Purity - LSD Quality/Cleanliness

[dexbud]

Hi SWIMERS:

SWIM's question relates to just what is contained in street blotter.

SWIM's friend consumed some blank blotter (with red-line outline) a while ago and was blasted into the outer reaches, way past Neptune, far beyond the outer reaches of our galaxy, past Andromeda, back in time, forward in time, exploding through quasars, turned inside out in quantum singularities, traversing even VOID... the experience was rough... the blast was so far out, that moment forever remains eternal and will never end (though after about 5 years, SWIM's friend felt as though she had "come back" to a reasonable degree). The experience did not leave much room for fear, though the tripper realized her control over even the most basic emotional reaction to this devastating and immensely infinite experience she was having... she could choose fear, or that which is not fear (I used to call this love, so we can go with that if SWIY would prefer).

SWIM's friend was convinced that what ever was contained in the highly potent 'hits' was impure LSD, from a 'sloppy' or 'lazy' chemist, more interested in the profit margin than the quality of the product and the well being of the final users... what is in "bad" or "tainted" acid? As far as SWIM can tell, LSD (49 these days, in contrast to preferable 25?) is responsible for the majority of effects, but that if the chemist did not thoroughly "wash" the end product, a number of impurities will remain and potentially affect the pharmacology of the product... what are these impurities and what kind of harm can they cause? Are their other "LSD-like end products that can be transmitted via blotter to end-users resulting in a similar but potentially "riskier" experience? As far as I know, the answer is no, LSD is LSD, but that impurities can affect the quality of the experience in a multi-dimensional fashion.

What is the scoop? Any intelligent/experienced pet monkeys out there?

[RaverHippie]

Look around and many things already are discussed here.

This thread is about all the things that aren't LSD which are unscrupulously sold as LSD on blotter.

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31806

as far as purity goes I'm not really sure there's a way to tell if there is pure lsd or a tainted or unwashed version. There's a thread around here saying that street lsd and a preserved vial of sandoz LSD-25 were exactly the same qualitatively when someone compared the two.

[sylenth]

hopefully some swimmer had a wise idea to get some more of those & eat them in quarters for future use. but smurf guesses not... as it sounds intense. sounds like the cook perhaps had a lab rat that escaped & accidently peed on the papers with out the cooks knowledge...

[Songcycle67]

Yes on Erowid there is this article in which many people who had experienced LSD from various street sources tried some 100% pure, sealed Sandoz from 1951 and could tell no difference:

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_article2.shtml

This is a very very lofty subject. There are many factors to take into consideration, a person's own set and setting being but one small (albeit important) part. LSD can illicit innumerable forms of what we now call psychedelic experience which makes it very hard to try to figure out how pure a certain sample is. It's not like cocaine where you get the same reaction every single time at a certain purity level. One can't look at it on any real analytical level unless they have the crystalline form, which is pretty rare. Even then small amounts of substances in the atmosphere can alter the *appearance* of the crystal.

Even more problems present themselves when we enter into the realm of the laboratory. We know that LSD-25 is produced in solution with a number of other isomers of LSD before the final step in production--cleaning of the solution--is carried out. Now to be sure, one could drink the uncleaned LSD solution and trip. At this stage you either have produced LSD-25 floating around with a few of its isomer pals or a glass of water. No question about it. However, if one is to assume that purity is, as Bruce Eisner writes, "next to godliness" this last step is the most crucial. The purification technique is called "chromatography" and it is here where the perfectly good LSD-25 is turned into what would be called "pharmaceutical grade" LSD-25.

Of the many isomers and proteins present in the solution of pre-cleaned LSD-25 two seem to be the focus of purists--iso-LSD and lumi-LSD. Both of these compounds have been rumored to be the cause of "bad trips" or "fuzzy visuals" since at least the 70's. It has been theorized that these compounds and others could act as "blocks" on the receptor sites to which LSD binds, but there have been no scientific studies to conclusively prove this.

So then in order to ensure purity a cook must run his final solution through the chromatograph many times before it reaches the state of a white, translucent fluffy crystal (considered the highest purity possible). According to Owsley, at 99% purity the compound ceases to purify further unless considerable heat is added, at which point the LSD would probably be lost.

Now these other isomers and proteins present in the final solution are fractions upon fractions of molecules inside a molecule that is active at a fractional dose. The real question is: how potent could a fraction of molecules be when taken in a dose that is in the microgram range? Well, many people think that because LSD is active at such low doses then it is possible that its isomers are as well.

So you see from this long sprawling explanation, there is just no real way of knowing how purity figures into the equation. But I will go so far as to say that I would bet that if someone is going through the trouble of attaining these highly scheduled substances and investing 3-5 days in the making of such a substances then that person would most-likely not decide to skimp on the cleaning process. After all, a lot of these blokes are making it for themselves and their friends--that's probably why they got in it in the first place. A lot of cooks take pride in the purity and methods of their process. There are definitely a few exceptions, however, as the nature of clandestine production of an illicit substance is inherently risky and if the cook involved is a novice or unconcerned with purity then they may speed things up on the purification end so as to get their batch out faster and avoid cops.

But there is no such thing as "bad acid"--either LSD-25 is produced in the reaction or it's water--and impurities are entirely debatable. There's no killer acid out there that's guaranteed to give you a bum trip every time. Unfortunately the same can't be said for the myriad of Research Chemicals flooding America.

Hope that long, rambling statement somehow helps.

Reputation Comments on this post:

	excellent, informative pot
	very quality and thorough response which seemed to be useful in answering the OP's questions.

[dexbud]

It has helped some... perhaps SWIY/M could discuss some of the potentially active isomers that are produced and eventually removed... some are active, right?

_DB_

[Songcycle67]

None of the three isomers of LSD except d-Lysergi Acid (LSD-25) are considered active in their own right: that is to say that when they were tested in the brain without the presence of other substances they caused no response. Unless my understanding is flawed, however, this does not mean that they couldn't slip into the brain and either change the reaction that occurs or, as stated above, block the receptors. To my knowledge there have been no studies done to monitor the effects of the presence of any of these isomers in concurrence with LSD in the human brain.

For the record the four isomers of LSD are:

D-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (the only active--commonly known as LSD-25), iso-LSD, lumi-LSD, and L-iso-LSD.

iso-LSD, and I believe lumi-, are both turned into d-lysergic acid diethylamide after a certain purity is reached in the LSD-25 solution.

[Panthers007]

That's the going logic. Unfortunately research was blocked from the mainstream in 1965 when Sandoz was told to stop supplying d-LSD25. And research into this is very expensive for any drug. As a result, we really don't know. We have good theories based on other models - but nothing concrete as yet. Hopefully...

[Stephenwolf]

Originally Posted by dexbud

LSD (49 these days, in contrast to preferable 25?)

there isn't an LSD-49... .only LSD(as you stated in your end point "lsd is lsd") the 25 just meant something along the lines of "This is the 25th chemical in this bunch that was isolated",as far as i know.

according to Erowid (not a definitive source by any means) there probably weren't any other LSD's... no LSD-12 and not LSD-49 or anything like that ...could have been say LHE-24 LMN-27 (made those up) Anything really... http://www.erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=3066

[dexbud]

Has anyone else ever heard the '49' rumor or misnomer? It used to be present in much online knowledge, explaining peoples' divergent subjective experiences from batch to batch of 'LSD'

[podge]

Swims confused, what exactly was the problem with the experience other than the dose being far too large for swiys friend? Usually people complain about their blotters not being strong enough, but its always advisable to test the waters with a half or a quarter just in case they are of high potency.

[raven3davis]

SWIM is a firm believer that there is clean vs. dirty acid. Now this is just an opinion derived from his subjective experiences, but some acid just feels a little more achy on the body. SWIM has tried batches that consistently produced the same kind of achy feeing in the muscles and general discomfort on the come down. Then he repeatedly tested a batch or more clean stuff that didn't carry any of those negative effects.

People are really split on this debate

read this article
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_writings1.shtml

then this
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_article2.shtml

This debate will never end.

Reputation Comments on this post:

i'll agree with you...puff recently got some fantastically strong acid that unfortunately has the nasty side effect of f...

[Songcycle67]

Originally Posted by Stephenwolf

there isn't an LSD-49... .only LSD(as you stated in your end point "lsd is lsd") the 25 just meant something along the lines of "This is the 25th chemical in this bunch that was isolated",as far as i know.

Yes this is correct. We know that Hoffman made at least 25 "versions" or derivatives of the LSD compound which were slight variations in the configuration of the Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) molecule, however, the number of compounds he actually made in total is unclear according to most sources. I believe the number is listed in My Problem Child by Hoffman, but my copy is on loan so I can't look it up unfortunately. I would assume, however, that there were at least a few more beyond the 25th synthesis. The 25th was the most potent, the most psychedelic, and generally the most interesting to Sandoz. There were apparently others that did something, I'm not sure what, but they performed at around 10x the active dose of LSD and were generally more fickle substances.

I actually missed the original comment about LSD-49. What the poster is probably talking about is ALD-52, which is an analogue...basically the LSD molecule literally in reverse form. Often called "orange sunshine." Not widely available due to difficulty of synth and LSD-25 being a required precursor--also quickly degrades to LSD-25 in the presence of the elements. If this is sold to someone and it isn't in a pill or some other thick, protective coating they should be very suspicious indeed.

For some reason this year has been the year of the analogue. So many people are selling their acid as ALD-52 and ETH-LAD (another analogue) to make it sound more exotic and expensive. There is definitely ALD-52 floating around according to SWIM, but he doesn't think that there is any ETH-LAD available on the "street" level. "Orange Sunshine pills" are also a really good way to pass off all kinds of nasty shit/research chemicals that are active at the milligram range and thusly can't be blotted.



And as for the debate about purity, SWIM too thinks that purification is important to the experience. We don't know what these isomers do to the experience, so all cooks should clean their product thoroughly so as to avoid *possible* contamination. One just cannot be too safe when dealing with substances of this nature--especially those derived through very precise chemistry.

The unfortunate truth is that when testing these substances once again becomes legal, I have a feeling that effects of purity will not be studied for quite some time due to the nature of the drug--you just can't get a solid result.

My resolution has been to test the reactions between the four isomers of LSD (including LSD-25) in a virtual brain with virtual LSD, a technique which is already being utilized to study this substance: unfortunately the research is mostly limited to the extremely specific reactions of different parts of the "virtual brain" under "virtual LSD." But I think something of this nature could be utilized to create a model for how the isomers work together.

[Stephenwolf]

"I further employed my synthetic procedure to produce new lysergic acid compounds for which uterotonic activity was not prominent, but from which, on the basis of their chemical structure, other types of interesting pharmacological properties could be expected. In 1938, I produced the twenty-fifth substance in this series of lysergic acid derivatives: lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD-25"- from LSD My Problem Child By Albert Hoffman

So lsd was just the 25th of the lysergic compounds he made. Says nothing about possible contaminates now...just giving the info i said about not having an LSD-49 a source...

[Panthers007]

Correct Stephenwolf: LSD25 simply means that this was the 25th Lysergic Acid molecule synthesized from Lysergic Acid - the parent molecule. Nothing mystical or mysterious - just the 25th molecule made. There is a whole series. BOL148 for instance. BOL148 was a favorite of the CIA. If you are pre-dosed with BOL148, LSD25 wouldn't causes it's well-known effects.

The list, and various rumors, goes on.

[Songcycle67]

Originally Posted by Panthers007

Correct Stephenwolf: LSD25 simply means that this was the 25th Lysergic Acid molecule synthesized from Lysergic Acid - the parent molecule. Nothing mystical or mysterious - just the 25th molecule made. There is a whole series. BOL148 for instance. BOL148 was a favorite of the CIA. If you are pre-dosed with BOL148, LSD25 wouldn't causes it's well-known effects.

The list, and various rumors, goes on.

Excellent addition! There were innumerable substances produced using Lysergic Acid Monohydrate as its base and if I'm not mistaken BOL148 is merely one example of the myriad of related substances which do in fact have a detectable affect on the effects of LSD-25 itself.

These are some of the most notable active analogues of LSD-25 as listed by Shulgin, for some reason ETH-LAD is excluded from this list:

ALD-52. 1-Acetyl-N,N-diethyllysergamide. This material has been explored in the 50-175 microgram range and there are a number of human trials reported, with varying conclusions. One found that there was less visual distortion than with LSD and it seems to produce less anxiety and was somewhat less potent than LSD. Another report claimed it was more effective in increasing blood pressure. Yet another could not tell them apart. ALD-52 just may have been the drug that was sold as "Orange Sunshine" during the "Summer of Love" in the late '60's. Or "Orange Sunshine" may have been, really, LSD. This was the focus of a fascinating trial where two defendants were accused of distributing LSD, whereas they claimed that it was ALD-52 which was not an illegal drug. The prosecution claimed that as it hydrolyses readily to LSD, for all intents and purposes it was LSD, and anyway, you had to go through the illegal LSD to get to ALD-52 by any of the known chemical syntheses. The defendants were found guilty. And yet, I do not know who has actually measured the speed or ease of that reaction. If ALD-52 hydrolyses so easily to LSD, and the body is indeed a hydrolytic instrument, then these two drugs should be absolutely equivalent in every particular, This is the ergot equivalent of the psilocybin to psilocin argument, except this is an acetamide rather than a phosphate ester.

MLD-41. 1-Methyl-N,N-diethyllysergamide. The 1-methyl homologue of LSD is has more of somatic than sensory effect, has fewer visuals and is less well accepted than LSD, with the range of dosages being from 100 to 300 micrograms. This indicates that it is perhaps a third the potency of LSD which is in accord with both pupilary dilation and reflex action. However, the cardiovascular responses are actually increased. Besides being less potent than LSD, it appears to have a slower onset but it is equally long lived. There is cross-tolerance between MLD-41 and LSD.

BOL-148. 2-Bromo-N,N-diethyllysergamide. This synthetic ergot derivative, along with its 1-methyl homologue MBL-61 (mentioned below) should be used as powerful tools for studying the mechanism of action of LSD in the human animal. It does not have LSD-like effects in man. At 6 to 10 milligrams orally, there are some mental changes noted. But in another study, 20 milligrams was administered a day to a subject for 7 days, and there were no reported effects. And yet it is as potent a serotonin agonist as is LSD. How can serotonin be argued as a neurotransmitter that is a major player in explaining the action of psychedelic drugs, when this compound is nearly without activity.

There are some suggestions that an intervenous route may be more effective. I have heard of effects being noted at maybe a milligram and a short (2-3 hour) intoxicaion following 20 milligrams administered over a 20 minute period. I was involved many years ago in a study of radio-labelled BOL-148 which was made by the bromination of LSD. I was quite sure that the only radioactive material present was BOL-148, but there could well have been some unreacted LSD still present which would, of course, still be psychoactive. The synthesis is not clean -- I was tempted to make an entry for this compound if only to reproduce Albert Hofmann's original published experimental procedure. He reacted 13.2 grams of N-bromosuccinimide (in 400 mL dioxane, with 1.2 liters of dioxane containing 25 grams of LSD. This gave 11 grams of crude produce which had to be recrystallized. The radioactive syntheses uses effectively elemental bromine, and gave yields of from 5 to 15%. Visualize that reaction! A warm flask containing over a quart of warm solvent in which there was maybe half a million doses of LSD.

1-Hydroxymethyl-LSD, 1-dimethylaminomethyl-LSD and 2-iodo-LSD. These three additional compounds are shown here because they were described in a synthetic flurry that followed the discovery the activity of LSD. But at the moment I know neither their internal Sandoz codes nor if they had ever been explored in man. This is a kind of frustrating catch-all entry, in that the long index will send you here, and once here you realize that nothing is known. Well, at least the compounds are known, and perhaps there is something in the Sandoz vaults that might be interesting. I do not have access to them.

MBL-61. 2-Bromo-N,N-diethyl-1-methyllysergamide. This is the compound BOL-148 (mentioned above) with a methyl group attached to the 1-position of the indole ring (LSD has a hydrogen there). This wold be an even more tantalizing challenge to the serotonin theory for centrqal activity of the psuchedelics, in that it is without any activity in man at an oral dose of 14 milligrams (similar to the inactivity of the BOL-61 compound, but it is spome five times more potent as a serotonin agonist. With it, as with the iodiniated analogue MIL, there are many examples of the compromising of scientific integrity in the quest for funds and recognition. Both compounds are as effective as LSD itself in displacing labelled LSD that is bound to the post-synaptic serotonin receptor sites in animal brains. But neither of them show any LSD-like activity. But both have been labelled with 11-C or 122-I to give positrol emitting forms that can be administered to man and localized in a positrom emition tomographt instrument (a PET scanner).

It is precisely due to the nature of the reaction between substances such as BOL-148 and LSD-25 that keeps me hanging on to the notion that blockage of the action of LSD-25 through its isomers is *possible*.

I must say, however; that, as Shulgin himself pointed out, we are prescribing great amounts of activity to extremely minute amounts of isomers in this theory. That is to say that for every 100 micrograms of LSD produced there would be roughly 1/1000th that much iso-LSD or lumi-LSD produced in the solution. So in 100 micrograms of LSD-25, before cleansing, you may have as little as 1/100th of 1 microgram of isomer. The current scientific trend says that no substance on earth could perform with any affect at that dosage--nowhere near it. So then you get into a lot of theoretical science and guess-work in trying to explain how these isomers could affect an experience. There is a law of science which says that the theory which requires the least amount of speculation is the most correct, and the isomer theory definitely requires a fair share.

[Lobsang]

Well really the only person that would really have an answer is someone who had taken LSD of different purity levels I suppose. And knew exactly what they were taking. Then one would know. Now for example it is said that the largest lab in history that we know of produces differing grades of LSD. The lavender was sold publically I believe and the fluff was kept for possible personal use and to give away to close friends. So the question would be why would someone in the know do this if it did not matter? If there were not differences? I mean it could be that even these people were just imagining a difference. But if this is not the case abd there is a difference one might wonder if there is something better than Sandoz.

[Songcycle67]

Originally Posted by Lobsang

Well really the only person that would really have an answer is someone who had taken LSD of different purity levels I suppose. And knew exactly what they were taking. Then one would know. Now for example it is said that the largest lab in history that we know of produces differing grades of LSD. The lavender was sold publically I believe and the fluff was kept for possible personal use and to give away to close friends. So the question would be why would someone in the know do this if it did not matter? If there were not differences? I mean it could be that even these people were just imagining a difference. But if this is not the case abd there is a difference one might wonder if there is something better than Sandoz.

Firstly I think that human testing of purity levels would be extremely hard to make accurate and reliable, unfortunately. As long as subjectivity is present within the brain of the host, the study will remain subjective and inconclusive. Descriptions of "bad acid trips" are hard for even those who have experienced them on many occasions to put into words.

As to the other point about why purify if it doesn't do anything, this was my question as well. The answer is a lot more on the simple, business-side of things than the mystical, unfortunately. Chromatography was initially used to basically make the product pretty while also ensuring the purity. LSD-25 at its lowest grade is a rather sloppy looking solution. Chromatography is used to strip away any unnecessary muck (mostly random inactive proteins) that would increase the chemical weight and to transform any remaining isomers of LSD into LSD-25, thusly changing a mess of various molecules in suspension into a fine, uniform, crystalline powder. The Swiss and Germans were perfectionists and they would've purified it through chromatography until it was as pure as possible. Yet another reason why modern cooks should do the same so as to get as close as possible to the original formula.