Using reagents means you may have to sacrifice a small part of your product.
Here is a method I have tested to work well and doesn't waste any. This is nothing new, I just wanted to spread the legitimacy of this method and add some tips.

Get a surface that is white and non absorbent like a coffee cup or a ceramic plate.
Put a small amount of distilled water on your surface (I have heard chlorine could mess with your product so use distilled just in case). You want a small amount. Maybe about the size of a quarter.
Turn out the lights and turn on a black light. Observe how the water looks under the UV light.
Now drop your blotter or whatever into the water and just watch the water. It should start turning light blue. You should see little streams of blue flowing out if you look closely. As soon as you see the blue fluorescence turn the light off. UV light will degrade LSD.
Once you are done, add some more water and just take it like a shot. Or if you want to keep it on blotter you could use ethanol instead of water and just let it evaporate.

The reason you put down the water, turn on the black light, THEN drop the blotter, is because if you just poured water on your blotter then looked at it under UV, you might not be so certain if any change in the water's color occurred. You might find yourself thinking "maybe this is just what water looks like under UV light, and this is some bunk acid", but if you visually watch a change happen you can know.

This was tested on LSD and another unknown substance thought to possibly be DOB. The LSD passed with no question about it and the mystery substance produced no change at all.
If you have any info on other substances that could possibly fluoresce please post it here. But AFAIK LSD is the only thing that has that sky blue glow and easily fits on a blotter.

Chlorine will destroy LSD on contact.

Plenty of blotter drugs turn blue. This is not a good way to test for LSD at all, you should use a reagent kit.

Such as which ones, 1ce?

frobot, LSD degrades when UV light shines on it, so your title is not technically correct. Sure it may be little if you shine quickly but there is definitely degradation going on.

But yeah thanks for sharing your method Now let's see if 1ce can help us out with naming other substances where false positives could be an important factor here.

Despite the rudimentary nature of the method, if this helps to distinguish genuine LSD from 2,5i-NBOMe and similar "research chemicals" that are frequently passed off as LSD, then this method is still very useful.

I found an article on erowid.org, describing the same:
https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_testing2.shtml

I would have to disagree there. There could be some other substances that fluoresce, but I've never heard of another one that turns blue. Certainly not "plenty" if any.

There are several advantages over reagent kits
Reagents are expensive where as water is cheap and available anywhere.
There is some debate on the ink on blotter paper messing with the results of reagents, but this method would avoid that.
You have to sacrifice next to nothing at all to test it (endlessness brings up a good point about the UV light degrading LSD. But I'm pretty positive the loss will not be noticeable)

I know for a fact that neither 25b,c,d,i,ip,g nbomes, and neither DOC, DOI and DOB shine strongly blue like LSD.

I'm pretty sure neither does bromodragonfly. I don't know about 5-MeO-AMT but I've never seen it being sold as LSD.

Very possibly 1p-LSD, AL-LAD and LSZ will shine but they don't seem to pose the risk of the other substitutes mentioned above at least from reports that are coming out so far.

What else can be passed off as LSD?

Its important that people understand not to do this test with simple blotter paper because white paper itself can shine with UV light and people might mistake, they'd have to do the 'extraction' as mentioned in the OP for better results.

How about:

Cocaine
inactive lysergamides
AL-LAD
5MeO-AMT
The entire (and rather impressively long list of): Dimethoxy-amphetamines
pscilocin and other tryptamines glow under a blacklight.


I must quash you claim as this being a 'good' method because it can't distinguish between indoles such as tryptamines and dipeptides from psychedelic amphetamines.

Cocaine in a blotter? Psilocin/cybin in a blotter?

"inactive lysergamides" like what? When has that ever been found in a blotter?

What other tryptamines are active at sub-mg dosagee?

What are the dosages for dimethoxy amphetamines?


Also, you suggested earlier using a reagent like ehrlich, which will also have false positives, including the tryptamines you mentioned.

Every testing method has it's blind spots.. It's important to not talk about this in a vacuum but in realistic terms.

This method isn't exactly a lab test but if I test something sold as LSD and it passes this simple test, I feel confident in it. I trust it no more or less than using reagents.

Endlessness for inactive lysergamide d-lsd is an example. =P But yes testing between l-lsd and d-lsd is beyond thenusefulness scope.

d (lsd-25) is the active epimer.

frobot, if you want to waste little, invest in micropipettes.

I derped.

How does

square with
?

What are the data for DOM, DOET, and other alkylated DMAs?

the wavelengths of max. absorbance increase with increasing pi-bond conjugation, i.e. number of alternating double-bonds, and respectively, the wavelengths of the hues transmitted.

Wait wait, this is fascinating. See I always thought light was given off by excited electrons emitting photons as they decayed to a lower energy statr. I had no idea bonds could affect this, I thought that energy was constant.

So then, if a bond could effect emittance, the does that mean the electron energy within that bond is fluctuating? Where can I find out more about this?

pi-bonds are shared, overlapping orbitals.

this is discussed in org. I, iirc.

^ yeah, a great example with familiar alkaloids would be the b-carbolines.



For an electron to decay to a lower energy state and emit a photon, it has to get to that energy state somehow in the first place, usually by absorbing a different (higher energy) photon. Think of plucking a G on a guitar (ground state), then playing the first harmonic, (1 node) you are promoting the vibration to 1 higher energy state, this can be repeated 2nd harmonic (2 nodes), 3rd harmonic (3 nodes)

In the case of conjugated system, we are promoting the pi bonding orbital (HOMO) to its anti bonding orbital (LUMO) Typically the energy required to do this is very high, but delocalization of electrons through an increasingly conjugated system lowers the energy difference between orbitals, so a longer wavelength could be absorbed.

Transistion metals can have pretty colours too, same concept, but the photon emitted come from the d-orbital splitting, which the electrons from these non-degenerate orbitals can move to one another, the differences in energy are much lower than your pi bonding orbitals, its easier to get visible blues and greens.

In organic compounds, it is all about electron delocalization. Delocalization is resonance, resonance is conjugated pi systems.
Harmine, harmaline (dihydroharmine), and tetrahydroharmine are all extremely similar molecules differing only by double bonds within the ring system.

Harmine is fully conjugated, harmaline -1 pi bond, and THH has only the conjugated indole moiety.

Now getting to the point, what is cool about this, take these three alkaloids and compare them with UV light.

The delocalization of electrons allows for easier excitation of electrons with UV light
With a lesser conjugated system, higher energy photon, a shorter wavelength is needed to excite the molecule.

So this is why we see harmine, having the most delocalized system of the three emit a blue light when exposed to UV light, the other alkaloids are green/blue and green.

The conjugation also effects the polarity of the hetero cyclic amine, so they are easily identified on TLC which also affects the basicity.This is also the property that allows you to seperate harmine and harmaline in your rue extraction. Wonderful, makes for an easy analysis. The perfect tool for the analysis would be HPLC-UV for so many reasons.