What do people see when they're tripping? Analyzing Erowid's trip reports (263 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43171007
An Experience with Modafinil (343 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30067264
As fruity as all that sounds, I learned a lot about chemistry and how to conduct (or not conduct, perhaps), verifiable research, which is an important part of my thinking today as we navigate an ever-increasing flood of claims about tech, medicine and mental health. I have to imagine HN attracts some pretty analytical minds by default, my own being novice, at best.
I have a lot of great respect for the folks at erowid and I’m glad to see they’re still around.
- Test what you get. Some stuff being sold as LSD might actually be another synthetic psychedelic, potentially dangerous (unlike LSD). So test: even in jurisdictions in which LSD is banned, you can easily buy tests; for LSD, this would be Erhrlich's reagent. If it tests positive, and since there's no reason to have LSD and an adulterant (unlike other drugs such as cocaine), you're safe.
Of course, this is what my friend told me.
> The thought of ingesting some substance from dubious sources, that could be contaminated with absolutely anything
People used to trust networks of friends, rather than stereotypical 'gangs' or 'dealers'. The problem now is that there is so much other stuff floating around that nearly anything you go after could be nearly anything else.
In the UK there is a service called WEDINOS, which is of interest in this area - you can anonymously submit them a sample of whatever it is and they will publish the result on their website. They use the data to track drugs (their particular interest is novel or 'emerging' drugs) around the country. You basically get a number, fill in a form and post it to them alongside a sample, and they will do GCMS. You're not supposed to send them things you know are illegal, but ... looking at the website people do, a lot.
As the other poster mentions reagent tests are available fairly widely and can give you a rough idea.
Also in many countries some LSD derivatives are not (yet) illegal, and in those it is quite often possible to order things like 1P-LSD, which is (as far as can be ascertained) a pro-drug that is quickly metabolised into LSD, on the open internet.
Also, besides Erowid, other reliable information sources have popped up. Psychonautwiki, tripsit.me for example.
Some countries have anonymous test pipelines via hospitals or universities, but it's less common. Test kits are available online.
> there's no reason to have LSD and an adulterant
Why is that? From what I understand LSD is pretty challenging to produce, so isn't there an advantage to an unscrupulous producer using something easier/cheaper?
There are few psychoactive compounds that work in the same microgram range as LSD. So if you're getting blotter then the size of the tab is important. The other compounds such as the NBOMe series use bigger blotters that are easy to spot.
My old bad trip was meticulously documented and is published on the site (don’t mix cannabis with psychedelics, yo! You don’t wanna get paranoid as the walls are melting)
Funny aside: I think I spent 13 BTC to buy some LSD on the dark web at the time. Years later, the change from that transaction was enough to pay a month’s rent in London. Not only I spent what is a small fortune today, but the parcel was seized by the authorities so I never had the pleasure of trying LSD. Maybe one day…
The first plateau (1.5 to 2.5 mg per kg body weight) is described as having euphoria, auditory changes, mild stimulation, and change in perception of gravity.
The second plateau (2.5 to 7.5 mg/kg) causes intense euphoria, vivid imagination, and closed-eye hallucinations.
I like recovered.org's description of fourth plateau dose experiences:
The fourth plateau (at extremely high doses) can cause complete disconnection from reality, a sense of entering “another universe,” and a loss of sensory contact with the environment.
Sounds about right. Definitely kills some brain cells, but a hell of a ride. Would not recommend it if you don't like dissociatives.
To safely receive drugs through the mail, you do not do anything clever (like mailing them to an empty house) instead you behave in a way that gives you plausible deniability. And you do not do anything that would lead police to think you’re distributing.
Order small, personal use quantities to your name and your address and leave the package on your counter for a couple of days after it arrives. If the police show up, say you didn’t recognise the package and left it on the counter until you had time to return it to the post office.
Where you’re ordering from and to matters too. Ordering from the Netherlands into Australia almost guarantees the drugs will be found because all international mail is processed by Australia’s postal service and the Netherlands is an obvious source country. Order nationally to avoid processing.
Ultimately, it’s just like buying drugs on the street: be a nobody buying for personal use.
The biggest risk is that inevitably the seller will eventually get busted and your address will be in the seller’s records. If you’ve bought large quantities, the police will see you as a dealer and try to catch you in a sting. The best sellers do not keep records for this reason, but it’s something you won’t know until they get caught. If you buy personal use quantities, the police aren’t going to waste time on you, even if they have records of your orders.
Think about it this way, if you're a dealer you want to inflate your supply right? So, if you have a street drug that is an 'upper' and you want to cut it, you need to cut it with uppers, or something that can mask an upper. That cut needs to blend in, if you're expecting something blue, and it has red in it, then you'll know its off.
Psychedelics would need to be cut with other psychedelics, but it's not as easy as mixing two things and having it come out. LSD comes as a crystal and is then put in an alcohol solution and dried on paper, there's not many things that would work that way. If the goal is to stretch your supply, you just further dilute it, and many people do.
Where there are cheaper/easier alternatives are things in the 2c family, or others that are _close_ to the experience of LSD but not, and are also more toxic.
I don't know if any of that is clear, or makes sense but
Love those guys, incredible resource.
Well, there went two hours of my morning, and I only made it halfway through the comments.
> Silk Road prices for pure 25I-, 25C-, and 25B-NBOMe powder currently range from $90 to $200 per gram. The most problematic listings are vendors selling blotter that begs to be resold as acid: 1/4-inch perforated squares in 100-hit sheets bearing designs such as Albert Hofmann's bike ride and The Beatles Yellow Submarine, among other acid-blotter designs from the past. One vendor states "each tab is acid size, no big blotters here". Another offers hits supposedly containing 1 mg of 25I- and 25B-NBOMe each! Dosages range from 500 micrograms to 2 mg per 1/4-inch hit, with advertised doses averaging around 1 mg. On Silk Road, LSD blotter is 5-10 times more expensive than NBOMe blotter.
I think unfortunately toxic and potentially fatal doses can fit on a 1/4 inch hit or in a single liquid drop. There needs to be a lot more active chemical though, whereas you get a slight metallic taste with LSD, the article says NBOME is extremely bitter due to the higher concentration, which is sometimes covered up with mint or other flavor (never heard of this with LSD).
There's an interesting 2019 article "Multimodal imaging of hallucinogens 25C- and 25I-NBOMe on blotter papers" [2] that analyzed a random seized NBOME sample from Germany. It has lower concentration per cm² than what Erowid cited, but I don't think it's a technical limit unfortunately that prevents scary doses from fitting on a standard blotter.
[1] https://erowid.org/chemicals/nbome/nbome_article1.shtml
[2] https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/do...
ahahaaha you people just found out about this?!>?!
in america there are pockets of psychadelic support that would provide clean sources, you'd maybe network with them through campus norml groups, or that cool chemistry TA. these people have zero incentive to sell you something different or contaminate it with anything (more work).
when it is dosed correctly, you can take a small dose of lsd and see if it is the effect you recognize or something else. definitely just do some homework to make sure that it can be trusted.
Yes packages get intercepted. But it isn’t the legal liability of an addressee for what is in some box that SOMEONE put in the mail. Otherwise it would be an amazing blackmail (nigh literally) tool to target any enemy.