I'm fine. Why shouldn't I be?
y with the chemistry of elemental phosphorus, and at the time, due to being careful, was doing it in microscale first, because it was one of the first two or three times I'd ever physically been in possession of elemental phosphorus, of the white allotrope, prepared by dry distillation of red phosphorus under an inert argon atmosphere, and condensing the white phosphorus vapours in a volumetric measuring tube filled with ice cold iced water then finally re-melting it under water, so as to bring all the little bits and flecks together into bigger lumps.
Ended up accidentally getting a tiny piece, about the size of a split lentil, maybe half that drop on my wrist, and it wasn't precooled in ice water, but ready to ignite. It did, hurt like fucking hell for such a small burn. Although being burned and the flames leaving concentrated acid behind in the wound will do that to you I should figure (4P+5O2 (/\)->P4O10 (phosphorus (V) oxide is often assigned the formula P2O5, but actually, its dimeric IIRC, forming P4O10 rather than P2O5. Its the anhydride of H3PO4, orthophosphoric acid. Great dessicant for things that will tolerate acidic conditions, because it has one HELL of a vicious affinity for water, ripping and scorching to find it where necessary.)
It wasn't the burn itself that was the problem, it was only small, physically, did leave a scar from the flaring blob of white phos, but then again I've scars of one sort or another all over the show, from anything from that phosphorus burn, to someone trying to take me to pieces with a katana, too many IV scars, and a load that look like self harm scars down one arm, but that actually aren't, and was from the older of the two ex fiancees I have, not the 14yo autie chick, the 17-19 or so goth girl (actually both of my former fiancees were goth girls, the younger one, the classic autie uber-babe and human cannon shell full of dynamite, she didn't really start out that way, but she seemed to take after me in that respect, after seeing how I dressed, and obviously liking the style, going for smudged black eyeshadow done in camo stripes to one side, black lipstick, pale white face, black eyeliner etc., lots of leather and spikes. Looked sexy as all fuck on her too. And having her either on her arm, or from my steel-spiked leather collar/s, made sure everybody knew I belonged to her
)
Was a real problem in school, the aftermath of the phosphorus burn, it caused SEVERE temporary but fairly protracted paralysis of the whole arm, I could move at the shoulder but from there on, I could barely move it, shaking as if palsied, almost parkinsonian type symptoms plus complete inability to grip with my hand, couldn't even hold a pencil, it'd just drop out of my hand, as well as having sod all motor coordination with what little movement, with really profound, severe muscle weakness and when trying to move, shaking and twitching of the arm...that was rather hard to explain when I was just in my first secondary non-mainstream school, and it was afflicting my dominant side, forcing me to (try at any rate to) write with my left hand, looking like a chimp had scrawled it with a wax crayon inserted up it's bum'ole and when really, really drunk. Or an epileptic spider dipped in ink had visited the paper.
I can't remember how I explained that. Because I couldn't really say to my teacher in my class at the spazz school (no, I am not being rude, I am, and I'm proud of it, autie and lovin' it. I guess you could say, that along with plenty of the autie/aspie community, we, I, have taken the term and owned it. Means nobody can insult me with it, I'd just say 'whats your fucking point? you don't need to tell me, I knew that fucking years ago dumbfuck
), that Instead of going to bed, or doing homework, I'd been staying up all night, distilling white phosphorus, condensing it, remelting it under water etc. and gotten burned by a stray little glob of WP, and non-fatally poisoned by it, and that no, I didn't know whether it would be temporary, or permanent.
I can picture the sort of looks that'd have gotten me, attention I didn't want or need, since it'd only take one annoying little do-gooder adult with the best of intentions probably but who'd start off some bugger or buggers prying into my lab, growing as it was at the time, fertilized by phosphorus, thionyl chloride, iodine, lovely sodium and potassium metals and NaK alloy, all kinds of fun nitrated things, and watered with chromyl chloride, oleum, and enough hydrochloric acid and NaOH to drown every chinaman in china with a tidal wave of caustic and HCl, one after the other, to a depth sufficient to raise the water level to above their house chimneys
)
And I just didn't want said dogooder trying to stop me, blithering on about how kids should play with toys instead of phosphorus, sulfur, and concentrated H2SO4, HNO3, HClO4 etc.or some long winded sermon about chlorine gas not being suitable for young children. It wasn't like the spazz school even HAD a damn lab. They said they did, but it was a room with a TV and video player, a load of 'colouring in' worksheets, and stuff about the weather cycles that I already knew, and which quite frankly, would bore the shit out of me to have to sit through being told what I could have gone into greater detail about in terms of geology than they did FFS!. Their 'science equipment' consisted of a few plastic trays containing bits of wire, crocodile clips, batteries and little lightbulbs. No joke. And they expected the kids to just somehow learn by magic, throwing that insipid dreck out there in their shitty little plastic trays and expecting the kids to learn without explanation or education, just to up and do things.
No juicy bits either, no big pulse-rated electrolytic capacitors for a marx generator, no big lead-acid batteries, or anything I could have used to solder things, no solder or soldering iron, certainly no damn laser for a laser-triggered spark gap switch to build a coilgun in class.
ONCE, they had a 'chemistry lesson', ONCE, in the entire time I was at that school. And that was a teacher, coralling everyone into the farthest away part of the room possible, for the horrendously dangerous reaction of dropping a couple of droplets of potassium iodide/iodine in ethanol (I.e iodine tincture) onto a potato half, showing us 'oh look at this! isn't this wonderful! look how its changed colour! aren't you all impressed blah blah blither mither preach piss off drink bleach and die already, you have to be doing this to taunt me damn you to hades!.
Wouldn't even let us get close enough AFTER to properly look at the potato, not that I wanted to. Been there, did that once, moved on as quickly as it took to read and comprehend why the color change takes place, felt no need to have some plonker lord it over the class as if they were doc Shulgin his own bloody well holy ghost!
I remember that day, after getting home, I'd gone out on my bike, selling flowers door to door, for some self-employment, as well as scavenger-hunts in derelict buildings with just a backpack, swiss army knife, hacksaw, compact crowbar, pipe cutters etc., and having up the floorboards, having the copper pipes out, the wiring from the walls, and once, even found a place with, aside from of all the weird places, a huge stash of retro but great videogames on floppy disks, big pile of them, including the likes of system shock 1, terminator-future shock and others, under the floorboards of the place, found them when ripping the flooring up to get at the water pipes.
The attic was a treasure trove too, full size copper boiler I had to transport out piecemeal, much as I'd love to have modified it to serve as a bioreactor, with a glass liner, for fermentation type biosyntheses with various cultured organisms, but in any case I needed the money, and they had a long-dried up water system LEAD tank, big lead vat with lead pipes. Must have been quite an old place. Found a big stack of a series of cigarette cards too, entire set minus just one card, I snagged those too, figuring I'll buy the last single card then sell the entire set.
Spent ages hacking and prying and snipping and ripping in that place. Everything from the floor to the walls to the attic to bricking the windows to smash the lead strips free (albeit handed over to the scrap merchant with as much glass still adherent as possible, more weight=more money=more lab funds=a happy Lestat, and a happy me with an actively growing lab is a good me
, even got up on the roof to get the lead slips holding slates in place, chucking the slates down into the unoccupied derelic building. More or less filleted the entire building, from basements to the roof, even smashing in the walls for the copper wire.
All went to the scrap man, the pipes filled with earth to weight them, lead melted, and cast around rocks, bricks, whatever else could be improvied.
I had somewhat of an unusual childhood when I was growing up. Started with intensive study of botany and mycology at age four, apparently, I sort of remember teaching myself how to read using a mycology textbook, and I really took to it, I've been quite the enthusiastic (and often hungry) mycophilic mycophage since then, teaching myself how to recognize the edible and the poisonous varieties around, and especially of course, to recognize and know the deadly species, which of course, I have and had no desire to consume ;P and learn how to utilize some of the kinds of mushrooms that are poisonous, if not treated in specific ways, such as boiling, throwing away the water, boiling again, tossing the water, then cooking in whatever manner they are to be served, some that need heat-curing before use, or leaching and pickling. I don't know where I got all that from, as a 4yo child, since I had no family members who were mushroom-hunters of an avid kind who could have influenced or taught me. I just up and taught myself, pretty much 'because I can' and partly because botany and mycology were accessible without the income I of course hadn't got as a toddler that I would need to build and maintain the lab I started on as soon as it became available to me to do so.
I remember quite often, my old man taking me out for walks in the woods and forests, where really, it ended up with his being transportation, and ME taking HIM out for a hike, teaching him about the wild edible mushrooms to be picked, and their various virtues, bringing back all sorts, slippery jack and larch boletus, fly agaric, hedgehog fungi, morels, parasol mushrooms, giant puffballs if I really got lucky, I absolutely LOVE giant puffball, sliced thick into 'steaks', fried and dipped in batter then flash-deepfried to make puffball steak fritters. Big bin bags full of meadow waxcaps, scarlet hood waxcaps, crimson waxcaps, I'd usually end up bringing back the fry-up supper material for a fungal feast after returning home.
As for that damn school day with the iodinated potato...I went out and with some of my lab funds bought up a fucking ton of iodine tincture, and started acidifying it and treating with an oxidizer to convert the KI to I2, lowering the aqueous solubility of iodine, as KI increases the solubility of elemental iodine if present via a common-ion effect. Then distilling off the ethanol present for recycling as a solvent and reactant in other things, distilling away the water, bit by bit, and finally, being rewarded with a pile of iodine crystals, which I worked up and purified by using resublimation onto a very cold surface, as iodine sublimes without melting, and this was useful to refine it down to a finer grade of material.
Went back to school the next day, albeit with brown and orangey stains on my fingers and hands of course, bits of iodine stain on my clothing, having gone round every pharmacy in the city I could get to practically, and rounding up bottles of iodine tincture, so I could actually refine the silvery-violaceous, black-pitted lumps of treasure to be distilled therefrom.
This I did, and I spent all day in the spazz school, itching like crazy to get back to my home, to my lab, my life's work in progress, which to me, is my home within my mere dwelling and abode. The lab, is where I actually FEEL alive, vibrant and at HOME, real home, not just a place to live. To my bench-top, my stacks of shelves laden with reagents precious and mundane, cupboards full of solvents, acids, other places full of bases (to keep the base away from the acid supplies for safety), and to my fridge full of the more volatile solvents I use (E.g THF, ether, dichloromethane, nitroethane/nitromethane, chloroform and what have you), as well as volatiles like my tub of iodine, although I need to get more elemental I2 actually now I remember it, I've used most of my last kilo tub; as well as to play host to the specially chemical attack-resistant bottles with teflon or other fluoroinert polymer caps with flexible fluoropolymer compression seals within the top of the cap, and their screw threads wrapped tightly with teflon tape, those being for containment of liquid reagents that are volatile and dangerous, such as for example, chromyl chloride, elemental bromine and iodine monochloride, phosphorus trihalides, thionyl chloride etc. All the volatile stuff that just goes for the jugular if given a nanometer will try for the nation. Its my hazmat and volatiles fridge.
Although I don't actually keep any white phosphorus stored in the hazmat fridge, that, if I have any around, I just keep in jam-jars, pickle jars etc. filled with distilled water to keep the sticks and lumps of cast white P under, and with a wee squirt of argon over the headspace to push air out and help prevent oxidation, the jars having the necks wrapped just for extra good measure in a bit of teflon tape, although it isn't necessary to have the PTFE tape over the screw threads, it does help when opening jars containing sticks of white phosphorus. And besides, I'd not have containers of willy peter right next to the five or ten liter jugs of THF, acetonitrile (methyl cyanide, I would hazard a guess burning and pyrolyzed acetonitrile would give off rather nasty fumes, and I KNOW that dichloromethane, one of my favourite and most used solvents, that isn't flammable, but if burnt on an already going flame, decomposes to give off that ,most insidious, sneaky and absolutely deadly poisonous gas, phosgene.
Not got any WP around currently, I generally prepare it when I need it, and keep a bit around for the next time I need it.
But I do have 2kg of red phosphorus handy, reagent grade good stuff from Sigma. So I can always just go start heating and make it on an as needed basis under inert gas.
Aside from the more minor burn, the one that caused that lasting parkinsonian-esque paralysis and severe muscle weakness, palsied shaking of most of the arm after being burnt on the wrist by a tiny bit of WP, I've only ever had one accident with it, and that was during a distillation of liquid white phosphorus, refluxing in an alchemist-style alembic, hooked up to an argon tank to flush the vapors into ice-cold water.and condense it for remelting and casting into pucks or sticks. When that happened, the alembic overheated and developed a spot fault, a thin crack, where an eerie-coloured white-hot jet of fire started spewing, , at which point I knew to get the fuck out of the way, despite my wearing a blast-shield over my goggles, elbow length rubber gloves with big, thick rubberized plastic impregnated cotton undergloves over my hands, wearing a gas mask and a long leather trenchcoat, in order if the worst happened, that any WP coming in my direction would hit the trench so I could scrape it off with a knife and shove it under water asap to make sure it wouldn't be wasted any more than needs be. Or at worst the trench shucked off and left to burn, although I like the coat so that would be something of last resort.
Actually, it's my favourite element, due to the great many allotropic forms it takes, that and carbon, as well as iodine, in the first two cases, well with phosphorus, the huge, huge number of allotropes, in the case of carbon, the vast, vast variety of organic chemistry as well as large variety of allotropes, in the case of iodine that lovely lustre it has in the form of large chunks, pitted and with that wonderful silvery slightly violaceous colour, and beautiful color of the bright purple vapours when heated in a sealed tube of glass; to sublime in little clusters of fluffy micro-crystal needles. And I kinda have a fondness for the semimetal/metalloids too, like selenium, tellurium, germanium, arsenic, silicon etc)
Damn FUBAR, that is shitty. I'd have gone and scored if it were not for the only way I have to score is through mail order, a mate who can get me H, and sometimes methadone tablets.
But nobody HERE who I could score from. Thankfully I could manage to get the boxes of the most important stuff, the opioids, chlormethiazole. The doc saw that I had the past repeat slips with all the meds, and didn't insist on seeing another for the nitrazepam, because it was obvious that I was telling the fucking truth already. HOURS of pissing about, all night up until they sent paramedics around. Thankfully I'm not stupid enough to take the benzo daily, I'm prescribed 5mg nitraz twice a day, but I don't take it anything like so often, rather I use much larger doses much less often.
If I could have scored the opioids, believe it, I would have. And then I'd have synthed some chlormethiazole or its brominated homologue starting from vitamin B1/thiamine and saved a ton of fucking about, Even though yesterday, I was due for the entire weeks supply, that same damn day, and was LATE getting it, still only gave me one fucking day's meds. Picked up everything today though in full, meaning I actually got a day extra worth, from the emergency supply. And getting given another rescue pack of chlormethiazole (I take chlormethiazole/heminevrin at 192mg 3x/d to stop seizures happening, but I get rescue packs as the docs refer to it on an ad-hoc basis, as and when I need them, as long as I don't go for another rescue pack too often, its basically a double supply, a second bottle of 21 capsules, sometimes a few more, so I have a supply I can use to deal with breakthrough seizures, it works really well for prevention but at times, I get days where the safety net seems to be just gone, and every time I sleep, as I wake again I'll go into another seizure, and have to take a dose, or sometimes have someone put a couple of capsules into my mouth, as even in the atonic, paralytic seizures I can still swallow.
Couple of caps of chlormethiazole down the hatch and it will bring me out of the seizure within...well about as quickly as it takes the capsules to burst open once swallowed, stuff hits FAST, fastest oral drug I've ever taken. As fast to kick in as say, a big mug full of 40-45% vodka would be if chugged down in one shot. Weirdly as hell too, for a GABAergic that acts like a barbiturate, I've experienced NO physical dependency on it even after a good few years of (medical) use. Weird. Totally fucking weird that I've no dependency to it. Not complaining.
But zopiclone bandit, aside from that poisoning during my early starting out that left me paralyzed, the only other problematic encounter with WP was when that alembic broke, because it eventually did, went from a crack venting a long narrow jet-stream of blazing hot gaseous phosphorus, to shattering completely. I'd had the intelligence mind you of course to make a hasty retreat.
Just as well I did, because the failure of the alembic was nothing short of in catastrophic fashion, shattering, resulting in a massive eerie greenish-tinted searing bright white flaring fireball, and the white P, which at the time was refluxing and molten, dripping down the walls of the glass, it just went 'WHOMP!!!', and catapulted itself as a stream of blobs out from the main central fireball, firing it across the garden in a pattern like the shape of an octopus, a central 'ground zero' where the ground was burnt to sterilized, grey, inorganic ashes and mineral residues, all soaked in acid, belching forth a HUGE cloud of white phosphorus pentoxide smog, Smoke so dense that in my protective gear, coming back to apply damage control where possible, if possible I couldn't see my gloved hand a foot away from my face (and no, not very much damage control was possible, the time for damage control is generally before damage, not after, LOL, and it took no time at all to make a biiiiig motherfucking mess of the lawn) The central ground zero area, with spokes radiating out, where the earth was seared, soaked in acid, smoking and salted, from where the jets of WP propelled across the garden had dripped on their flight path, burning ray shaped patterns into the garden, which due to the fertilizer like effect of the phosphate left behind, after many months, the grass that eventually grew back outstripped the established lawn in no time at all, growing much darker green, much taller and wider, it was like I'd given it a shot of steroids, nothing could grow there for ages, then all of a sudden it just shot up like a fucking rocket on steroids and crack lol.
I could have gotten roasted alive after that alembic burst, but I sure as SHIT wasn't about to stand by close to it, knowing it had just developed a fault, so I ran for cover. I'm hardly likely to stand around there where something of cyanide-level toxicity and which is both pyrophoric, and sticks to people wounded by it, burning all the way until it either burns out altogether, or it burns straight through them and out of the other side, am I now? Hell no!
And FUBAR-you HAD a script, and yet they still fucked you off in the pharmacy just because you were a day not EARLY but fucking LATE, picking it up AFTER the due date? thats fucked up big time! that is absolutely disgusting!
And thats absolute horse shit they told you about having to pick up CDs on the exact date on the script too. Its different if someone is trying to pick one up before the due date, but not picking up CD meds (in my case, morphine and oxy) after the due date? thats bollocks! there is nothing to prevent that. I did today, for three CDs plus a benzo and chlorrmethiazole, it was due on monday, yet they insisted, when I ended up having to go to the hospital to see out of hours GPs. FFS they should be satisfied with medical records. Fucking DR insisted on seeing not just empty labelled bottle/boxes, but ones from a week ago! plus recent rx refill forms as well. Even when all they had to do was look at my sodding medical records. 35-40 quid in cab fares, waiting hours AFTER waiting all night at that.
Didn't you try another pharmacy on the saturday? supermarkets etc.? because the fuckers that told you that heap of shit were way out of line. Bunch of sisterfucking parasites. And why leave the script with that pharmacy without it?
