red22
Bluelighter
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Dec 19, 2024Welcome back to The Drop In, DoubleBlind’s psychedelic newsletter serving up news, culture, and events from the underground straight to your inbox.
Per usual, today’s dispatch is packed with wild stories. One of which is about Willy Myco, the multi-hyphenate mycologist, chemist, and content creator, who traveled to Pakistan to record a step-by-step instructional video on how to make LSD. It’s the first REAL, detailed recording of someone making the compound — not a cheesy voiceover tutorial on LSD synthesis paired with flashy visuals of molecules. This story truly has it all: calls from the FBI, scientists in Pakistan, death threats, and more. From the bottom of my bleeding heart, you DON’T want to miss drugs journalist Patrick Maravelias’ dazzling DB debut. You can find it below!
If you keep scrolling, you’ll find an opus on the evolution of modern psychedelic art (another story that truly has it all) by prolific writer and journalist Julia Edelman, and stories on glow-in-the-dark mushrooms, why people have bad trips, and so much more.
Sending sunshine,
Mary Carreón
Senior Editor
Willy Myco Just Released the First-Ever Video Demonstrating How to Synthesize LSD. Patrick Maravelias, Dec 18, 2024, DoubleBlind
After all that, the lead chemist at the University of Okara, Dr. Ali Altaf, performed the synthesis on video, and Willy released it to his Patreon on Halloween night with step-by-step instructions on how to make LSD in very simple terms. As someone with no knowledge of organic chemistry whatsoever, I was able to follow along with the video very easily.
“Literally a grandma could take my video, watch it, and produce LSD,” says Willy.
This quote corroborates Owsley's statement:
You were one of the major acid chemists of the Sixties, but apart from supplying the LSD, in what other way did you help stage The Acid Tests?
I am not, and never was, a "chemist". I am no more scientifically qualified in chemistry than someone who can bake a great wedding cake is. I was soundman for a band, Grateful Dead, who were the house band at the Acid Tests.
I called you a chemist because that is what you are referred to in most literature. Also, I assumed anyone making acid had to be a chemist, considering the fact that every time manufacturing is mentioned they always go on about how hard it is to produce it.
Difficulty has more to do with reading ability and ability to precisely follow directions, so far as I can see. You need no knowledge of chemistry whatsoever, you just need to understand some basic principles as simple in concept as: water boils at 100C and freezes at 0C. Otherwise all published syntheses of organic and inorganic compounds can be reproduced successfully by pretty nearly anyone with at least average intelligence. I had only one semester of inorganic chem 11 years earlier. It took me just three weeks in a library to learn all the principles I needed to do what I had to do, including how to change standard glassware to make it work better. Simple really. Problems always have to do with availability of materials, not esoteric knowledge.
“Wolfe is Useless”: Owsley Stanley on the Merry Pranksters and the Acid Tests. Henrik Dahl, The Oak Tree Review, Jan 2003
Related:
The Sunshine Makers (documentary). 2015. Cosmo Feilding-Mellen, Connie Littlefield, Passion Pictures, Persephone Productions, FilmRise
The fascinating untold story of Nicholas Sand and Tim Scully, the unlikely duo at the heart of 1960s American drug counterculture. United in a utopian mission to save the planet through the consciousness- raising power of LSD, these underground chemists manufactured a massive amount of acid, all while staying one step ahead of the feds.
Tracking the Supply of LSD. Trafficked, S3E2, National Geographic, Jan 25, 2023
Der Hype um legales LSD in Deutschland: Wie das Verbot umgangen wird. VICE auf Deutsch, Aug 7, 2022, YouTube (3:32) (Interview with the man who invented LSD prodrugs)
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