Sunday, August 25, 2013

MK-801 HISTORY?













Despite having been in gray-market use for almost twenty years, MK-801 is arguably the least common RC dissociative. It is so rare that I am not entirely sure how many of the reports on its qualitative effects (which are less than ten in number) are from users ingesting material diverted from legitimate bioscience suppliers or laboratories (in which context it's common) relative to those acquiring the material from gray-market RC sources. Accounting for MK-801's extreme scarcity are a non-trivial four-step synthesis from an unusual precursor (5-dibenzosuberenone), its association with at least one fatal poisoning, its implication in the formation of Olney's lesions (which, I am aware, have never been observed in humans), and its general conception as a non-euphoric, Jacob's Ladder-ish amnesiogen. But recently Erowid published an extraordinarily detailed MK-801 experience report that presents what I feel is the most illuminating description of the drug's qualitative effects written thus far. The report (titled The Most Beautiful Lobotomy I Ever Had and written by a user named viscosity) incorporates some objective measurement of vital signs, multiple trials at escalating doses, and passing mention of use by the author's friends. Here is an excerpt:
I somehow am able to use the webcam on my computer and take many random video clips where I start recording only to forget what I wanted to say or why I even began recording in the first place. So I make some short 5 second comment about how I’m really far gone and just use undescriptive phrases like “What just happened?” “I’m not really sure” “I don’t know” and “Wow. Just Wow”. My ability to communicate verbally is pretty messed up as I’m stuttering, taking with a heavy speech impediment and keep loosing words in the middle of sentences. I can’t seem to convey in English what the drug feels like at all. It’s so intensely strange and surreal the words completely escape me....
In some videos I obviously have no clue what I’m doing or that I am even recording. I record myself eating something, then wander off camera only to come back at the computer to stare at it, trying to make sense of it, then wander off to mumble some incoherent gibberish off camera. At one point I cannot locate the trash can to throw a food container away for a good couple of minutes and am completely mystified as to where it had gone. It was actually only one and a half feet from its usual location but I could not remember that I had moved it there, and its new location was seemingly invisible to me despite it being directly in my field of vision. I’m not in a bad mood, but I am completely shot at this point and very confused. I even somehow manage to record a video of me watching a video of myself that I had just recorded of me watching myself on the video preview (that one was pretty funny to watch later. By the look on my face I seem to be kind of amused, yet absolutely bewildered and unable to process the sensory stimuli in front of me).
I'm posting this for two reasons: first it's simply an interesting report that counters the idea that euphoric effects of ketamine and other NMDA antagonists can only result from action at targets other than the NMDA receptor, and secondly because I am writing a review article about gray-market dissociative history and would very much like to collect reports from anyone who has self-experimented with MK-801 (also called dizocilpine) or who can provide me with historical information about RC vendors that have carried it in the past.

Monday, August 19, 2013

KETAMINE FREEBASE: CRIMINAL COUNTERION?

In 1999 ketamine was made a schedule III controlled substance in the United States. In the following years China, a major exporter of ketamine, also subjected the chemical to more stringent control and Sichuan began to formally regulate export of ketamine in 2004. If you look at posts on various drug forums during the period between 2002 and 2004 it is frequently stated that China prohibited non-medical export of the hydrochloride salt but not the freebase resulting in laboratories vending the freebase form exclusively:
[There was] a funny window where China had scheduled ketamine HCl but not the base, so that took up the slack.
- J, 2013
There is also alot of Ketamine freebase comming out of china these days, it is diff than the typical ketamine hcl (salt)
(this is because exporting ketamine hcl was outlawed so they just switched to the freebase)
- shroomy, 2002

For some reason people seem to be able to get lots of this ketamine freebase now-a-days. is there some sort of different legal status for this stuff then for the HCL form?
- pberezansky, 2003 
There used to be a big import market from China, but there was a clamp down and now China only exports Freebase Ketamine and not Hydrachroide. Freebase is much harder to use and has to be converted into the salt.
- budda, 2004
There are also an abundance of threads and teks from that period detailing the conversion of ketamine freebase to the hydrochloride salt aimed at scientifically untrained ketamine users in possession of the freebase. This is all to say I believe there is sufficient (indirect) evidence to support the idea that this practice was taking place in China in the early 2000s, my question is whether any of you (readers) can help me find direct evidence that China controlled the HCl salt of ketamine but not the drug itself––effectively prohibiting the chloride counterion––which is ridiculous. If anyone reading this speaks Chinese or could direct me to a lawyer familiar with Chinese drug law during that period, help would be greatly appreciated.


tl;dr
I want to substantiate the claim that ketamine hyrdrochloride, but not the freebase, was legally controlled in China during the early/mid 2000s. 

Friday, August 9, 2013

HAVING A SHOW

“You’re terrible,” he says.
“You’re terrible,” he repeats.
“You’re terrible,” he repeats with additional emphasis.
“What?” I reply.
“You’re terrible,” he says.
“He’s terrible,” he says to a man standing between us.
“What?” the man between us asks, directing the question at me.
“Is he joking or being genuinely hostile?” I ask, directing the question at the man between us. 
“Are you joking?” the man between us asks the man. 
“He’s terrible,” the man responds, “He has a show on Vice, it’s terrible, everyone agrees.”
“You have a show?” the man between us asks cheerfully.
“He has a show about drugs,” the man answers for me.
“Is it a video show?” the man between us asks with genuine interest.
“Yes,” I respond.
“I used to work for Vice with Timmy Barber eating cockroaches,” the man who thinks I'm terrible says, I believe.
“Your terrible,” he says.