is it really acid?

i am thinking of doing LSD, or mushrooms this summer, and with mushrooms, you can tell that it is a shroom, but i cant tell if acid is really acid, and i really dont want to take the wrong shit. How do i know if it is really LSD and is it common to get something else?

 

the only true way to tell is to try it.. or test it in a lab which is costly.

 

Well there are are a few ways to know it is actually lsd and not something else. First of all, lsd is the drug that can fit on blotter, so if your getting it on blotter, its either lsd or paper. Also lsd glows under a blacklight.

 

If you get paper, take 1 and trip for around 8-10 hours with a good bit of mind fuck and colorful visuals, then it's LSD. The only other thing that you MAY get on .25" x .25" blotter (standard size) is a DOx. DOx's usually last a good while, though. If you put it on your tongue and about 5 minutes later, your mouth tastes like you licked a 9-volt battery, it's real.

 

if it tastes bitter its not real L and get ready for a long intense ride. It really sucks that many areas are flooded with this "LSD".

 

Yeah, I concurr. Chemically taste = not LSD. Also most people don't realize that DOx chemicals aren't actually "psychedelic." These chemicals are psychoactive and they produce enhancement of color such as you would find in a light mescaline trip, but they are basically just souped up speed and they excite the same neurons as speed (but then so does mescaline).

However, the DOx chemicals will make you feel like you've just ingested about three tabs of high dose adrenaline, and not much else. Most users report feeling "bored" and "dirty" as being a stand-out of the experience. The only thing psychedelic about these drugs is that they will distort space and time in a manner very much unlike speed. Users very rarely report closed eyed visuals on mild doses.

The length of time for come-up is also severely prolonged as compared to that of LSD (usually 2-4 hours on DOx vs. 30 minutes-1 hour on LSD), as is the comedown (usually at least 12 hours for DOx vs. 8-12 max. for LSD unless very potent).

 

How can i tell the difference between acid and DOx? ..because i realllllyyyy dont want 12 hours of some other shit. LSD is either on paper or blotter, so if it is on paper, is it definitely cid? Or could it still be fake!?!? I have a minor heart condition, and i just dont want anything to physically affect me, cause if it is all psychological, Ill be alright. I dont know what DOx is and/or if it is worth the risk...

 

"DOx" are a class of chemicals first identified by Alexander Shulgin as being psychically active in the 1950's. The most well-known of these chemicals is DOM (marketed in the 1960's as STP). Several of the DOx chemicals, most specifically DOB, are passed off as LSD in both liquid and blotter form. DOB is psychically active at 200ug, but it is usually blotted onto thick, absorbent blotter.

DOB will drastically speed up your heart rate. If you have a heart condition I would recommend that you never put yourself at risk for taking this drug. DOM (STP) is no longer distributed or manufactured by anyone to my knowledge, and it is only active at the milligram level.

Other research chemicals such as 5-MeO-DMT and 5-MeO-AMT are only active at the milligram level also, how ever this can be passed off as LSD when sold by the vile or in pill form. In a vile one can usually detect a severely "bitter medicine" style taste, other hints that you've gotten one of these is getting off really hard on one tab. If you take a pill of 5-MeO-AMT, at a standard dose, it will produce a state resembling "cartoon psychedelia," as I call it. People who use this drug report intense visuals well beyond the boundaries of LSD, Mescaline and Mushrooms, no matter the dose.

LSD-25 should be a nice, smooth, clean trip with subtle visual alterations and a distortion of space/time.

 

so what kind of LSD should I get to ensure that it is real. On paper, or blotter? I really just dont want to have to worry about it when I trip.

 

I dont really know much about LSD so im sorry if i sound retarded..lol

 

IMHO a lot of people are dipping the research chemicals DOB, DOI and Bromo-Dragonfly, all basically types of "psychedelic" speed, onto blotter with pictures to make it more easily passable as LSD.

All the best stuff I've gotten has been on plain, thick white paper or in liquid form. Geltabs (or windowpane) are less likely to contain any research chemicals as well. They are a relatively safe bet. You're more likely to run into real LSD on blotter than in a vial, but unfortunately this increases the risk of getting speed shot right into that heart of yours via DOx.

The bottom line is that if you don't have a trusted connection it's all in the hands of fate. Don't try to buy LSD at jam band festivals as this will also increase your risk of purchasing some "Lavender" -- LSD mixed with god knows what else.

If you do decide to take the risk--let the dealer know that you know your shit. Look up everything you can about LSD. Ask them the dosage per hit, the purity, etc. They will be less likely to give you bunk acid if you let them know they're dealing with someone who is educated on the subject. Especially if it's someone who can find them after they've just been sold a .25" x .25" square of DOB and beat the living shit out of them.

The bottom line is that you can't know until you try it, but when you do:

Speedy/Irrational/Dirty high with minor brightening of colors and sour tasting blotter/liquid = DOx.

Calm/Warm/Rainbow-like opened eye visuals/Things slowly wafting and swaying = LSD.

It's really too abstract a feeling to describe, but those are the standouts for me.

 

doesnt matter what u get it on its all the same lsd whether its on blotter or sugar cubes or what have u. and the best way to make sure ur getting lsd is to take confirmed lsd which is somebody whos done acid b4 takes the batch of stuff ur gettin and confirms it is in fact acid.

 

That's not true. When you produce LSD-25, several other isomers of lysergic acid are produced. While this is still, technically, LSD-25 it is not technically "pure" LSD-25. It's not until the cleaning process when purity is established. During this process the chemical (LSD-25) is run through a machine called a chromatograph. This machine tells you how many impurities are in the solution (LSD-25) as well as what they are. The chemist then adds the appropriate reagents (chemicals) to clean the LSD to his desire.

Therefore purity can range anywhere from 10% (usually completely unheard of these days--probably the infamous "brown acid" at woodstock) all the way up to 99.9% (which both Owsley Stanley and Tim Scully claim to have gotten on all their batches post-1965). While the common man can usually get about 70% pure, or silver, LSD there is a lot of White Fluff (about 90% pure) and Needlepoint (95%+).

So what's the difference?

Well these Lysergic Acid isomers floating around in your finished LSD-25 solution, if not taken out through chromotography, act as sort of blockers to the receptors in your brain where LSD is active. This manifests itself usually in "darker" more "manic" LSD. Many people relate experiences on impure batches to those experienced on morning glory seeds.

Basically: the purer you get it, the closer it resembles "cliche" acid. You get all aspects of the trip: visuals get more intense, hallucinations become more real and it seems that the purer your batch, the more potent as well. A 100ug trip on Needlepoint for example would take about two Silvers of the same quantity to re-produce the same results. Perfectly good LSD-25, if uncleaned, can be completely non-psychoactive.

The LSD experience itself (if in a good set and setting) should feel clean, warm, and shiny. You can definitely "feel" it when you get a batch of lower purity--as this tends to give a considerable and often hard to deal with body load.


Having said that, most people can usually at least find Silver in their town. Most acid is Silver these days it seems.


I also agree with st. stephen, without someone who knows what to expect from Good LSD trying the stuff themselves, it's impossible to know.

 

songcycle, I've never heard of isomers that block the activity of lsd. So these isomers are psychoactive? If so, it seems like they would have been isolated themselves and research would have been done on them (ie Shulgin, Hofmann, etc). If they are not active, I don't see how they could block the lsd receptor sites. And even if they did block some wouldn't this simply result in a low dose lsd experience rather than some mutilated form of an lsd trip?

Take for example Hoffman's first intentional dose of LSD and how he used comparisons from the activity of other ergot alkaloids to make his guess at what the smallest active dose of lsd was likely to be, and yet he still largely underestimated its potency. So this suggests to me that the risk of encountering non-lsd ergot alkaloids that were active in the microgram range would be unlikely. And again, if some were found, it makes sense that they would have been isolated, studied, and reported in the official literature.

 

Mark,

The isomers ARE technically psychoactive in that they perform a function in the brain. Unfortunately that function is to fit into neurons that, with pure LSD-25, would be doing its most "psychedelic" work. Most spefically these contaminants include iso-LSD, lumi-LSD and LSA-112. These isomers were researched by Hoffmann et. al. during their research into Ergot and its effects on the vascular system as well as many other leading chemists. They indeed seem to produce an antagonistic effect on the LSD experience. Nichols apparently synthesized every synthesis of LSD from LSD-1 all the way to LSD-25 and hardly any of them were psychoactive. None even came close in potency. The closest being active at some 10x the normal dose of LSD-25.

One can only speculate why isomers present such as iso-LSD would "mutilate the trip," but I'd say it's fair to assume that this is due to sort of a natural "cooling down" process, while LSD-25 is trying to "heat up" the psychedelic activity in your brain, the iso-LSD "cools down" the reaction. It's like water having to produce steam in the presence of heat.

Here's some info from an article by Bruce Eisner in a 1977 issue of high times. Eisner says his argument is mere speculation, but in recent years it's pretty much become Dogma/obvious and Owsley/Sasha/Scully and co. agree with his observations:


The manufacturing of he necessary precursors is a long process, and a great many new occasions for impurities can arise. During the preparation of the main precursor - lysergic acid monohydrate - various ergot alkaloids and cycloalkamides of lysergic acid will contaminate the final product if not later removed by proper chromatographic procedures. Which contaminants do appear depends on whether the starting material was ergot, ergotamine tartate or morning-glory seeds. And once these proper precursors have been synthesized into LSD, various isomers and lumi-LSD (LSD saturated with water) may contaminate the final product if not removed by proper chromatographic procedures.

Thus, chromatography, the highly refined procedure that the organic chemist uses to isolate specific chemicals, is the key process by which impurities may or may not be removed from he eventual LSD crystal.


SOURCE: http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_writings1.shtml



EDIT: Here's an interview with Owsley and Eisner where he sums it up really well:

B: So the earliest acid you got was mixed — some of it was good and some of it wasn’t good?



O: Most of it was terrible. It would make you high, but it was so full of impurities and other things that it was a totally rough trip.



B: Where do you think the impurities come from?



O: I’m not God. I can’t look into a brownish liquid and tell you what’s in there. There’re all kinds of derivatives of ergot containing various derivatives of lysergic acid that are active in some way in the body. St. Anthony’s fire, do you know about that? It was the result of ergotamine in the ergot growing on rye which was made into bread in the Middle Ages, made your fingers and toes drop off. They are very complex, many of the derivatives, and most of them are active — and when you are doing a synthesis you get all kinds of things that hook up to the lysergic acid molecule. Breakdown products, isomerization — who knows what’s in there?



I’ve had this conversation with Sasha many, many times. I’ve said: “Sasha, as you approach higher and higher purity, you get more and more magical.” He said, “Well, you’re ascribing a very high activity to very minute amounts of impurity.” I said, “I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but there’s something going on there.” Then later I got to thinking about this, and realized that perhaps the impurities are like a kind of catalyst. A catalyst can catalyze a reaction at extremely minute quantities, and often these catalysts are not affected by the reaction. Who knows that there isn’t some catalytic/synergistic effect that occurs? Where you have 100 mcg. of LSD and you have nanograms of some strange fellow-traveler impurity that actually catalyzes the effect of the LSD on the nervous system into something else. I’m not going to say that this is what’s happening, or that I necessarily believe this, but I do know that as you purify LSD you very quickly come to a point where it will not dissolve in the solvent from which you have crystallized it. It gets to a point where it’s insoluble in the methanol, and you have to heat this for such a long period of time in fresh methanol that some of it breaks down. And once it has broken down, only then will it dissolve. So there’s a lot of strange stuff going on with this “chemical” that doesn’t necessarily work according to the usual principles of chemistry. There’s no more chemistry to making LSD than there is to baking a bloody cake. You just have to know how to do it. What parts to use, what temperature to set the oven, etc. Most of it is published, and that which isn’t published is available to an investigative mind. The correct and accepted term for those who make the entheogens is “cook.” I like to think of it as a sort of Gourmet Chef, master of Fine Mental Cuisine.



Now, Sasha is a chemist. I’m not a chemist, I never pretended to be a chemist. I’m an artist. There’s no more chemistry to making LSD than there is to making a bloody cake. You just have to know how to do it. What bits to use, what temperature to set the “oven”, etc. Most of it is published, and that which isn’t published is available to an investigative mind. It helps to be smart, if you’re bright and you pick up on things and pay attention, you can pretty soon figure out what was left out of the published account. On the other hand, a chemist is a person who, wanting to make a compound, having an idea of the structure, evolves in his mind a synthetic process to produce it. To verify the structure of a known original compound is the usual reason for development of a synthesis for a naturally occurring or semi-naturally occurring compound. He is synthesizing this compound in order to prove its structure, or to provide a means of manufacturing it other than extracting it from a plant. A chemist is a highly skilled person. I don’t have any of those skills. What I did is like following a recipe.



SOURCE: http://www.bruceeisner.com/writings/2004/08/interview_with__2.html

 

Thanks for the thoughtful response.


I'm familiar with the Eisner article you mention. The interview with Owsley was something I hadn't seen though.

In general I disagree with Eisner's speculations about lsd being much worse nowadays than it was back in the 60s. Idealizing the past is so common and myths surrounding "orange sunshine" tend to grow and evolve into all sorts of nonsense. I'm also not much persuaded by Owsley's theories, as he had some pretty weird superstitious notions attached to the production of lsd.

I agree with Shulgin's statement when he said “Well, you’re ascribing a very high activity to very minute amounts of impurity.”
Most of the underground chemists seem to get wrapped up in their own grandiose schemes and notions and hence come across as fairly un-objective. If Hofmann or Shulgin stressed the importance of purity and pointed out the likelihood of isomers affecting the experience significantly, I'd probably get on board with the idea. But I won't bank on the credibility of Eisner, Owsley, Scully, Sand, etc.

 

Take some LSD-25 that hasn't been run through a chromatograph. Owsley may be full of shit at times, but I think someone who made as much and took as much as he did would notice the differences in different purity levels.

I think basically it's just a huge mystery--everything about this chemical is non-standard. I would think that the same could be said about it's isomers. Just the fact that LSA appears in both the plant kingdom and the fungi kingdom is almost unheard of. But I can tell you that in my experience LSD at 50% purity is very dark and abstract compared to that of 95% purity. Anyone who has gotten a yellow vile knows the perils of impure acid trips.

EDIT: Also, about the people at Sandoz. Swiss and German chemists are an extremely careful, well-trained lot. Hoffmann never talked about impurities because it would've been implied that the substance should be cleaned very thoroughouly. He also rarely talked about issues concerning the details of the synthesis of LSD or street LSD, apart from saying "it's impure." The same can be said for Shulgin.


As to your comment about old heads talking about how "it's not the same," I disagree completely. If anything it has gotten better. Just because these kids in the city are being sold trash doesn't mean the finest crystal isn't floating around out there. It is.

 

My concern would be that if this lsd had been put on blotter and therefore you didn't have the apriori notion that what you were about to consume was impure, then what would happen?
How much is it a self-fulfilling prophesy?
Over the past 9 years I've had acid from a few different sources (at least I'm guessing so), and the potency has certainly been varied, but I wouldn't conclude that one batch was more impure than some other batch. There were good trips and not-so-good trips from each batch, and so I'm cautious about jumping to the conclusion that one batch was impure and tend to chalk any differences(that weren't dosage related) up to subjective effects like set and setting.

 

I've taken different purity levels in the same set and setting and had intensely different experiences. LSD at 50% feels like being poisoned to me. It definitely could be subjective, though.

However, if Chromatography does nothing for the final product, why clean it?

 

I believe that it helps with converting the unreacted reagents into finished product. Also it would make the finished product more compact, more white, more appealing in general.

For example if I were to eat a spoonful of dirt mixed with salt, the dirt really wouldn't have much of an impact on the salt that would get absorbed into my body, but its still a good idea to clean up (especially if toxic chemicals are involved) even if it doesn't significantly affect your main purpose all that much.

I'm not saying that purity isn't important, just that I don't think it isn't as big of a deal as its typically made out to be.