HeisenbergSpecial

Depolymerize the acrylonitrile butadiene styrene polymer, and separate the monomers via distillation. The styrene can be converted into phenylacetic acid and from there phenylacetone via a reaction that uses sulfur. Another depolymerization product, acetonitrile, can be reacted with benzomagnesium chloride to form a chemical that hydrolyzes into phenylacetone.

And of course, phenylacetone can be reductively aminated with methylamine to form racemic methamphetamine.

I was hoping someone would ask this. Overall, they don't give a lot of details, and Bryan Cranston sounds like he's reading a script when he uses chemistry terms, but because they don't give too many details of the chemistry, they don't get that much wrong. Does that make sense?

There are flaws with the chemistry though. First, they mispronounce "methylamine", calling it "methylmine". No biggie. Second, the "genius" of Walter White's formula is that supposedly it can produce enantiomerically-pure dextromethamphetamine. Basically, meth exists in two chemically-identical forms that are mirror images of each other. A right and left hand form if you will. The right hand version is the psychoactive version, and the left hand version does virtually nothing but dilute it. If you have just the right-hand version or just the left-hand version, it will form crystals, but if you have both together, it will form a powder. Thus "crystal" meth, is just the psychoactive isomer.

Unfortunately, Walter and Jesse mention using platinum oxide and mercury-aluminum amalgam for reductive amination, something that is absolutely NOT possible without getting a racemic mixture, ie, a mixture of both isomers, so that part is very clearly inaccurate.

edit: People have claimed they deliberately got this wrong to confuse wannabe meth cooks, but that's clearly not the case. If you used platinum oxide or mercury aluminum amalgam for reductive amination, you'd still get methamphetamine. It's just that it would be a less desirable form of methamphetamine, ie, not the superb-quality stuff they're supposed to be making. If they wanted to deliberately leave out information, they should have just had Walt invent a "magic" hydrogenation catalyst for reductive amination, and just never give out the details of the formula for the catalyst. Just say it's an organometallic ruthenium/iridium chirally selective hydrogenation catalyst or something. That would make it a) theoretically possible, b) satisfactory to real chemists, and c) give out absolutely zero information to wannabe meth cooks. The way they approached it hints that their science advisers may be DEA chemists as opposed to actual chemists.

If any of this was too complicated, or you'd like clarification, I'll be glad to elaborate further.

Hell no. If I ever start using again, I plan to directly fund the Mexican cartels like a good American should.

Basically if you heat plastic in a no or low-oxygen environment, it'll break down into smaller molecules, which can then be distilled. Legos are made from ABS plastic, which breaks down into styrene, among other things, when heated in this manner. Styrene can be converted into phenylacetic acid or benzaldehyde, both of which are controlled chemicals due to their potential for methamphetamine manufacture. This wouldn't be that practical with ABS plastic, but I've heard of it at least being attempted with polystyrene, ie, the stuff they use to make styrofoam and clear plastic forks.

After I was arrested, I still had my unused drugs available after they released me, which were well-hidden, so I used them and got caught. So they had me do this outpatient rehab program. Then they started using that pharmachek patch on me. The thing would not stay stuck to my arm. The oil in my skin turned the adhesive on the patch into this gray clumpy goop. It was supposed to stay on up to two weeks, but would fall off after, on average, three days. There wasn't much I could do about it. I tried covering it with athletic tape, but my probation officer told me I couldn't do that, so I pretty much just had to let it fall off. It didn't help that I was court-ordered to live 100 miles away from the federal probation office, so if it started to fall off, I'd have to drive 100 miles to their office and hope they were still open. And invariably, it would test positive, whether I used or not. And I didn't use after the first time I was caught. Anyway, one time it tested positive when, as pathetic as it sounds, I was kind of proud of myself for not using it at all in the last month. And this sent me over the edge. It really did. I probably came closer to suicide than I had at any point in my life prior to that, but instead I just smoked a whole bunch of weed and watched Doctor Who. So then I got another positive drug test come back for weed. Still was doing the outpatient rehab, and they told me they were concerned about me. But other than that one time, I didn't smoke any weed at all, and had already stopped meth for at least a month and a half. So I'm going to outpatient rehab three days a week, not using or anything, and staying clean. And then one time while I'm at the outpatient rehab place, I get a weird-sounding call from my dad. Not sure why I thought it sounded weird, but it did. And then suddenly they tell me they've moved up my appointment several hours, while not making eye contact with me. So I'm like, FUCK!!! Something bad is going to happen. But what am I going to do about it? So I take a walk around the city, enjoying the nice spring weather. And when I get back, there are these two guys with cop haircuts dressed in baseball caps and looking at some paperwork and then at me. And I'm like FUCK!!! again. Yep, another false positive Pharmachek sweat patch test resulted in a warrant for my arrest by the US Marshals.

Of course, nobody believed me about not using, so they sent me to jail for a month while I waited for an opening at an inpatient rehab place. Jail was mostly just very boring and humiliating. I spent it drawing pictures of naked women in exchange for Little Debbie snacks, and reading old paperback novels with the covers torn off. I also talked to old men a lot. The guys my age all seemed dumb as shit, but at least the old guys had been around long enough to know a thing or two. My family came to visit me as often as they could. I didn't want them to see me like that, but I did it for their sake. Afterwards, we all had to strip naked and spread our butt cheeks apart with our hands to show that we weren't hiding anything. They didn't do any probing, but it was still really humiliating. Eventually, when I realized none of the guards wanted to see that shit either, it was less bad, and I tried to see it as an opportunity to moon the guards. Pretty much everyone was there for drugs, DUI, or some sort of nonviolent larceny. And one of the local judges apparently had an ax to grind against fathers who were behind on child support, so there were quite a few of those too. My bunkmate for a while was actually on leave from serving in Afghanistan, but apparently went out to celebrate his homecoming and drove home drunk. He was telling me about training Afghani police and military. It was pretty interesting.

After jail, I spent time in inpatient rehab. Some of the shit those people went through was just, wow. Like, virtually all the women and many of the men had been raped at least once, and one girl was raped on nearly a daily basis by her father. Sometimes he'd rape her and make her mother watch, and sometimes the reverse. I mean, how the fuck is someone supposed to get over something like that? She was a lesbian, and had a girlfriend that came to pick her up, but I remember her talking about how much she loved this girl, and how happy she was going to be to see her. But shit, if this girl was able to love after all that she had to live through, who the fuck is anyone to try and take that away from her?

As you can maybe tell from how I responded, I don't think inpatient rehab was really helpful to me for quitting drugs. I mean, I hadn't used weed in a month, and hadn't used meth in over two months when they arrested me, so I really don't think I needed it. But it did open my eyes to what goes on in a segment of society that a lot of times we try and act like it doesn't really exist. And in that sense, I saw and heard stories that will stick with me and affect how I see the world for as long as I live, so maybe that's a good thing.