Designer Drugs - What Is It Made Of?

What Is It Made Of?

Designer drugs are often made with common household substances by inexperienced drug makers. Connelly reported that "illegal labs have been found in remote mountain cabins and rural farms, as well as in single and multifamily homes in city and suburban neighborhoods. These operations can be moved fairly quickly to new locations, in order to avoid detection by police or federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents."

Although the ingredients in them are often quite ordinary, the illegal production of designer drugs is a dangerous business for both the producer and the user. Secret labs have been known to blow up during the drug-making process, and botched batches of drugs can be deadly when ingested. Myra Weatherly, writing in Ecstasy and Other Designer Drug Dangers, commented: "These imitation drugs mixed by 'bathtub chemistsInexperienced and illegal drug makers who concoct homemade drugs; also referred to as kitchen chemists or underground chemists.' can be much more potentPowerful. than the real thing. Not only are these drugs dangerous in themselves, but a goof in the lab—such as overheating a substance—can mean death."

Shocking Ingredients

People are often shocked to learn what ingredients are used in designer drugs. Many of the ingredients are products that one would never dream of consuming. One good example is GHB. Few people realize that GHB is synthesized in household laboratories by mixing ingredients such as floor cleaning products, nail polish, and super glue removers with sodium hydroxide in the form of lye. Lye is made from wood ashes and used to make soap. Unintentional poisonings from bad homemade batches of GHB are not uncommon.

The chemical compositions for the six drugs discussed in this entry are listed below.

  • 2C-B: C2H8NO2Br
  • ecstasy: C11H15NO2
  • GHB: C4H3O3
  • ketamine: C13H16C1NOHC1
  • methamphetamine: C10H15N
  • PCP: C17H25N