I came into this thread thinking it was about the custom of “making one’s mark” instead of signing your mame.
Never mind.
They’ll mail it here, yeah. Depending on who you order from, they might have US-legal stuff in addition to Analogue-Act-Prohibited research chemicals. Again, customs might sieze it, and there is a (vanishingly) slim chance of legal problems. There are about as many scam sites out there as legitimate vendors, though, so keep that in mind. Basically, if you found it through Google, it’s 99% likely to be a scam.
What did you smoke and how did you smoke it? If you’re smoking salvia leaves from a handpipe with a cigarette lighter, it’s almost impossible to break through. Get a waterpipe, a wind-resistant cigar lighter, and 10x concentration (or preferably higher) salvia extract. Inhale as deeply as you can and hold it for 20 second. Incidentally, 20 seconds is about how long it takes to come up on salvia, so have a friend handy to take the pipe from you before you drop it. Sitting on the floor or a couch is a good idea, too.
The compound you’re after is Salvinorin A. The leaves don’t have it in a really desirable concentration, and a regular bic lighter isn’t hot enough to vaporize it very effectively.
That said, there are some people that seem to be simply unaffected by salvia. One guy I talked to repeated the steps above with several doses’ worth to no avail, so your mileage may vary. Chances are, though, that if you do it in the manner I’ve just described, you’ll experience a very potent trip.
They’re not. Lysergic acid amide is a Schedule III Controlled Substance.
And that is not easy! A friend and I tried it as teenagers, but neither of us was able to choke down enough for it to have any effect.
I think you’re going to have to choose between your wariness of “the drug thing” and your curiosity here. With enough searching, you might be able to find something legal that has some effects similar to ecstasy, but they’ll be weaker, shorter-lived, not quite the same, and there’ll probably be a lot of work and unpleasantness involved in preparing and ingesting it. A drug experience is a very subjective thing, and you can’t really know what E is like without taking E.
The closest I’ve heard of is kava kava, a root which you can probably find in some processed form at your local GNC or other health food store. Some of the reported effects are similar to some of E’s effects, and apparently the active ingredient has a similar chemical structure too. However, like most stuff you’d find in the herbal section, there’s no real standardization of dose, so it’s hard to know how much to take - and it tastes godawful, so have fun figuring it out.
Disclaimer: Drugs is bad, don’t do 'em.
A lot of ecstacy is mostly legal (caffeine and DXM–a trip and a half in its own right) stuff anyway, which is why pill testing is always necessary; the purity is awful. IANARaver and haven’t had it myself, though, so MMV.
But I bet if you did a Google search you could find a number of things proclaiming to be legal ecstacy. MDMA is a unique animal because it’s both a stimulant and a hallucinogen, and even more unique because it’s an emotional hallucinogen more so than a visual/acoustic one. There are a lot of things that act like amphetamines, particularly caffeine in high doses, but its precise hallucinogenic effect is really hard to find in anything other than the genuine article (which itself is hard enough to find in so-called “X” pills). I have a specific totally-legal drug in mind which is both a stimulant and a hallucinogen, like ecstacy; it’s far more visual and stony than MDMA, but it’s probably as close as you can get to its emotional effects outside of ecstacy itself. (I for one, in my past experiences with this drug, have been blown away by the human capacity for love and altruism, often in situations where both were actually pretty much absent, like the founding of grocery stores. That’s pretty X-like.)
I’d love to discuss this in further detail with you, FormerMarineGuy, and have a wealth of information and experiences to share with you regarding both the OP’s topic and the relationship between ecstacy and your policy at the workplace; however, I’ve skirted the line on these topics here before and it’s best if you email me about it.
Absolutely not true for whippits, if by whippits you mean small canisters of nitrous oxide. That’s a well-documented legal substance that will give you a buzz and won’t kill you unless you’re really, really dumb about using it. Again, it’s best if I not go into the details here, but I’d be happy to refute your claim by email if you desire.
Oh, man. If there’s ever a drug not to be taken lightly, salvia is it and a half (actually, datura is it and four halves…). Nothing like ecstacy, BTW, or for that matter anything else.
I’ll also second WhyNot’s suggestion that you not mess with nutmeg or datura lightly, datura in particular. Nutmeg isn’t as strong as salvia or datura AFAIK (though I’ve never taken nutmeg or datura) but it can be very intensely unpleasant for a very long time. One of those drugs I have absolutely no curiosity about, no thanks.
FWIW, I’ve tried to prepare kava kava and not really had anything to show for it except I was a little bit relaxed or something.
I didn’t get anything like what I’ve read about either, except a numb tongue for about a minute.
Back in college, I experimented with a number of things. I also have experience in dealing with people who have overdosed on Ecstasy in the emergency room. I don’t doubt that ecstasy is far safer than cocaine, nor that alcohol is legal and causes wider problems, yada yada. But MDMA can certainly cause some bad problems, particularly in people with previous health conditions, and it’s not just government websites that say so.
My experience is that psychonauts grossly overestimate the safety of some of the substances they take. The bad trips do end up in the emergency room, can be life threatening, and aren’t helped by the fact that the teenagers and frat boys tend to dump the patient in the ER and leave, or claim to have no knowledge of what the patient took. I have personally seen ecstasy cause seizures and dangerous heart arrhythmias, and have also seen a number of people crash their cars at high speed after indulging., causing other injuries. Most people who take ecstasy don’t run into these problems, but to imply it is perfectly safe is a little misleading.
It’s also worth mentioning the risk that your drugs are adulterated. Pills sold as MDMA are frequently adulterated with PMA or speed, if they contain any real ecstasy at all. Alas, we’ve decided it’s better to lock people up for trying to get high than to help them do it safely :(. I think I’ll pass on MDMA until that changes.
Search Google for “dancesafe” - they provide kits to test for the presence of MDMA, as well as laboratory testing for a fee. They note “Our lab program has revealed that the vast majority of pills containing MDMA do not contain other drugs”, although you can find plenty of counterexamples in their results database.
Good to know that most samples are clean, but they do say that the home kit can’t tell if there’s an adulterant present if there’s some actual MDMA there as well. Even if the odds are good, it’s still a gamble. Plus I like my clean rap sheet.
Check your e-mail. I used a hotmail account, so sometimes it goes to a spam mail folder. The title of this thread is the same subject line I used.
I am enjoying everyones perspective and input on this subject. From what I am getting so far, there are things out there that causes some of the feelings that X cause (without the same legal restraints, possibly), but nothing that gives the same exact feeling that X could possibly give someone.
SIDE QUESTION: Would it be allowed in GQ to ask what the best way to take X would be? I mean, types of music, lights, tastes of food, etc. These are all things I hear people mentioning and read about on certain websites. Or would this question belong somewhere else?
They tend to frown on any “how to” questions related to illegal activities here. Those certain web sites would be better places to ask. Also, if you were in a situation where you were going to take ecstasy, you’d probably be with someone (or several people) who had done it before (or were doing it with you) and could offer advice.
NO. NOt allowed.
The questions belong on another website.
samclem GQ moderator
I am glad I asked to ask instead of asking! Thanks SAMCLEM.
I would like to emphasize several points taken from Dr. Paprika’s excellent link:
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“A small subset of the population is missing the liver enzyme CYP2D6, which may be implicated in fatalities caused by the inability to metabolize MDMA” (using MDMA might then be considered a form of Russian Roulette)
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“Patients with HIV who are taking protease inhibitors and ingest MDMA have had near-fatal reactions secondary to alterations in the cytochrome P-450 systems, resulting in an inability to metabolize MDMA”. (in other words, taking one drug can interfere with the body’s ability to metabolize another).
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“Patients taking monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) have had near-fatal outcomes when ingesting MDMA. Sympathomimetic-MAOI interactions can cause excessive serotonin and norepinephrine release, resulting in hypertensive crises, intracranial hemorrhage, and severe hyperthermia” (and, although I don’t have a cite at hand, I’d be willing to bet that if you take MDMA and also use Ritalin or Adderal (for ADHD), you’d be at risk for the very same potentially lethal effects)
This is your brain; this is your brain on MDMA.
If you can find a cite, I’d be very interested. Considering the number of young people taking ADHD drugs and the popularity of E, it seems like reports of bad interactions between the two would be all over the place, but I’ve never heard of it.
Ritalin and Adderall are amphetamines, aren’t they? According to DanceSafe’s lab results, a lot of ecstasy pills also contain other amphetamines. Seems like if anything, they’d diminish or just alter the experience by competing with the MDMA.
About kava kava (one of my favorite plants, by the way) - you’d be hard pressed to take enough of it in a convienent form to get any hallucinogenic properties from it. “Natives” prepare fresh kava kava root, not dried (I’ve only ever found dried available in the US, and I’m an herbalist ordering from bulk supply companies regularly. If anyone knows where to get it fresh, do let me know!). They prepare it by splitting a large leaf down the center, placing the fresh kava root in the crack, rolling it up and beating the hell out of it with a rock. Then the leaf is grabbed on each end and twisted. The resulting mucilageous goo drips out and is collected. It’s then drunk, and they drink a lot of it - up to a cup at a time!
There has been no liver damage found in local populations drinking traditionally prepared kava kava. There have been very occasional reports of Westerners taking too many kava kava pills and damaging their livers. There has been at least one death, from a guy in Germany who took kava kava along with some other pharmaceuticals that are hard on the liver (and of course it was the kava that was blamed.)
Why is this? No one’s sure. It may be that, like the missing enzyme to digest MDMA, there’s a missing something in some Western folks, but everyone on the island has it. It may be that something in that leaf used in the traditional preparation “buffers” the liver effects of kava in some way. We’re not sure why they can take massive quantities of it every single day, but we might die from a handful of pills.
Aside from all that, kava’s not really like X at all. It’s more like alcohol, with the aforementioned numb tongue side effect. If you take enough, your legs will go numb, too. (In fact, I use kava extract in a sore throat spray for just that effect!) Other than that, it releases inhibitions, eases tension and anxiety and has a calming effect.
Wikipedia cites a study that says commercial kava extracts tend to be made from a different part of the plant:
Your point is very well taken - I agree that we “should” be seeing lots of such interactions given the high prevalence of Adderal and Ritalin use.
And, I can’t find a cite for my speculation despite doing a fair search on PubMed.
Still, based on pharmacologic considerations alone, I think it’s very likely that such an interaction will occur. Again, it’s Russian Roulette (IMPO).
BTW, although competitive in inhibition of amphetamine by another is possible, I’d worry about additive effects (on things like BP).
Eek! Yes, that could explain it, as well. I’ve only seen “kava kava root” on labels (and I make my own root extracts from dried and chopped or powdered root), but there are some shady supplement companies that will do some shady things, including adulterating their product with ingredients not on the label.
Exhibit 42 in my crusade for the use of traditional preparation of herbals until alternative preparations are studied and proven safe and effective.