POD 70: Unraveling Ariadne's thread with Dr. Mike Cunningham

Ray Suelzer

Is this episode available to non subscribers? I would like to share it with someone who may find it interesting.

gossamer

I love when you have Mike on. I just relistened to the last one again and he’s really great.

Oli

It's hard out here for a clandestine cook, man😂 Wondering what you've achieved with other catalysts.. ethanolamine acetate seems pretty brilliant as catalyst and solvent (70's+ thus far) wondering what other routes typically yeild

Michael Cunningham

Not really, some places in US may consider it positional isomer of DOET but I didn’t encounter issues working with it at Columbia and we have DEA licenses wherever needed

Michael Cunningham

Just use alane when in doubt

That would be a good conversation!

Oli

Plz do report back. I'm no authority on the limitations of various reducing agents, can only speak from limited experience (4-methylthio in this case). Red-Al (SMEAH) is available to the home chemist as well, non-pyrophoric and comparable to LAH.. haven't played with it yet tho

Hamilton Morris

I pretty much always use LAH

Oli

c:

Psychestim

Thank you! :)

Oli

Video taken down

Oli

Use 2:1 volume IPA/h2o, quick addition nabh4 (slight excess), v/ slow addition nitroalkane (no soyouz rockets), drop-wise addition cucl2 in h2o, reflux@80c 30 min, 50% rm volume addition naoh25% and allow to stand a while till h2 evolution ceases, phases separate immediately. allow to cool, extract with same volume IPA to pull remainder, evap IPA add acetone and then acid of choice. Doesn't work with 4-halogenated besides Cl and F. B safe, pass the knowledge, merry crimmas m8🎅

Psychestim

Do you have the link perhaps? I‘d aporeciate it because apparently there are a bunch of videos on reductions that came out recently.

Oli

There's actually a channel on youtube which recently put up a pretty foolproof nabh4 procedure using IPA, it's now my go-to. Have a look

Psychestim

That‘s good to hear, is one hour of refluxing enough? My friend suspects most of it wasn’t converted to the amine and stayed as the nitroalkane. Oh and did you use DCM or ether for the extraction? It could also be that he lost some in the work-up, so I’m interested to hear what solvents you used.

Oli

I've had reasonably high yeild with nabh4/cl2+ on the alkykthioPEAs. Zn/HCl's a bit tricky, but accessible. I wish ur friend SWIM luck

E Lee

Can we get an episode on finasteride? Or dutasteride? Or just some more steroid talk? Get Derek from mpmd on here...

Psychestim

How do you usually reduce 4-alkylthio-2,5-dimethoxy-nitrostyrenes to the corresponding phenethylamines? When my friend tried to reduce the 4-isopropylthio-2,5-DMNS with NaBH4/CuCl2 he only got 13% yield, whereas with 2,5-DMNS it‘s usually around 60%. We don‘t have access to LAH unfortunately, but perhaps Zn/HCl might work a bit better?

🌺ily🥀

Ketamine doesn’t yield a psychedelic experience though

Oli

Thank you. Lots of aldehyde n bases to play with, this one's worth optimizing

Hamilton Morris

I can check my old notebooks but these days I usually use .04 Eq cyclohexylamine and .2 Eq ammonium acetate

Oli

I'm just curious which route you followed for the Henry reaction with nitropropane. I.e. which catalytic amine you used. Or if there's any literature on an optimized synthesis beyond the one in PiHKAL (I admittedly haven't searched much beyond the usual clandestine reference sites).

Doing any speaking events for SXSW that don’t require a badge? Would be neat to attend a live talk!

runningfromthemysterymachine

This balance beam mouse ariadne thing is cool. The highest I ever dosed on LSD I had a serious increase in balance and I am not normally coordinated or good at walking across beams.

Cheminterested

I thought ketamine was originally fast tracked specifically for treatment resistant depression

Cheminterested

If that is the case, then I would guess the same for the US

Alex Deleeck

Depends on where you live, in many EU countries it is due to analog laws

Cheminterested

Is the compound scheduled?

Zach

Hamilton, did you low key announce that you're making a new documentary film?

🌺ily🥀

Love 💕 Doctor Cunningham. Are there any psychedelics that don’t interact with antipsychotics ? Is it a priority to get compounds into treatment resistant populations or do they skew the results unfavourably in the sprint to market?

gossamer

Wonderful episode! I really enjoyed this conversation.

Read the Ariadne paper several weeks ago and found it very interesting. How cool to hear Cunningham talk more candidly about this work!!

Jacub White

This was a really cool interview. I've always had a certain fascination with Ariadne, and it doesn't seem to get talked about often, so I liked this a lot. Mike also sounds a little bit like Sodapoppin, so that's funny.