William s. Burroughs and lsd-6

[shpongle1987]

I just got done watching a documentary called William S. Burroughs a man within. First off I would like ot say it is an AMAZING documentary for anyone that like anything to with Burroughs. Second...I am very curious of something that was said in the documentary pertaining Burroughs drug use. There was a scene were I believe Ralph Metzner was saying Burroughs gained a ton of respect from Leary and others because he would take a substance called "lsd-6" and supposedly it was known for being a very very strong hallucinogen that most other did not enjoy. I looked all over the net to try to find some info on "lsd-6" but found nothing useful. Does any one have any knowledge of this substance? If I could post a video of the interview I would but I found it on netflix and I don't think there will be any youtube videos of it but for anyone that has netflix the documentary is on there.

 

[burn out]

My understanding was that Burroughs did not like any psychedelics except for cannabis. Here is part of interview with him that can be found on erowid:

What about psychedelics?

"Well, cannabis is useful. When you're stuck and don't know where you're going you smoke cannabis and then you see four or five ways the narrative can go. No one is going to become a writer from taking any of these drugs but they can get beneficial material from them.

"I don't like any of the stronger psychedelics. I would never take LSD... I hate it."

"You've tried it?" (Obviously.)

"I've tried it. I just hate it. I don't like the feeling.... It makes me nervous. My coordination isn't good and there's a metallic taste in my mouth and there's nothing I like about it. I've taken mescaline, psilocybin. The only one I've been able to use with consistency is cannabis."

"Has anything useful come to you with mescaline or psilocybin?"

"Yes, but mostly of an unpleasant nature. There is one interesting one though, yagé, but I've never been able to get any since I left South America. There's Banisteriopsis in it; that's the main ingredient but not the only one. The medicine men use it to potentiate their powers, to locate lost objects and that kind of thing. But I'm not impressed much by their performance. Everybody has telepathic experiences all the time. These things are not rare. It's just an integral part of life. The faculty is probably increased to some extent by any consciousness expanding drug."

http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/burroughs_william/burroughs_william_article1.shtml

 

[DwayneHoover]

I don't believe Burroughs claiming he did "LSD-6". Where the hell would he have aquired it? Hoffman made 25 ergot derivatives and after shelving them fir years had some sort of irrational impulse to make LSD-25 again and the rest is history. It was many decades later before it became a counterculture hit. The actual formula for number 6 is probably either gone and the paper it was written on turned to dust, or locked away some case of "miscellaneous historical documents from Hoffman's research at Sandoz" 200 layers deep in some warehouse somewhere... or most likely it was never even saved, and got burned in the Sandoz incinerator in 1930 or something.

I mean, I love Burroughs, he was by nature a STORYTELLER who loved making up utterly wild stories and fucking with people's heads. ANYTHING supposedly factual he says especially if it is about a drug should be DISbelieved before it is accepted.

 

[shpongle1987]

I'm only going by what Metzner said in the interview....and yes most of the documentary did surround his use of "junk" as he liked to call it...

 

[DwayneHoover]

Yea, not gettin down on you, I realize you are just mentioning something you saw elsewhere. (Isnt that like 99.9% of what is on the web? )

lsd-6 is mentioned I believe for the first time in "Naked Lunch." I can't decide which I believe in more, Burroughs acquiring and doing lsd-6, or in the existence of giant cockroach-men who get excruciatingly high on "Bug Powder"

Anyway, That's probably where Metzner picked up the meme. It is remotely plausible in a hypothetical sense but just seems too outlandish when you think about it. Most likely part of Burroughs' brilliantly sculpting his public persona of expert and traveler in the deepest most out there most fringe arcana in the world, which he really actually was, of course, but still... (God how I love WHB!).

 

[Survived Abortion]

I don't know, why would he lie? I mean it's plausible that the recipe for LSD-6 got out, and it's also plausible that LSD-6 is psychoactive. It was only LSD-25 that got discovered as psychoactive because it's activity was discovered by accident. For all we know Sandoz could have access to all the recipies, in fact I would have assumed that anyway. Pharmaceutical companies don't just destroy research like that willy-nilly.

 

[DwayneHoover]

Well that's a fair point and it occurred to me, so sure. Just seems unlikely anyone would decide to cook it up. Any other reports, especially from before NakedLunch?

And I wouldnt consider it a "lie" per se if not true, but within the bounds of fictional license, being as it is in a novel.

 

[Ismene]

I don't know, why would he lie?

Any number of reasons really - perhaps he'd just got the story mixed up.

Certainly that bit about having "huge respect from Leary" doesn't sound accurate. Burroughs didn't enjoy DMT and when Leary gave him mushrooms he didn't like those either. In Leary's autobiog there's no mention of Burroughs enjoying psychedelics. So I'm not too sure about this claim of him being the only guy who can take LSD-6 when he was shit-scared of DMT and mushrooms.

 

[Incunabula]

I don't know, why would he lie? I mean it's plausible that the recipe for LSD-6 got out, and it's also plausible that LSD-6 is psychoactive. It was only LSD-25 that got discovered as psychoactive because it's activity was discovered by accident. For all we know Sandoz could have access to all the recipies, in fact I would have assumed that anyway. Pharmaceutical companies don't just destroy research like that willy-nilly.

What? Plausible what? Not to be rude, but are you one of these people who believe that the moon landing was a hoax, the American government was behind 9/11, and the Illuminati secretly rule the world

As far as I know all the other LSD´s were tested by Hoffmann, of cause, and none other than nr.25 possessed psychoactive qualities.

I´ll see if I can find some info about it, I´m sure it´s on Erowid.

 

[Roger&Me]

Good god, who knows? There is no such thing as "LSD-6".

As far as I know all the other LSD´s were tested by Hoffmann, of cause, and none other than nr.25 possessed psychoactive qualities.

There are no "other LSD's"! 8( He made a series of different compounds, and after each name he put the chronological number in the series; he did this for his own bookkeeping purposes. The 25th one in the series just happened to have been LSD. There's not like an LSD-1, LSD-2, LSD-3, etc etc!

 

[Survived Abortion]

^Ah, that explains a lot, thanks! And yeah I can see how Burroughs would embellish a tale already steeped in myth and misunderstanding. You're right, he was a storyteller.

 

[Incunabula]

There are no "other LSD's"! 8( He made a series of different compounds, and after each name he put the chronological number in the series; he did this for his own bookkeeping purposes. The 25th one in the series just happened to have been LSD. There's not like an LSD-1, LSD-2, LSD-3, etc etc!

^^ Yes, I know. Maybe I said it in a wrong way.

 

[Solipsis]

Call it LSX-6 then and you still got the same question basically. I find it very confusing to learn how much research has been done on LSD analogues, apart from those in TiHKAL (how many are in there, only the 4 listed and a few more only mentioned?)... and then suddenly there was this LSB/LSP thread a while ago which sounded pretty convincing.
If anyone has an idea of how many active analogues are known it would be helpful. And it probably would not be that strange at all if one of them turned out to be Hofmann's sixth. After all he was not really looking for psychoactivity so he could have easily missed it. Unless he was secretly a rogue chemist intrigued by the kykeon mystery, eating his creations when no one was looking ... 99% kidding of course. [edit: LOL after writing this I found the following: The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries by R. Gordon Wasson, Dr. Albert Hoffman (the inventor of LSD) and Prof. Carl Ruck)
I mean, it would almost be strange if, after him having discovered LSD-25, no one would ever try to trace back his other creations, if not he himself. But if the nature of those compounds was kept a company secret, then it could have become very difficult.

 

[Incunabula]

[edit: LOL after writing this I found the following: The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries by R. Gordon Wasson, Dr. Albert Hoffman (the inventor of LSD) and Prof. Carl Ruck)
I mean, it would almost be strange if, after him having discovered LSD-25, no one would ever try to trace back his other creations, if not he himself. But if the nature of those compounds was kept a company secret, then it could have become very difficult.

Yeah, that´s what I´m talking about, I once read that Hoffmann, after discovering LSD´s psychoactivety (is that a word? or did I just make that up?) continued to check all ergoline derivatives that he had earlier made for psycho active effects.

I just can´t find were I read it again.

As far as I remember one of them was actually were active at several milligrams, but still not in the same way as LSD.

 

[DwayneHoover]

Yea there's really no reason to believe any of Hoffman's other ergoline derivatives were psychoactive... let alone that the recipes of failed experiments would have been saved... let alone that someone later got ahold of the recipes... let alone that they made some... let alone that Burroughs got ahold of it.

Hoffman was looking for something to increase bloodflow during childbirth if memory serves correctly. Burrough's "LSD-6" is a fictional metaphor & a linguistic joke, first mentioned in a novel FULL of wild fantasy surrounding drug experiences... a story device, not a true confession. Connect the dots, folks.

 

[Solipsis]

Haha sure You happen to discover LSD, then at some point you just throw your lab notebook in the trash. Not like there is anything memorable about it. At the very minimum I think the syntheses were saved, if only for containing helpful info. You know most researchers consider failed experiments a result even if it looks to you like a non-result. If you design your experiment correctly you will always find out something worthwhile, whether it is if something is possible or turns out to be impossible. Both are discoveries.

Least interesting scenario is indeed that nobody ever really found the data useful to cook up analogues with less ideal activity profiles, but it seems a bit hard to believe since even weak drugs can tell you something about receptor binding dynamics. Perhaps the problem is that the activity is so broad-spectrum (LSD is very promiscuous), so lysergides get less attention than the selective compounds?

Anyway I know virtually nothing about LSD-6 so that part I can just assume from you.

 

[DwayneHoover]

Well sure maybe there is a record of the other 24 ergot derivatives. But no reason to think any of them were hyper-potent psychedelics. Just a fictional play-on-words by WHB, very fitting his style. Yea Hoffman's lab notes on the apparently not useful 1-24 could well have been saved by Hoffman or his employer for posterity I suppose, and to remember "things we already tried".

 

[Survived Abortion]

If anyone has an idea of how many active analogues are known it would be helpful. And it probably would not be that strange at all if one of them turned out to be Hofmann's sixth. After all he was not really looking for psychoactivity so he could have easily missed it.

Haha sure You happen to discover LSD, then at some point you just throw your lab notebook in the trash. Not like there is anything memorable about it. At the very minimum I think the syntheses were saved, if only for containing helpful info. You know most researchers consider failed experiments a result even if it looks to you like a non-result. If you design your experiment correctly you will always find out something worthwhile, whether it is if something is possible or turns out to be impossible. Both are discoveries.

This is what I think too. With all the other ergoloids that we know are psychoactive, there is every possibility that any number of his other ergoloid creations were too. He did invent Hydergine. I fail to see any good reason why Hoffman or Sandoz would have intentionally destroyed his other work. To me it's completely normal that they were archived. And they could definitely have been revisited at some point.

edit: Dwayne, can you elucidate the nature of this "play on words" you speak of?

 

[skillet]

Here's a good review of lysergamide analogs, by Nichols, of course

Abstract
In discussions of hallucinogens in past years, most of the focus has been on phenethylamines and phenylisopropylamines, with a modest amount on tryptamines. A large gap always has been the lack of discussion of lysergamides. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is one of the classic hallucinogenic agents, but substituted lysergamides always have seemed to be largely ignored. The lysergamides have been investigated on several historical occasions, but the late 1950s witnessed most of the recent work (Abrahamson 1959; Cerletti and Doepfner 1958; Gogerty and Dille 1957; Isbell et al. 1959). Within the past 8 years, there has been an attempt to fill in some obvious gaps that exist in the understanding of lysergamide-type hallucinogens.

Dwayne, I'm sure Hofmann made more than 25 analogs, maybe many more. I'm not sure what he did with them though after discovering LSD. The N-Me-N-iPr analog is about 1.5x the potency of LSD in rat drug discrimination, according to the review above, and seems like something Hofmann might have synthesised...

 

[DwayneHoover]

edit: Dwayne, can you elucidate the nature of this "play on words" you speak of?

As others tried to explain above, LSD-25 does not refer to the "25th version of LSD". It refers to the "25th compound in a series" of the ergot derivatives he was trying out, this ONE of which was *THE* "LSD". The play on words was Burroughs pretending as if they were ALL just different versions of LSD, that there were at least "25 versions of LSD." Which is wrong. There was only ONE Lysergic Acid Diethylamide"... which just happened to be number 25 in the series of Ergot derivatives.

Changing the intended meaning of the shorthand notation from meaning "LSD, number 25 in a series of experiments", into "25th version of LSD" is the play on words... OK perhaps "play on words" is not quite the right term. "play on meaning" would be more correct.

Anyway, only ONE of them was LSD.

That doesnt mean there arent OTHER psychoactive ergoloid extracts however, which there likely are... that just was not what Hoffman's notation "LSD-25" meant.