Well..that was a nice surprise after what started off a heap of shit of a day. Was doing my last 70mg of morphine in a shot, prepped from XR zomorph capsules, and whilst doing the IM, the damn needle shot off the barrel as I tried to depress the plunger too quickly, wasting I'd guess a quarter to just over a quarter of the first wash, triturated the remains even finer for a while in one of my mortars (I've two, one for things which are allowable into my body, be it psychoactives or spices and whathaveyou, and the other one is reserved exclusively for lab use, I'd sure as shit never shoot anything that's been in the other one. I can't remember everything that's ever been in there, but I can remember there being some potentially unhealthy nitro-compounds that are irritating as hell to mucous membranes, completely or almost totally insoluble in water, but still, it didn't take much vapor escaping from a long, narrow-necked flask, similar to a Florence flask but with a ground glass joint at the top of the neck, when the reaction aimed at synthesizing the nitro compound in question (no, nothing to do with explosives, nitro groups DO have other uses, they are electron-withdrawing as all fuck, for example, and via reduction, good intermediates to amines) had it's appropriate chemicals mixed together and then popped in the microwave.
Thought I was fucked, but no, went to get some codeine linctus from the one place that does it round here that I can go to (there is one other but its not open weekends and besides, I've burnt my boat there, big time, after being repeatedly lied to regarding acetone, with a pharmacist repeatedly coming up with one story, which was politely but firmly, logically refuted point by point, then when it was obvious that he was full of it, and obvious it was obvious, coming up with more and more and more different heaps of shite, after being repeatedly blatantly lied to, eventually I..rather lost my patience. And after what I said to him, while I didn't give him the chance to say anything, its a fair guess that I'm barred for life, and for that matter, any offspring for several generations will also be banned. I kinda exploded in his face in fury, said a lot of very, very nasty things to him, to the extent that there is no way in hell I'll ever be sold anything of any kind ever again there, anyhow, guy was a fucking dick, he had it coming; and I've a really low tolerance for idiots, and that pharmacist was even more of an idiot than most, not only a moron, but a total, utter whorebegotten cunt beyond all redemption.)
Young, inexperienced girl at the till, was fine selling me a couple of bottles of codeine linctus at a time, plus a bottle of DXM syrup for good measure. Had to quickly grab one of the bottles of codeine syrup and pocket it (she could see that) while going for my wallet, to prevent the pharmacy owner seeing and potentially telling her not to sell more than one at once. He doesn't have a problem selling one daily, but only one per transaction/per day. He's not entirely stupid, in that it seems he can see that a chronic pain patient who goes there every week to pick up two morphine formulation scripts and one for oxy IR is not about to have any problem whatsoever with developing a tolerance from occasional use of codeine syrup. That horse has already bolted.
And just for icing on the cake, after I'd downed all but the extra 100mg of one of the bottles, dropped my E-fag back at home. Bending over to pick it up and what did I find? some lynlor oxy IR caps
The effect on my eyes...christ..the vapor from that was horrid (I was wearing eye protection, but the set of goggles I was using at the time had vent holes in the side to prevent condensation. Which is good, stops things misting up inside to the point you can't see jack shit, but unfortunately, the gas exchange goes both ways, if something can get out, it can also get IN.
Got a new set since, a visor-style one-lens set of goggles, plus an additional heavier, but still wear-able blast shield that locks onto the head and flips up and down, like a welding mask but designed to take shrapnel, gouts of boiling, potentially corrosive liquids and deflect anything that otherwise would hit the wearer in the face, and down to the very top of the torso, top of head etc. so it is scattered sideways instead of melting your face off. The visor-style face mask [its like a diving mask, not a respirator/gas mask, although I've got two, possibly three of those) has no breathing holes and fogs up, but I've discovered a little trick that gives me the best of both worlds-a bit of fairy liquid diluted in plenty water, used to wet a bit of bog roll, this being used to wipe round the inside of the visor, it stops the lens fogging up.)
Bog roll to the rescue twice in that case, with that nitro-thingy, the classic synthesis of the compound in question takes between 6 and 7 hours on a steam bath. But using a microwave oven one can shorten it to 15-30 minutes. Has to be watched very carefully, The MW operated manually in a pulsed fashion, giving it a nuke, then a dunk in a cooling bath, then repeated nuking-cooling cycles until the total irradiation time allotted is up. Better yields, better purity of product, less crap to get rid of in the workup, and the crude product is bright yellow (its supposed to be yellow, nitro groups often act as a yellow chromophore, take say, trinitrophenol/picric acid, and dinitrophenol, bright yellow, same with the P2NP and substituted 1-phenyl-2-beta-nitropropenes and the nitrostyrenes used for making amphetamines and phenethylamines respectively, the intermediate nitroalkenes are invariably bright yellow or occasionally orange.)
In the case of the compound I was working on, it is meant to be yellow, when done on the steam bath it often comes out dark red, but when everything is thrown together, two reactants and a catalyst, just chucked in the flask and nuked for a half hour (still got to fine tune the timing and see when yields start to drop), can get near stoichiometric yields, running solventless, dissolving directly into isopropanol after the reaction and recrystallizing from there), anyhow, the vapor, was a problem, coming out of the flask neck, and irritating as fucking hell, both to the eyes, mucous membranes (was wearing a gas mask, gloves, but sans a full NBC suit, the kind of selfcontained breathing and dermal protection equipment one would wear if venturing into an area known to be hot with nerve agents, or if treating ebola virus patients, there is no practical way to stop EVERY tiny potential contact with airborne vaporized solids, you take your gloves off later, and touch an item of clothing while changing into clean clothes and there you are, it just got on your fingers....
The compound worked on didn't justify NBC gear, not even close, but it was awfully irritating to eyes, mucous membranes, skin and via inhalation, had an effect like CS gas, not particularly dangerous, but it certainly made the work less pleasant. Until...bog roll to the rescue. Couldn't use a stopper to plug the flask, as it'd just explode due to the overpressure created when the microwave evaporated....lets just say when it evaporated either of the two liquid reactants and leave it at that.....
Compound itself isn't explosive, but the buildup of pressure due to solvents being vaporized would have shattered the flask, potentially busting my microwave, so came up with a quickly improvized but perfect solution to the problem. A rolled up tube shaped wad of bog roll stuck part way into the flask neck, leaving a length to get hold of and pull it out after everything is finished. Worked like a stopper, condensing the vaporized solid onto the surface of the bog roll and preventing it exiting the flask and either getting into the MW or escaping out into the room. Could even work without a gas mask, no vile teargas fumes at all.
