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Erowid - Documenting the Complex Relationship Between Humans and Psychoactives

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207 points slow_typist | 5 comments | 21 Oct 25 20:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.626s | source
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jbstack ◴[22 Oct 25 09:51 UTC] No.45666840[source]▶
I'm curious how people go about finding safe sources for something like LSD (to be clear I'm not asking for anyone to give specific details, just an explanation). While psilocybin is easy to try safely (just travel to a place where it is legal), LSD is illegal in every jurisdiction as far as I know. The thought of ingesting some substance from dubious sources, that could be contaminated with absolutely anything, terrifies me and I honestly don't know how people bring themselves to take this kind of risk. Am I missing the point and there is some safe underground supply chain for this sort of thing?
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andrepd ◴[22 Oct 25 10:01 UTC] No.45666905[source]▶
- Buy on the darkweb. Marketplaces exist with established vendors, open forums, feedback, customer support, escrow... I could write a long text about how this is an infinitely better way to do things for all concerned than to "force" non-violent people to interact with violent drug traders and adulterated products, but let's leave that for now. You can pay with Monero for untraceability.

- 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.

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1. jbstack ◴[22 Oct 25 11:46 UTC] No.45667647[source]▶
Interesting. Can you clarify this part?

> 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?

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2. echelon_musk ◴[22 Oct 25 12:02 UTC] No.45667774[source]▶
From my old and hazy memory (someone correct if wrong):

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.

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3. Denatonium ◴[22 Oct 25 12:55 UTC] No.45668339[source]▶
I think what OP is saying is that if a manufacturer is putting real LSD on a tab, it's unlikely that they're also adding an adulterant.
4. BurnTheBoss ◴[22 Oct 25 13:04 UTC] No.45668467[source]▶
In addition to what others are saying, I think it's important to think "apples to oranges" here.

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

5. cypherpunks01 ◴[22 Oct 25 17:42 UTC] No.45672576[source]▶
I think generally yes, phenethylamines are the primary compounds known to work in the same dose range as LSD. Unfortunately they are much cheaper to produce, and the majority of the 25C- and 25I-NBOMe fatalities occur after people believed they were taking LSD. I have read similarly, that tab size of a dose might be an indicator, but I don't think it's a fully reliable method. Check out the old 2013 Erowid "Spotlight on NBOMes" article [1]-

> 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...