How much LSD do you absorb by touching tabs?

[Flickering]

Suppose you didn't know what tabs were, and your hands were sweaty, and you saw a sheet of 50, picked it up and studied the artwork for a few minutes. Surely the sweat would absorb quite a lot of LSD, and you'd have a damn hard trip? Is there any research on approximately how much you'd absorb?

I'm writing a book in the near future, and the main character needs to unwittingly ingest somewhere between 0.8 to 2.5mg of LSD. I was thinking he could get it dropped onto his hand in liquid form, or eat LSD-laced sweets, but this idea could be a lot more unusual.

I recall, one of my first acid trips, I volunteered to cut the tabs for my friends. Then I took 1 and a quarter, and they each took 2 (and redosed around T+08 and T+14 hours). We all agreed that I tripped the hardest. That might be because I had the least experience and tolerance, and had the lightest build, but it might also have to do with the fact that I handled 10 tabs with my bare hands before cutting them with scissors.

What do you reckon?

 

[sekio]

LSD is basically not absorbed through skin. (Ref: Erowid transcript) ... it's actually been posed that Hofmann himself may heve never even ingested LSD the first time he was "exposed".

Another fact: I've made LSD in my lab on many occasions for research purposes, possibly in not so meticulous a manner as Albert Hofmann. Nothing ever happened. I had several graduate students who made LSD as an intermediate for projects. No accidental ingestion of LSD ever occurred. A technician in my lab makes it routinely because we use it as a drug to train our rats. He's learned by experience that he never gets high, nothing ever happens. And yesterday I was talking to Nick Sand, and Nick said, "I made a solution of LSD in DMSO…" -- DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) is a chemical that greatly enhances absorption of other chemicals through the skin -- he says, "…I painted it on my skin. Nothing happened." A concentrated solution and nothing happened! How did this very meticulous Swiss chemist get the LSD into his body? I don't know.

So even solbvents thought to penetrate the skin instantly don't make LSD active transdermally. And LSD in blotter paper is rather hard to release until you start saturating the blotter paper with fluid.

There is no risk from handling blotters, unless you're doing so in a shower or you're manipulating them with your tongue.

Really the biggest risk of exposure comes from its odorless, tasteless nature. Your character wouldn't notice if someone dumped a fuck ton of LSD into his food/drink at a bar or something. (I guess it's your problem dealing with providing enough of an asshole to do that )

Tl;dr. You can handle tabs all day and nothing's gonna happen. Exposure risk from dermal contact is 0.

 

[LogicSoDeveloped]

What an excellent explanation Sekio, I've wondered about this myself!

 

[phenethylo J]

I think a cool way your character could could acidently injest it is when they use a bottle of visine that was in a friends bathroom cabinit because their eyes are dry and itchy and unknown to them it is lsd.

 

[RobotRipping]

well what if you were handling a bunch of blotter and accidentally touch your mouth? I could see that happening pretty easily. Or would it not transfer from the blotter paper to your hand very easily? This was always a concern of mine when dealing with the nbome series.

 

[Flickering]

Thanks Sekio. Damn, so even if your hands were sweaty and you held a full sheet for a couple of minutes, that wouldn't do anything? Bit of a shame - there were a few reasons I really liked that idea for the story. For the record though, no one slips him any LSD (yeah, you'd have to be a horrible, horrible person), it happens by accident.

Visine - the uncanny thing is, I was recently thinking about storing LSD liquid in an eye-drop bottle, to carry around discretely. LSD straight to the eye, haha. Probably not what I'll end up writing but hey, good thinking.

 

[psood0nym]

Has anyone ever really come up with a more plausible explanation of what happened with Hofmann's experience using more info? I've only heard the Nick Sand story above before and that Hofmann had natural beatific episodes (like Dostoyevsky but not an epileptic sort of thing) that might have just happened to coincide with the "spill." Hofmann says the duration of the experience was "2 hours." Even if he had secretly figured out LSD was a psychedelic, tried it on his own, then made up the spill story to save face, the 2 hour figure doesn't make sense. But if he had a natural experience that just happened to coincide with the spilling of LSD and LSD didn't do anything physiologically, well then that's, like, psychic communication from a chemical telling you it's psychedelic without actually interacting with your brain chemistry. In my not so informed opinion based off just this limited knowledge and human nature, I think he must have known the history of ergot poisonings and did some private exploration, made up the spill story to save face and fit with the 2 hour circumstances at play at the time, then once he became a legend just let it ride. Please anyone feel free to disabuse me of my ignorance here. I just can't make sense of it with what I know.

 

[TheAppleCore]

LSD is basically not absorbed through skin.

There is some anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Although I can't verify this information, I've heard that people working for hours laying sheets of paper LSD start to trip from handling all the wet paper. Also, I have heard of people effectively dosing liquid LSD by the (highly inefficient) "puddling" technique, where a puddle of liquid LSD is squirted into the palm of your hand.

 

[TheAppleCore]

Has anyone ever really come up with a more plausible explanation of what happened with Hofmann's experience using more info?

It's not hard to imagine that Hofmann accidentally ingested some LSD in the lab. An airborne particle of crystalline LSD could have been inhaled, he could have rubbed an itchy eye with a contaminated hand/glove, he could have unconsciously put his finger on his lip and then licked his lips, etc.

Also, if it was a very small quantity, i.e. a threshold dose, then it's also easy to imagine that the perceivable effects would only last 2 hours. Recently I took 2 mg 2C-E, which had a perceptible psychedelic effect for around 30-45 minutes, during the time that a larger dose would've peaked.

 

[TangerinO]

well what if you were handling a bunch of blotter and accidentally touch your mouth? I could see that happening pretty easily. Or would it not transfer from the blotter paper to your hand very easily? This was always a concern of mine when dealing with the nbome series.

Yeah I was handling a sheet recently and licked my fingers after. Could have sworn it sky rocketed my trip.

 

[revolve]

Yeah i had a number of fresh microdots in my sweaty hand before i put them away and i started to trip even before i consumed one.. but i had all types of drugs beforehand so my anecdote is pretty flawed

 

[sekio]

well what if you were handling a bunch of blotter and accidentally touch your mouth? I could see that happening pretty easily. Or would it not transfer from the blotter paper to your hand very easily? This was always a concern of mine when dealing with the nbome series.

Compounds don't just "fall out" of a blotter or pill. It's not a concern unless you're handling sheets with wet hands and then licking your fingers, or other equally silly things.

Imagine if you spilled very dilute sugar water onto a piece of thick paper. Now let it dry completely, and handle it. See how much sugar your fingers pick up (hint: not a lot)

I've heard that people working for hours laying sheets of paper LSD start to trip from handling all the wet paper.

Not that anecdotal evidence really stands for much, but it's more likely exposure happens through the oral/mucosal route rather than transdermal. It's still possible to have transdermal exposure (see: fentanyl patches) but I don't know if people would like having a moist sheet of acid strapped to their back!

And it's also fairly well-known some people experience "drug effects" from merely being near drugs. It happens to opioid users - why can't psychedelic users experience it too?

 

[TangerinO]

Compounds don't just "fall out" of a blotter or pill. It's not a concern unless you're handling sheets with wet hands and then licking your fingers, or other equally silly things.

Imagine if you spilled very dilute sugar water onto a piece of thick paper. Now let it dry completely, and handle it. See how much sugar your fingers pick up (hint: not a lot)



Not that anecdotal evidence really stands for much, but it's more likely exposure happens through the oral/mucosal route rather than transdermal. It's still possible to have transdermal exposure (see: fentanyl patches) but I don't know if people would like having a moist sheet of acid strapped to their back!

And it's also fairly well-known some people experience "drug effects" from merely being near drugs. It happens to opioid users - why can't psychedelic users experience it too?

So yeah just to be certain, I shouldn't have licked my fingers?

Well I guess I can answer my own question by saying I won't be doing it again anytime soon.

 

[levir]

Maybe it would be possible to absorb LSD through your skin if it was broken, e.g. a cut.

 

[VerbalTruist]

^That doesn't work I've tried it. I just ended up dropping more into my mouth. I let it sit in a cut for 30 minutes (it was a deep one too) then I lapped it up and droppered three more hits into my mouth. I was 'TRIPPING BALLS' as is the parlance of our times.

The follow up post to the original pretty much explains it perfectly. You aren't going to trip by handling tabs. Also, don't pick up a sheet with sweaty hands! It will foul some of the LSD. Kids these days.

However, if you handle a sheet with sweaty hands you stand to lose nothing by licking your fingers after the fact and the sheet has been stored. You wouldn't want to lick your fingers and then get the sheet all spitty.

 

[Typewritermonkey]

I had a friend who had 12 sugarcubes in tinfoil all in the same thing, said each one was weak. When he ate the last two, he licked all the foil, said it felt like around 6-7.

Another time I had a friend who had a sheet that got kinda exposed to moisture, licked the tin foil and sure enough he was high as fuck.

I'd say the best way is just to have him have a cup of tea and when he asked for 1 or 2 cubes of sugar, he says two coyly, and kablam!