The designer drug connection

The designer drug connection I'm usually not too fond of gossip and speculation, but since I know designer steroids are a popular topic, I guess I might chime in.

Three designer steroids have been found lately, drugs we know as DMT, THG and Norbolethone. Whereas this raises suspicion about numerous designer steroids out there that we do not know about, there is too much evidence suggesting that all three are the work of a single chemist.

First off we have tetrahydrogestrinone. Aptly named since it only differs from gestrinone by saturation of the 17alpha ethinyl group, which is basically adding 4 hydrogens. As is well known this drug was connected to Victor Conte's BALCO firm and several athletes being adminstered the drug as 'the clear'. Now there is good reason to believe that norbolethone was the first version of the clear. Or so they say. I don't know what they base that on, but just from the MO it is pretty clear that norbolethone was manufactured by the same chemist. Norbolethone is basically norgestrel, but again with a saturated 17a-ethinyl group. So one could call it tetrahydronorgestrel, but the difference was that norbolethone had been previously produced in the 1960's and was then named norbolethone.

In both cases they took a steroid that was more easy to procure. Fact is, the DEA and the government aren't really that interested in progestins since there is no history of abuse of these products. And in both cases the drug was simply altered by saturation of the 17a ethinyl group. That seems like too much of a coincidence. Especially since few people were in the loop about norbolethone to suggest it was a copycat. If indeed the authorities have reason to believed that norbolethone was a previous version of the clear, then it would indeed confirm that it was the same chemist.

In his book called "the Juice", Will Carrol claims to have interviewed the mystery chemist, referred to in the book as Mr.X. This is a passage :

quote:

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From 'The Juice'
Published in Sports Illustrated, April 25th 2005

I asked how he created THG. He explained that it is a substance that is chemically similar to Gestrinone (an infertility drug) and Trenbolone (an anabolic steroid), and that it had been around since the late 1990s. While Dr. X wasn't the first to make it, he refined the process and was one of the few who could produce and distribute the substance. He'd get Gestrinone by sending women to a fertility specialist "who'd write the pass [prescription], and we'd pay cash. Doctors love that, man. We'd spend a couple hundred, spin it [mix the components] and sell it for a couple thousand.

He said there was a lot of cheap "gear" (the term insiders use for steroids) on the market, made for "pathetic losers looking not to have sand kicked in their faces. The world-class athletes who use my stuff can afford good gear" -- the kind impossible to detect.

...The leagues, he said, were overmatched. The metaphor I'd heard was that tests were like looking through mug shots; if the shot wasn't already in the book, you couldn't identify the perpetrator. "Exactly!" he said. "If the NFL wants to test for every known steroid, that's more than 100 tests per player -- 32 teams, 53 players, 100 tests; and they aren't cheap. And that's for known substances. I know there's 10 they don't know about."

The claims seem exaggerated and one has to doubt the scientific abilities of a man that talks like this, so how much truth is in this is not known. What is striking is that the MO does seem very plausible, namely procuring common (or in the case of gestrinone) less common progestins, and then making the same chemical alteration.

Then we come to DMT. DMT is in fact as many have suggested Madol. The reason for the confusion is that two groups of researchers working for the Wada discovered the compound almost at the same time. The American group named it Madol, The canadians named it DMT. The substance is 17alpha-methyl-5alpha-androst-2-en-17beta-ol. Some rumours are going around boards that it concerns Trimethylsilyl Madol, but that is incorrect. This is simply the form the American group used to conduct their research. Trimethylsilyl is an ester by the way, so it has no effect on the actual compound once hydrolyzed from the ester in the blood. So its really an issue that is beside the point. Basically DMT is Madol.

So what links DMT to the other two designer steroids ? Well first of all, as the researchers have concluded, we must be talking about a chemist with knowledge of ancient steroids. Madol, like norbolethone, was previously manufactured and patented in 1961. That is rather circumstantial. More concretely the American researchers found traces of THG in the oily Suspension in which they discovered Madol, making it VERY likely they came from the same lab. And probably a small lab that doesn't concern itself with quality care, or this wouldn't have happened. So we are talking about a small, possibly private lab, not subject to pharmaceutical standards for quality control.

So while wild stories about these drugs are rampant, its probably just storm in a glass of water. And if they really have a lead on this chemist, it seems unlikely many more designer steroids will pop up. In any case, the best place to start looking is for commercially available progestins that could be turned into potent androgens.

Just some more info on DMT for those interested, again, this data is so ancient it shouldn't really be trusted for anything more than shits and giggles (the old A:A ratio, seminal vesicle, Prostate weight, LA muscle weight bullshit) : The anabolic potency of DMT was estimated to be 160% that of Testosterone in the levator ani (which we know to be a smooth muscle that is androgen dependent and therefor not representative), its androgenic activity only 60% (Seminal vesicle and Ventral prostate assay). Its anabolic-androgenic ratio was estimated at 3.7. If any of this is remotely close to actual values, DMT was actually quite potent for having no 3-keto group.