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How to distinguish lysergamides?

TheAppleCore

TheAppleCore

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Jul 14, 2007
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Is there a way to correctly identify a substance as either LSD-25, ALD-52, 1P-LSD, ETH-LAD, etc., without having to send blotters to a remote testing facility like Energy Control? In the Psychedelic Drugs subforum, a user claimed to be able to do this with a combination of Marquis and Liebermann reagents, and I was wondering if this was indeed the case.
 
Would a mod mind moving this thread to PD? Perhaps someone there could help me?
 
See I did have a think about it but one of the problems is that there aren't really any reference results to go on. It's difficult because when working with blotters you need to ideally dissolve in 99% isopropanol to get a decent colour change.
 
Can you take them? This way you could determine which is eth-lad and which is ai-iad better than by random choice. 1p-lsd, 1a-lsd and lsd-25 are very doubtful.
 
white55 said:
Can you take them? This way you could determine which is eth-lad and which is ai-iad better than by random choice. 1p-lsd, 1a-lsd and lsd-25 are very doubtful.
Click to expand...
ETH LAD is distinguishable, in my experience 1p was very underwhelming microgram for microgram compared to LSD 25, al lad is less of a mindfuck but still quite visual, not as deep of an experience. Personally I think I could distinguish them apart but I've taken the lot many times
 
Isn't that close to what I said? Eth-lad/al-lad should be easy to distinguish (Is it very visual with little head space and a short duration? It's al-lad. Is it very visual, with no lack of head space although a slightly different one than lsd and a duration more or less the same as lsd? It's eth-lad), 1p-lsd/ald-52/lsd would be trickier, some people do believe they could do it easily, others think they are the same and some think there are small differences which can get overlooked since the set&setting can change the experience a lot more (I'm leaning towards the last one although ald-52 is my favorite lol).... sadly nobody has yet done a large double blind human trial to see if they can or can't be distinguished by humans (good luck getting approval for it 'yeah so I want some grant money and the approval to give a lot of people one of 3 very similar drugs to see if they can distinguish them from each other'... I don't think this conversation would go very well).
 
white55 said:
Isn't that close to what I said? Eth-lad/al-lad should be easy to distinguish (Is it very visual with little head space and a short duration? It's al-lad. Is it very visual, with no lack of head space although a slightly different one than lsd and a duration more or less the same as lsd? It's eth-lad), 1p-lsd/ald-52/lsd would be trickier, some people do believe they could do it easily, others think they are the same and some think there are small differences which can get overlooked since the set&setting can change the experience a lot more (I'm leaning towards the last one although ald-52 is my favorite lol).... sadly nobody has yet done a large double blind human trial to see if they can or can't be distinguished by humans (good luck getting approval for it 'yeah so I want some grant money and the approval to give a lot of people one of 3 very similar drugs to see if they can distinguish them from each other'... I don't think this conversation would go very well).
Click to expand...
Haha where's MAPS when you need them
 
I've still got to get at least a ten strip of 52 and 25 but once I do I'm going to do a blind test on myself by having my gf pick one and place it on my tongue
 
You can make Marquis reagent at home using hardware store-grade sulfuric acid and veterinary-grade formalin. You can also make Liebermann reagent using hardware store sulfuric acid and sodium nitrite. Personally I had to purchase the sodium nitrite online but found it very cheap at certain home biodiesel suppliers. Formalin should be available at any decently-stocked aquarium supply store, usually for around $10 for a 250ml bottle. Preparation methods for these reagents can be found on wikipedia. They are accurate preparation methods but you need to take some precautions in the preparation of both of these reagents, as Marquis preparation can off-gas some formaldehyde which is really really bad for you, and Liebermann preparation can off-gas some nitrogen oxides, which are about as fun to breathe in as pure chlorine. I'm sure that if you would prefer you can purchase these reagents ready-made from organizations like Dance Safe or Bunk Police.

You can look up videos of the colorimetric reactions on youtube. Bunk Police have very good colorimetric videos, and they have tested all of the currently available lysergamides. Using this exact set of resources, I determined the identity of several batches of "acid" which came my way this winter. I spoke about these results in one of the threads in this section.
 
Cool, glad to be of service! I honestly don't trust the results of a single reagent to fully identify a substance. Two reagents which produce a different color from each other in reaction to the same substance is ideal for seeing what's going on. well, ideal is an overstatement. Helpful is more like it. Many different substances produce similar color reactions with one reagent, but different color reactions for another reagent. I lucked out with the materials I had on hand, as some of the lysergamides produce similar reactions with Marquis, but Liebermann differentiated them noticeably.

I will put all the relevant information here and if it violates a safety rule on this forum I will take no offense at its removal by a moderator.

Marquis is prepared by the ratio of 9 parts sulfuric acid to 1 part 37% formalin solution. Because mixing these chemicals causes an exothermic reaction and the formalin is volatile, this must be done very slowly and it's advisable to do it in a glass container submerged in an ice bath. Never add the formalin to the acid, always add the sulfuric acid to the formalin solution. I measure "parts" as ratios of drops, usually preparing by doling out 10 drops of formalin into a small mason jar placed in a large bowl filled with ice cubes and a little water to assist in cooling the jar. Then I add 90 drops of sulfuric acid very slowly over the course of around 10 minutes. This is probably unnecessarily slow but I'd rather not have the formaldehyde volatize. This produces enough Marquis reagent for the testing of basically every unknown substance I might have at any one time.

Liebermann Reagent: 1 gram of Sodium Nitrite: 10ml Sulfuric acid. In this preparation, there is no avoiding the off-gassing of nitrogen dioxide, so it's best to do this outdoors. Weigh out the gram of sodium nitrite into a mason jar, and measure the 10ml sulfuric acid using what ever you have available to measure volume with. If you don't have anything available that can measure milliliters, just go with the density of sulfuric acid, 1.84g/ml, and measure out 18.4g sulfuric acid. Add the acid dropwise to the sodium nitrite, in an ice bath as with the Marquis preparation above.

Again, it might make more sense for people who haven't taken a chemistry course outside of high school to simply purchase these reagents from a trustworthy source.
Dancesafe.org has each reagent available for $20 or discounted combo kits of 4 to 8 reagents.

https://www.youtube.com/user/BunkPolice
I find that searching for the substance and the reagent will usually bring up Bunk Police's relevant video as the top search result, but this may change so here's the youtube channel.
 
The only difference I think you can distinguish is between 1P-LSD or ALD-52 or 1P-ETH-LAD (that is: 1-acyl lysergamides), and non-acylated lysergamides because the acylated versions apparently require about 2 hours of being in water before they respond properly to Ehrlich's reagent.

Unfortunately in my opinion that is not a real difference.

Never heard of different responses to Marquis that you can actually use reliably to differentiate between say LSD and ETH-LAD, they would have to be significant differences that are not obscured by variability in potency, freshness of reagent etc, like green vs yellow.

I would find it extraordinary if that would work, look at the Marquis reactions of other drug homologues like 2C-D and 2C-E, 2C-P may be a bit darker but the others also range from yellow to light brown so can you really identify that way? Maybe DMT and DiPT analogues, yes but that is quite the difference in substitution not just a next homologue.

IMO Marquis works best as a preliminary test, to give you a match with the class / chemical family of drugs or not, although other compounds may also give that color reaction. I guess that applies to other reagents as well.

I think that the Ehrlich's + Marquis thing is more meant to be a more 'conclusive' test to identify a lysergamide than to actually differentiate between them. Rather to make sure you don't have a tryptamine that is responding to your Ehrlich's.
 
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Here are my notes on the Marquis + Liebermann reagent tests for lysergamides:

Drug:..................Marquis.............................. Liebermann
LSD ...............Yellow quickly to black ..................Black
1P-LSD .........Yellow to rusty-purple ................... Yellow
ALD-52 .........Very faint yellow ...........................Yellow
ETH-LAD...... Yellow to faint brown ............. Brownish purple
AL-LAD .....Yellow to dingy yellow-brown ........ Brown to black

I couldn't find results for 1P-ETH-LAD, LSM, or LSZ. By using these two particular reagents you can get identifying results. Due to overlap in the results of AL-LAD and ETH-LAD in Marquis, Liebermann is subsequently needed to complete identification. Due to the overlap in results from 1P and ALD in Liebermann, you need Marquis to subsequently differentiate between them.

I understand the skepticism that arises from not using other reagents or from not taking other types of compounds into consideration. Some anecdotal data from people who consumed the materials was used to assist in identification. The 1P and ETH-LAD I had consumed already, so I knew they were lysergamides and I was going to be surprised if they turned out to be LSD. The LSD and ALD-52 had been tried by other people before samples were provided to me for testing. This certainly kept me from looking at the results from benzodiazepines and fentanyls.
 
achuma said:
Here are my notes on the Marquis + Liebermann reagent tests for lysergamides:

Drug:..................Marquis.............................. Liebermann
LSD ...............Yellow quickly to black ..................Black
1P-LSD .........Yellow to rusty-purple ................... Yellow
ALD-52 .........Very faint yellow ...........................Yellow
ETH-LAD...... Yellow to faint brown ............. Brownish purple
AL-LAD .....Yellow to dingy yellow-brown ........ Brown to black
Click to expand...

^^^ Good stuff, thank you! :)
 
1p-eth-lad is the exact same mod of eth-lad as 1p-lsd is of lsd


anyway if you are sure what you have is one of the lysergamides, al and eth are simple to distinguish by eating them
 
Oh didn't know about the Liebermann results, I thought the OP said Ehrlich's & Marquis...

The Liebermann result from LSD and ETH-LAD do look different, but both look easily confused with that of AL-LAD. Luckily you will rarely get AL-LAD posing as another lysergamide.

As for the 1-acyl ones, again you could only get a match but not conclusive identification.

What kind of scenario makes it essential to qualitatively differentiate one lysergamide from another? One of the very few I can think of is if you want to first try AL-LAD for being gentle but none of the other ones and unfortunately that would be the hardest one to get right.
I guess making sure that someone isn't just passing off acid as one that is rarer would be the main point but I agree with white55 that the ones that actually make a difference: AL-LAD and ETH-LAD should be noticeably different although I guess only if you have actually tried LSD before.

@Transform: references to go on could be taken from bunkpolice though?

I shouldve read achuma's earlier posts better, i thought i did :p
 
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Yea.. that is what I said and how I consistently used it... so 1P-ETH-LAD is one of the 1-acyl ones... all the sold 1-something lysergamides all have 1-acyls (= 1-alkanoyls): acetyls and propionyls.
In the acetyl wikipedia they talk about both acetyl specifically and about acyl [radicals / groups] in general. Read it carefully and don't confuse them... acyl is not used as a shorthand for acetyl there either. Read the acyl page for less confusion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acyl_group

Of course, in the case of lysergamides the acyl makes for an amide because it is an acyl on the indole N. This interferes with the reaction Ehrlich's reagent normally has which is why you have to hydrolyze the acyl off first in water. Turns out this thread wasn't really about Ehrlich's, my mistake.

There are blurbs about 1-acyls here and there: I've been wondering about things like 1P-DMT for a while now but this is off-topic. Suffice to say the potential may be more limited than one would hope.
 
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