Artistic rendition of a methamphetamine urine lab.

In 1669, the German alchemist Hennig Brandt furtively heated a retort containing the extract of 1,453 gallons of putrescent urine (alchemically coded “□”). He watched as it transformed into a series of salts, oils, and assorted vapors, which preceded a curious substance that luminously fell from the retort’s mouth into a pool of water.

Brandt had produced white phosphorous, a hitherto undiscovered chemical element present in (almost) every living organism and the first to be isolated since antiquity. From this golden stream came a discovery that would catalyze the development of modern chemistry, yet today’s alchemists who extract the psychostimulant essences of their urine are subject to scorn and imprisonment. Where did we lose our way?

It is now understood that human urine contains a complex assortment of amino acids, urea, creatinine, and many other compounds––but the body also employs urine to excrete the metabolic byproducts of many drugs we ingest and biosynthesize on a daily basis. Aspirin, caffeine, cocaine, and methamphetamine all find their way into our urine, sometimes unchanged, other times conjugated and rendered inactive, and on some occasions biotransformed into distinct pharmacological entities called active metabolites.

Though alchemists believed the ultimate chemical feat to be the production of gold from urine, pharmaceutical companies have developed a technique for isolating human chorionic gonadotropin—a hormone 3,000 times more valuable than gold—from the urine of pregnant women. On average, an expecting mother passes more than $15,000 worth of the substance each day, which Organon and other pharmaceutical companies hungrily collect and purify to be sold under brand names like Pregnyl. It has been hailed as a wonder drug for dieters and anabolic-steroid users who wish to avoid the plight of testicular atrophy. Drugs like Pregnyl are considered neither repugnant nor desperate but technological feats, so why the double standard shaming those who extract methamphetamine from their urine?

As a species, the collective mark of our urinary metabolites is so great that it has begun to alter the global hydrosphere. In 2005, a scientific paper confirmed the presence of the cocaine metabolite benzoylecgonine in Italy’s Po River, concentrations of which were used to estimate the number of cocaine users surrounding the river’s basin. In the years since, the urinary metabolites of stimulants, anabolic steroids, psychedelics, and opioids have been detected in river sediment and urban water systems internationally––from morphine in the Ebro River to bromazepam in the Rhine to the great ciproflaxin rivers of India. The levels of pharmacopollutants in our environment are so great that archaeologists will one day examine sedimentary layers of pharmaceutical stone, banded chronologically with the epochs of medicinal chemistry. The quantities of ritalinic acid, amphetamine, and paraxanthene excreted in the bathrooms of a typical college library during exam week alone would be enough to stimulate a small and extremely tired village, yet the metabolic byproducts are wasted out of fear and ignorance.

This brings us to the humble tinkle tweaker, modern disciples of Hennig Brandt who reconsume their crystalline essences in ouroboric infinitude out of a love for the Earth. Let us learn from them. In 2005, recycling-depot employee Daniel Zeiszler immolated in an act of selfless ecological compassion when he spilled solvent on his arm and then accidentally lit himself on fire with a cigarette while extracting methamphetamine from his urine in a San Francisco hotel room. A small foible, which should have been met with wry smiles and aloe-vera gel, was received with derision and a five-month prison sentence: Another Galileo faces the Roman inquisition.

In 2007, police in Minnesota broke into a storage locker suspected of housing a meth lab to find 50 one-gallon jugs of urine used for methamphetamine extraction, or so they claimed (the officers on the scene were too disgusted to collect the pee for forensic analysis). The technique has become popular enough for the Meth Awareness and Prevention Project of South Dakota to advise, “Anyone who notices containers of a yellow liquid in someone’s garage, refrigerator, or property should be wary of the biological and chemical hazards, as well as the potential danger of dealing with a tweaker.” And the Colorado Department of Health reports, “We have performed activities in residences containing dozens upon dozens of two-liter soft drink bottles filled with urine waiting to be processed. In such labs it would not be uncommon to find as much as 100 liters of stored urine.” Such accounts are a testament, I say, to the tenacity of the human spirit.

I called a young chemistry prodigy to discuss his experience of being caught extracting morphine from his liquid waste:

“I wasn’t running a specialist urine lab or anything like that, my interest was truly scientific. But years ago I was hospitalized for overdosing on barbiturates, and some crow-begotten, rat-bastard guttercunt of a paramedic narced me for possession. His tip-off caused filth to raid my lab, and the urine-extraction project was fouled before I got through the reaction and could hydrolyze the goodies. The look on the pigs’ faces when, among the evidentiary photos of my glassware and reagents, they found jugs containing gallon after gallon of morphine piss almost compensated for the trauma of being forced to explain what a glucuronide conjugate is to a bunch of unthinking swine. To add to the injustice, I was already prescribed opiates, so I was merely regenerating a drug that I had obtained legally. They were so confused by my lab that they thought I was manufacturing chemical weapons and had the bomb squad blow up all of the urine jugs. No shit.”

Though the extraction of many drugs is derided as desperate and depraved, the extracting of the above chemicals (methamphetamine particularly) from human urine is actually quite efficient. A single dose of meth is eliminated over the course of 48 hours and unchanged quantities of S-enantiomer (which is produced in the classic reduction of pseudoephedrine-containing cold medicines) have been found to be as high as 43 percent, with 6.4 percent metabolized to amphetamine, and a fraction of a percent converted to p-hydroxymethamphetamine. With the current trends leading to the increased monitoring of pseudoephedrine-containing remedies and reducing agents such as red phosphorous, the need for piss labs is greater than ever. Dare we shame those who conserve our planet’s finite resources?

To bring things full circle, next time you are extracting methamphetamine from your urine, why not isolate some white phosphorous as well, follow that with a quick allotrope conversion, and use it in your next pseudoephedrine reduction?

Stand tall, tinkle tweaker, Hennig Brandt would be proud.