Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  g and had a mp of 108-109.5 !C. Search was made by gas chromatography for evidence of the other two theoretically possible positional isomers, but none could be found. The NMR spectrum showed the two para-protons as clean singlets, with no noise suggesting other isomers. There was a single peak by GC (for the recrystallized product) but the mother liquors showed a contamination that proved to be N-methylformanilide. A 0.3 g sample, along with 0.3 g malononitrile, was dissolved in 10 mL warm absolute EtOH, and treated with a drop of triethylamine. There was the immediate formation of a yellow color followed, in 1 min, by the deposition of fine yellow needles. Filtering and air drying gave 0.25 g of 2,5-dimethoxy-4-ethoxybenzalmalononitrile, with a mp of 171-172 !C.

  A solution of 7.3 g 2,5-dimethoxy-4-ethoxybenzaldehyde in 25 g glacial acetic acid was treated with 3.6 g nitroethane and 2.25 g anhydrous ammonium acetate, and heated on the steam bath. After two h, the clear solution was diluted with an equal volume of H2O, and cooled in an ice bucket. There was the formation of a heavy crop of orange crystals which were removed by filtration. The dry weight of 1-(2,5-dimethoxy-4-ethoxyphenyl)-2-nitropropene was 4.8 g and the mp was 120-124 !C. Recrystallization of an analytical sample from MeOH

  gave a mp of 128-129 !C. Anal. (C13H17NO5) C,H.

  To a gently refluxing suspension of 3.3 g LAH in 400 mL anhydrous Et2O

  under a He atmosphere, there was added 4.3 g 1-(2,5-dimethoxy-4-ethoxy)-2-nitropropene by allowing the condensing Et2O to drip into a shunted Soxhlet thimble apparatus containing the nitrostyrene, thus effectively adding a warm saturated ether solution of it to the hydride mixture. The addition took 2 h. Refluxing was maintained for 5 h, and then the reaction mixture was cooled to 0 !C

  with an external ice bath. The excess hydride was destroyed by the cautious addition of 300 mL of 1.5 N H2SO4. When the aqueous and Et2O

  layers were finally clear, they were separated, and 100 g of potassium sodium tartrate was dissolved in the aqueous fraction. Aqueous NaOH

  was then added until the pH was >9, and this was then extracted with 3x100 mL CH2Cl2. Evaporation of the solvent from the pooled extracts produced an almost white oil that was dissolved in 100 mL anhydrous Et2O and saturated with anhydrous HCl gas. There was deposited a white crystalline solid of 2,5-dimethoxy-4-ethoxyamphetamine hydrochloride (MEM) which weighed 3.1 g and had a mp of 171-172.5 !C.

  Anal. (C13H22ClNO3) C,H,N.

  DOSAGE: 20 - 50 mg.

  DURATION: 10 - 14 h.

  QUALITATIVE COMMENTS: (with 20 mg) I experienced some physical discomfort, but doesnUt that tell us about the work to be done, rather than the property of the material? The breakthrough I had was the following day (and this seems to be the way MEM operates, i.e., first the energy and expansion, next day insight) was of the highest value and importance for me. I was given a methodology for dealing with my shadow parts. No small gift. And I did it all alone and the results were immediate. I am so grateful.

  (with 20 mg, at 1.5 h following 120 mg MDMA) RThe transition was very smooth, with no obvious loss of the MDMA experience. I felt less of a need to talk, but the intimate closeness with the others was maintained. The experience continues to grow more profound and euphoric and I prayed, in the latter part of the afternoon, that it wouldnUt stop. It continued until midnight with marvelous feelings, good energy, and much hilarity. And it abated very little over the next several days leaving me with the feeling of lasting change with important insights still coming to mind one week later.

  (with 25 mg, at 2 h following 120 mg MDMA) RI found that sounds in general were distracting. No, they were out-and-out annoying. I may have been in an introspective mood, but I really wanted to be alone.

  No body problems at all. Felt good. I developed some color changes and some pattern movement. Not much, but then I didnUt explore it much. The wine party afterwards was certainly most pleasant. The soup was a great pleasure. And that hard bread was good. The material was clearly not anorexic, or at least I overcame whatever anorexia there might have been.

  (with 30 mg) I was aware of this in thirty minutes and it slowly developed from there to an almost +++ in the following hour. There were visual phenomena, with some color enhancement and especially a considerable enhancement of brights and darks. The first signs of decline were at about six hours, but there was something still working there after another six hours had passed. A slow decline, certainly.

  (with 50 mg) I came into the experience knowing that yesterday had been a very fatiguing and tense day. I felt this material within the first ten minutes which is the fastest that I have ever felt anything.

  The ascent was rapid and for the first hour I tended to an inward fantasying with a distinct sensual tinge. There was a persistent queasiness that never left me, and it contrasted oddly with a good feeling of outward articulation and lucidity which succeeded in coming to the fore after the introverted first hour. Sleep was difficult, but the next day was calm and clear.

  (with 50 mg) Lots of energy, best directed into activity. Clear imaging, thinking. Intense yet serene. Good feeling of pleasantness and some euphoria. I felt the need to keep moving. Hard to stay still.

  (with 70 mg, in two parts) RThe effects of the 40 milligrams were muted by another drug experiment yesterday morning, and I never got much over a plus 1. There is an erotic nature, tactile sensitivity perhaps not as delicate as with 2C-B, but it is there. At the 2 hour point, an additional 30 milligrams increased the body impact (a distinct tremor and sensitivity) but somehow not a lot more mental. I have been compromised by yesterday.

  EXTENSIONS AND COMMENTARY: MEM was both a valuable and dramatic compound, as well as a drug that played a watershed role. The completion of all the possible trimethoxyamphetamines (the TMAUs) showed that only two of them combined the values of dependability of positive psychedelic effects with a reasonably high potency. Both TMA-2 and TMA-6 are treasures, both active in similar dosages, and both offer methoxyl groups that are begging to be replaced by other things. The first focus was on TMA-2, partly because the needed synthetic chemistry was better known, and partly because I had discovered its activity earlier. But there were three entirely different and distinct methoxyl groups to work on, in TMA-2. There is one at the 2-position, one at the 4-position, and one at the 5-position. The most obvious thing to do, it seemed, was to make each of them one carbon longer. Replace a methoxy with an ethoxy. And a logical naming pattern could follow the use of M for methoxy, and E

  for ethoxy, in sequence right around the ring from the 2- to the 4- to the 5-positions. The first group to be compared, then, would be EMM, MEM, and MME. And of these three, it was only MEM that was right up there in drama and in potency. But, by the time that became apparent, I had already completed the diethoxy possibilities (EEM, EME, and MEE) as well as the triethoxy homologue, EEE. With the discovery that the 4-position was the magic leverage point, and that the homologues at positions 2- and 5- were clearly less interesting, all emphasis was directed at this target, and this has led to the many 4-substituted families that are now known to be highly potent and felt by many to be personally valuable.

  Why put such emphasis on potency, I am frequently asked? Why should it matter how much of a compound you take, as long as the effective level is much lower than its toxic level? Well, in a sense, that is the very reason. There are no guides as to what the toxic levels of any of these many compounds might really be in man. There is simply no way of determining this. Only a few have been explored in animals in the pursuit of an LD-50 level. Most of them are similar to one-another, in that they are, in mice, of relatively low toxicity and, in rat, of relatively high toxicity. But this toxicity appears not to be related to potency in man. So, if one might extrapolate that they are of more or less the same risk to man (from the toxic point of view) then the lower the dosage, the greater the safety.

  Maybe. In the absence of anything factual, it makes a reasonable operating hypothesis.

  Many of the reports of MEM effects have been with experiments in which
an effective dose of MDMA had been taken shortly earlier. There has developed a concept, embraced by a number of researchers, that the ease and quietness usually seen with the development of the MDMA experience can mitigate some of the physically disturbing symptoms sometimes seen with other psychedelics. This may be partly due to a familiar entry into a altered place, and partly due to a lessening of dosage usually required for full effects. MEM seems to have had more trials using this combination than many of the other psychedelic drugs.

  123 MEPEA; 3-METHOXY-4-ETHOXYPHENETHYLAMINE

  SYNTHESIS: A solution of 10.0 g 3-methoxy-4-ethoxybenzaldehyde in 150

  mL nitromethane was treated with 1.7 g anhydrous ammonium acetate, and heated on the steam bath for 1 h. The excess nitromethane was removed under vacuum, yielding a loose, yellow crystalline mass that was filtered and modestly washed with cold MeOH. The 8.0 g of damp yellow crystals thus obtained were dissolved in 50 mL of vigorously boiling CH3CN, decanted from a small amount of insolubles (probably ammonium acetate residues) and cooled in an ice bath. The crystals so obtained were removed by filtration, washed with 2x5 mL cold CH3CN, and air dried to constant weight. The yield of 4-ethoxy-3-methoxy-'-nitrostyrene was 6.3 g of beautiful yellow crystals.

  A solution of 2.3 g LAH in 70 mL anhydrous THF was cooled, under He to 0 !C with an external ice bath. With good stirring there was added 2.3 mL 100% H2SO4 dropwise, to minimize charring. This was followed by the addition of 6.2 g 3-ethoxy-4-methoxy-'-nitrostyrene in anhydrous THF. After a few min further stirring, the temperature was brought up to a gentle reflux on the steam bath, and then all was cooled again to 0 !C. The excess hydride was destroyed by the cautious addition of IPA followed by sufficent 10% NaOH to give a white granular character to the oxides, and to assure that the reaction mixture was basic. The reaction mixture was filtered and the filter cake well washed with THF. The filtrate and washes were combined and stripped of solvent under vacuum. The residue was dissolved in dilute H2SO4. This was washed with 2x75 mL CH2Cl2, which removed the residual yellow color. The remaining aqueous phase was made basic with NaOH, and extracted with 3x75 mL CH2Cl2. These extracts were combined and the solvent removed under vacuum. The residue was distilled at 108-115 !C at 0.4 mm/Hg to give 4.2 g of a mobile, colorless liquid. This was dissolved in 12 mL IPA, neutralized with 60 drops concentrated HCl, and diluted with 100 mL

  anhydrous Et2O. There was deposited a fine white crystalline product which, after removal by filtration, ether washing, and air drying, yielded 3.8 g of 3-methoxy-4-ethoxyphenethylamine hydrochloride (MEPEA).

  DOSAGE: 300 mg or greater.

  DURATION: short.

  QUALITATIVE COMMENTS: (with 120 mg) I am at perhaps a +1, a very slight effect of lightness, without any body awareness at all. And then in another hour, I was completely baseline again.

  (with 300 mg) Whatever changes took place were complete at the end of an hour. The effects were very quiet, very pleasant, and very light.

  There was nothing psychedelic here, but rather a gentle lifting of spirits. No sensory enhancement or other expected changes.

  EXTENSIONS AND COMMENTARY: This is one of the very few phenethylamines with only two substituents that shows even a hint of central activity.

  And there is an interesting story attached. I got a call out of absolutely nowhere, from a Stanislov Wistupkin, that he had discovered a number of new psychedelic drugs which he would like to share with me. Two of them were simple phenethylamines, one with an ethoxy group at the 4-position, and one with an allyloxy group there. Both, he said, were mood elevators active between 100 and 300 milligrams. One of them was this material, here called MEPEA, and the other one was 3-methoxy-4-allyloxyphenethylamine, or MAPEA. When I did meet him in person, he gave me a most remarkable publication which had been authored some ten years earlier, by a person named Leminger, now dead.

  It was all in Czech, but quite unmistakably, right there on the third page, were the structures of MEPEA and MAPEA, and the statement that they were active at between 100 and 300 milligrams. I have not yet made the allyloxy compound, but I feel that it too might be a gentle mood elevator similar to the ethoxy.

  A most appealing extension of these materials would be the amphetamine derivatives, things with a 3-methoxy group, and something small and terse on the 4-position. The immediate analogies of MEPEA and MAPEA would be 3-methoxy-4-ethoxy- (and 3-methoxy-4-allyloxy)-amphetamine.

  And equally interesting would be the 4-hydroxy analogue. This would be an easily made compound from vanillin, one of our most enjoyable spices in the kitchen cabinet, and it would be directly related to the essential oils, eugenol and isoeugenol. This amphetamine compound has already been synthesized, but it is still unexplored in man.

  Some years ago a report appeared in the forensic literature of Italy, of the seizure of a small semitransparent capsule containing 141

  milligrams of a white powder that was stated to be a new hallucinogenic drug. This was shown to contain an analogue of DOM, 3-methoxy-4-methylamphetamine, or MMA. The Italian authorities made no mention of the net weight contained in each dosage unit, but it has been found that the active level of MMA in man is in the area of 40-60

  milligrams. The compound can apparently be quite dysphoric, and long lived.

  In the Czechoslovakian publication that presented MEPEA and MAPEA.

  there were descriptions of escaline (E), proscaline (P), and the allyloxy analogue (AL). These are all active in man, and have been entered elsewhere. This is the only published material dealing with psychedelic drugs I have ever been able to find, from the laboratory of Otakar Leminger. What sort of man was this chemist? He worked for years in industry, and only at the time of his retirement did he publish this little gem. He lived at Usti, directly north of Praha, on the Labe river (which is called by the better known name, the Elbe, as soon as it enters Germany). Might there be other treasures that he had discovered, and never published? Was young Wistupkin a student of his? Are there unrecognized notes of Otakar Leminger sitting in some farm house attic in Northern Czechoslovakia? I extend my heartfelt salute to an almost unknown explorer in the psychedelic drug area.

  124 META-DOB; 5-BROMO-2,4-DIMETHOXYAMPHETAMINE

  SYNTHESIS: The reaction of 2,4-dimethoxyamphetamine (2,4-DMA) with elemental bromine proceeded directly to the formation of 5-bromo-2,4-dimethoxyamphetamine which was isolated as the hydrobromide salt with a melting point of 204.5-205.5 !C and in a 67%

  yield. A mp of 180-181 !C has also been published.

  DOSAGE: 50 - 100 mg.

  DURATION: 5 - 6 h.

  EXTENSIONS AND COMMENTARY: There is very little synthetic information available, and some of it is contradictory. The initial human report in the medical literature says only that a dosage of about 100

  milligrams produced effects that were similar to those produced by MDA. Both the quality of the experience and the potency of the compound have been modified in more recent publications by the originators of this compound. A 40 milligram dose, after an induction period of an hour, produced a vague uneasiness that was interpreted originally as a threshold psychedelic effect. At doses in the 60 to 90 milligram range, there were produced feelings of anxiety and paranoid fantasies, and distinct toxic signs such as flushing, palpitations, and occasional nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Any psychedelic effects seem to have been blurred by the more obvious toxic actions of the drug. I have been told that their final conclusion was that the drug appears toxic in the 50 to 60 milligram range. I have not personally explored this positional isomer of DOB.

  The positional isomer of DOB with the bromine in the ortho-position is 4,5-dimethoxy-2-bromoamphetamine and is called, not surprisingly, ORTHO-DOB. It has been made by the condensation of 2-bromo-4,5-dimethoxybenzaldehyde with nitroethane to give 1-(2-bromo-4,5-dimethoxyphenyl)-2-nitropropene with a mp of 105-106

  !C. Reduction to the amphetamine had to be conducted at a low temperature and using only an equimolar amount of lithium aluminum hydride, to minimize reductive re
moval of the bromo group. The hydrochloride salt of 2-bromo-4,5-dimethoxyamphetamine (ORTHO-DOB) had a mp of 214-215.5 !C, and the hydrobromide salt a melting point of 196-197 !C or of 210 !C. Both have been reported. The yield from the direct bromination of 3,4-DMA was apparently very bad. I do not think that the compound has ever gone into man.

  There are three other dimethoxyamphetamine isomers known, and each has been explored chemically as to its reactivity with elemental bromine.

  With 2,3-DMA, a mixture of the 5-Br-2,3-DMA and 6-Br-2,3-DMA was formed; with 2,6-DMA, 3-Br-2,6-DMA was formed; and with 3,5-DMA, a mixture of 2-Br-3,5-DMA and the 2,6-dibromo product was produced. The bromination of 2,5-DMA is, of course, the preferred procedure for the synthesis of 4-Br-2,5- DMA, or DOB, q.v. None of these positional isomers has evear been put into man, but 3-Br-2,6-DMA and the iodo-counterpart have been explored as potential radio-fluorine carriers into the brain. This is all discussed in the 3,4-DMA recipe.

  125 META-DOT; 2,4-DIMETHOXY-5-METHYLTHIOAMPHETAMINE

  SYNTHESIS: To 27 g 1,3-dimethoxybenzene that was being well stirred, there was added, dropwise, 29 g concentrated H2SO4 over a period of 15

  min. Stirring was continued for 1 hour, and then the mixture was poured slowly into 250 mL of saturated aqueous K2CO3. The precipitate that formed was removed by filtration, and dried at 125 !C to give 59.6 g crude potassium 2,4-dimethoxybenzenesulfonate. This was finely ground, and 30 g of it was treated with 35 g of POCl3 and the mixture heated on the steam bath for 2 h. This was cooled to room temperature, and then poured over 300 mL crushed ice. When all had thawed, this was extracted with 2x150 mL Et2O. The extracts were pooled, washed with saturated brine, and the solvent removed under vacuum to give a residue which solidified. There was thus obtained 14.2 g 2,4-dimethoxybenzenesulfonyl chloride as white solids with a mp of 69-72 !C. Heating of a small portion with concentrated ammonium hydroxide gave the corresponding sulfonamide which, on recrystallization from EtOH, produced white needles with a mp of 165.5-166.5 !C.