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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

#91

Post by masklinn »

non-entity wrote: post #28
throwaway9955 wrote: post #27

For those that want LSD but not have to be a criminal I recommend trying 1-P LSD which has the functional class of LSD without being illegal in most countries, happy tripping. If you're on the wall about trying it micro dose and work your way up to something functional.

Is LSD schedule I in the US? If so it might be prosecutable under the federal analogue act, although whether that act matters seems to be somewhat debated. I know some other countries have blanket bans on RCs and analogues as well.

> Is LSD schedule I in the US?

Yes. Most psychedelics are Schedule I. Though to be fair, that's in large part due to the UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances, of which only 11 UN member states are not party.

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#92

Post by CivBase »

mindfulhack wrote: post #35
seesawtron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tobacco and alcohol industry are getting government subsidies, bailouts and huge profit margins. Not sure about the other "illegal" drug manufacturers.

It's more acceptable and state-sanctioned to sell drugs that kill people while keeping them subdued, than ones that keep them alive and open their minds. I don't want to sound like a crazy 'conspiracy theorist' or a 'hippie', but I don't know to distill this sad and truthful statement more simply than that.

You might sounds less like a 'hippie' if you avoid the phrase 'open your mind'. It implies that psychodelics provide users with some kind of enlightenment rather than just hallucinations and euphorea. Makes it seem like anti-drug politicians are trying to hide some sort of dark secret which can only be unlocked by taking LSD.

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#93

Post by Bootwizard »

masklinn wrote: post #87
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.

> For some reasons the feds in the 90s were unusually interested in prosecuting psychedelics. Psychedelics = hippies = anti-war left. A well-known and somewhat similar "unusual interest" was in prosecuting crack versus coke.

Oh it wasn't unusual. It was intentional. A war on poor and minority (mostly black) communities starting with Reagan's "War on Drugs"

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#95

Post by tazjin »

CivBase wrote: post #92
mindfulhack wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more acceptable and state-sanctioned to sell drugs that kill people while keeping them subdued, than ones that keep them alive and open their minds. I don't want to sound like a crazy 'conspiracy theorist' or a 'hippie', but I don't know to distill this sad and truthful statement more simply than that.

You might sounds less like a 'hippie' if you avoid the phrase 'open your mind'. It implies that psychodelics provide users with some kind of enlightenment rather than just hallucinations and euphorea. Makes it seem like anti-drug politicians are trying to hide some sort of dark secret which can only be unlocked by taking LSD.

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 unlikely that they'd end up with the right perspective shift through some other circumstance.

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#97

Post by Nursie »

gallexme wrote: post #85
Nursie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was thought to be a pro-drug for LSD, but I'm not sure that's been proven. AL-LAD has also been spotted in recent years.

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.

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#98

Post by kerkeslager »

MayeulC wrote: post #60
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was arrested and searched the police didn’t even find the 200 tabs I had on me. They found everything else, but LSD is incredibly easy to hide from regular law enforcement. They found everything else, but in typical stupid-police fashion, they ballsed that up too and ended up entering a nolle prosequi (do not prosecute) at the district court level. The police prosecutor was sufficiently annoyed, and I was suff…

> but LSD is incredibly easy to hide from regular law enforcement Not that I intend to leverage that knowledge, but you can't just write this and leave it at that. Why so? I've never seen any LSD, so I am not sure why that would be.

Most people who have taken LSD have never seen any LSD either, because the dosage is so small. A strong dose is something like 300 micrograms--this amount of crystal is almost invisible to the naked eye.

This also presents problems for chemists, because measuring out such small amounts is prohibitively difficult. So typically they dissolve a measurable amount (say, 30mg) into a volume of liquid (water or alcohol) and distribute it across a sheet of blotter paper divided into 100 squares, so that when the liquid dries, each square contains the desired dose (in the example, 300mcg)[1]. This is why the image most people have of LSD is a half-centimeter by half-centimeter square of paper--they're not seeing LSD, they're seeing the paper the LSD crystals are trapped in.

Since I'm posting this under my real name, I should clarify that the reason I've researched this is that I did volunteer harm reduction at festivals. I don't even drink alcohol, let alone take drugs.

[1] To be clear, LSD at stable temperatures is a solid crystal. There's no such thing as "liquid LSD"--that's LSD dissolved in a solvent.

Re: LSD chemist William Pickard to be released from prison

#99

Post by throwaway0a5e »

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.

In the 90s the feds tried to go hard on gun crime and that just got them a bunch of pictures of crispy children on the news, not exactly the look they were going for.

In the world of use it or lose it budgets cracking down on psychedelics seems like a pretty safe way for the DOJ to keep burning money without incurring too much negative publicity.

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