Chapter 2: LSD to LSD

Before starting the production of LSD I needed the raw materials. My parents’ pharmacy was the safest and cheapest place where I could obtain most of my requirements as, although it pains me to say it, my parents were involved in a fraud in which they received chemicals free of charge. My brother worked for one of the largest pharmaceutical company in the world and his job was in quality control. If a batch of chemicals was found to be substandard it was removed from the production line. More tests would then be carried out on the faulty batch and when the product was deemed to be ‘up to specification’ ir would be recycled through the system. Or at least most of the batch would be recycled through the system. An amount of the chemical found to be ‘substandard’ by my brother was clandestinely shipped to my parents’ pharmacy. It had come as a shock to find that my supposedly law abiding parents were part of a scam and were receiving chemical supplies free and gratis and without the manufacturer knowing a thing about it. But the upside of that was if I purloined a kilo or two of what my parents had illegally obtained who were they going to call?

I came back from Malissard with three kilos of ergotamine tartrate and several litres of trichloromethane, chloroform. I also picked up an old Single Punch Tablet Press that had been languishing in my parents’ garage since they had bought a high speed rotary press machine. Like all pharmacies 40 or 50 years ago my parents actually dispensed prescriptions rather than just unpack the boxes of pills and capsules produced and delivered by pharmaceutical companies. In those days pharmaceutical companies supplied bulk ingredients for pharmacies to make up prescriptions written by local doctors, hence the availability of ergotamine tartrate and chloroform in their store room. As for the necessary kit required to produce the acid the university laboratory already contained state-of-the-art equipment; including a roto-evaporator, heating mantles, and sterilising equipment. I constructed a ‘pop up’ dark room from blankets and metal struts that could be quickly assembled after ‘normal’ work had finished in the laboratory. Claude had obtained Doctor Messines’ permission to allow me to do my own ‘research’ in the laboratory after hours, with authorisation to show the security personnel who patrolled the campus and buildings at night. I asked Claude how he had persuaded Doctor Messines to allow me such carte blanche.

He grinned. “Our Doctor Messines is a randy old goat and has got the hots for my latest squeeze, Eleanor. I’m allowing him to vent his lust on her and then I will have him by the short and curlies. He wouldn’t dare renege on the deal.”

“Eleanor will allow Doctor Messines to, err, have his way with her? He must be nearly fifty!”

“Eleanor will do whatever I tell her. She would even let you screw her if I told her to, but you’ve got that hot whore from The House of Joy to haul your ashes.” He grinned, “But if you ever want a piece of Eleanor just give me the word and she’ll be underneath you in a trice.”

“Eleanor doesn’t even like me, or at least she appears not to like me,” I said.

“That’ true. She thinks you’re really weird, but if I told her to screw you then screw you she would. I popped her cherry and gave her such an orgasm she’s gagging for my prick all the time, and if she doesn’t do what I want she doesn’t get any hot steaming dick. So Doc Messines gets his ashes hauled, we get LSD tabs made, and Eleanor gets her rocks off when I prong her after she does what I want. At the end of the day everyone goes home happy; God’s in his heaven and all is right with the world!”

Put like that it all made sense, of a kind.

“I’m going to need extra hands to help out in the lab.” I said.

“Well, don’t look at me. I’ve got a distribution chain to set up and run besides having to prong Eleanor regularly to keep her sweet. What about the Gruesome Twosome, those two nerdy friends of yours? They don’t have much else to do with their time, and we could pay them in tabs; it might even shake them up enough to get a life!”

Sybil surprised me by jumping at the chance to try LSD. “I’m told LSD can open one’s inner eye, and it might help me understand the mind set of Lippi, Daddi, Giotto, Berlinghieri father and son, and all the other great medieval artists. Yes, Philippe, count me in.” She was showing more animation than I had ever seen her express before and had a glow about her that made her sexually attractive. Wow, just the thought of tripping on acid had stirred her emotions. Imagine what she would be like after taking a tab or two!

Gaspard was only slightly less enthusiastic. “Perhaps LSD will open up my inner eye and I will discover the Golden Number, the number that determines how we think and perform; or maybe I will find the perfect algorithm to forecast the regional lottery winning line.”

With those two looking after the sterilising, the venting, the distilling, and the other grunt work I did what a chemist does; producing lysergic acid from ergotamine tartare, synthesizing that with chloroform and heating to isomerizate its chemical structure. Eventually, after a series of chemical reactions, LSD crystals formed.

I then diverted off the usual path by grinding the crystals into a powder and mixing the powder with Potassium bicarbonate and Monocalcium phosphate (aka baking powder). A standard dose of LSD is about 100 micrograms, and the resultant powder manufactured – 80% LSD, 20% baking powder – was fed into the Single Punch Tablet Press machine.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I would imagine even a chemistry major would agree that divulging the means and methods of producing LSD to the readership of Sol would not be appreciated by the authorities, or the owners of WLPC.

I hope a nod is as good as a wink (to a blind horse).

By midnight there was a batch of 200 tablets available. I had purposefully lowered the strength of each tablet as I had read that some people are more responsive than others to LSD and can have a ‘bad trip’, although most people would just have the psychedelic sensation without any harmful, mental, affects. I assumed the more often one took acid the more tolerance one would achieve. However, Claude would be selling the tablets just produced to fellow students, few of whom would have experienced LSD before. I thought it prudent they set off on their journey to the unknown with a less powerful dose and I would make full strength LSD tablets when there was a larger population of users.