How strong are pressed pills right now?
This version has been translated from Polish and links to the relevant test kits have been added. In a life-threatening situation call 112. This article is informational and serves harm reduction. It does not encourage the use of psychoactive substances and does not replace medical advice.
Pressed pills currently run around 164 mg of MDMA on the median, at least across the 1,955 published pills that were tested. 527 of them contained more than 200 mg and 129 more than 250 mg, so the strong end of the market is nothing unusual, it is a quarter of it.
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The same logo is not the same dose
The three most-tested presses in the database show what a logo is actually worth as information.
| Press | Samples | Middle 80% | Median | Full range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Punisher | 240 | 93 to 229 mg | 160 mg | 9 to 298 mg |
| SoundCloud | 200 | 133 to 234 mg | 169 mg | 65 to 291 mg |
| Pop Smoke | 118 | 134 to 260 mg | 206 mg | 59 to 338 mg |
Ignore the extremes and look at the middle column: eight Punishers in ten fall between 93 and 229 mg, a factor of two and a half inside the ordinary range for one design in one colour. Pop Smoke runs consistently stronger than the other two, with a median 46 mg above Punisher's.
SoundCloud pills · Punisher pills · Pop Smoke pills
What that means for a dose
A press is a shape, not a recipe, and different producers copy popular designs. So a report tells you what one pill of that appearance contained on one day, which is useful market background and is not a measurement of the pill in your hand. If the mg figure matters to you, the honest options are to look up the press, then test the sample, and treat any published figure as a starting assumption rather than a number to dose on.
What a pill report is · Search the alerts database
Testing the one you have
Marquis and mecke indicate MDMA, simon's separates MDMA from MDA, robadope rules out 2C-x and amphetamines, and zimmermann picks up benzodiazepines and cathinones. None of them measures quantity, so for a dose figure you need a quantity test or a TLC plate, and for fentanyl you need a strip because no reagent covers it.
Single-use MDMA test, 3.65 EUR · MDMA and cuts kit, 28.97 EUR · MDMA purity and identification, 100.29 EUR · Fentanyl test strip, 1.19 EUR
Questions?
What is a normal pill strength now?
Median 164 mg across published samples, with a quarter above 200 mg. That is a figure for pills other people had tested, so treat it as the reason to test yours rather than as a description of it.
Is a strong pill better value?
It is more drug per unit, which is not the same thing. A 300 mg pill is not a single dose for most people.
Can I trust a mg figure from a pill report?
As a description of that sample, yes. As a description of yours, no.
Why do the same logos vary so much?
Anyone can copy a die, and even one producer's output varies between batches.