morninggloryseed said:
Owning a scale has nothing to do with being elite. It has to do have having a damn brain in your head and not being an irresponsible idiot when working with potent and pure chemicals active in milligram amounts. And volumetric measurements are worthless if you don't know how much you are starting off with, i.e. you don't have a scale to weigh it before you add the liquid.
MGS, I was replying to an earlier thread which claimed the association of owning a scale and membership in the elite circle.
All drug use has some level of risk associated with it. Harm reduction assumes that even if people decide to take a certain level of risk (whatever that may be), they are still people who deserve respect and deserve to be helped and educated to reduce that risk.
(
http://www.dancesafe.org/documents/druginfo/risk.php)
It is obvious that measuring your dosages on an accurate scale is the best way to ensure your dosage won't be higher than xx mg’s (it could always be less if you aren't sure of purity). No one is arguing that point.
However, if someone who refuses to buy a scale (or won’t be buying a scale anytime soon-and we know you’re out there) wants to know a better and more accurate method of dividing doses than simply eyeballing, liquid measurement offers some advantages.
I'd bet that many, if not all, of the people posting about "how dumb people without scales must be" have taken...(gasp!)...unknown doses of psychedelic drugs before (perhaps even psychedelic research chemicals). I know I have. I believe this is an inherent aspect of most illicit and grey market drug use.
How much mescaline is in your san pedro? How much psilocybin is in your mushrooms? LSD? MDxx (do you even know what chemical this is supposed to be)? Ayahuasca?
In most of these cases, the manner in which optimal dosing is discovered is by trial and error (of a particular batch). Finding your own optimum dosage of any psychedelic research chemical involves the same process, even if you have a scale. You will not know your optimal dosage until you try it. I see many people with a scale try the upper limits of Shulgin’s dosage range for their first experiment and this is arguably not very responsible either.
The advantage liquid measurement offers over straight eyeballing is a relative idea of the strength of xx ml of one’s solution, which allows one to accurately adjust future dosages from previous experience. Before I had a scale (gasp!), I would eyeball what I thought looked like 10 medium to low doses (based on previous experience, total amount I was supposed to get from vendor, etc.) and dissolve them in EtOH, then I would start with about half a dose, then depending on how that felt, move to 75% or 100% or even 125% or 150% of a dose or sometimes I would even stay at 50% (although not often). Liquid measurement takes some of the variability out of subsequent dosing from a particular solution and this is important for safety.
Of course, without a scale at all, you will not know how many milligrams are in your solution, but you also won’t know how many milligrams of psilocybin are in 3.5 grams of batch ‘a’ mushrooms. All drug use has some level of risk and experimental psychedelics has more than its fair share, but you can reduce the risk of taking too much by taking things slow and being careful.
(Also, someone brought up legal considerations for having chemicals in liquid and I would just like to point out that there are legal ramifications for owning a scale too.)
Again, nothing beats a scale for accuracy and if anyone plans to research like this, I’d highly recommend a scale (even .01 g will get you started). Using liquid measurement techniques, you can turn a .01 g scale into .001 g accuracy. However, if you are not going to get a scale, please take whatever precautions are available to you to stay safe.
Hope this helps.
