POD 124: The journey to MMDA, DMMDA, and a new synthesis of MDMA

I want to go to university and major in this podcast’s attachments.

Demo Stathis

Incredible

James

Incredible podcast

Ramon Nunez

holy cow, i'm dumb! Maybe there's hope for humanity yet. These young men are smart!

Andrew Carson

Hamilton this is remarkable content! I love the vespiary and am aware of these helional threads. These guys are legendary and to hear them speak I am so impressed! They are both clearly very, very brilliant. I wish them the best and am excited to (hopefully) continue to follow their work! They speak of both the chemistry and the experience of these compounds so beautifully. The MMDA trip sounds very interesting and I will read the full write up later, but I love how he describes the drug as "the final boss". I know how that feels (for me the final boss was PCP). Thank you three for this treasure. Next we need carl from vespiary to do interview! cheers.

Sherm

This is excellent.

v0lume

Big love

Ed Dragan

super easy to follow.

Dylan EscriVa

Thank you so much for doing the .rar file works splendidly.

Harley & Mee

Damn these two guys are intelligent! Very interesting episode.

Jordan Wilson

This is one of the best things to grace my ears

Eric

Heilige Scheiße

Bellacopoeia

These guys are awesome. Wishing them a long and fulfilling career in the chemical arts

Mason Earle

The description of the MMDA closed eye visual experience sounds very similar to what I have experienced following MDMA, ketamine, nitrous. It’s not something that happens every time, but I recall having very PowerPoint/screen-watching experiences (one memory being related to watching gameplay of a Cuphead type game). Super interesting!

Jai Whelan

God I've listened to this one multiple times wish i could yap to these gents 🙏

E Lee

Is The Vespiary down? Or has it moved from TheVespiary.org to a new url?

Aime

Absolutely amazing episode. Very inspiring what they are able to achieve at this age already. And I know people complain about slow uploads, but the wait is so so worth it if we get gems like this. Nowhere else can you get something like this.

FiveBinkie

Amazing episode, thanks!

Afromaster

I know there are some substantial advantages to the podcast format, but for these chemistry discussions having slides with structures and conditions would make the content much easier to follow. Especially with non-iupac natural product names like myristicin, where you need to guess how it's spelled to figure out the structure. Great discussion though, impressive that they could accomplish so much outside of a formal lab.

Charles

I've had good results dissolving in a minimal amount of 2-MeTHF, then crashing out the crystals with hexane. Evap as needed to crash out the crystals.

brandonslemaster

The best way I've found to grow gorgeous translucent white crystals of DMT is the following: 1. In a vial or jar with ptfe lined cap pour some pentane (like 10 to 20 ml per g) over your yellow DMT freebase. 2. With stirring pipette in just enough acetone to get everything dissolved 3. Leave the cap very slightly cracked open, allowing the solution to slowly evaporate over several days. Thusly is how you create the Machine Elves' Diamond Portal

Organic Synthetic

LOVE these kinds of conversations as a chemical engineering student

Michael Startek

Pseunut cocktail: https://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal157.shtml I think the combination is also found in one of Shulgin's pharmacology notebook, but not sure.

Hippo

Supposedly similar compounds can release vasopressin which is an anti diuretic. It's pretty consistent. A lot of drugs do this, not only phens

M

july 2017, and october 2029 are the ones talked about most in this pod if anyone missed that

Aidan

The doomscrolling with your eyes closed and the inability to urinate reminds me a lot of dissociative experiences I’ve had. Could there be some NMDA activity going on there?

BoyzNThaWoodz

“There were 9 people because we tried it in a parent teacher conference” lmfao

BoyzNThaWoodz

genuinely one of the coolest things i’ve ever listened to

balls mcballs

For the love of god, tell these guys to go on a PhD program in total synthesis!!! They are very curious and leans towards reasonings that are conducive of progress in multistep synthetic problems. The molecules they are synthesizing are not impressive at all, but it's how they manage to analyze, gather feedback, choose purifications methods that I find very encouraging for their young age. I'm very impressed by their personal investments into this, however I am also very much afraid that they could get caught/arrested anyday, ruining any opportunity for them to become great chemists. If what they say is true, that they are indeed in love with multi step organic syntheses, they will get addicted to total synthesis of natural products. Many compounds have never been made before, therefore investigating each reaction the way they did would be their daily routine (and get paid to do exactly that). Here are SOME total synthesis research groups in Europe : Burton (UK), Bach (GE), Carreira (CH), Dixon (UK), Furnster (GE), Gaich (CH), Gademann (CH), Heretsch (GE), Laurence (UK), Plietker (GE), Zhu (CH) So anyway, if you two guys read this, please consider the bigger picture for your future as you two have predispositions to do well in this field. Do not let cheap adrenaline rushes of reported, structurally boring, compounds comprise your future, but instead come play with the big boys.

Paul

amazing information, thank you

J

Likewise

Arylcycloscopy

Cool thanks for sharing!

M

S and H wow! Also does anyone know where I can read more about the su (sp?) nut cocktail? Never heard of it. Mentioned in Pihkal maybe ?

taylor gautreaux

I have been selecting random JCLICs and reading them but probably won’t get to them all. If someone has read all or a lot of them, can you highlight ones that are particularly interesting or ones you really enjoyed? The perspective and time capsule nature are both such a fascinating and unique look at drugs.

Ericaceous

this is absolutely incredible

grief

I went to work and told all the homies they were making mdma with prophyrin photocatalyst . I think it was mdma my bad if that's wrong. So damn cool though.

Kyle Langlois

There is now a .rar file at the end of the attachments with the collected JCLIC articles.

Hamilton Morris

Hey I can't pee easily on MDMA or 2cb so it's a phethelamine thing?

zealot

I have a love hate relationship with these types of interviews. I love to listen and hate that I don’t understand when they speak in chemistry. Well worth the wait! Thanks Hamilton!

Monica Mendez

Holy shit 🙏

Aidan

The speed at which they say MD2P is satisfying to hear every time

Gwylo

As starting chemistry at mid 20s hearing them so far im amazed with what i dindn’t know and how i get the inspiration to continue , thanks Hamilton !

Herbanoir

One of my chemistry interests as a perfumer is studying structure-activity-relationships of aroma molecules. Given the odor receptors share the same architecture as those that mediate many psychotropic substances (theyre GPCRs), it's actually an incredible way to quickly get an intuition of SAR by just sniffing and studying the 200+ bottles in front of me.. some very cool stuff to be found, and unexpected surprises. Theres definitley interesting implications for psychedelic SAR. I may do a writeup on it sometime.

Ivan Mounteer

No, they explicitly describe how they didn't take DMMDA.

Hamilton Morris

Thank you for this episode, Hamilton. An interesting thought came to my mind when they started to describe new smells that they were experiencing; and one of them mentioned, that he wanted to synthesise a compound because of it possible smell. All of the colors and all of the sounds are available to us - as all of them can be easily generated, but not smells. So it's really possible that there are so many smells that literally zero people experienced, and also there are probably hundreds (thousands?) of new smells can be available to us in the future. A whole new dimension of chemistry just opened for me, and all because of this episode!

Alex Omelchenko

Thanks captain

Finn O'Donoghue

Really enjoyed this!! I’m feeling inspired to have a go at all of this but the barrier I’m faced with is that my innate style of learning just refuses to take the syntax seriously because no matter how I try to force an understanding I just struggle to translate meaning from terminology which by its nature seems to just obscure a far more simple language that otherwise could have been communicated far less cryptic to my brain lol and more like a simple cooking recipe lol, super simple like here are the things your gonna need and here’s what you mix together, heating and cooling times and temps, etc.. maybe that’s kinda cheating but maybe it’s just when it comes down to it, ain’t nothing to it but to do it, and I would love to know just what to do, yeah this is stupid and long, I know lol, but I am honestly in need of a teacher who can translate all the lofty stuff back down to the fundamental mineral and metallurgic things.

Jeff

It's the people who can't tell the difference between actual documentary-level journalism and the mass-production of content-for-content's-sake (making up 90% of pocasts and YouTube) that may as well be white noise as it just gets played in the background.

CSN

Yeah I always download every attachment but that was QUITE the endeavor this time! Probably missed a couple and duplicated others despite my best efforts.

CSN

I figured it would be good when I saw it was almost 3 hrs. Fantastic. Thank you for letting those two go on about the evolution of their passion and the thought process for those synthesis in great detail. This kind of detail is so valuable. It is what makes o-chemical synthesis a difficult art. Details about solvent ratios, distillation column sizes, vacuum pressures and temperatures, added purification in the workup, TLC details, use of all sources of info - other chemists, patents, chemical literature, books, vespiary, hacked LE literature - lol . . . super valuable. Also enjoyed your detailed account of Speeter-Anthony and the issues with getting from the 4-OH indole-amine FB to a more stable salt. Now is the time to stock up on the aldehyde whose name shall not be mentioned. Hamilton, what is the nature of the Ariadne piece and timing on the piece?

david

I assume you are at least half joking, but just in case, there is nothing retarded about not knowing what an oxime or protoporphyrin IX is. Nobody is born knowing these things, it’s simply a question of who is curious enough to learn. I have faith many listeners could understand this podcast if they pause it periodically and look up unfamiliar terms.

Hamilton Morris

Money is great and all,but there is also something to be said about doing what you're passionate about an interested in. I can tell you I'm definitely not listening to podcasts about process automation for fun on the weekends. I also think if you try to do what you love and make money doing it, then it become a job at some point and loses some of the magic. It's a hard compromise. If you're and artist and then you try to make money selling your art, at some point most people really lose touch with the thing they loved so much about the art form and it starts to feel like a grind. I also make music and tried to make a living doing that when I was younger. At some point it stopped being a thing I loved and I started trying to make music that I thought would sell. I compromised the art to try to make it more commercially appealing and that made me start to hate it. This is why I think it's best to have a job that pays you well, and save the things you love for outside of work. Make enough money at your gig to give you the resources and time to pursue your passions outside of work. That's my philosophy at least.

Cheminterested

Right out of school with my bachelor in chemical engineering I started in process automation. So I have used very little of my chemical engineering knowledge. They just like chemE grads for automation because we understand process. I had an interest in building computers and some basic programming skills that I acquired in and out of school, so that also made me a good fit. I started in general process automation, predominantly Allen Bradley PLC ladder logic programming and HMI design for all sorts of industries. Oil and gas, speciality chemical, vitamins, but not pharma right away. I was making 60k right out of school but the company was great and really let new grads sink or swim, and you really cut your teeth and learned a lot from the senior guys. I also was 40yrs old because I went back to school after battling heroin addiction and they hired me with a non violent felony drug conviction. So I really owe that first place a lot. I wouldn't have a career if it wasn't for them. I stayed there for 2 years and then bounced aroudn a bit making pay jumps along the way, which is really the only way to get a decent salary these days. Gone are the days of company loyalty and pensions. I'm 8 years in now and I have a senior role at a pharma company. I made 170k last year including my bonus. My base salary this year is 140k and standard bonus for my role is 13% +/- depending on how the company does for the year. I have no plans to try to climb the ladder any longer. I don't want to manage people and don't plan to leave the company I am with now unless they let me go for some reason.

Cheminterested

Do these guys take everything they synthesize?

Jehovah's Taco

Mind if ask how much you make annually?

M

Right. Undergrad chem knowledge is just not enough to push the boundaries. A lot of extracurricular personal study is necessary!

M

I’m definitely intrigued.

Jenni

The one fella is Sawdust and Honey, yeah?

Oliver Foley

Very fascinating. I usually struggle to pay attention to stuff but I've been locked in on this interview. Thanks again Mr. Morris :D

Jacub White

there should be enough info in the episode to find the threads

Erik

Nice Pauly Walnuts

Cheminterested

Seriously. Of all the crap I spend my money on, I've never once thought giving Hamilton 10$ a month was a bad use of it. God, the amount of things I buy that costs more than 10$ a month that I get so much less out of than this guy's podcasts are innumerable.

Cheminterested

Fascinating. I think I saw a post about this on some of the FB mushroom groups https://www.greenstate.com/psychedelics/snowball-mushroom/

Cheminterested

Ah, I see someone else mentioned it. The Vespiary. Do we have their user names so we can look up their posts, or is that not a good idea?

Cheminterested

What is the forum or website they say their work is published on? Sorry, I can't quite make it out with the accent.

Cheminterested

Even as someone with a bachelor's in chemical engineering with 2 semesters of organic chemistry, 1 physical chemistry, 1 inorganic chemistry, I barely follow. Sometimes really wish I had stayed in school, but in reality, being independently wealthy with lots of time to self study is more important. I have a great career making medications that save people's lives, but this leaves no time for following one's passions.

Cheminterested

I experienced a closed eye cartoon movie playing on the backs of my eyelids once in 1999 after what I thought was an MDMA experience, now I’m not so sure. Thanks for another banger

Demo Stathis

I only understood a few of these words, but their passion and enthusiasm was amazing. Great episode! The kids are alright.

Erik

Yeah, I’ll try

Hamilton Morris

Eric i absolutely agree with you. Like the kids in this pod said you gotta be autisticly interested for it to be worth it lol

E Lee

Always something lol i agree though

E Lee

Yeah that’s a fair assessment. Either way pihkal, I have read a fair amount of it - I tend to dip in and out of the entries for the compound I am investigating but I probably need to be looking at multiple similar entries - I,e- when looking at 2c-e it would probably help to look at other alkyl substitutions. I did try looking into scihub but i think it wouldn’t load or something. I’ll have to get better at this… Anyway thanks for replying - you probably saved me some time. I may actually still make the n-methyl-TMA2 or something even n-methyl-TMA once I have separated normal TMA enantiomers, if I like what the bioassay provides. So yeah fair enough, I’ll do more reading! I am still looking forward to seeing what R-TMA and S-TMA are like on their own - more so with TMA 2.

rabidreject

Such a good episode. These MDMA anlogues are on my bucketlist.

Helmer

https://www.thevespiary.org/talk/index.php

Ericaceous

So where is "the vespiary" the guys keep referring to? Sorry if that's a noob question but I haven't been up to date with chem forums for a LONG time.

Michael Newman

bro can you please zip the attachments if it's that many next time?

Magic Plants

Isomerdesign is a good place to find publications and usenet information on a specific compound. It is not complete though. They also tried to index the Pharmacology Notebooks of Shulgin (found as PDF on Erowid), but it is also not complete, so reading them yourself may be helpful too to dig deeper into anything Shulgin. There are more pharmacology notebooks which are not uploaded to Erowid due to some misuse, so this is not the whole body of work by Shulgin. It also helps just reading tons of papers. These compounds have also regularly been published, check the publication section on isomerdesign. They have also been mentioned in PiHKAL. I think you just need to read more.

Hippo

Join the vespiary or one of the main chemistry subreddits. Then you'll have far more people to talk chemistry with :) and get quicker feedback

V R

absolutely incredible episode! spectacular

HashKetchum

The subconscious doomscrolling actually happened to me last night after ketamine therapy 😳

Chip Beckstead

As a 30 year old trying to teach myself all the chemistry I slept through in college, these guys make me feel so stupid lol

Rajiv

My biggest take away from this convo is that I’m retarded.

Jameson kerr

Needed this today!

M

Ah okay. Fair play. Where did you find those papers? I need to get better at finding the literature

rabidreject

Wonderful thank you!

ChannerT

I’ve asked about the Gate Dancer book at least a dozen times, the guy who had it died before sharing the full text with me, his widow seemed like she might let me see it at one point but then stopped responding to my messages

Hamilton Morris

Glad you're still creating - Pharmacopeia was formative, anything even spiritually succeeding it would be a dream. Unrelated - I still think about Ballard and the Chemical Gate Dancers Research Group. A lot. Any chance you ever found a copy of that Journal? I'd really love to hear any more about other obscure books you've encountered and collected.

Sean Fraley

Great conversation. Re: your discussion about DiPT at the end hearing his material was insoluble in basically everything, including DMSO, honestly I can't help but think it's just not the desired product or is very saturated with some undesired salts (granted you should be able to filter those out of DMSO through a .2 uM filter before NMR). I'm not sure what else it could be; I would expect even iPr2NH to react cleanly with that acyl chloride, or at least not react if base is needed. But I'm wondering if the deprotonation is needed to increase stereoselectivity at the carbonyl carbon. A less nucleophilic base might also react at the alpha/benzylic carbon and cause some promiscuity or something.

charlie hudzik

I completely agree, but I was starting to get worried that there was something wrong with Hamilton / the producers

Alex Deleeck

HEEE'SSS ALIIIVEE! Jokes aside, thank you for this phenomenal interview, truly appreciate the lengths you go to for bringing novel information to the public, which can be found nowhere else :) I have immediately downloaded & transcribed the podcast to ensure that this knowledge can be archived & preserved 📑

Alex Deleeck

N-Me-DOB and N-Me-DOM are known compounds. It reduces the activity. https://isomerdesign.com/pihkal/notebooks/transcripts/p2/p2.208.pdf https://isomerdesign.com/pihkal/notebooks/transcripts/p3/p3.341.pdf

Hippo

Do your own homework.

Enzyme

Does anyone know about the snowball 🍄‍🟫 strain? Discovered by Pope Joseph.

Jenni

Oh and I’m doing it all clandestinely (is that even a word?) 🤔

rabidreject

Hamilton I NEED to talk to you! I’m working on n-methyl psychedelic amphetamines and resolving enantiomers - and bioassaying them. I really have been looking hard for any info about any n-methyl phenethylamine’s with the alpha carbon. Because without the alpha it reduces activity but with amphetamines it increases lipipholicity. Please reply to the email I sent to your website!

rabidreject

I concur 100%! I also appreciate the fact that you always focus on releasing quality material. (As opposed to just pushing something out of the nest to beat an artificial deadline). Thanks SO much for maintaining quality.

tycho

Seriously all the people saying “what am I paying for if he doesn’t release something every month?” Like he released 5 podcasts in a week in December. Making podcasts is a side hustle for him. You subscribe because $60/year gets you the only quality drug journalism in the world and because you want to support someone doing incredible work. I’d pay $60/yr to get 1 release, honestly.

Ericaceous

Thank you for the great homework!!

Chip Beckstead

Hamilton just want to continue to let you know how much your hard work is appreciated. There is something so inspiring just about the way you relate to the world, I find it deeply inspiring and life affirming. Thank you so much for just being you!

Ericaceous

Look at that sweet PDF buffet Ham served up for us. Bon appetite!

Ericaceous

This was really interesting. On the subject of Empathogens, is there any chance you could talk to someone about Kanna Mesembrine and Mesembrenone. I've recently tried it and it's definitely got some Empathogenic effects similar to MDx compounds.

Chris DeLuague

There are ~50 PDFs

Hamilton Morris

Thank you Hamilton

Jake Hill

Wow this is really interesting and touches on some of the stuff I am doing at the moment Wow - I literally just made a stock solution of acetone and HCl. Hey Hamilton. I just emailed you, I’d love to talk to about my research on n-methylating these sorts of compounds as well as bioassaying both enantiomer’s of these incredibly rare psychedelic amphetamines This is probably THE most useful chemistry chat since that reductive amination 5-MEO-DMT GUY. KEEP IT UP!!

rabidreject

Parsley seed oil makes the best breath mints by far. It seems to neutralize bad breath emanating from your stomach. I first bought these in Japan and from 7-11 in Hong Kong.

michael james

Pseudonitrosite.

Hippo

no rush hamilton u always cook

Nathan Hodgetts

What is the functional group he is referring to? “Pseudonitrazide”?

Finn O'Donoghue

Take your time. We know you're working on good things, and your podcast episodes are always worth the wait. Looking forward to hearing more about Ariadne, since there's so little information out there about it.

Brian

So unbelievably stoked on this one, MMDA has always been one of my ultimate "holy grail" inspirations from nerding out in PiHKAL and erowid back in the day. There's something mysterious with those "mind movie" inducing entactogens...

Keenan Troll

Lmao that parent teacher conference reference. I feel like that's gonna be a recurring joke in the drug world from now on.

Armchair Idiot

Finally!

Hippo

Thor Correia

Holy.pdf! Thanks Hamilton, for all the work you do and the important information you share!

Austin Baker

I just wanted to say I'm looking forward to the Ariadne project you mentioned at the beginning, it's my favorite of the ten classic ladies. From the endless buffet of compounds Shulgin left behind, Ariadne is oddly one of the ones I'm most excited to try someday, despite the fact there are more "delicious" items on the menu.

Miningav

Finally some new amazing work from you but I feel like youre trolling the research ive been presenting to you with this one

Lilveiss

WERE FUCKING EATINNGGGGGG

Eloi Jeshua Ramirez

:DDDDD

Isaac Anastas

Merci 🥰

Antoine Mardhel

LETS FUCKINGG GOOOOO

ghoul

YAAAAY!

Jakob

Thanks Hamilton!

Kevin gomez