Article by David Nichols - Synthetic Chemist

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110105/full/469007a.html

I thought this was an interesting read - this guy has done lots of research on psychedelic/psychoactive substances, which among others included MTA - a substance which has killed at least 6 people.

I just thought it was interesting to see the RC scene from the side of a chemist who first synthesized some of these substances. Shows a little something about how the best of intentions can turn out terrible.

Share it around.. :love:

 

david nichols is professional. he was doing his job, researching. he went to graduate school to be a psychedelic chemist. its the gray market characters that messed up here.

 

before reading the article, i just wanted to say that the thread title made me think "this guy is going to be the next Shulgin"

i could be totally wrong. i wonder if this guy does any bioassaying?

edit: after a paragraph, the answer to that question^^^ seems like a no.
and whoops! this guy is probably almost as old as Shulgin.


MTA - methylthioamphetamine. that pesky thio group...keeps killing people. (it's in 2ct7)

 

david nichols has been around. he's done all sorts of work including most of the mescaline and lsd analogs. he made the dmt for rick strassman's study. he found a novel route to synthetic psilocybin.he also makes lsd for studies involving it.

 

^^^i knew a little about all that, so i dunno why i assumed he was young.

where can i sign up for one of those studies?

 

You can blame the RC market on the war on drugs directly. I think people would be perfectly happy using weed/opiates/coke/mushrooms/acid and would not have to find new and crazy shit. I know I would. All five of these things have been thoroughly tested, researched and are fairly safe in their basic form. Aside from acid people have been using the other 3 for thousands of years.

 

He wrote the Forward in PiHKAL. Plus, although the names are changed, he features in the biography part. He is a close friend of shulgin and has published several papers with him including the first paper on the pharmacological action of MDMA in humans back in 1978.

 

Isnt he one of the only chemists in the world that can legally make LSD?

 

The War on drugs preceded the RC scene.

There are non RC drugs that are used fairly often outside that list like Ecstasy, Meth and Ketamine as well.

 

If you want to say that only some drugs are "okay," I can understand that, but all the drugs on your list ought to be of some sort of set other than "people seem to do these ones the most." For example, opiates/coke have caused a lot more problems for anyone than any RC ever has and there have been plenty of studies on them, they are also not all that safe in their basic forms.

 

I think what David Nichols is saying, that he does not like amateur chemists and rc peddlers, looking over his shoulder because people are experimenting with compounds that he develops in a dangerous way, outside of a laboratory setting. The compounds he develops could potentially be very dangerous. I think he sees himself as opening many pandora's boxes, letting genie after genie out of their prospective bottles.