Increasing the Purity of Street Drugs

If you do synthetic street drugs that are sold as powder, crystals, or pills, the following techniques for “cleaning” drugs may be of interest to you.

One of the simpler methods of purifying your drugs is called an alcohol wash. The premise is that some impurities/cuts will not dissolve as much in alcohol as the actual drug. This works especially well with coke, since it is very soluble in alcohol. It will remove some but not all of the levamisole/tetramisole in coke.

Supplies: Drugs to clean, 2 clean glass or ceramic containers, lab or coffee filters, something to measure small quantities of liquid with (usually you can get a free 10ml oral syringe from any major pharmacy chain by asking for one), internet access, and the purest alcohol you can get. if you can have somebody bring it in from out of province or the U.S, pure ethanol over 90% is best. Sold as Alcool Global 94% in Quebec, Everclear/Spirytus 95/96% in the U.S. Next best is 99% isopropyl alcohol from a pharmacy, make sure it’s 99%, not normal rubbing alcohol. After that, some LCBOs sell a 75.5% proof Spirytus, don’t get Bacardi 151 unless you want your drugs to have non-alcoholic rum residue in them. In a pinch, normal vodka will work but not nearly as well as those above, and you’ll lose a lot more of whatever you’re cleaning to the process.

How much alcohol you’ll use will depend on what you’re cleaning, and how soluble it is in the solvent you’ve got. For example, cocaine HCl (which is what you’ll have if you bought coke that isn’t rocked up into crack) is soluble in water at 1.8 grams per millilitre of distilled water, that means every millilitre of water can dissolve 1.8 grams of coke. In pure ethanol (drinking alcohol) it takes 3.2ml to dissolve a gram. That means, in 94% alcohol, you’ll need about 2.8ml per gram, just call it 3ml since you’ll lose a bit to evaporation and the sides of your container. If you have a toaster oven, set it for about 150F, cover the top of your container with a glass plate, and wait for it to come up to temperature. The plate will have to sit flush with the container so the alcohol doesn’t escape. Heating the alcohol is optional, but will improve your results. If you do heat it, make sure you pick up the container with oven mits or a folded towel, because it will be hot. While hot, dissolve your coke in the alcohol and stir to help it dissolve. You can then let it cool to room temperature and pour it through your filter into the other container. Before pouring, wet the filter paper with a bit of alcohol that doesn’t have coke in it. Anything less soluble than coke will now be left in the filter, and your cleaner coke will be in the alcohol. Pour the alcohol onto a flat plate and let it sit until it evaporates, which will leave behind your coke. You can use light heat to help it evaporate faster, but make sure it’s under 175F and absolutely no open flames. Once it’s almost dry, chop it up finely and let it sit for another 48 hours to get all of the alcohol out, especially if you used alcohol not meant for drinking. It may look like a weird white paste before it’s completely dry, don’t be alarmed if that happens.

To wash other drugs with alcohol, just look up how soluble they are in the solvent you’re using (liquid that you’ll be dissolving your drugs in) and adjust the figures accordingly. If the solubility is lower than 30ml per gram it’s probably not worth doing.

Another method of cleaning your drugs is called an acetone wash. This will improve the purity of most drugs if done correctly, but will not get rid of most cuts that are drugs themselves. If your mdma has speed, PMA, lidocaine, etc. in it that will still be in it at the end. This is best for getting rid of things that whomever manufactured your drugs left behind due to greed, laziness, or incompetence. It will also get rid of caffeine. If you have mdma that’s dark brown and smells strongly, it will be white and mostly odourless when you’re done. Warning: Acetone is very flammable, unhealthy to breathe in, and it dissolves paint, varnish, plastic and styrofoam among other things. Keep away from open flames, keep a window open, and only use clean glass, ceramic, or metal containers. This does not work for any drugs that are in freebase form, like crack or DMT.

Supplies: Acetone (available at most hardware stores. Make sure the container just says it has acetone in it, don’t just get any bottle from the paint thinners sections). To test if your acetone is clean, pour a little bit onto a clean glass/ceramic/metal surface and see if it leaves residue behind when it evaporates. If it doesn’t, you’re good. Epsom salts (should be available at most pharmacies, make sure they’re unscented and not sea salt/ something else). An oven or toaster oven, coffee filters, clean glass/ceramic containers, and a mortar and pestle.

First you’re going to want to “dry” your acetone. Dry acetone means it has no water in it, water is bad because even a little bit will cause you to lose some of your drugs. To do this, crush up epsom salts in your mortar and pestle and put them in the oven on high for 3-4 hours. This will take all the water out of the epsom salts, and they will now absorb water from the atmosphere, or your acetone. Put the equivalent of roughly 1/5 of your container of acetone in dried epsom salts into the acetone container. Give it a good shaking for about a minute, and let it sit for a day. You now have dry acetone. Don’t shake the container before using and pour slowly from the top layer so you don’t pour out epsom salts with it. Pour it through a coffee filter to make sure you don’t get any epsom salt in your drugs. If you have a glass eyedropper and patience, it’s better to just use that to siphon acetone off the top and leave all the epsom salt at the bottom. Crush your drugs finely, and depending on how much you’re washing put them in an acetone friendly container of appropriate size. Probably a shot glass. Then pour your filtered, dry acetone on top, enough to cover your drugs plus a little room at the top. The acetone will absorb impurities and some cuts, but not your drugs. Stir it around a bit with an acetone friendly utensil, (glass or metal) and let it sit for maybe 10 minutes. Then take a clean container with a new coffee filter on it, and wet the coffee filter with a bit of acetone. You can then pour in the contents of your shot glass. Save the coffee filter and scrape any residue from the shot glass. Let the acetone evaporate off and you can then retrieve your drugs from the coffee filter. If you’re curious, you can also let all the acetone from the other container evaporate which will leave behind all the impurities that were removed, otherwise just dispose of it or keep it in a closed container to reuse later.

If you apply both of these techniques to your drugs they will become even cleaner. Keep in mind these techniques only work if what you bought as MDMA/coke/whatever actually contains MDMA/coke/whatever. If you wash a mystery E pill you’ll still have mystery powder at the end, albeit cleaner mystery powder.

Links to resources on this topic: