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I can't imagine trying unknown drugs on myself. That's so risky. But people did it and found out the hard way like with Bromo-DragonFLY: subjective effects hav

I can't imagine trying unknown drugs on myself. That's so risky. But people did it and found out the hard way like with Bromo-DragonFLY: subjective effects have been described as “like being dragged to hell and back again. Many times. It is the most evil [thing] I’ve ever tried. It lasted an eternity.” Oh and it lasts up to 3 days. No gracias.

loves_mangoes 5y ago
The way to test these things is by starting with an alergy test, a dose low enough that it definitely won't have any effect, and also definitely will not kill you. If you feel fine, you wait several days and try a bigger dose, then see if you feel any effects. Stop when it becomes unpleasant or unwise. This is not safe. There is no safe way to ingest dozens of unknown chemicals. Somehow, chemists like Shulgin show that it's possible to test all those compounds on yourself and still live a long healthy life. Still, I would not recommend tempting fate.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "The way to test these things is by starting with an alergy test, a dose low enough that it definitely won't have any effect, and also definitely will not kill you. If you feel fine, you wait several days and try a bigger dose, then see if you feel any effects. Stop when it becomes unpleasant or unwise." If you absolutely must experiment, this method is a good for hopefully avoiding short-term adverse effects, but not long-term ones. Much safer is to stick to substances that have a long history of safe human use.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Long-term effects tends to come from prolonged use or very high amounts, not from doing smaller tests. > Much safer is to stick to substances that have a long history of safe human use. Yeah, so much is clear, but saying "stick to the classic ones" when one brings up experimentation with new ones doesn't bring much new to the table. Much better to provide education up front on how to dosage new drugs (not just new to the world, but new to your body too) for the ones who do want to exist in that space.
  - loves_mangoes 5y ago
    Absolutely. If you're looking for examples of things going wrong, the researchchemicals forum unfortunately has more than a few cases of people showing symptoms of serious nerve damage after experimenting with NPS ('novel psychoactive substances') stimulants ordered from RC vendors. That is despite a (smaller) subset of them being careful and methodical with dosage. Personally, as a very squeamish person, I'm more than happy to stick with the tried and true, and in desperately boring moderate amounts :)
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    Unfortunately almost all of the moderately safe, well known compounds were made illegal by people afraid of their own shadow. Yes this is aggressive, and yes I'm quite angry about how these laws have held back scientific progress.
    - theptip 5y ago
      It's sad that the war on drugs is just pushing recreational drug users (often unknowingly) to more-readily synthesized chemicals with worse safety profiles, thereby increasing the net harm to society. It really puts the lie to the idea that harm reduction is part of the agenda in most western countries. Say what you will about the recreational drugs of the 20th century, their long-term effects are well understood.
- jelling 5y ago
  The definition of survivor bias though
- Nursie 5y ago
  I think the main problem with bromo-dragonfly is that the active dose is somewhere around 200 micrograms, around 50-100 times more potent than what they were expecting (2cb-fly). In fact there’s very little other than lysergamides and some opioids that’s active at that level. I guess some sort of volumetric dilution might have helped, otherwise I t’s actually pretty difficult to dose that low.
gpcr1949 5y ago
The fatalities with bromo-dragonfly where due to a mix-up on the distribution end, not only because of the inherent danger of the drugs. In fact, the local distributor (known as Haupt RC) in the bromo-dragonfly 2c-b-fly mix-up incident, died himself. Of course, self-titrating new chemicals is not without risk, but Shulgin style careful titrating usually prevents incidents comparable to the bromo-dragonfly one and various other ones (such as unreliable dosing of NBOMe derivatives etc).
virtuallynathan 5y ago
There's no other way to know what they'll do.
1_player 5y ago
Some first hand accounts of Bromo-Dragonfly: https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_BromoDragonfly.shtml https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_BromoDragonfly.shtml
failrate 5y ago
These folks are also very experienced chemists who can model the structures of the chemicals they are synthesizing and make reasonable guesses about their effects.
netizen-936824 5y ago
Its also customary to start at extremely low doses and slowly work your way up until activity is noticed. Iirc this is all detailed in pihkal/tihkal along with explanations of the Shulgin scale
the_only_law 5y ago
I’m gonna have to read some trip reports on this. The only other things I’ve seen described this horrifying are deliriants like datura.

loves_mangoes 5y ago

The way to test these things is by starting with an alergy test, a dose low enough that it definitely won't have any effect, and also definitely will not kill you. If you feel fine, you wait several days and try a bigger dose, then see if you feel any effects. Stop when it becomes unpleasant or unwise. This is not safe. There is no safe way to ingest dozens of unknown chemicals. Somehow, chemists like Shulgin show that it's possible to test all those compounds on yourself and still live a long healthy life. Still, I would not recommend tempting fate.

pmoriarty 5y ago
"The way to test these things is by starting with an alergy test, a dose low enough that it definitely won't have any effect, and also definitely will not kill you. If you feel fine, you wait several days and try a bigger dose, then see if you feel any effects. Stop when it becomes unpleasant or unwise." If you absolutely must experiment, this method is a good for hopefully avoiding short-term adverse effects, but not long-term ones. Much safer is to stick to substances that have a long history of safe human use.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Long-term effects tends to come from prolonged use or very high amounts, not from doing smaller tests. > Much safer is to stick to substances that have a long history of safe human use. Yeah, so much is clear, but saying "stick to the classic ones" when one brings up experimentation with new ones doesn't bring much new to the table. Much better to provide education up front on how to dosage new drugs (not just new to the world, but new to your body too) for the ones who do want to exist in that space.
- loves_mangoes 5y ago
  Absolutely. If you're looking for examples of things going wrong, the researchchemicals forum unfortunately has more than a few cases of people showing symptoms of serious nerve damage after experimenting with NPS ('novel psychoactive substances') stimulants ordered from RC vendors. That is despite a (smaller) subset of them being careful and methodical with dosage. Personally, as a very squeamish person, I'm more than happy to stick with the tried and true, and in desperately boring moderate amounts :)
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Unfortunately almost all of the moderately safe, well known compounds were made illegal by people afraid of their own shadow. Yes this is aggressive, and yes I'm quite angry about how these laws have held back scientific progress.
  - theptip 5y ago
    It's sad that the war on drugs is just pushing recreational drug users (often unknowingly) to more-readily synthesized chemicals with worse safety profiles, thereby increasing the net harm to society. It really puts the lie to the idea that harm reduction is part of the agenda in most western countries. Say what you will about the recreational drugs of the 20th century, their long-term effects are well understood.
jelling 5y ago
The definition of survivor bias though
Nursie 5y ago
I think the main problem with bromo-dragonfly is that the active dose is somewhere around 200 micrograms, around 50-100 times more potent than what they were expecting (2cb-fly). In fact there’s very little other than lysergamides and some opioids that’s active at that level. I guess some sort of volumetric dilution might have helped, otherwise I t’s actually pretty difficult to dose that low.

gpcr1949 5y ago

The fatalities with bromo-dragonfly where due to a mix-up on the distribution end, not only because of the inherent danger of the drugs. In fact, the local distributor (known as Haupt RC) in the bromo-dragonfly 2c-b-fly mix-up incident, died himself. Of course, self-titrating new chemicals is not without risk, but Shulgin style careful titrating usually prevents incidents comparable to the bromo-dragonfly one and various other ones (such as unreliable dosing of NBOMe derivatives etc).

virtuallynathan 5y ago

There's no other way to know what they'll do.

1_player 5y ago

Some first hand accounts of Bromo-Dragonfly: https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_BromoDragonfly.shtml https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_BromoDragonfly.shtml

failrate 5y ago

These folks are also very experienced chemists who can model the structures of the chemicals they are synthesizing and make reasonable guesses about their effects.

netizen-936824 5y ago

Its also customary to start at extremely low doses and slowly work your way up until activity is noticed. Iirc this is all detailed in pihkal/tihkal along with explanations of the Shulgin scale

the_only_law 5y ago

I’m gonna have to read some trip reports on this. The only other things I’ve seen described this horrifying are deliriants like datura.