acetylephedrine

[kingdxm]

O-acetyl ephedrine
Now here is an interesting substance. It is made by reacting acetic anhydride to ephedrine or heating glacial acetic acid and ephedrine with several drops of sulfuric acid. This drug is about as potent as methamphetamine, although my guess is that it doesn’t last as long since the body can easily breakdown esters. The drug has almost no peripheral effects( increased heart rate, high blood pressure, nervousness, etc ). The is an even simpler way to make this drug although I have never tried it. By heating it in ethyl acetate or isoamyl acetate a chemical switch takes place called transesterification. With ethyl acetate and ephedrine you get ethyl alcohol and acetyl ephedrine. With isoamyl acetate( banana oil ) and ephedrine you get isoamyl alcohol and acetyl ephedrine. This reaction is catalyzed by sulfuric acid. My guess is that you would add 1 mole of ephedrine and 3 to 5 moles of isoamyl acetate( or ethyl acetate ) along with 5 drops of concentrated sulfuric acid. That way there is enough acetate to react with all of the ephedrine. This also allows the reaction to exceed 50% since a ester reaction will break down to an alcohol and acid when it gets to 50% and will stay there unless one of the 2 chemicals is more abundant than the other. The reaction will probably take a couple of hours. This drug is worth the effort as the ester on it would make the drug very fat soluble and speed it to the brain, as with heroin( diacetyl morphine ). Another great thing about this substance is that
is it not listed in the Controlled Substance Act and therefore is legal. Although ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are now listed as C-5 controlled substances, the analog laws do not pertain to it. This law only covers analog derivatives in the C-1 and C-2 category. This means that C-3 through C-5 analogs of already existing controlled substances can be made legally, kick ass huh?

My question is has anybody tried this drug or know anything else about it?

[Paregoric Kid]

can you substitute sulfuric acid with something else?
also, do you need ephedrine or can you do this with pseudoephedrine?

[robojunkie]

No need for a great excess of ethyl acetate (why bother with isoamyl acetate?) when you can (and usually do) heat these straightforward acid catalyzed transesterifications. You just distill off the ethanol as it is formed into a Dean-Stark trap or some other rigged up contraption and drive the equilibrium towards the new ester. I believe 85% phosphoric acid can usually be substituted for these as well. Then one can vacuum distill the product or purify through standard means, assuming there isn't any or significant amount of the amide formed, which of course would be undesirable. Hell, if one could in theory successfully perform this or any other reaction to generate the O-acetyl ephedrine/psuedoephedrine, I would also imagine one could then possibly hydrogenolyze the benzyl ester (which the O-acetyl ephedrine would be a form of) to the N-methyl phenyl isopropylamine and toluene cleavage products. The first of course being more commonly known as methedrine, etc. Not being overly into this I haven't looked it up, but if the Birch modification (reduction of benzyl alcohols) can be applied to PSE/ephedrine I would imagine there wouldn't be to much of a problem with the O-AcEph/PSE. I think I will look it up out of curiosity. Assuming the transesterification is feasible in this particular case. Is this a known/precedented reaction, kdxm? I'm referring to the transesterification of course, with this particular "alcohol"?

Also I'm moving this thread and all like these to the chem section. Kdxm, please post these threads there, OK?

[Paregoric Kid]

I've seen mentions of N-acetylpseudoephedrine but nothing for o-acetylpseudoephedrine. are you saying if you did the same thing but substituted ephedrine with PSE it would still produce something good? also has anyone heard anything about diacetylephedrine?

[OxyContinuously]

Interesting compound, novel I guess.

Other than the possibility that it will more than likely cross the blood brain barrier quicker due to the --acetyloxy group on the benzylic carbon, and probably require a lesser dosage than standard ephedrine, I see no real benefits to this compound.

Highly doubtful that it will be on par with methamphetamine as far as potency, as a matter of fact, judging it by its structure, I would venture a guess and say it is probably shorter in duration than both ephedrine and methamphetamine; nice idea though.



later

[superman]

if you have the effy, why not just make meth? the rest can be had in a day in any large city

[Paregoric Kid]

here is something I found on bluelight. he explains that o-acetylephedrine wouldn't have the ephedrine feel to it because of the acetyloxy group which would prevent activation of the adrenergic receptors.
O & N-acetyl ephedrine interchange quite easily depeding upon the pH of the solution they're in (<7 ie acidic results in O-acetylephedrine where >7 ie alkaline favours the amide formation). I came across this many, many years ago and I think it was an OK stimulant - I don't have any 'real horror show' memories of it as I do of ephedrine (and I mean many - lots of drug fillee waters have flowed under the bridge since then!) with not too much of the hideous ephedrine feel - think that's to do with the dose required - 20mg - not producing enough ephedrine metabolite to bugger it all up.

Having an acetyloxy group on the benzylic carbon improves BBB penetration & prevents direct action on receptors that ephedrine has (benzylic OH groups seem to increase noradrenergic activity in preference to dopaminergic - esterify it and you push it more towards the dopamine activity).

If I remember it's not that stable - my sample stunk of acetic acid after a few weeks without the benefit of an airtight contaner including dessicant