Some, although running excessively low on the pain control. So going to improvise, with an extraction of over the counter 7.45mg dihydrocodeine/500mg paracetamol tablets, and after the vac filtration off of the paracetamol (almost totally insoluble in cold water), basify with ammonia, take up into dichloromethane, distill off the dichlor to be left with the dihydrocodeine content of several hundred of the shitty OTC pills, then reflux it with 30% anhydrous hydrogen bromide in glacial acetic acid, which simultaneously demethylates dihydrocodeine to dihydromorphine (several times as potent) and the residual HBr is exploited twice, once to catalyze a Fischer esterification between the acetic acid solvent and dihydromorphine, and once again, to strip off the otherwise high-boiling glacial acetic acid by using the HBr traces to catalyze a second fischer esterification with added methanol, forming methyl acetate which is distilled off, and a little methyl bromide, which is vented somewhere safe.
I've never done this reaction before, but I have tried the result from someone who has, who gifted me a little, and who followed the reaction via GC-MS, found to produce an almost selective demethylation at the 6-position, with a little demethylation of the other, 3 position methyl ether, and the result is mostly 6-monoacetyldihydromorphine and a lesser amount of dihydroheroin which forms as a byproduct. Although given the object is to produce something very close to it, for use as an analgesic, having a highly potent and euphorigenic opioid analgesic form as a lesser byproduct is quite acceptable, as far as side products go.
After that, its just a matter of filtering and washing for workup, 94-95 yield. Nifty or what. I've only ever had it once, from the same individual as got the process down to an art, including the neat methyl acetate conversion of residual GAA, 2ml 30% hydrogen bromide in GAA, 90-100 'C for 2 hours and you're golden. Job done. And fuck me, I've never had anything like it, even surpasses any of my own creations so far. Absolutely blew my head off, quite literally had me staggering, holding onto things to keep upright from a single 300mg IV dose. For the best part of 3/4 hour. Usually the IV flash lasts minutes at most, that lasted nearly an hour, before the main show even started, so to speak.
Hopefully this will turn out to be a repeat of the good work.
