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LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

psymposia.com

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Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#121

Post by echelon »

jacobush wrote: post #44
082349872349872 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine once asked his TA about (my memory fails here) either how to activate a leaving group or set up a protecting group at a given hypothetical structure. The TA, without batting an eyelid, responded "I think you'll find all the precursors are scheduled, too." The next lab, the TA, presumably having reflected a bit and in the middle of an unrelated discourse, added "remember, always characterise any synth…

What is a group ? (Group of people, or some chemical compound, or some kind of corporate structure, protecting possibly illegal stuff going on in one of the groups?) Are all the precursors scheduled, or is the punchline that the TA was wrong? Why would one do well to remember to characterise any synthesis undertaken? To protect oneself against legal action by showing that the labs purpose was synthesising legal compo…

Leaving groups are the part of the molecule that are designed to "leave" during a particular reaction

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaving_group

You design your synthesis around this and try to pick pathways that are easy, have the highest yields, and don't produce undesirable products you have to remove.

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#122

Post by gallexme »

Nursie wrote: post #97
gallexme wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AL and ETH n a bunch more (mipla ...) are all very different to lsd, they only show chemical similarities, but so do melatonin and dmt :)

Having tried AL and the original, I'm not sure I could spot any sort of difference. It was years apart and it's all very subjective though.

I tried ETH AL and 1p half a month apart , they all been a lot of different

AL lad 150ug was happy ish almost no visuals, very slight mind changes

ETH lad 75ug played most with my mind visuals were weak but very distinct to lsd, touch was amazing,but was extremely easy to get afraid of smth(thought loops etc)

1p lsd 125ug was just like lsd with maybe more vasoconstriction atleast hands felt colder n hikes were more exhausting than lsd

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#123

Post by a2h »

d33 wrote: post #31
kitteh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also need precursors (like ET) which is difficult to get. Though China is a pretty good source if you can pull it off (and for other things like safrole, etc.).

What's ET? It's pretty difficult for me to Google this acronym given that it mostly finds "et al" when I couple this with LSD queries. Is it ergotamine from the other subthreads here?

Ergotamine Tartrate.

Interestingly, ET is used to treat cluster headaches and migraines.

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#124

Post by zelly »

skissane wrote: post #117
plmu wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been reports of huge overdosis, e.g. by miscalculation by a factor of 1000 or even more. The physical harm was little to none. The mental harm varied greatly, there were even some people who got improvements in pre-existing mental conditions; with lsd in general, but also with large overdoses in particular.

A case report from 1974 says that massive LSD overdoses can cause bleeding and hyperthermia, symptoms which could potentially be fatal without medical attention (but, in this case, medical attention was received and all survived) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1129381/

Wow, I wonder if they spoke about it publicly after the fact. There aren't a lot of stories like this. Did they remember the experience? Was it really a coma or some out of body experience? It would be interesting to see how differently their lives went versus their peers.

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#125

Post by zelly »

a2h wrote: post #123
d33 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's ET? It's pretty difficult for me to Google this acronym given that it mostly finds "et al" when I couple this with LSD queries. Is it ergotamine from the other subthreads here?

Ergotamine Tartrate. Interestingly, ET is used to treat cluster headaches and migraines.

LSD treats cluster headaches, for some people permanently:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/06/lsd-alleviates-suici...

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#126

Post by peroporque »

kitteh wrote: post #10
smabie wrote: post #8

For some reasons the feds in the 90s were unusually interested in prosecuting psychedelics. I'm of the opinion that all drugs should be legal, but even if I wasn't, I think I would still question why LSD manufacturers were getting such long sentences around that time. Never really made sense to me.

Friend of a friend got caught with two sheets in the 90s and I think he got 20 years for each one. Downstate Illinois. My recollection was the weight of the blotter paper was considered as the drug itself and that easily increased the federal sentencing guidelines.

I will never understand how people in the US are okay with this. Don't people care about justice at all over there?

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#127

Post by tazjin »

CivBase wrote: post #105
tazjin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common miscommunication here is that people perceive the statement as saying "psychedelics are the ONLY way of learning certain things", whereas what they should perceive is "psychedelics are ONE (very efficient) way of learning certain things". The thing is that for people whose normal life does not include pursuing knowledge and understanding just for the sake of it (and I think this might be most people), it's…

Is there any credible evidence that psychedelics reliably and "efficiently" help people learn things?

I don't know what you'd consider "credible evidence". You can find tens of thousands of anecdotal accounts, but you're probably looking for something more formal.

It's likely a futile search: Research into these topics is difficult to get approval for, even when it's more "tangible" things like effects on depression or PTSD. In my opinion, we'll probably need another few decades to get there (though there has been some encouraging societal progress in some places recently).

We won't get anywhere in this conversation because we're on two different sides of a fence, and I certainly can't describe what being on this side is like and can only invite people to come over here. It'd be like asking you to describe what the colour green looks like to you.

Which path around, or over, the fence they choose is up to them ...

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#128

Post by nyolfen »

gverrilla wrote: post #90
tutfbhuf wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the mexican drug cartels able to manufacture LSD in scale and export cross-border?

demand for lsd is low nowadays. doesn't compare too cannabis or cocaine or mdma. it's not a very good party drug lmao

LSD use is actually higher than it has ever been in the US. i apologize for lacking a source, but this was something i saw about a week ago, in the context of highlighting its relative popularity with young, college-educated americans.

that said, it’s hardly a cash cow in the way meth and fentanyl are; and as someone said elsewhere on this thread, one person could probably suppy the whole country.

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#129

Post by onemoresoop »

plmu wrote: post #106
skissane wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1970s, my father worked as a research chemist for CSIRO (Australian government research lab), doing research into new pharmaceutical products. One of his colleagues decided it would be fun to manufacture some LSD after hours for personal use. The colleague made an error in calculating the quantities involved and ended up taking an accidental overdose. It didn’t kill him, but he spent some time in a psychiatric…

There have been reports of huge overdosis, e.g. by miscalculation by a factor of 1000 or even more. The physical harm was little to none. The mental harm varied greatly, there were even some people who got improvements in pre-existing mental conditions; with lsd in general, but also with large overdoses in particular.

The former Pink Floyd band member Syd Barret fried his brains from LSD but it is not clear whether he ODed or did too much of it over a long period of time. Once the initial paranoia subsided he became a complete recluse.

Having said that, I think LSD is a fantastic drug but that is not for everyone. I’ve got a friend who did it constantly for over 2 years and he is a completely sane person. He claims it was one of the experiences that put an end to his alcoholist tendency which might as well be genetic. His dad died due to alcoholism.

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#130

Post by saul_goodman »

skissane wrote: post #117
plmu wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been reports of huge overdosis, e.g. by miscalculation by a factor of 1000 or even more. The physical harm was little to none. The mental harm varied greatly, there were even some people who got improvements in pre-existing mental conditions; with lsd in general, but also with large overdoses in particular.

A case report from 1974 says that massive LSD overdoses can cause bleeding and hyperthermia, symptoms which could potentially be fatal without medical attention (but, in this case, medical attention was received and all survived) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1129381/

Don't buy the hype, it's impossible to die from overdose of LSD. The one case I've read of it happening was highly suspect.
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