Lysergamides The famous "Orange Barrels" of LSD in the 70's

[mikenwuf]

Great thread. This was one of the first acids I ever took, first time for what we called Orange Barrell Sunshine, was the Donovan concert on October 4, 1969. My father and stepmom took me and the drummer of our rock band in high school. I discovered trails that night and played with my cigarette all concert, the parents were clueless. The last time I did the Owsley Orange Barrell Sunshine was a year later when I had a syringe made up of three barrell's and lost most of the memory for 2 days, thanks to friends in school, I got through it. Never again. 250+ trip in a year, never a bad one, thank goodness.

 

[OGZipster]

I have done Purple barrels and some laced with orange or yellow crystals, those were the best hallucinogens I ever ate, it was at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert at Winterland in 1975, one other time I took what was called a triple dragon and it was the Grateful Dead New Years Eve show on December 31st 1979 to the morning of Jan. 1, 1980, then 13 days later I took some orange juice laced with liquid at the Cambodian Benefit Concert at the Oakland Coliseum, fun times brother. I have to believe that the dosage was at least 250 micrograms and possibly more, I do believe that the stuff at the Lynard Skynyrd concert was laced with DMT because the first hour I was incapacitated, fortunately it was during the opening act, a band called PARIS.

 

[4DQSAR]

In response to the OP, Tim Skully and Nicholas Sand were the first to make a 'designer drug' being ALD-52 as the active in those 'Orange Barrels'.

One got caught in the early 70s, the other turned up in Canada making (R) lysergic acid sec butyl amide.

That diethyl or sec butyl or whatever amide is used are just lipophilic space-filling moieties AFAIK.

 

[Esperighanto]

That diethyl or sec butyl or whatever amide is used are just lipophilic space-filling moieties AFAIK.

Yeah even back to Hoffman's notes in Ergot Alkaloids, and what is released from MK NAOMI/ULTRA/ARTICHOKE and all that uniquely American hell pertaining to LSD that occurred, people rarely reported a major different compound vs compound as long as they were similar and had the doses scaled as to be equipotent. Reading the old MKUltra notes comparing psilocin to ethocin to psilacetin are fascinating, there's a podcast recorded by Hamilton Morris a while back where he interviews a chemist whose parents were parts of these trials and he still recalls their wide eyes watching airplanes land and take off at the airport.

In response to the OP, Tim Skully and Nicholas Sand were the first to make a 'designer drug' being ALD-52 as the active in those 'Orange Barrels'.

You would actually be someone I want to ask about this, I can only barely find reference before the ALD-52 days to the thought process of "circumvention through chemistry". Since then though it seems to be quite common, both for reasons pertaining to supply as well as economics, and legality and sometimes popular appeal.

Some of the older papers on things like allylescaline, DOC, and ethylmorphine all indicate people were playing with analogs just because, but it wasn't until people were cooking acid (and of course DOM) by the bathtub full that they started to encounter issues like "Damn I sure am running low on amines, what I can replace it with?" Some of the earliest incidences of PCE being encountered on the streets is because of how much of a pain in the ass piperidine not only is, but has always been. Before the late 1960s though, do any meaningful examples of this pop up on your radar because I'm at a loss for anything from the late 60's and before.

 

[xdrc]

In response to the OP, Tim Skully and Nicholas Sand were the first to make a 'designer drug' being ALD-52 as the active in those 'Orange Barrels'.

One got caught in the early 70s, the other turned up in Canada making (R) lysergic acid sec butyl amide.

That diethyl or sec butyl or whatever amide is used are just lipophilic space-filling moieties AFAIK.

From Tim Scully's AMA on Reddit ():

The Orange Sunshine we delivered was LSD 25. ALD 52 was an ill-advised desperate defense strategy that failed miserably. I recommend that anyone who is guilty should stay off the witness stand; I wish I had followed that advice.

The story of Orange Sunshine is complicated by the fact that The Brotherhood distributed LSD from more than one manufacturer as Orange Sunshine. Nick and I made the original Orange Sunshine in Windsor. That was the last lab I worked in making LSD. Ron Stark managed several LSD labs in Europe and most of his output was tableted and sold as Orange Sunshine. At least some of the LSD that his labs made was not pure.

I believe what it would be very difficult to design a good experiment to compare the influence that different batches of LSD have on the quality of trip that people have since there are so many other factors that also influence the trip. At the 1966 Point Richmond lab Owsley, Don Douglas, Melissa and I divided a 10 g batch of pure crystalline LSD into 5 equal piles. These were dyed different colors and buffed (diluted) with lactose and calcium phosphate to make powder suitable for tablet triturates. The five different colors of tablets that result were identical except for color. But soon after they hit the street, stories were flying around the San Francisco drug scene: one color was said to be very laid-back, another was rumored to have speed in it, and one was said to be far more spiritual than another.

 

[4DQSAR]

Yeah - that is why Sand swapped to making the then-legal (R) lysergic acid sec butyl amide.

Hoffman and Stoll made and tested a LOT of homologues. The only 'new' thing was the (S,S)-2,4-dimethyl azetidine homologue of LSD. Making that amine is a bit of an arse but I would just have it made. After all, it's a simple amine so not suspicious. BUT it does help us understand the active conformation.

 

[Esperighanto]

Making that amine is a bit of an arse but I would just have it made. After all, it's a simple amine so not suspicious. BUT it does help us understand the active conformation.

Why bother with making it the hard way, let nature handle it. This is commonly found without many structurally similar compounds in the phytochemistry of a couple plants iirc, Solomon's Seal and Lily Of The Valley I think? I used to daydream of running two grow tents, one for HBWR and one for an azetidine source just generating LSZ in a mobile fashion.

 

[xdrc]

The problem with all such plans is actually doing them, of course...

 

[BWG707]

We used to get blue barrel, never saw orange barrel. The orange sunshine we got was more pill shaped. Microdots were very small, tiny looking pills. Saw lots of windowpane. Also we would run across liquid L-25, dropped it on your tongue or a sugar cube. Crazy days back then.

 

[pupnik]

loved the microdots