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From Madol to DMZ: The Forgotten Compounds That Slipped Through Legal Cracks
How Chemists Reverse-Engineered Steroid Laws to Dominate the Supplement Market
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Ever wondered how some supplements crossed the line into the realm of steroids? From 2002 to 2013, mad chemists played a dangerous game of molecular trickery, exploiting legal loopholes to bring potent performance enhancers to market.
America's Wild Designer Steroid Era: Legal Chicanery and Molecular Trickery
In America in the 2000s, specifically from about 2002 through 2013, certain mad chemists navigated the legal landscape of the supplement market by engaging in what the sources describe as "legal chicanery". This process involved identifying legal loopholes and reverse-engineering the language of statutes like the Anabolic Steroid Control Act and Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act (DASCA) of 2014 to bring potent anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) to market as "dietary supplements".
The methods used to reverse-engineer these laws include:
1. Mining Historical and Technical Literature
Chemists referred to basic AAS chemistry and historical pharmaceutical research — specifically reference texts like Julius Vida's Androgens and Anabolic Agents — to find "niche" or "forgotten" compounds.
- Unmarketed Compounds: They sought out potent steroids that were synthesized in the mid-20th century but never officially marketed as pharmaceuticals, such as desoxymethyltestosterone (Madol) or dimethazine (DMZ) — twice as potent as Superdrol.
- Gap Exploitation: Because these substances were not in commerce, they were often not explicitly named in the lists of controlled substances, allowing them to occupy a legal gray area.
2. Structural Modifications ("Metabolic Trickery")
To avoid selling a substance already listed as a controlled steroid, chemists modified the molecular structure to create prohormones that would convert into the active steroid only after ingestion.
- Diols and Diones: Chemists would take a known steroid and change a ketone group into a hydroxyl group (Diols) or vice-versa (Diones). For example, norethandriol (Legio-X) was marketed as a "diol" precursor to the potent steroid norethandrolone (Nilevar®, A.K.A. "oral Deca").
- Double Bond Migration: They would often shift the double bond to the 5th position (the Δ⁵ position) instead of the 4th, relying on the body's 3β-HSD enzyme to reconfigure it back to the active configuration.
- Alkylation Adjustments: Some chemists experimented with different alkyl groups at the 17α position. While most active steroids use a methyl group, chemists sometimes used an ethyl group (as seen in ethylestrenol or Maxibolin®) to prolong anabolic effects and navigate different legal definitions.
3. Exploiting Categorical Ambiguity
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) allowed manufacturers to distribute products without prior proof of safety or efficacy to the FDA.
- Naming Conventions: Products were often listed under "bastardized" chemical names or non-descriptive trademarks to make them harder for regulators to identify.
- Labeling as "Research Chemicals": By labeling substances as "research chemicals" or "not for human consumption," companies attempted to bypass supplement-specific regulations while still reaching the bodybuilding market.
4. Creating Hybrid Molecules
Chemists also designed "hybrid" molecules that combined features of different potent steroids. An example is methylstenbolone (Ultradrol), which is described as a chemical hybrid of methyl-1-testosterone and Superdrol (methasterone). By creating these novel configurations, they could argue the substance was not technically the same as the banned "parent" compounds.
