Practical Reviews Critiques in Neurosurgery
Many of you may remember the issue that came up with Cerebral Health/Bioscience Nutraceuticals a few months ago, where their choline bitartrate was numbing people’s mouths. After sending those samples in to the lab, the tests came back negative for choline bitartrate. We suspected it was choline salacylate, but decided further testing to ascertain the exact compound would not be worth the cost. Unfortunately that was not the last issue to come from Cerebral Health.
A few weeks ago, another Redditor placed an order pyritinol from CH, along with some alpha GPC and oxiracetam. When the order arrived, both the alpha GPC and oxiracetam seemed alright. However, the pyritinol seemed off. Before thinking about it, he took his normal 400mg dose of pyritinol and went out for a mountain bike ride. Within 15-20 minutes he was getting a weird euphoria and detachment. After another couple minutes, his memory gets very fuzzy.
Eventually his sister found him in the garage in a manic/psychotic state. He was biting his lips very hard, shaking, and holding his fists tight. Eventually he went into seizures when the paramedics came. He was taken to the hospital and seized again while waiting for the doctor. He had a crazed look in his eyes like what you see with people having a psychotic episode on MDPV. He was in the hospital for 4 days.
Not putting two and two together yet, he tried another small dose of pyritinol a few days after getting home, to see what effects came back. Sure enough, he started to get the euphoria and disassociation that he felt before. He also got the same crazed look in his eyes, and same rolling nystagmus. It tasted nothing like pyritinol, but more like burnt plastic. His cognition was off for a while due to the seizures, but he was sure it was the Cerebral Health pyritinol that caused it.
After doing some searching for similar reactions and physical properties online, he came to the conclusion that the compound was most likely a cathinone derivative like MDPV. All the effects fit with an overdose on something like MDPV. Since 400mg is a normal dose for pyritinol, but a massive dose for MDPV, that is most likely what caused the blackout and seizures. Since then he has been having intermittent seizures, and has been back in the hospital 3 times.
After speaking with the other moderators, we decided we needed to send a sample into the lab to get this tested. To prevent any accusations of tampering with the sample, I had another moderator order a whole new bag from them, then send a sample from that into the lab to be tested. So we now have two samples of the compound in question. The original one that sent the Redditor to the hospital, and the separate order we placed right after we became aware of the issue. Today the results came back, and it tested negative for pyritinol. I spoke to Colin at the lab, and he said that the FTIR did not match up at all, and that it was a completely unrelated compound. Due to legal constraints, the lab did not want to do a full workup on the compound apart from confirming it was not pyritinol. So we are going to be sending another sample from the same batch to Dacesafe.org to do a full workup. It will tell us exactly what the compound is, and what purity level it is at.
Here is the result from Colmeric [1]
So in light of this, I suggest that nobody purchases anything from Cerebral Health. This is the second instance in the last 6 months where they have been selling a completely different substance than what it was advertised as. In this particular instance, it could even be a dangerous and illegal substance. Until we do a full workup, I cannot say for sure if this substance was MDPV or another cathinone derivative. However, it is definitely a psychoactive compound other than pyritinol. Obviously a lawyer is going to be brought in by the Redditor that went to the hospital, so I may have to take certain statements down eventually. However, I want everyone to be aware of this serious issue before it potentially puts another person in the hospital!
EDIT: After further testing, the substance was identified as diphenhydramine (Benadryl).
Here are the spectra results. [2]
via Cerebral Health Pyritinol Test Results (WARNING) : Nootropics.
