there is little incentive to do high quality research. 1: I'm bipolar which is sometimes considered to be on the same spectrum
  • jac241 5y ago
    Maybe it doesn't cause permanent psychosis but people do become psychotic due to it and need to spend the night cooling off in the psych ED.
  • crate_barre 5y ago
    You are severely underestimating the power of these drugs. Anyways, most people do and usually find out the hard way.
• dcolkitt 5y ago
  Much of the effects of any intoxicant are culturally constructed. Alcohol is widely known for causing aggression, but this effect doesn’t seem to exist in cultures without that association. Nor does it exist in double-blind studies, yet the placebo group becomes more aggressive. You can start with two chemically identical intoxicants, and either by marketing or random path dependencies one gains a reputation in the subculture for making people go crazy. You can bet that large number of people are going to act wild on it. This is no different than the reputation different types of alcohol have garnered. Gin makes people mean. Whisky makes people emotional. Tequila makes people party like crazy. It’s all ethanol, but those cultural preconceptions become self-fulfilling prophecies. In many ways that makes these rumor filled, science light, unsubstantiated media stories about “this is the most dangerous drug ever” incredibly irresponsible. The stories themselves create the cultural preconditions around encouraging more self-destructive behavior among users. This isn’t even just drugs. Look at the moral panic over Four Loko. The same cocktail of ethanol and caffeine has been consumed as amaro and coffee by rich women since time immemorial. Yet it never caused moral panic until the “wrong type of people” started consuming it.
  • tyingq 5y ago
    I agree that the gin->mean, whisky->emotional, etc, is all bunk. But I'm still convinced there's a link between alcohol and violence. If nothing else, the lowered cognitive function and reduced inhibition would mean more opportunity to be angry, and less self control. Like, a drunk person might misinterpret someone accidentally bumping into them as aggression. And would be less likely to suppress the urge to respond in kind.
    • jdavis703 5y ago
      I’m just a sample of one, but I’m way more likely to flip my shit when sober — all my fights or verbal altercations I have in fact been sober. Granted, I’ve been diagnosed with various mental health disorders related to emotional regulation, so perhaps this is dependent on individual brain function.
      • 5y ago
• e9 5y ago
  It’s also possible that the impurities themselves were making it easier on the body(for whatever reason they could signal liver to produce more enzymes that were the ones to break down meth or clear it’s harmful metabolites etc)
• i_am_proteus 5y ago
  Thank you for doing the research and writeup.
• cleansingfire 5y ago
  P2P synthesis was the standard until it became hard to get (controlled) and that's when ephedrine and pseudoephedrine reduction became popular, despite much higher precursor cost. The reduction pathway is also easier, but because it's so much easier, It's likely much dirtier, since so little care is needed to "succeed." Now that Sudafed and ephedrine Diet pills are controlled, and can't be bought retail by the 1,000 lot, the balance has tilted back to the original precursor.