2020.01.05 19:38 meeknelly Top quality research chemical vendor
2018.06.29 16:24 BurlyMayes (John McAfee) This might be the craziest Bath Salt story you ever read.
Hello Everyone. I've been lurking here for years and just recently decided to join up. I'm hoping to get some help here.You see, somewhere along the way while John was trying to freebase bath salts he seems to have stumbled across an entirely new drug. At least, that's what he thinks. Every chemist and chemical company tells him what he has is still just plain old MDPV and that's not surprising -considering all he is doing is concentrating it, but he is convinced his freebase is still somehow "diifferent". Like the alchemists of old, he has magically transmuted the properties of the mundane to the truly divine... and by "divine" I mean after ingesting just 5mg of his magical bath salt zombie crack, he and his 17 year-old girlfriend had wild untamed monkey sex for 8 straight hours.
I'm a huge fan of MDPV. Not the white hydrochloride - it's inconceivable that anyone on the planet would willingly put that into their bodies -- I'm talking the freebase form. I think many of you that don't bother to freebase it yourself have at least tasted the freebase version when it was widely available as "tan mdpv". I think it's the finest drug evere conceived, not just for the indescribable hypersexuality, but also for the smooth euphoria and mild comedown.
My question is this: How can I more easilly separate the oil from the precipitate using some mechanical means?
Here's the nightmarish process I've been going through so far:
First I precipitate and then place the container on a foot vibrator for 30 minutes to raise the first oil (the oil is heavier than water, by the way):
https://i.imgur.com/ypK4gWw.jpg
Then I painstakingly touch each droplet with the point of a hyperdermic, which causes the oil to climb up the needle. Then I slowly extract the needle until the surface tension at the top allows the oil to float.
https://i.imgur.com/y0n5tk5.jpg
I can only do a small amount at a time or else the oil collects into a ball large enough to sink again. I draw off the oil with a filed down needle point and then spend another 30 mitues of vibrating until the next batch rises. As I proceed, the droplets become smaller and smaller until they are barely visible. The complete extraction takes 5 to 6 hours.
For anyone who freebases mdpv, by the way -- the oil is dangerous beyond belief. When I first started doing this I accidently got a few drops on my fingers while handling a used flask and didn't sleep for 4 days. I had visual and auditory hallucinations and the worst paranoia of my life. It's all the bad aspects of white mdpv times a hundred. If you think the comedown from the white mdpv is bad, rub this oil into your skin. You'll be begging for a hundred milligram dose of the white in exchange. Use rubber gloves.
Anyway --- can someone tell me how I can mechanically separate the oil from the precipitate in less than 5 hours? I definitaely don't want to use a reagent. I'm not a chemist or any kind of scientist by the way, just someone who refused to accept the "new mdpv".
Thank you.
If you do try it, here is what happens (the white HCL is on the right, the precipitate left out for 24 hours in water and air is on the left, the precipitate after 48 hours is in the middle. It continues to degrade all the way through dark brown over the course of a week. The color in the center is what you're looking for in terms of best characteristics. When dried it remains stable):The good news is, when you are a millionaire living in Belize freebasing bath salts you have plenty of time on your hands to make more bath salt crack to freebase with your 17 year old girlfriend and post about it on the Internet!
https://i.imgur.com/W1HY1Qr.jpg
Note: The above posts are simply freebasing instructions for the HCL form of mdpv. To my knowledge there is no synthesis involved or transformation into any chemical other than mdpv.
P.S. DO NOT TOUCH THE OIL. Extremely dangerous. And never take more than 5mg of the tan colored form at one time.
I just tried it with 10 ml of water, 200 mg of pv, 150 mg of soda, and no heating, and you can see the oil residue on the sides of the beaker, so 100 ml and cold solution should be no problem - (although to FULLY recover your pv you do have to heat it). I didn't wait for the powder to fully precipitate before I took the pic - you can see it just starting to form the slightly darker thin layer on the bottom - just wanted to see if the oil was produced and precipitate would begin.Meanwhile, rumors begin circulating around Belize that the eccentric millionaire who lives in their neck of the woods is becoming increasingly... eccentric. He spends days on end and all hours of the night hidden away in his jungle compound with a small harem of teenage girls... just what the hell is he doing in there...?
https://i.imgur.com/VwfyZ1s.jpg
I can only assume that your pv is something other than pv.
If you do get it right, here's what it should look like after 72 hours of evaporation. (I scraped the lower half for drying for the next pic):
https://i.imgur.com/fLFyJNf.jpg
Here's the lower half after drying and before grinding back into a powder:
https://i.imgur.com/yH1yjO1.jpg
After 96 hours of evaporation you get the following. It's still very good, but not as good as the previous color:
https://i.imgur.com/aeFP9Lw.jpg
Both of the above colored forms are highly potent. Don't eyeball dosage. If you're used to the white pv, you will certainly overdose on this stuff because it is three times heavier by volume than the white stuff. If you achieve a color similar to the first one above, then it's potency is hard to overstate. Always weigh it and never do more than 3mg at a time. 3 mg of this is not much larger than a pinhead.
A side note: heat IS required to begin the transformation. For example, if you don't heat the solution at all during precipitation you will be left with a light yellow substance that has exactly the same poor characteristics of white mdpv. If you don't provide enough heat the same thing will happen. You'll know when not enough heat has been applied because after 24 hours of evaporation your mix will have a light greenish yellow cast, with no orange tint. There will be no tan hue. It will look like this:
https://i.imgur.com/8jicqYD.jpg
If the oil has a nice egg yolk color to it, then the heating has been perfect:
https://i.imgur.com/0PQuTc7.jpg
If the yellow-green color happens, don't worry, you haven't lost anything.. Add water, pour it back in the flask and heat slowly as described in an earlier post (two saucepans) for a couple of hours. Redo everything and the tan mdpv will appear.
There are dozens of things that can go wrong during this process - none of them irreversible. And there are a few possible end products that might look like the tan, but aren't (overheating the solution, for example, produces something, after evaporation and drying, that looks exactly like tan mdpv but merely gives massive, incapacitating headaches when bumped -- no euphoria, no high, no hypersexuality). If you run into problems I'll be happy to help.
I've processed 23 kilos of this stuff in the past year or so, and bump it myself every day - in fair quantities the hypersexuality... is beyond belief. I have had a number of acquaintances (both male and female) who have rubbed their genitals way past the point of bleeding and still couldn't stop.Holy shit! This dude claims to have discovered a psycho-sexual drug so potent, you will rub your dick into a bloody stump after rage fucking the family dog after just one bump!
In all honesty, a first time user, or a user on a large dose, when presented with food, will simply figure out a way to include it in the ongoing sex play with their partner. If alone, they will figure out a way to fuck it, or shove it up their rectum. This is not a joke. Everything on the Tan becomes a sex partner or a sex aid. If only visually. I will not, anymore, let anyone on Tan be alone with my dogs for example. (I have 14 dogs). Twice in the past year Tan users (one man, one woman - both after major massive doses, to be fair), attempted to have sex with one of my dogs. One user (again after a hugely massive dose), was arrested in a local village here for publicly molesting strangers. Fortunately, in my country, such a crime is punishable by a small fine at worst. So perhaps the appetite "suppression" that initially comes on is really an appetite "disinterest". Water though!!!! - dehydration is a major danger throughout. Force yourself to hydrate when on the Tan. It's way worse than MDMA, especially in higher doses, in terms of suppressing thirst. Watch your urine. If it gets darker, stop what your doing and drink water.
Over the past two years I have played with mdpv using ether, tuloene, xylene, baking soda, galacial acetate, vinegar, water, ethanol and dirt from my garden(the bacterial connection). I have precipitated, heated, frozen, incubated, dissolved, evaporated, combined and separated every possible combination of precipitate, solution and oil. In the process I have come up with substances that were less than enjoyable to ingest. I am my only test subject for these experiments. I temporarily blinded myself for three hours after drying and ingesting a brown goo that appeared after five days of incubating an odd gray precipitate after an etheacetate experiment with pv. I once ended up with a dark brown substance that looked similar to the darker tan pv versions. It gave me an incapacitating headache that lasted 4 days. I had overheated the pv oil during precipitation and created something horrible. I got PV oil on my skin and didn't sleep for 72 hours, during which time hellish visual and auditory hallucinations had me locked in the bathroom where I hid in the bathtub for 30 hours. My first hit of the acetate salt that I created from the tan had me hallucinating again for a few days. I had not considered that the salt version of the tan freebase might have dosages measured in micrograms. I should have guessed from the huge residual slush left over from the Acetic Acid wash. But I didn't. I bumped 3 milligrams. 300 micrograms is a large dose.
What I'm saying is that my body is barely being held together, and what little cohesion is left is the result of vitamins and pure will power. So I just don't have the courage to go down the acetate road. The HCL road has used me up.
You should have seen some of my forum posts on other boards when I was overdosing on pv.
And this might be the place to talk about "Pure Tan". My first post in this thread alluded to the process, and visually showed some of the procedures. I purposely obfuscated a little, because, well, I did a lot of work to figure out how to make it pure, and it's not really necessary for the average user anyway. The quick and dirty, which anyone can do, is well explained above and produces, IMHO, the finest chemical ever to appear on this planet. I'm a perfectionist, however, and spent the better part of this past year honing a purification procedure. I won't talk about how to do, because it wouldn't be germane to the average kitchen cook. It requires, among other unwieldy implements, a rotovap:Now... in case you think our man is simply obsessed with the singular pursuit of his "tan" (his name for the his special MDPV crack) you should know he is open to all avenues of exploration as evidenced by the following photos he shared with his new drug forum friends.
https://i.imgur.com/36zxTSR.jpg
An Airclean system:
https://i.imgur.com/kdRWgoj.jpg
A reasonably powerful microscope that will connect to a computer (so you can do detailed, microscopic measurements), and an incubator:
https://i.imgur.com/Zsn7vx0.jpg
It's not a fun process. Five consecutive full 12 hour workdays will produce only this:
https://i.imgur.com/gJBzWqJ.jpg
A one milligram dose of this, whatever THIS is, is scary. A 10 mg dose, unchaperoned, would be unquestionable fatal, or at least massively harmful - mostly from the uncontrollable insanity it would bring into your life. Keep in mind that the end product of the "quick and dirty approach" that I outlined contains less than 10% of this substance (precipitate, unavoidable loss through evaporation, mdpv contamination, etc.), so a 5mg dose of the "quick and dirty" is a good time. A 5mg dose of the pure would be a time you would never forget, and probably never want to repeat.
What I do here, with my friends and acquaintances who, rightly, worship this stuff, is mix it 50 to 1 with ground up Excedrin, and wrap it in 25mg doses:
https://i.imgur.com/kw0jmx4.jpg
Why Excedrin? First, large doses of the Tan is socially harmful, at the least, and people are people. They don't use the best judgment sometimes. Powdered excedrin, bumped or plugged in doses of more than 200mg in a single day, will cause massive pain, bleeding and discomfort. It is a deterrent to crossing the line into extreme danger. Second, daily use of the Tan causes a a slight background headache for some users after a few days (me included). 25 mg of Excedrin powder, bumped, removes it entirely. But.... since people are people, a number of folks have figured out how to remove the Excedrin by mixing the batch in a large quantity of water. The Excedrin remains in suspension for 10 or 15 minutes. The pure Tan falls to the bottom almost immediately. They siphon off the suspension and are left with an extremely dangerous substance. Dangerous because it is utterly impossible to measure a safe dosage of the pure substance, without possessing a scale costing thousands of dollars.. there have already been harmful events with people who have "purified" my Excedrin mix.
A local brothel owner (prostitution is legal in my country) talked me out of a large amount of Tan and provides it to his working girls and their customers. The idea was to simply increase business by having hornier customers and more authentic product. It worked for a while, and then girls started taking larger doses and giving customers larger doses. They began leaving and running off with customers - some after a single contact with the customer. Two of these men were married, had good jobs, and children that they loved. It has to be obvious, even to the most casual observer, that this is massively disruptive and borders on insanity.
If a person takes a large dose of the Tan and has the misfortune to have no partner at the time, then truly terrible things happen. A number of men, and women, have molested strangers after massive doses of the pure product (which is why I no longer provide it to anyone other than trusted friends - everything else is cut 50 to one). Twice, users on large doses have tried to molest my dogs. Again, even the most casual observer will see the danger in this.
I have distributed over 3,000 doses exclusively in this country. They call it SPT (I named it) and it is a seriously hot underground topic here. I know of at least a dozen people who spend virtually full time playing with this, and hundreds trying to get samples, which I dole out with meticulous care. Anyone caught sharing this with another without my consent doesn't get any more.
"Tan" is not the only thing that has come out of mdpv, and I am not the only person producing stuff. I try to keep track of all the recreational products on the world market, looking for constituents that provide evidence that other people are walking down this same path:So... what to do after you've exposed yourself on the Internet as a rich third world drug fiend sex addict?
https://i.imgur.com/HwMYB8B.jpg
It also contains trace amounts of a Salvia Divinorum based product. I've been playing around myself with combining tiny amounts of Salvia based chemicals with the Tan - Hugely Awesome, but I can't get a dosage that works for everyone yet.
For those of you who have tried Salvia, you will recognize the leaves below - the most potent naturally occurring hallucinogen:
https://i.imgur.com/8cPqdCH.jpg
Salvinorin-A, the active ingredient in Salvia, when processed correctly, yields a hypersexual compound that surpasses the Tan (if you can even get mind around the concept), but Its side effects for even a tiny overdose are debilitating (uncontrollable shaking, frothing at the mouth - which oddly doesn't detract from its sexual appeal if both partners are on it). So minimal doses are required, and the effects of these small doses are additive when combined with the Tan. The Salvia based Chemical in this Bolivian brew is different from the one I use, but very close. I've been trying to figure out how they made it.
I suppose it's time I should introduce myself.But of course, after a three day bender freebasing bath salts and fucking your teenage harem girls the paranoia finally sets in:
My name is John, and my main focus is the effect of medicinal tropical plants on bacteria, and vice versa. I don't need to tell you my exact location, because it doesn't really matter. "Imagine there's no country", as another John once said.
To do any decent research in this field, I had to be near tropical plants. Jungles have tropical plants. So I moved to this place:
https://i.imgur.com/IVo0rCS.jpg
until supplies could arrive, after which I built the lab:
https://i.imgur.com/hTVlLli.jpg
And stocked it with stuff that I would need in order to do research:
https://i.imgur.com/bsb1l8o.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/4lsJKC3.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/otdK5OS.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/mOWHDDs.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/VsM5pmz.jpg
Then, I went about the task of bringing some small civilization into the heart of darkness:
https://i.imgur.com/mNkugsG.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/UhiGB8V.jpg
]Ok. So I did what I came here to do. I've had fun and I hope I've given some of you food for thought. But I have to get back to the real world. The on-line world is more of a distraction than the self induced effects of the many experiments I've done using my own body over the past year or so, and I have work to do.However, a few more bumps of the zombie sex crack and John is back with gusto describing his sexcapades with teenage girls under the influence of his mystery drugs!
I'm going to delete all of my posts in this thread. I'm afraid that unless I can answer questions for people, the information will be more confusing than helpful. I myself won't have the time to log back on here. I may lurk again from time to time though. Two days should be enough time for those of you in the middle of making Quick Tan to ask your questions and get your answers. Those of you I've given my email to in private messages: That email address won't be valid in a couple of days. Those to whom i gave my phone number: Same thing.
So ask what you need (if anything), before i move on. Not trying to be dramatic, I just can't spare any more time away from the work. I've been on a semi-sebatical since I started this thread.
You are a good bunch of people.
Impossible to stay away from this thread. The dance is seductive. It is entirely possible, I believe, to break every known sexual taboo and indulge in activities that many would describe as "monstrously depraved" with the one that you love and have both partners feel elevated by the experience.But then John disappears again with one last cryptic post.
I have photos of the boss fucking dogs in my safe at home. I think my job is secure.Where did John disappear to? Well, perhaps not surprisingly -after admitting on a public forum that you are experimenting with powerful hallucinogenic sex drugs in your home lab with teenage girls and then passing this stuff out to "thousands" of people, the cops are going to be a tad bit interested... even if it is a third world country and you are worth millions of dollars. So on May 2nd of this year, the GSU (Gang Suppression Unit) raided John's home. During the raid they found a cache of firearms and a 17 year-old girl along with piles of cash and large quantities of mystery powders.
2012.08.10 16:53 tabledresser [Table] IAmA former meth cook and medical researcher who used illegal drugs to treat my mental illnesses. Reddit said I should write a book, so I'm giving it a shot. AMAA
| Questions | Answers |
|---|---|
| Does your son enjoy breakfast as much as Walt's? | No kids thankfully. I'm still in my 20s. |
| What did the authorities charge you with? | I was charged with possession of a schedule I drug precursor, with intent to manufacture methamphetamine. Someone calculated that I could make 2.8 grams of methamphetamine with what I had. For comparison, this is roughly the weight of a US penny. According to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines this is somehow equivalent to possessing 50 grams of heroin or 50 kilograms of marijuana. It's also supposedly worse than involuntary manslaughter in an offense involving reckless conduct. Because this was a federal charge, I will be a convicted felon for the rest of my life, unless a US president pardons me. If I had been buying my drugs from a dealer, (most likely supplied by Mexican cartels) I would have been able to do a drug court program, I would not legally be a felon, and I probably would have been able to put it behind me by now. Instead, my sentence has just started. |
| can you describe the legal process that you went through? | I was on pretrial supervision for two years, during which my lawyer got permission for the judge to sentence me outside of the sentencing guidelines. If I was sentenced in the guidelines, that would mean 2-3 years of federal prison. Just recently, I was sentenced two three years of probation and 8 months of electronic monitoring, over two years after the crime I committed. |
| I know its vastly more complicated, but it seems like you are punished more for being a smarter person. | I think you're right, although I would have phrased it more like, that the laws are not designed around people like me. This was true of the rehab and mental health systems as well. They're designed to deal more with your "typical" criminal. |
| If I had been buying my drugs from a dealer... | Well, a few reasons. First, it wasn't available in my area. Second, I don't really trust drug dealers. Third, it'd be expensive. Fourth, I trust my own chemistry skills more than I do some random meth cook. I could keep going. |
| Why didn't you do exactly that? Seems like you went through an awful lot of trouble for this... | Part of it too, was that I didn't want to be dependent on someone else for my supply. |
| Are you the one who knocks? | Looks like we have a winner for the first Breaking Bad joke. If experience has taught me anything, it won't be the last. |
| On a more seriuos note, what's thing you learned about yourself or life that you haven't stated above? | I learned that sometimes you need to feel depressed, in order to get a better perspective on your own life. Someone who has too much self-confidence and feels great all the time, probably overestimates his own worth and abilities. |
| Is it any good? Breaking bad - the synopsis kinda turned me off the idea of watching it. | It's good if you like gruesome, tense, nail-biting type entertainment. It's very... gritty. |
| Just read that that is the biological reason for depression. | I think you mean the evolutionary reason for depression. And yeah, it probably is. |
| Only 5 points for that comment! are you kidding me! | If you liked my comment, you'll love my book! j/k... but not really... |
| One of the interesting things about having bipolar disorder and using personality-altering drugs, is that it gives you some insight into the way other people think. It's like that line from the song Bittersweet Symphony goes: "I'm a million different people from one day to the next". I read a study that found a high incidence of bipolar disorder among writers, and I think I can see how it could help, at least some of the time. | |
| Biological works in that context too but thanks tweaker. | I think "biological" would refer to the underlying cause as it relates to brain chemistry, whereas "evolutionary" would refer to the benefit to the organism. |
| How accurate is the portrayal of meth cooking/dealing in the TV show breaking bad? I like to think they do a good job showing real life. Do they? | I don't know anything about the dealing part. I've never even bought drugs from a dealer. The cooking part is fairly accurate, although they do make a few mistakes with the chemistry though. First, they mispronounce "methylamine", calling it "methylmine". Not a huge problem, but whatever. Second, the genius of Walter White's formula is that supposedly it can produce enantiomerically-pure dextromethamphetamine. Basically, meth exists in two chemically-identical forms that are mirror images of each other. A right and left hand form if you will. The right hand version is the psychoactive version, and the left hand version does virtually nothing but dilute it. If you have just the right-hand version or just the left-hand version, it will form crystals, but if you have both together, it will form a powder. Thus "crystal" meth, is just the psychoactive isomer. |
| Unfortunately, Walter and Jesse mention using platinum oxide and mercury-aluminum amalgam for reductive amination, something that is absolutely NOT possible without getting a racemic mixture, ie, a mixture of both isomers, so that part is very clearly inaccurate. | |
| If you used platinum oxide or mercury aluminum amalgam for reductive amination, you'd still get methamphetamine. It's just that it would be a less desirable form of methamphetamine, ie, not the superb-quality stuff they're supposed to be making. If they wanted to deliberately leave out information, they should have just had Walt invent a "magic" hydrogenation catalyst for reductive amination, and just never give out the details of the formula for the catalyst. Just say it's an organometallic ruthenium/iridium chirally selective hydrogenation catalyst or something. That would make it a) theoretically possible, b) satisfactory to real chemists, and c) give out absolutely zero information to wannabe meth cooks. The way they approached it hints that their science advisers may be DEA chemists. | |
| All it takes is one semester of organic chemistry :/ | Yeah, it's really a very easy chemical to manufacture. Although if Walt actually created a catalyst with such a high degree of chiral selectivity, that would be pretty impressive. |
| You make a good point about not "giving away" how too cook meth on a tv show. | Honestly, the Internet makes it so easy to get this information, I'm not sure it matters, but they do like to be able to cover their asses. |
| Writing a book is easier if you have an electronic ankle bracelet? Awesome. I've always wanted to finish my book. I'm off to finger some kids. Thanks. | Not easier, it's just there are fewer distractions. You still have to contend with Reddit though. :-/ |
| I love the breaking bad reference in the name. I've seen almost every episode of breaking bad, is there any situations you get in that also happened in the show? | Not many. Everything I did was on a much smaller scale. The scene in the RV, where there's a whole bunch of opened blister packs of decongestants on the floor, is a dead give-away for a meth lab. That's what I always tried to make sure my lab didn't look like. Also, the scene where Jesse escapes the house and Walt sees him. Some of the stuff in their lab looks like what I was using. Plastic funnels and coffee filters, for example. Some of it was more professional and looked more like Walt's stuff too though. |
| Most of Breaking Bad centers around large-scale drug distribution, which I had no interest in. I was only looking to supply myself. | |
| I have to say ... the scenario you describe seems depressing. Are you going to write a depressing book or are there moments of joy and redemption that you have experienced? | Oh, yes, there are definitely funny, happy parts that are much more pleasant to read. That excerpt just happens to be from a depressing part. |
| Read about the transsexual psychiatrist, who was actually really good, but not too many people went to her because she weirded them out. | |
| Read about me, drawing pictures of naked women, then trading them with other inmates for Little Debbie snacks and soup. | |
| Read about "Trucker Jesus", the long-on-hair, short-on-teeth inmate with a heart of gold. | |
| There are a lot of ups and downs in the story I plan on writing, for sure. My only concern is that the story is going to end on a question mark. No one knows what happens next. But I guess that's life for you. | |
| I've been taking Noopept for nearly a month now and have been experiencing some really bizarre dreams lately. Have you experienced any messed up dreams after starting your Noopept regime? | I don't think Noopept has interfered with my dreams exactly. I have noticed that it's only effective for me at about 20-25 mg. If I use too much, it just totally stops being effective. It's the only medication I've ever taken that's been like that. |
| Also, how does Vyanese compare to Adderall? How about compared to meth? | For me, the difference between meth and adderall was a lot like the difference between adderall and caffeine. Vyvanse seems to be a lot like adderall, except it takes 2-3 hours to start working, then slowly builds up and slowly comes back down. I kind of prefer the regular instant-release adderall, because it starts working faster, and I can take one in the afternoon and still be able to sleep at night. |
| What do you think of krokodil with respect to how it's affecting Russian society? Do you think that America will ever see it as widespread as it is in Russia? | I think that Russia is having many of the same problems we are: a huge segment of their society feels useless and powerless, and has turned to drugs as a means of coping. The problem isn't krokodil, it's that people don't feel their lives are worth living. |
| I don't think this drug will ever become popular in the US. We're too rich, so we can afford better drugs like heroin. Also, it's made from codeine, which is restricted in the US. The reaction they use to make it actually uses chemicals that are already hard to get in the US, so there's really no chance it could take off. | |
| Will it be a picture book? If so are you planning to self illustrate it? | I don't think so. It's supposed to be written like a novel. Probably in the 200+ page range, but I'll have to see how it goes. |
| Have you ever considered going into the pharmaceutical field so that you can work on legal drugs that can help out people in the same situation as yourself? | The trouble is, there's a sort of blind spot in the currently available pharmaceuticals, due to the fact that some drugs are addictive to some people. For instance, opioids work GREAT as painkillers. If you're in pain from a recent surgery, the majority of people can take an opioid painkiller for a week or two and be totally fine, with no addiction at all. The drug will just do its job. But because a minority of people could develop an addiction, or already have an addiction and are hungrily eyeing that prescription bottle, companies are actually trying to develop less effective drugs to deter the addicts. Addiction potential has a higher priority than effectiveness, in most cases. |
| Stimulant drugs are similar in this respect. The push in the pharmaceutical industry is towards useless ADD medications like Strattera, that don't have any abuse potential but aren't very effective. Since my problem with many drugs has often been their lack of effectiveness, and because I have used addictive drugs before without ever feeling the need to redose, I felt I was not likely to develop an addiction. Thus, I felt it would be worth the risk to test drugs in this pharmaceutical "blind spot", which includes drugs like 4-methylaminorex. | |
| TL;DR: If a drug is addictive, even for a small percentage of people, it can be extremely difficult to get it approved. | |
| When you bake a cake there are some ingredients that you can use more or less of that will ruin a cake. If you use too much sugar, for instance, it might not be as big of a deal as using too much milk. Are there tight metrics when you cook meth, just like baking a cake? | Making methamphetmine is more like pruning trees than baking a cake, in a way. You aren't mixing everything together and then that's your stuff. You're using a chemical that will "prune" the OH groups off of pseudoephedrine molecules. When you're done, you use an extraction method to separate the "pruned" pseudoephedrine molecules (which are now methamphetamine) from everything else. Methamphetamine quality is a function of how well you do these two steps. If the first one isn't done well, there will be pseudoephedrine mixed in at the end. If the second one isn't done well, there will be other crap mixed in at the end. A lot of times people will cut corners with purification, because the more garbage you leave in it, the more weight you have. |
| Yeah you could only really use a mantle, a naked flame in any real chemistry set up is generally far to risky! That's still really impressive, how did you stop the degradation of the formed Grignard? Surely as soon as you isolated it it would react with even a trace of water? Or did you just keep it in the oil? Still really impressive though. | If you keep your flasks stoppered as often as possible, I think it's easy enough to keep water out. When I did the reaction, I reacted it with the already-prepared substrate almost as soon as I formed the reagent. Amines are really easy to recognize, and I could usually recognize aromatics. Ketones and aldehydes tend to smell a little fruity, as do esters, whereas hydrocarbons had a "chemical" smell. Alkanes and alkenes smelled different too. Alkenes smell stronger, and a bit different, whereas alkanes have a much milder odor. Yeah, this is hard to describe. |
| Don't go near that! Jesus that stuff is terrible... You just don't rid of that smell! Yeah ethers and chloroform need a lot of inhaling to really knock you out, the former can actually make quite a good hangover cure if you were out the night before!... I mean.. GLP is important... ;) Yeah a typical extraction method, actually makes sense there, did you have to use any crystallisation methods or did it just crystallise? And this may already be answered but how long were you doing this before getting caught? | You can use recrystallization methods later, to purify it. I used ethyl lactate because it evaporates slowly and I like the way it smells. |
| I was doing that for about two years before I was caught. | |
| of all, best of luck with your book. I hope it gets the attention it deserves! Secondly, you say your a medical researcher, what background did you have prior to this? | My degree is in engineering. I was taking courses in grad school, and I ended up doing very well in a class that was taught by a PhD student. He introduced me to his professor, who invited me to work with him in his lab. I ended up working with a local cancer center to analyze their procedures for bladder and prostate surgery. It was really a great experience, while it lasted. |
| What happened? | I was arrested, and had to stop using drugs, so I couldn't work at anywhere near the performance levels that I did before. |
| Even though I was accomplishing a lot, there were other problems. I talked about them a lot in the first AMA I did. Basically, my judgment wasn't as good, I was overconfident, and I would get so focused that I'd lash out at people who got between me and what I was working on. | |
| How much tolerance did you build to your former "habit"? | Not a lot. By the time I was arrested, I was using a little over 50 mg a day at the most. I don't think it was ever really addictive to me. Once I'd use it, I'd stop thinking about the drug and then just go do something else. I always used it as a means, not an end. |
| I know what having an addiction is like though, and I think if someone had that reaction to meth, it could really easily lead to some bad places. | |
| Wow, that still seems like a lot, given that the prescription formulation for ADHD comes in 5 mg doses. | It also comes in 10 mg doses. I was using more than is usually prescribed, but much, much less than addicts typically use. A gram (1000 mg) in a day is a very common amount for an addict to use. |
| What are your thoughts on other Amphetamines? | I'm not going to point anyone toward using those chemicals. A couple months of using MDPV back when it was "legal" was far worse for me than methamphetamine ever was. If meth has the same effect on some people as MDPV had on me, then yeah, I can see why it has the reputation it does. |
| Do you know much about them/can you talk about what your impressions are? | For anyone unaware, these chemicals are unregulated by any laws, but are powerful psychoactive drugs. It's illegal to sell them for human consumption, but as long as you sell them for some other reason, like as bath salts, or as incense, there are no restrictions on their sale. So the people selling them are telling buyers "don't consume these! wink wink" |
| Thoughts? | The police seemed to think that face-eating guy in Miami was using "bath salt" type drugs, but it turns out he didn't have any of them in his system. |
| I can imagine a bit of trial and error when it came to experimentation of what works for you. You care to talk about some of the error involved? Interesting AMA. | St. John's Wort. |
| Vitamins. | |
| Exercise. | |
| Sun lamp (for seasonal affective disorder) | |
| SAMe. | |
| 5-HTP. | |
| DL-phenylalanine. | |
| L-tyrosine supplements. | |
| Piracetam. | |
| Aniracetam. | |
| Fish oil. | |
| Herbal thyroid activator. | |
| Adrafinil. | |
| Modafinil. | |
| Prozac. | |
| Lexapro. | |
| Wellbutrin. | |
| Mirapex. | |
| Abilify. | |
| Selegiline. | |
| Effexor. | |
| Lamictal. | |
| Depakote. | |
| Neurontin. | |
| Pristiq. | |
| Parnate. | |
| Going on a gluten-free diet. | |
| Is that what you meant? I don't deny that many of these things work for some people, they just never worked for me. | |
| I didn't see ashwagandha on that list. Also selegiline with Phenethylamine works wonders for sociability, though it's no bueno for anyone with an addictive personality. | Selegiline had no discernible effect on me. I'm not sure why, since it's supposed to be really effective. |
| How about the cooking/distributing? | If you're caught selling meth, you WILL go to prison for a long, long time. You're much better off selling weed, which is a lot less harmful and a lot more popular. |
| "They'll legalize any drug as long as it keeps you producing. That's all they give a shit about." - Doug Stanhope. Link to youtu.be. | That video reminds me so much of the court-ordered therapy rehab crap I've had to spend the last two years sitting through. I've got to keep jumping through the hoops though. I haven't got much say in the matter. |
| Is the reward worth the risk? | It depends on the person. Methamphetamine can be incredibly addictive and damaging to some people, but other people are able to use it therapeutically. For instance, it can be prescribed as an ADHD medication under the name Desoxyn. I believe that the risks are much higher for people who snort it, smoke it, or inject it. These methods of use produce much more of an addictive rush, as opposed to just taking it orally. |
| Have you ever manufactured and/or used lsd and what was your experience with it? | LSD isn't worth making unless you make a lot, and have all the right chemicals, which are all list 1, and hard to get. Also, you need ergot alkyloids, which you get from a grain fungus. You pretty much have to infect a field of rye with ergot in order to get enough to make LSD with. I've heard that organic rye has quite a bit of the stuff in it, but that was from an episode of House, and it probably wasn't accurate. |
| LSD isn't worth making unless you make a lot, and have all the right chemicals, which are all list 1, Weren't the chemicals you needed mostly list 1? how'd you get by without the DEA nabbing you? | Some chemicals are list 1, but have a lot of uses besides drug chemistry, and thus are pretty easy to obtain. Other chemicals are list 1, and have few uses outside of drug chemistry. The meth chemicals are mostly in the first category, the LSD chemicals, mostly in the second. Does that make sense? |
| Perfect sense. i just thought they watched everything on that list regardless if there were legitimate uses or not. | Oh, they do. But drug chemists just say that they're using the chemicals for legitimate purposes, and police would need a warrant to prove otherwise. |
| Let me preface this question by saying that I don't really have a problem with what you do to help yourself in the privacy of your own home. I don't mean any disrespect by my question, I'm honestly curious. | My plan is to tell my story in as balanced a way as possible. I've actually been downplaying the positive effects and exaggerating the negative ones a little. In the book, moreso than in the AMA. |
| Most everyone I've worked with has said they started meth because they felt depressed/suicidal/otherwise unhappy, and thought that meth would help them forget about their problems, often because someone told them it would. So, do you find it morally problematic to tell this story publicly, which may encourage people to try and self-medicate with meth in a way that ends very destructively for them? Why or why not? | I do think it's important to portray drugs as the double-edged sword that they are. And I do intend to show the dark side too. The excerpt at the beginning, I think, shows that side. I was in a filthy, dangerous makeshift lab, and could only focus on the next step of my experiment. |
| Are you the danger? | Only to the leftover pizza in the fridge. I break into their home and devour them. |
| And I don't even knock. | |
| So what's the name of your new country? You are talking about people that stood up for something, you did drugs. There is no comparison. | By that logic, Rosa Parks was just lazy. |
| And so what if I'm standing up for the right to do drugs that haven't been marked up 10,000% by some pharmaceutical company? Just because the government doesn't like it when, say, you smoke weed, it doesn't mean they should have the right to brand people as criminals because they choose to use it anyway. That's not a free society. | |
| Sure, you can say we're free to do whatever we want as long as we obey the law, but technically this is true of North Koreans as well. A free society means allowing people to make their own decisions about their lives, even if you think they're making the wrong ones. | |
| Did you ever consider trying other amphetamines? i would have thought the reason methamphetamine helped was because it stimulated dopamine release, why not try something like MDMA as it is less addictive/toxic and more potent? | I've been prescribed Adderall, Dexedrine, Vyvanse, and Ritalin. MDMA is actually more neurotoxic than methamphetamine, and less potent, but because its users don't tend to use it on a regular basis, it doesn't cause as much damage. |
| Did you ever consider making your own variants based on the basic amphetamine structure? | Yeah, but I'm not allowed to do any chemistry experiments while I'm on probation. And that's going to be for a long time. |
| I'm interested in chemistry. I have a decent amount of time on my hands, and no interest in going back to school. Any suggestions? | I guess it depends what type of chemistry you're interested in. Chemistry's a pretty broad field. |
| Organic. So I can start to understand how chemicals in my body interact better. I'm into fitness. | I read about chemistry on wikipedia a lot. Also, sciencemadness.org is a great resource for aspiring or amateur chemists. If you're part of a university, you can usually access chemistry journals via sciencedirect.com. If not, you can just use some college student's computer, or account. If you can get guest wireless access at a university, that's usually enough to be able to look up chemistry journals. |
| How volatile and fragile is the process of making meth? | It's pretty easy if you know what you're doing. It also depends a lot on the specific process, as there are several. Also, whether or not you're starting with a precursor like pseudoephedrine, that's really simple to make into meth, or toluene or styrene, which is not. |
| Basically, it depends which of the many reactions you're using. | |
| How much actual violences occurrs in the process from getting materials, cooking to selling to a bigger group or to individuals? | From what I've heard, usually a group of people will pool their resources and get a batch going, then split up what they make, with the guy who knows what he's doing getting the lion's share. That's just what I heard in jail though. |
| Will you please put the other one there as well? It was the most interesting piece of writing I've read all day and I'd love to show some friends. Pretty please? Edit: nevermind, you posted it elsewhere. | Well, I'm certainly glad to hear you liked it. :) |
| I know of the many uses for psychotropics and cannabis, but I can't for the life of me see how meth could be used for therapy. Mind enlightening me? Do you feel the same about any other sort of "hard" drugs like PCP or coke? | Methamphetamine is available via prescription under the name Desoxyn. Doctors in the US can legally prescribe it, for ADHD and narcolepsy primarily. When taken orally, it's not as addictive because it doesn't give as much of the rush that addicts are after. |
| Cocaine was used in tonics throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two Catholic popes even endorsed it. Sigmund Freud was a big fan of it too. I think again, a lot of the difference was, they weren't smoking it or snorting it or injecting it. | |
| PCP isn't as dangerous as it's made out to be, but it doesn't seem very useful for anything either. Other drugs in this class, like ketamine, are widely used in medicine though. | |
| I know your exact scenario. My husband also has a record- the felony was dropped but he was still charged two misdemeanors. He was not medicated at the time of the incident. He went to jail for a few days, got fired... It was very hard. After that he couldn't keep a job to save his life. | If he has a drug-related conviction, a lot of times they won't give you financial aid. This is probably one of the most backwards laws I know of. How the hell do they expect people to turn their lives around? |
| He used to be an electrician working on multimillion dollar yachts. He is EXTREMELY intelligent and a perfectionist when he does work. But that's the thing, like you said, some days you can do it and it's awesome and your work is amazing and other days you can't even leave the house. | I've learned a lot of coding on my own. I used to be pretty good at it, but it seems my coding ability is directly proportional to the level of stimulants in my system. What type of coding is he trying to get into? If I were him, and looking to get a good job, I'd learn about writing financial software. That's where the money is these days. |
| He is trying to get financial aid to go back to school for computer coding - something he could do by himself without really having to work with people. I hope he gets the aid because without it I'm afraid he will slip back into major depression. What are some hobbies that you do besides writing to keep you motivated and "busy" (at the risk of using the wrong word there) ? | Lately, I've been reading a lot, and spending a lot of time on Reddit. Also, working on my book when the depression is at bay. I've got a project I'm working on, that I have to finish before I get my masters degree. The home confinement has made this work hard to do, but I've still made some progress. |
| Unfortunately this isn't craigslist but I figured it was worth a shot anyways. Would you consider including an E-book version and the actual book for $50 rather than two copies of the book? | You could just pay twice, once for $25 and once for $15. That way it'd be $40 instead of $50. I think you can do that anyway. I can make that an explicit option. Once a Kickstarter project is funded, they give you tools to survey everyone, and people can put down special requests or instructions. |
| Oh wait, is there something else in the $50 package that you want? If so, sure, I can do a book and an ebook. Next time I edit the Kickstarter page, I'll mention that this option is available. | |
| The whole idea of asking you random questions appeals to me in addition to getting the book(s), but since I completely understand your situation as I too suffer from ADHD and bipolar disorder, I want to help you out as much as I financially am able to. | Thanks. The kickstarter thing is actually starting to look good. I mean, $425 after a day and a half isn't bad at all, I think. It'd be nice to move out of this basement, and be able to write as a job. |
| Ok. I wasn't able to change the Kickstarter reward, so I just made a new one. FYI, anyone who gets a reward that includes multiple books can choose to have any number of them be eBooks instead. You'll be asked what you want via a survey, if this project is funded. | |
| Did somebody set you up? | No, I just made a stupid mistake and got really unlucky. |
| Breaking Bad meets White Collar? | I thought Walter White was white collar? He used to be anyway. |
| I was referring to the meth cooking part of Breaking Bad and the anklet part of the show White Collar haha. | The truth is, the joke's on them with the whole home detention thing. I'd just be on Reddit all the time anyway. :-p. |
| How much money did you make as a cook? | I never sold it. I did grow about a few marijuana plants for myself and friends, but only just enough so that they paid for themselves. |
| This is facinating. I dont have money for the kickstarter but i will buy the book when i can. | I'm not sure if/how it could be published, since it contains a lot of stuff publishers wouldn't want to touch with a ten foot pole. On the kickstarter page, you can go the ebook route for $15, or the physical book for $25. If a publisher picked it up, it might be available from them at some point, but if not, I'm not sure how it'd be available. Maybe electronically or something. I know there are ways of self-publishing that way. |
2012.06.05 20:42 desmondsdecker Can you please explain the synthesis of the "bath salts" drug, or more pertinently mephedrone/MDPV. I haven't yet found a sufficient answer.
2012.06.05 06:17 tabledresser [Table] IAmA person who managed a shop selling bathsalts for 2 years until it the shopped got raided and shutdown.
| Questions | Answers |
|---|---|
| What were in the "bath salts" you sold? | Honestly the only people who knew were either lab-workers or the makers. the packages were shipped to us in boxes full of small packages that had next to no information on them....and surely no ingredients. I tried them one time after working there for a few months to understand the hype and I wouldn't ever recommend doing it. It is essentially synthetic meth. people buy lots of it because they are told it's like speed. which it is, but more. you speed. your emotions are exaggerated A LOT. you feel warm, want to talk a lot and touch everything. heightened sexual stimulation. |
| You seem to assume that all of them are the same. I tried a bunch of them and each salt feels different. | Definetly not the same. we sold about 8 different kinds. the addicts would flip out if we didn't carry the top 3 (white girls, white rush, or blizzard)...the other ones were cheaper but 95% of people didn't like think they "were good enough" |
| Link to en.wikipedia.org. | I was aware. lots of research was done. but again...when they put a ban on these things, they don't disappear. The makers just find new-lesser known, even more dangerous chemicals to get the same results. |
| I also didn't order these. The owner of the company did. I just sold them....and carded everybody, never sold to somebody intoxicated or that showed signs of abuse. | |
| Did you see many of the gas industry workers coming in for K2/bath salts in order to get high but attempt to beat the drug tests? Did you ever become friends with any of the people you sold bath salts to? Did you card people when they attempted to purchase bath salts? | I never took note to gas-industry people specifically. the k2 stuff was sold to pretty much everybody...It was in Penn-state area. College town. lots of students in extra-curricular than were being tested. Middle-aged workers. 9 times out of 10. if you CAN smoke the real stuff....you wouldn't bother buying the fake k2. |
| Some of the other employees who were all good friends of mine, used them. They were smarter about it...once in a blue-moon people. Some of the regulars I sold to were very nice. One girl who bought form us 5x a week had her car break down and I drove her 40minutes home. we carded EVERYBODY that wanted to buy any of the synthetics. the other shops in the area that sold were raided the same day we were. hospitals would call us and beg us to stop selling. we were the only store that didn't get in trouble for selling to minors. | |
| Jesus... Fake piss costs $40. k2 can give you seizures. WTF is wrong with people? | Yeah we sold fake piss too....or legally it was "a golden shower enhancer" hahahhaa. one of the more funny things. all detox products we sold for "personal cleansing use only" .....not to "pass a test" because that would be trying to cheat a test for illegal substances and that would be very illegal for us to sell. =p. |
| How much are they compared to say, weed? | This was the 2 years ending last last summer. compared to weed.....that depends where you are and how much you get your green for. we sold bags that were 1/10th of a gram. TINY amount....but about enough for 8-10 uses. and the bags were 30-ish a piece. 5 or more-20$ |
| Of the 8K how much was from the salts? | The people were usually calm....we wouldn't sell if they weren't. ALL the salt-head customers were regulars. in at least 3 times a week...some every day. they would talk to us, and bullshit, buy their stuff and leave. there was a rich soccer mom who lost everything because of her addiction and her husband leaving her. |
| These 'downfalls' you mentioned; some details? | Couples would fight in the store over which kind to get, guys would come in scratching at themselves, unable to make eye-contact. just point at what they want. |
| Did you see people (salts users) who were freaking out/violent? | I had a guy threaten me, try to scratch me and fall on the floor and cry when I wouldn't sell. |
| What are the users like when they're not high/before they buy? | But I meant we made about 8k a day in salts ALONE...highest day i think was 12k from salts. usually we'd sell a few hundred dollars in pipes, and maybe 400-1000 in k2, other things. |
| 1/10th of a gram gives who 8-10 uses? 1/10th of a gram will be gone after you light it once. And I would never have paid 30 bucks for .10..are you selling to morons? | Snorted not smoked. just a pinhead worth. |
| Do you like tacos? | I need tacos....I need them or I will explode. |
| Did you feel morally okay about selling it? | Honestly no. When I started I had no idea what they were. Then as my time there progressed, you learned the customers. some were soccer moms, others were next door plain joe types, and you had a lot of the stereotypical skinny, coked-out types. people brought their young children in with them to the store. |
| That makes me feel gross about humanity. Not judging you, but the parents. | As a mother, it pissed me off tremendously. seriously broke my heart. |
| How could you live with yourself providing these things to people who it was obviously harming? | I never sold to anybody who came in intoxicated. i've called the cops on some people, CS on others. I've known people to use them without issues. I got paid a lot to deal with it. The employees all told the owner we felt uncomfortable selling them....but we would have lost our jobs if we didn't go along with it...and it was one of those-easy work/outstanding pay jobs. not proud. glad it's over. |
| What the hell are bath salts, seriously. The extent of my knowledge is that they were allegedly abused by a man who proceeded to eat another man's face off. Do they have any therapeutic properties? Do you put them in your bath and they help you relax? Is there a legitimate purpose to them? Someone educate me! | Recreational drug used to fuck you up. No benefits from taking it other than the high. won't do shit in your bath water. They aren't the real bath salts you'd buy in the soap section of the local store. They are just marketed so they can legally be sold in stores. |
| 2 questions, 1: Could you use these "bath salts" for actually taking a bath, and what would it do to you? 2: how many little people do you think you could fend off at once(while sober, no bath salts aloud)? | #1. we had a strict-if you didn't know how to use the product then we wouldn't tell you. better off that way really. The product would have done nothing if you would have bathed with it. Customers would come in and want to try it for the first time and say "sooo..we put this in the water then?" and we'd say yes. Truth is...it is marketed now as bathsalt....so it's legal to sell. using it for human consumption is illegal. so if anybody mentioned snorting it, we had to kick them out of the store and refuse sale to them. same as the K2-fake marijuana stuff. it's sold as "incense"....you "burn" it, not "smoke it" because that would be illegal. the wording there was one of the more intricate things you had to learn. |
| #2. it depends. there were a lot of small sorority girls...i could take a few of them. not a large guy though. but i'm a short female...soo meh. I say regardless of who...no more than 2-3? haha. | |
| Ah yeah, just like the head shops that have large signs proclaiming "These are WATER PIPES. If you use other terms for them, we will have to kick you out," and kick out people who refer to them as "bongs". | It's a stupid rule. and yes....the employees hate it as much as the customers. the saying goes, "If it rhymes with song or soul, it isn't sold here" ....."bongs" and "bowls" are wording for paraphernalia, and in order to legally sell something of the sort, it needs to be compatible with tobacco. Undercover in head shops are quite common, and workers don't want to risk getting in trouble for selling you a "bong". Talk to us outside of work hours, anything goes. =) |
| Tobacco pipes have a "bowl". | The place you place the tobacco or whatever you smoke...is considered a "firing chamber" |
| Do you judge parents who bring their kids to the liquor store or the beer distributor? | No. kids were in the store a lot. which didn't bother anybody really. everybody was very chill all the workers would usually talk to the kids about school or whatever while the parents shopped. |
| It was only an issue when you had angry/junkie parents with the kids. which i hate to see anywhere. i would judge somebody who drunkenly took their kid to the liquor store. | |
| How do you learn to close your eyes to the downfall of other human beings? Money? | The money was good. but I was just in a job where I worked with all my best friends, great hours, awesome pay, great customers (other than the salt-heads) and it was the one downside. but you know also that another store in the same town sold stuff too. so if they didn't get it from us, they would get it on the street or in the other shop. at least this way, we could deny service....or call the authorities if needed or control the amount bought. selling poison to people who don't care. |
| We made about 8k a day. So how much did you make ? | A lot was under the table. I received about 8 an hou40 hrs a week. and then got bonuses of about 300-400 a paycheck in addition to leaving with tips and such of about 60-300$ a day. |
| Whoa whoa whoa, people tipped you for selling them bath salts? | Oh yeah. our prices were subject and heavily inflated and we were able to adjust them in the computer for regulars/larger sales. we would haggle prices, though most wouldn't try. but the regulars tipped us very well to save them some when we were low or whatever. a lot of salt heads also would accidentally over pay us and leave quickly and we'd throw it in the tip jar. |
| What was the SOP if a customer came in obviously already high on bath salts? Followup question: I was under the assumption that the FDA suspended the legality of bath salts while they are reviewing them for a possible ban. Are there actually states where they are still legal? | If a customer was clearly intoxicated (we couldn't rightfully assume it was on salts) then we would let them look around if they weren't threatening. if they wanted to buy something we would politely say that we aren't allowed to sell to them. if they wanted the "drugs" we would say that we aren't legally allowed to sell to them because they are clearly abusing the substance for purposes other than what it was intended for. |
| There were bans while they were waiting for a real ban....but it was just on a vague all-over "bath salt" instead of ingredients...soo they jsut repackages the same things and called it "massage powder" for legal sale again. the actual ban when it went through banned certain toxins. but just like the k2 ban when it happened, they ban certain chemicals in the products....but then new ones are made that aren't specifically on the ban..so it was legal again. | |
| Can you tell us a little more about the raid. What did they take? Who got arrested? etc. | I actually left the job to move to Pittsburgh about a week before the Raid.....but I kept in touch with everybody. The store was raided along with the 2 others stores in the area that sold them. they came at night when the shop was done, they took the computer system and the salts. next day they handcuffed my 2 friends/coworkers and nobody was arrested. They dealt with the owner after that....who, to the best of my knowledge is still around. |
| Here is an article about the raid the day it happened. The shop has been closed since. | |
| Link to gantdaily.com | |
| Every run into any zombies? | I've never had somebody try to eat my flesh. But I have had many addicts try to sell me their watches/coats/kids electronics. I've had to throw many people out of the store and i've had to tase a few people who got really aggressive and angry when I told them I couldn't sell to them because they showed signs of abuse for the product. |
| This is confusing. So you're peddling this poison to all of these people, but once they show "signs of abuse" you suddenly find your moral compass? I don't get it. This is like a crack dealer saying "na man, you just got a rock yesterday, I don't want you abusing my product". | Because we sold it "not for human consumption" obviously everybody knew what people really used it for. But, legally....we were just selling it "to take a bath with" if somebody asked us how to use it we'd say "you put it in your bath to act as a water-softener" we can't accuse improper use/deny sale to somebody who just wanted to buy it unless i could prove they were consuming it. If they mentioned ingesting it in anyway, or were intoxicated...we wouldn't sell. it's all about how to sell it legally. wording is very tricky. |
| Did/do you consider yourself to be a drug dealer while you were working there? | No and yes. |
| What other sorts of odd things did you sell? Also, have you ever tried bath salts yourself? | We sold water pipes, vaporizers, papers, sex-toys, de-tox products, all your smoking accessories. |
| The other fake "drugs" we had were salts k2 plant fertilizer "x-tasy" pills lots of drinks/strips for random euphoria/energy purposes. | |
| I tried them once. didn't do anything crazy. wouldn't do it again. | |
| Sex toys? That's kind of an odd thing for a head shop to sell. | We had board games, t-shirts, hair dye, battle axes, knives, bear mace, LOTS of odd things. I don't think the owner really knew what he was going for. he owned 5 stores and was only around like 1 day a month to drop of shipments. |
| What kind of taser? The gun-shaped taser? Or the big wand type? Or the little handheld kind? | It kind of looked like one of these...Link to www.smartstun.com |
| But bigger? | |
| Holy COW, that is some serious money. Surprised someone didn't try to rob you at the end of the day. Hope you had a drop safe, you must have had a heck of a lot of cash on hand. Any idea how much profit the owner was making on each pack of bath salts? | We had one incident where 5k was robbed. but that was it....we had a drop safe and we had a BA light-saber looking taser behind the counter as well as bear mace. |
| I just want to say that what happened to you is wrong. That new Pennsylvania law banning bath salts is just another unnecessary law that people will (rightfully) ignore. Instead of buying the bath salts from you, now there will be people on Calder Way selling the stuff unregulated, in dark alleys. What's especially wrong is that the store was shut down before the law went into effect on Feb. 22, and I still don't understand that one. What people don't realize is that there are too many laws in today's society. If you repealed 95% of the laws on the books, there would be very little increase in crime. Having too many laws (like low speed limits) causes people to disrespect all laws and to have to make a conscious decision of which to obey. The idea that every law is just because it is made by representatives you elected no longer applies. In Australia, there is a "sunset provision" where all laws expire after 10 years, and that should be the case in America. What kind of stuff did Dragon Chasers sell? I walked down Fraser St every day to go to lunch and thought that it was a "glass emporium," selling stained glass and gifts and stuff like that. Was that stuff just a front for more profitable things like legal drugs? | We didn't sell stained glass. The "drug" case was right in the front of the store when you walked in, but if you didn't know what the stuff was...then you'd walk right by it. We sold incense, tapestries, TONS of pipes, grinders, scales, t-shirts, sex-toys, stash containers, novelty items, etc. and yes, people will just sell more dangerous shit on the street now.... that's why my answer is mixed on how I feel about selling them. I didn't enjoy selling to coke-heads. but, the rest of the customers were great, usually just chill stoners. The store wasn't a front though....everybody knew it was a stoner-pipe store. or so I thought |
| The one time you took it, did you taste brain? | Haha not even close. I was having a that-70's show style chill circle with some friends. No violence. |
| Is your name a reference to the "zombies"? (nomnomnom) | Hehe. no. originally had zombies in mind but not those zombies. |
| So I had not heard about this at all. That being said, how did these "salt heads" find your shop? I mean, I have never heard of anyone ingesting bath salt as a drug. Am I really behind the times on this? Chemically, this isn't in any way similar to regular bath salt is it? | Nothing like real bath salt. everybody in the town that smoked, knew about the shop. just a store where stoners would buy pipes and such. |
| Do you personally believe that these instances of violence/cannibalism are being caused by bath salts, or that it's simply being claimed that in advance in order to wage a public war on them of sorts, and it's another drug? | Honestly, i've had friends do salt.....i tried it once and I don't doubt that they are CRAZY fucked up. but the videos of people acting possessed and such, look to be way different than anything i've saw. My guess is they took way to damn much of it. or mixed it. or were mentally unstable to begin with. or most likely, a mix of the 3. |
| What's your favorite drug? | The pot. |
| What was the raid like, and do you regret working there? | The raid was at night so I wasn't there. I don't regret working there because the friends I worked with turned out to be the best family of friends i'd ever had and I never would have met them otherwise. |
| Where did the bath salts come from? Did they come from China? | No. we sold about 8 different kinds, all from different places from all over. most from the US though. |
| I remember when all the shops at Penn State got shut down! Not gonna read all the comments but I'm assuming you were dragonchasers or jamaica junction? i forget who the third that got shut down was. | The third was a unimart. but yes. dce. |
| Did you ever have people come in multiple times a day to buy more? | Yeah. But most people would come in and buy several bags. we put a 10 bag limit on purchases though...and most people would just come and buy all 10. |
| Mind if I ask which shop or just which town? A shop in my town got shut down recently so I'm j/w if its the same shop. | Penn state, pa. dragon chasers emporium. |
| Did you sell blue magic? Shit was chronic. | Nah. |
| I am especially creeped out by the addicts who use so many bath-salts they are basically permanently wrinkled... I can only imagine how they pay for their water bill, let alone the bath salts, if they can't even go in to work... | It amazed me how the poorest people always had money for their fix. I had a guy bring his 5 year old daughter in and ask me if i'd buy her radio so her dad could get salts. we reported him to CS. |
| I dont want to interupt the AMA, but from what I've read it's the table scrapings of other drugs, and can contain LSD, cocaine, meth, etc etc. | From what I was TOLD, it was all synthetic-made things. no actual drugs. thats how it was "legal" |
| "You must provide proof of your identity in the body of your post when you submit your IAmA" Probably going to be taken down soon :/ | Updated just for you baby ;p. |
| I knew a guy that shot up bath salts. Fuck that. | The police came in when there was a temporary ban on them before and gave us a book-sized brief on cases of people doing all sorts of fucked up shit on salts. guy in lingerie fucking a dead goat, people ripping themselves up, guys going crazy. it's typically snorted but some people smoked it. or shot it up. fuck all of that |
| Well, I think I'll stick with weed. | I'd suggest that. |
| Forgive me if I'm wrong but I thought "bath salts" were MDPV and mephedrone was marketed as fertilizer. | We sold "plant fertilizer" too. to make your plants grow "quickly and energetically" ....it was more like just 4-8 hours of speeding. i personally found the fertilizer better. better feeling, better customers, never had any problems with people on it. |